“When I read the script, I saw a story made for kids that had a different tone than anything done before,” says Emmanuel “Chivo” Lubezki, ASC of Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. “It was complex, with many layers of dramatic tones that went from farce to comedy to melodrama and tragedy––sometimes in the same scene.”

The film tells the tragic story of the Beaudelaire children, who are left a vast fortune when their parents are tragically killed in a fire. When they are sent to a distant relative, they find out that he is plotting to kill them in order to seize their fortune. “It’s really about how adults never really listen to kids,” says Lubezki, who has two young children of his own.

“At first, I was reluctant to do a movie with a strong comedian like Jim Carrey,” Lubezki admits. “However, director Brad Silberling and his deep understanding of the visual side of a film as well as being able to work with two very talented people from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow days, Colleen Atwood (costume designer) and Rick Heinrichs (production designer) made the project more interesting.”

Early on in the project, Lubezki and Silberling determined that the visuals had to be simple and the lighting had to be unobtrusive. “And, that the camera angles were really going to be the most stylized part of the project because we wanted everything to be from the kids’ perspective,” Lubezki explains. “It would be just enough to make the adults feel bigger and more dangerous.”

Lubezki and his gaffer, John Buckley, began to expound on something that the cinematographer had worked on for many years––finding a light that is fill and key at the same time. “The sets were huge containing many layers, so we felt that lighting with one light would help us simplify the process,” Lubezki explains.

Not as simple as it appears to be, however. “The ‘one light theory’ is in essence a huge top light consisting of hundreds of socket fed space lights,” explains Buckley. “By lighting primarily with a large top light, we were able to control the ambience as well as fill and back light for the actors anywhere on the massive sets.

“Gary Dalquist, the rigging gaffer, had the immense job preparing these sets,” Buckley continues. “By using socco fed space lights we had six levels of intensity in each head to fine tune the fill to backlight ratio. This control was critical to lighting quickly and allowing the actors the highest range of motion. Inside the reptile room, for example, we keyed the actors with low 20Ks through 1000h frames and a second layer of full grid. The interior of the set was largely made up of glass cases and concave glass walls that reflected everything. The face of each key light frame was striped with black tape to make the reflections look like the set walls. At times, a third 4 x 4 frame of light grid was added to each light for additional softness on the close-ups.”

The creative team also decided to create a very narrow color palette to emphasize the emotional elements. Each story and chapter would be supported by a “color” that fit the emotions. “This allowed us to give each color a meaning,” Lubezki explains. “The Cat in the Hat had too many colors. They assaulted the senses and distracted the audience from what was being said. Here, it is quite different.

“The first house, for example, is done in grey and green tones. Rick created sets that allowed accents on things that we wanted to notice for a moment. Green is an incredible color. It is the only color that can be both warm and cold. It’s flexible. It allowed us to give the sets comfort and, at important moments, show that the comfort is fleeting.”

Lighting and color palette in the works, Lubezki turned to format. Because he knew he was doing a digital intermediate, he wanted to use as much of the negative as possible. He decided to go with the Super 1.85 format, which he has been experimenting with on commercials. “By using part of the sound area, more top and bottom of the frame, we could reduce the grain,” he explains.

“The problem with this is the lenses,” he adds. “Someone needs to test further to know how they work with the format because the part of the lens that gets used here was not designed as a sweet spot. We have to fine tune each of them, to make sure we don’t get the flare.”

Lubezki was confident that this process would work because production was allowing him the luxury of follow through. “I have always thought that the timing was 40 percent of the cinematographer’s job,” he says. “The studios, a lot of people, don’t understand and don’t support that. On this film, production was amazing. They knew that working with Steve Scott at EFILM, Beverly Woods at Deluxe and printing the dailies with ACE light silver retention allowed me to manipulate and control the image beyond what we did on the set.”

For Lubezki, the most challenging sequences to shoot were both the interior and exterior scenes at Count Olaf’s (Jim Carrey) house. “Especially the garden where there is an opera-like theater play in which Olaf ‘secretly marries’ the girl, while making everyone believe that it is just a play,” he says. “The topography of this garden was so complicated that we couldn’t bring in Condors; so we had to bring light in from the ceiling to make walls of light. Thank heaven for an incredible crew,” he says, quickly. “If it weren’t for John Buckley, Mike Anderson, dimmer board operator Scott Barnes and camera operator Kim Marks, we could never have accomplished any of these shots.”

“The garden set of Olaf’s house has a well contoured yard that made it impossible to get near the set with Condors,” explains Buckley. “To overcome this we used Gary Dahlquist’s huge overhead ‘one light’ to control ambience and to get a sense of back light. Large, aged, coffee cans that were fitted inside with 1000-watt globes were used as the stage foot lights. These coffee can lights were further softened by custom-made frames of quarter straw and 216 diffusion. Since the coffee cans were able to be photographed, it was easy to transition from wide shot to close-up key quality with only the addition of 4 x 6 foot 1000H frames.”

“It was a very challenging movie from the beginning,” says key grip Mike Anderson. “In prep, we laid out each set in a way that we could have enough room for the double white diffusion top light that Chivo and John wanted. Whether it was an exterior or interior, we had to make sure there was enough room so that all of the ceilings and walls could be wild in a way that the top light (double diffusion) could lower in after pieces were pulled out. This was made possible by coordinating with construction during prep to build in the supports needed to hold the structures when they were literally hanging over the set. All the walls in the house, for example, were carefully constructed with the help of rigging key grip Don Selsor to be attached to one-ton chain motors from West Coast and Branam Enterprises. Don rigged the ceilings to lift out so the double diffusion top light could come down.”

For Anderson, one of the most difficult and more challenging sets was the exterior village, exterior cave and exterior beach. “They were built inside at Downey Studios,” he explains. “All were separated by these incredible backings that were painted in place so that they could tie into the set built around them. Basically, what we had was one huge set that was 2600 feet of backing track that was separated into three different sets.

“Chivo’s idea of lighting these big sets in the Downey stage was overwhelming from the start,” Anderson adds. “When we first walked into the hangar, we talked about using top lighting. Chivo and John Buckley decided on Space Lights, to be hung from the top. During prep, we experimented with different diffusion to be used under the space lights. This would accomplish two things: 1) Soften the light enough so the source became one big one; 2) Allow us to use the overhead diffusions and still be able to shoot in the reflection of the water that we needed in each of these Downey sets.

“With the help of the Paramount canvas room, we came up with a new fire retardant sail cloth that was equivalent to a Roscoe full grid cloth, to hang under the space lights. The hangar’s top height was 32 feet. That meant that we could have a bare three feet from the bottom of the space lights to the cloth (six 101 x 160 foot pieces overlapping to cover the whole set up). We had to make sure it didn’t burn! In the end, the way Chivo and John set this up, all of the water reflection and window reflection looked like a soft overcast sky.”

“At Downey, water and reflections played a critical role in our largest sets of the film,” says Buckley. “245 Skypans brought to life the enormous Briny Beach set backing. The amount of reflection in water was controlled by balancing the 1600 overhead Space Lights and backing Skypans. A layer of smoke and a 20K with double full straw mounted on a parallel at the waterline provided a convincing sunset visible through the backing. Careful pre-production and extensive planning along with the help of Gary Dalquist and his crew were key for these huge sets.”

Camera operator Kim Marks’ biggest challenge on the film was keeping the feeling that the story was coming from the point of view of the children, with Count Olaf’s presence always threatening. “It had to feel like he was always looming just around the corner and just one nasty trick ahead of them,” Marks explains. “In the beginning, Chivo’s lens of choice was the 27mm prime lens. Almost, without exception, it was the first lens we looked at on the finder and far and away the most used. This always put us very close to the actors and enabled Chivo to show a huge amount of Rick Hendricks’ backgrounds. Chivo would set up the shots, exploiting the lavish sets and incredible painted backings, every time.

“The shots were often very symmetrical,” he recalls. “We were either from very low angles or high ‘predatory’ angles that always gave you the feeling that the children were being stalked or observed by evil Count Olaf. Brad Rea, our dolly grip, would often supply a slow creeping move on the dolly, Technocrane, or even a four-foot slider, to increase the feeling of the world closing in on this unfortunate trio of children. The pan and tilt axis was rarely used; so incredible detail had to be given to the layout of the track or crane move, to be sure that the symmetry remained during any push. Harry Zimmerman, Chivo’s focus puller, was constantly being challenged by Jim Carrey’s incredible ability to lean from nine feet away to his nose penetrating the matte box in the fraction of a second. That man has a mean lean!”

While Lubezki is the first to acknowledge the lengths that his crew had to go to in making the layers of the Lemony Snicket sets piece together, he had to pull another challenge out of the hat. “It was our forced perspective sets,” he says. “We had one set that only worked for camera if you were dead center. That was a challenge for everyone.”

“A car at a railroad crossing made up our forced perspective set,” says Buckley. “To support the force perspective view, the set was like a bowl with a considerable rake. This bowl-like shape limited the placement of lights. A four cornered truss rig over the car allowed us to supplement the amount of back light on the car and stay out of camera. 400 Space Lights again provided ambience and fill. Two 20Ks just out of frame through double 20x frames with full and half grid provided the key. Using 20Ks, we could have a huge soft source close to the car with enough punch to dig in without being too contrasty.”

“Placement of the camera was critical in exploiting the work that Rick Hendricks and art director John Hendrix had done,” says Marks. “Telephone poles were built in diminishing scale as were track, railroad ties, a miniature barn and even some cow silhouettes. The greens people had to make several sizes of corn and even diminish the size of the road base rock used for the railroad tracks. Plus, they had to build a full-scale road that fell off to a matter of inches wide in a matter of fifty feet or less.

“We were always very specific as to the placement of the camera to maximize these ingeniously designed features and Chivo and John Buckley carefully balanced and either diminished or increased the light to accentuate the effect.

“Careful attention was necessary in determining the proper camera height as to not give away the false horizon, which was only 75 to 100 feet away, but needed to look like a mile in some directions,” Marks continues. “The scenic artists did an outstanding job of painting an amazing 360-degree cyc that had to express the feel of a real world lighting effect involving a bright horizon in one direction and a gathering storm in another. I doubt that, in this world of digital effects and sky replacement that we will ever again see this type of craftsmanship and artistry expressed on such a large scale.

“It was a very strange feeling to walk around this set because your sense of depth was constantly being challenged by its excellent execution. The work done on this set may be the best example of every department on this film coming together to create a complicated and rewarding sequence that will be fun and exciting for the audience to watch, even when they are unaware of it’s complexity.”

Another interesting challenge for the team behind this picture was a change of cinematographers at the very end of the film. Because Lubezki had to leave for another commitment in the final weeks of the project, he asked Robert Yeoman to finish for him. “Robert did a terrific job on a difficult sequence,” operator Kim Marks recalls. “It was supposed to occur on Lake Lachrymose and was filmed in a newly dug tank in Downey and against a 150-foot painted backing. We had to stay perfectly square to that backing to prevent the horizon from falling out of level.

“In addition, we had to shoot everything looking in one direction. Robert and gaffer John Buckley had to not only flop the key when we were doing reverses, but they also had to change the look of the lighting on the backing to make it appear as if we were looking in the opposite direction. To add to the confusion, there was a lighthouse in the background with a spinning light, fog on the water, and a horde of attacking leaches that had to move in almost every shot! This all was rather simple, until we added the two-year-old baby to the mix––in a boat that is supposed to be sinking! We all can’t wait to see this sequence!”

“I was fortunate that Chivo and crew allowed me to observe their way of shooting for a few days before Chivo left,” says Yeoman. “That made it so much easier to make a seamless transition. Hopefully, because of this prep time and the generous cooperation of Chivo’s crew, the audience won’t be able to tell who shot which sequence in the movie.”

When asking Emmanuel Lubezki if his crew has covered the challenges on Lemony, he takes a deep breath, and then laughs a little. “You know, the biggest challenge was the cast, but not Jim Carrey!” he adds hastily. “I’ve got two kids at home. We’ve made it through their first years––barely. And they weren’t ‘working.’

“Here, we had little girls that were a year and a half old. Working with them was complicated and time consuming, but our crack crew did their homework. Pre-production paid off. Complicated sets were up and running. Lighting rigged carefully. We could change out walls faster than anything. Get the kids to perform––now that took the time!

“Hey, it’s all part of making movies,” he adds philosophically. And, we were making a movie for and about kids. So, things happen.

“Thanks to an incredible crew, Robert Yeoman’s unselfish support and ability to step in and continue the look, I think we pulled off the impossible. I hope that adults who watch this learn to ‘listen to their kids’ and kids who watch this learn that they can be anything they want, if they learn to trust the strength they have within.” •