Identity, directed by James Mangold, is the story of ten strangers stranded at a deserted motel. They are being killed off one at a time. Panic breaks out as they struggle to find out what has brought them together and what they have in common.

“Normally I’m not a big fan of horror films,” says cinematographer Phedon Papamichael (Moonlight Mile, Million Dollar Hotel, and the soon-to-be-released Mathilde).

“However, this script was a page-turner from the beginning. It was tight, fast paced and it takes place on different levels of reality. Definitely not your conventional psychological thriller. The story evolves on so many different levels it gave me goose bumps.”

While the script worked as a film, Papamichael found that there were several technical challenges to overcome. “First, 95 percent of the film takes place in one location over a 12-hour period,” he explains. “Second, it is raining all of the time.

“You have to find a way to keep the visual suspense without tiring out the audience. This is not easy, since there is no real change of scenery.”

From a technical standpoint, Papamichael and Mangold had to find a way to smoothly transition between the exteriors, which were shot on location, and the extended exteriors and interiors done on stage. Many exterior scenes were shot on location in the Mojave desert from one direction, and the reverse shots were done seven weeks later on stage.

Fortunately for production, the biggest stage around was available. Production designer Mark Friedberg turned Sony’s Stage 27 into an even bigger motel than the original on location, complete with grounds, mud-slides, Joshua trees, and an extensive and complex water reclamation system that could rain onto any spot on stage.

There was also a pool area and another complex with extra buildings that didn’t exist on location. The extra buildings on the stage were added back into the location shots with the help of CGI during post. CGI also included sky replacement, additional lightning and extra rain layers.

“Visual effects supervisor Robert Stromberg did a great job taking care of smooth transitions between the wide establishing shots and tighter coverage,” says Papamichael.

“In the very beginning, we decided to treat the motel as if it were a space ship,” he explains. “By letting the background fall into complete darkness, we could enhance the feeling that our characters were completely cut off from civilization, with nowhere to escape to. It also eased the problem of matching backgrounds from location to stage.

“In the desert at night, you can’t light deep, so that worked in our favor as well.”

The location scenes were all shot first, with some of the action in the cars taking place at magic hour. The wider driving shots were done in the 20 minutes of actual magic hour, while the interior shots and close-ups were done during sunny daylight.

To match the wide shots and to move as quickly as possible, Papamichael’s key grip, Ray Garcia, custom cut hard gels like N9, N6, N3, 1/2 CTB for the cars. As the light dropped off, the gels, which were attached by Velcro, would be pulled. “We needed the NDs to help create the overcast and rain look while driving around on the insert trailer,” he explains.

For the shots at magic hour, Papamichael used Fuji Reala 500 daylight stock. The rest of the film was shot with Kodak 5279.

Location lighting was as minimalist as possible, allowing production to move freely and capture the needed elements in as little time as possible. “Our actors and crew were put to the test out in the Mojave Desert,” Papamichael admits. “We shot in February at night when the temperature was down to the 20s and we had high winds blowing the man-made rain. The actors were freezing in wet, flimsy clothing. We were mostly limited to one take because the conditions were so poor. There were icicles on the matte box, by the end of a take. Often times, technical perfection wasn’t as important as making sure we got what we needed quickly and moving on.”

For Papamichael, the various road scenes that led these wayward strangers to the deserted motel were the most difficult to accomplish. He wanted to keep the visual concept of being isolated, yet allow for a feel of an endless road. “We asked the art department to rig actual lamp poles, adding Nine-Light Fays for top light on our star-area,” he explains. “To simulate the lamps that continued to the end of the road we added Babies and Tweenies on stands at decreasing heights. By pointing these lights straight at the lens, we were able to create the effect of lamp poles continuing further down the horizon to continue the forced perspective. We then brought in two BeeBee lights, one on either side of the road, which allowed us to shoot one direction and then do a 180 and shoot the other direction without re-lighting.”

Papamichael also added 80-foot Condors with Lightning Strikes 250K PAR units, using the round lights for more punch. These were carried through on both location and stage for a consistent lightning effect.

“Our production designer thought he could make a 360° painted backdrop on stage to match the location, but I thought it would be less expensive to hang blacks all around, which would also enhance the feeling of isolation that we created on location. Besides, the rain would diffuse the background to the degree that nothing would have been seen anyway.

“So to make it work, the rigging crew hung blacks 360° directly on to the walls of the huge stage. Since it was raining throughout the story, this atmosphere helped hide the blacks.”

The rain coming from rain-grids hung off the stage’s ceiling allowed Papamichael the ability to shoot 360° without seeing a background that might not match. It also meant not having to move rain equipment to get a new shot. “We spent a lot of time testing on film the various sizes of raindrops. Our special effects supervisor, Ron Bolanowski, custom-built different rain-heads until we determined the right size of drops. It was very critical to achieve the desired size. If it were too big, it would look too sourcy and if it were too small, it would look misty––almost like smoke. We ended up with a medium size,” he explains.

“Sometimes, if the rain layers are too many, you lose definition. It becomes difficult to maintain a consistent exposure on the backlight. Often I would ask them to shut down deeper layers of rain, in order not to lose detail of the drops.

“Once on stage, we had greenbeds built all the way around the top of the stage at approximately 60 feet high. We positioned the same Lightning Strikes 250K PAR units all around so that we could shoot 360°. Our gaffer, Corey Geryak, also set 60 Maxi-Brutes on the greenbeds allowing us the ability to backlight the rain at any angle. We chose the Maxi-Brutes to give us more spread. We were considering 20Ks, but they looked too sourcy. At times, we even added opal to the Maxis, giving them more spread. It created consistent, ambient rain light and allowed us to put characters in silhouette.

“On the floor, we added 70K Lightning Strikes on stands that could move around and reach into areas we couldn’t get to from the green-beds.”

Mangold and Papamichael envisioned this story as a film noir, allowing them to go quite dark and play many of the sequences as silhouettes against the rain. To enhance this emotional element, Papamichael kept the color palette minimal. “There were really only two colors in the entire palette of the film. One was from the aged and uncorrected fluorescent tubes that we requested from the art department that were under the awnings from the motel.

“I wanted them to go green and we actually enhanced the green by adding 1/4 plus green. These were not necessarily flattering lights, but their color and direction helped to give our characters an almost ghostly appearance that fit the story. This harder top-light also creates a more classical film noir look. We played the Maxi-Brutes lighting the rain uncorrected, since I wanted the rain neutral in color. To the Lightning Strikes we added only 1/2 straw to make them slightly cooler than the rain. I didn’t want the lightning to go blue either, in order not to introduce too many colors to our palette.”

The other color came from the interiors, which were kept warm and motivated off the tungsten practicals. This was complemented by our production designer’s choice of warm-tone wallpapers and furniture, like reds and sienna. “We spent a lot of time testing for the right warm textures and colors in our extensive film tests,” Papamichael explains. “The psychology behind was that the ‘outside’ world was hostile, hence the cooler tones and green tones, while the contrasting ‘interiors’ would provide comfort and shelter from the storm.

“One of my biggest concerns for the motel stage sequences involved the anamorphic lenses,” he says. “For the past four films, I’ve used the Panavision C-series lenses. They have flair characteristics that I prefer over the Primos, but I don’t feel that you can shoot them open at T4. The top and bottom definition falls apart, even at a T4 - 2.8 split. Because the stage was so large and I had to work with the Maxis off the greenbeds, I wanted to have the option to go to a 2.8 when needed. So, I tested the C-series, the Primos and the Hawk series (Russian lenses bought by a German company and used on the Arricam). I found that the Primo lenses held up the best at a 2.8 and therefore were more practical for this picture.”

The Primo lenses and the latitude of the 5279 stock were a great help to Papamichael, when faced with the noir look of the picture. “I didn’t use any filtration on the lens, wanting to maintain the crispness of the Primos for this story. The rain acts as a natural diffusion as it is. Also, I didn’t find it necessary to enhance the contrast by applying any ENR or skip-bleach process to the film, since my lighting was going to be ‘high-contrast’ to begin with.”

By keeping a strict log and the use of many black and white 3000 ASA Polaroid reference-shots, the matching of all the film’s transitions went as smoothly as possible. He maintained the consistency of the rain exposure by spotlighting it in multiple areas of the frame and placing it at 1+1/2 stop under the set exposure.

According to Papamichael, the Steadicam allowed for even more flexibility and speed “because the ground on stage was so uneven and muddy, we didn’t want to get held up laying track most of the time. So, we had David Luckenbach, working many of the shots.

“The conditions were very difficult for everyone,” Papamichael continues. “Bob Hall, the 1st AC, did a great job trying to manipulate the remote focus, which was encased in plastic and was always fogging up, as he ran through the rain. It was impossible to see the lens at times with everything wrapped in plastic. It was either fogging up and/or shorting out. Bob did an amazing job of keeping focus under those conditions, especially on an anamorphic at 2.8.”

For the ‘finale,’ the motel gets hit by lightning and loses all power with everything taking place in theoretic darkness for the last 20 minutes of the story. “I couldn’t use any practical lighting sources.” That provided one of the most interesting lighting challenges for Papamichael and crew. “The practicals in the rooms and the green top light under the awnings and overhangs were all out,” he adds. “However, we still had the back light on the rain, therefore much of the sequence was done in silhouette.

“The lightning had to become more frequent at that point, to help us accentuate dramatic beats. Luckily the storms grows to its strongest level at the most dramatic part of our story, so it was justified to use this.

“But still, I asked our director, Jim, to write something in––some device to give us some practical source of light. He didn’t want to use the old movie cliché of flashlights, so we had to struggle to come up with something for the center courtyard of the motel. Because it was a ‘shoot out’ sequence, there was a lot of detail to be photographed.

“We decided that since lightning had hit the power pole, a cable would come loose,” he explains. “Because there was a storm, this cable was constantly twirling around on the ground and creating sparks.

“To simulate the sparks, we used the smaller Lightning Strikes units (70k) without the straw correction for a blue spark effect.

“When I watched the special effects team rig the cable, I saw that it would also shoot yellow flame-like sparks. This allowed us to mix the blue flickering from the Lightning Strikes with a warm flicker created using a nine light (gelled with 1/2 CTO and Y-1) in conjunction with a flicker box to provide intermittent fill in addition to the backlight.

“At the end of the film, one of the characters realizes that what all the characters have in common is they all have the same birthdays, and their last names are all names of US states. That causes him to have a panic attack that allows him to leave the dimension of the motel and enter another reality.

“We wanted the exit from the motel to be visually striking,” Papamichael explains. “So, we went from the darkness of the motel after the lightning hit, to a strong bright light in an interrogation room. The audience now sees another reality-level in the interrogation room with a judge, the DA and psychiatrist present. We used a match cut on his head turn and on that, it turned into an entirely different environment. It was a big conference room, and we kept these moments very static in contrast to the frenetic movements of the insanity of the motel scenes.

“This was quite an interesting project for me, because neither the director nor I had done this genre before. We had a challenging journey discovering the visual language of the genre and the story we wanted to tell. We applied many of the more traditional film noir elements, like top light and silhouettes and then added a more contemporary element through the addition of color and warm soft light interiors. This combination of contrasting moods created a style that seemed most appropriate for this story.” •

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