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March 1999 Cover Story
Technically
Genius
Although they were beginning to talk about the visual approach to the
story, Bob and Steven wanted to key in on the casting first. “Since there
were so many real babies in the story, getting a handle on the actors
was paramount. The reality of what age we could actually use to give a
certain range of performance was the key element,” explains Katz.
“When we zeroed in on the age group and felt confident in their abilities,
we could take the process a step further into creating the personalities
and expressions to fit the minds of these little geniuses,” Katz continues.
“At this point, we could focus on the style of visual effects and the
look we needed to develop for the entire project. We were explorers in
a new realm of technology. In a funny way, at the end of a long road—six
months of principal photography and a total of two years of creating the
‘baby geniuses’—it felt like we had finished Mission Impossible.
Katz felt that they were constantly having to go back to square one,
“because the digital technology we were playing with kept getting more
sophisticated. We created our own factory of digital artists who worked
tirelessly around the clock, seven days a week. I felt the entire team
pulled off a miracle. The result is a film that I believe is almost digitally
flawless—and most audiences will not even realize how complicated the
process was.”
With cast in place, Bob Clark and Katz began to discuss the look of the
film and shoot tests. “Bob doesn’t like bright and flat, which is a stereotype
for this genre of comedy. Bob likes the world of reality. His view of
the world is natural light with strong sunlight, dark shadows, gray rainy
days, a world of texture,” says Katz.
“We then began to talk about format. I personally love the anamorphic
frame. It probably goes back to my childhood days. Seeing a movie in Cinemascope,
Todd AO, VistaVision, anything widescreen, was always an event to be looked
forward to and rarely, if ever, disappointing,” Katz reminisces. “The
lights in the theater would dim, the curtain would rise and the widescreen
came alive. My intuition was to go anamorphic and place these babies in
a gigantic world.”
Katz explains that “Bob is extremely cerebral in his approach to filmmaking.
This is what makes him a great writer and storyteller. His initial response
was—and I must say it was hard to dispute—how will all these babies and
adults be able to work in the same frame? The babies will get lost. Bob
always has this ability to challenge and push me to, hopefully, make the
right decision.
Katz pondered this question for some time. “I sat in front of a computer
with the production designer for days viewing set designs from every possible
angle. We calculated lens sizes to fit baby and adult relationships in
various formats.
“What I discovered was that the anamorphic frame could hold fairly large
groups of babies in the foreground and, by using triangular design and
perspective, the adults would loom large. This goes back to Citizen
Kane, the wide lens and extreme depth of field approach.
“Next I discovered the excitement of the close-ups, the dynamics of two
babies talking profile across the screen to each other.”
The next step for Katz was to shoot tests that explored the possibilities.
“With the help of the special effects team, led by Terry Moore and Jacques
Stroweis, not only was anamorphic the correct approach, but Super 35mm
was even better. We could achieve the anamorphic look and at the same
time the effects team was able to use the entire negative.
“This meant that in many scenes elements could be manipulated to fit
the format. I found this flexibility extremely exciting. Every scene was
storyboarded and we began to realize that there were 200 plus visual effects.
Bob began to see the possibilities and we won our case.”
Next came the search for the right film stock. Katz chose Kodak because
he wanted the film to have a visual snap and sparkle. “I wanted as little
grain as possible, because of all the generations the film would have
to face, plus the added optical blowup for Super 35mm.
“The obvious choice was the new Kodak Vision 500 stock. Against all the
Kodak stocks it has the tightest grain structure and extremely vivid colors.
It also has an incredible latitude, which I need desperately. Baby
Geniuses, with all its complications, was a low budget film. We didn’t
have the luxury of the mega effects films. I couldn’t afford to light
huge expanses and hold the depth of field. I needed all the help I could
get from the film stock. We had to be extremely cautious and commit to
our decisions.”
The next step in the process was lighting tests and letting the principal
babies experience life on the set. This is when the reality factor set
in. Katz and Clark discovered the time involved in working with 18-month-old
babies. “They truly were the stars,” he says, “and determined how the
pace would be.”
This was an interesting experience for the whole team. The babies grew
with the process and with every day became familiar and comfortable with
life on the set. “Then the magic really started to happen and great moments
were captured on film,” he adds.
A few days before shooting, Katz decided to add one more element to the
film. “I felt the babies had to have that soft quality that I remember
Gerber Baby Food ads had, and Norman Rockwell paintings. But I was afraid
to mention my decision to the effects team.
“I tested various filter combinations and came up with a series of Double
Fogs for the entire look of the film. Traditionally, effects films demand
a clean negative—as pristine as possible. I went against this theory and
showed my tests to the effects team. The Vision Stock retained the clarity
that they needed and gave me the subtle edge I was searching for. Thus
began the journey into the world of Baby Geniuses. ”
Now Katz could design the lighting. He wanted two distinctive looks.
The first would be the cold futuristic underground world of Babyco. The
second became a world of the idyllic all-American dream. The biggest challenge
inherit in the lighting was the element of time. The lighting design had
to be consistent from scene to scene and most importantly simple, efficient
and cost-effective.
The babies were the key element to be considered. The babies’ body clocks
and concept of time were not dictated by the filmmakers. Once a scene
was blocked there was little, if any, discussion. “Our crew instinctively
understood the desired lighting design of every set,” he says. “They were
prepared for instant day and night changes. Every piece of cable, lighting
instruments, diffusion materials cranes, tracks, had to be ready to fly
at a moment’s notice.
“It was impossible to predict the amount of setups to be done in any
given day, a true production nightmare,” says Katz. “Some days we were
lucky to get one shot completed and had to move forward to a different
set the next day. The following week or month, we would return to the
unfinished scene. Bob’s brilliance as a director is that he is constantly
editing the film in his mind, rewriting scenes on the spot to fit the
schedule without sacrificing the integrity of the film.”
Once again, a computer program proved an important role in the making
of the film. Katz, early on in production, began to paint with light every
set in the film. “The production designer and I would calculate the various
positions of the sun during a day according to the script. I could see
from virtually every conceivable angle how the sun would light a room
or a specific object.
“With these images, I could take any creative license and paint the frame.
Once I found a complete set of images I was pleased with, I could present
them to Bob for his input and Marshall Adams, my gaffer, could pre-light
virtually every set and location. This process was extremely cost effective
to the production and most importantly, what I discovered in the process
enabled me to have more creative flexibility.”
The opening sequence of Baby Geniuses takes the audience by surprise.
It appears to be a Hollywood mega-budget Mission Impossible. Baby
Sly, the hero, has escaped the underground lab and is loose on the grounds
of Babyco. He is running wildly through a maze of hedges pursued by security.
“The sequence takes place at night,” says Katz. “Considering the scope
of the location and the monolithic size of the Babyco towers, which were
totally black glass reflecting any light source, left us turning to the
visual effects team for answers. In reality, the only possible way to
accomplish the task would be to build detailed miniatures, matte paintings,
or complete digital wizardry.
“The enormous scale of the location and the prohibitive cost of attempting
to light it, with the additional challenge of shooting the sequence at
night demanded by the script, seemed an insurmountable problem. The obvious
and simplest solution of shooting the sequence by daylight would not have
had the dramatic dynamics to set up the story and ensnare the audience.
Yet the biggest hurdle was trying to convince Bob to consider moving the
location.
At Katz’s urging, Bob did concede to look at alternate locations. “Bob’s
love of the Baby location, which he had chosen months before principal
photography began, was perfect for what the script and story required.
The architectural structures and surrounding grounds had been designed
as if it all had been built for the script.
“For months my crew and I went out at night and tested various approaches
to lighting the black monolith that was the key element to the movie,”
says Katz. His challenge at this point was to find a solution to getting
Bob’s vision on the screen.
“Thinking back to Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, the most important
lesson she learned on her trip down the yellow brick road was that sometimes
the most difficult and insurmountable problems in life have the simplest
of solutions.
“Every movie begins with a script. Re-read the scene and somewhere between
the lines the answer lies. After months of brainstorming, the answer was
staring us in the face. The film was set at Christmas. One of the visual
charms of Christmas is the magic of all the lights.”
So the crew of Baby Geniuses lit the giant maze and all the grounds of
Babyco with thousands of twinkling lights. The next part of the equation
for Katz was how to get separation of the looming, black Babyco skyscraper
and the nighttime sky. Then he recalled Stanley Kubrick’s opening in the
classic film 2001: the shining monolith was floating in a sea of
darkness with a slight subtle glow separating it from the universe.
“With this thought in mind, for once I was thankful for the air quality
in Los Angeles. At night, the combination of the humidity, haze and pollution
was the answer to the problem.”
“We backlit the building with 18Ks mounted in a Condor which lit the
haze and magically defined the structure,” says Adams.
“But having defined the building wasn’t enough,” adds Katz. “It still
did not have that one subtle element to give it life. One of my favorite
films is The Great Escape, which is also what this scene is all
about. The common denominator in this genre of film is one key element.
In every one of these films, the escape is at night. There are guard towers
and searchlights, thus Babyco came alive with 4K Xenons mounted on the
27th floor of the building continually sweeping across the structures,
the maze and the grounds throughout the chase.
“Not only was this cost-effective, but it gave us the ability to shoot
virtually in every direction, with the option of mounting the camera on
a Steadicam with wide lenses, 10mm, 14mm and 18mm, chasing Baby Sly through
the maze.”
After accomplishing the opening of the film, Katz was faced with the
ending sequence in this same location. The doctor is trying to escape,
with a baby in tow, racing to meet her private helicopter on the top of
Babyco’s parking structure. The chopper is seen making it’s way around
the massive Babyco Towers. Police cars are making their way up the ramps
of the parking structure to the roof. The chopper cannot land and drops
a rope ladder down for Dr. Kinder to climb up.
“She is being closely pursued,” he says. “As the chopper rises and begins
to head off around Babyco, the pursuer grabs the rope ladder. The Babyco
chopper comes face to face with police helicopters intercepting. To complicate
matters, a light rain has fallen and the parking structure is covered
with puddles. The lighting concept remained consistent with the opening
sequence of the film. The camera angles were all consistently low angle
and the lenses consistently wide. My camera operator, Steven Barnes, was
shooting wild hand-held shots from the hero chopper and managed to avoid
the multiple cameras on the parking structure’s roof as well as the camera
directly under their chopper. My assistant, Bonnie Blake, and I felt and
looked like we were caught in the eye of a hurricane.”
The scene was shot over a three-night period because of the short time
Katz had with the babies and the limited time on the helicopters. Ken
Goch, Bob Clark’s assistant director, ran the set with safety in mind.
He made sure every camera team was covered by numbers of stunt men ready
to pull them away in case of an accident.”
Katz kept the lighting consistent with the earlier Babyco scenes. The
buildings were backlit and the 4K Xenons were sweeping the sky from atop
the Babyco Tower.
Yet, despite all of Babyco’s inherent location and production problems
and “sleepless nights lying awake thinking of solutions and logistics
of the lighting as well as not having any time to shoot tests based on
our wild theories,” says Katz, “the sequence turned out to be great fun
to shoot and a scene that has all the production value Bob envisioned.”
The interior world of Babyco was that of a corporate giant dedicated
to the betterment of children around the globe. This was represented by
a grand interior amusement park, Joy World.
“This was a complex challenge to light and shoot,” says Katz. Joy World
was created at the Grand Slam Canyon Amusement Park inside the Circus
Circus Hotel in Las Vegas. “The park is enormous and is housed within
a pink dome structure,” he explains.
“Lighting was a challenge,” adds gaffer Marshall Adams. “The dome in
Las Vegas is a heavy, pink plastic material about one inch thick. The
color temperature was about 5000 degrees kelvin, with ten points magenta.”
Katz admits that lighting from outside would have been photometrically
almost impossible. “The physical location did not lend itself to using
Condors, cranes or lighting platforms, the light scheme had to be incorporated
into the existing design of the park. We were not allowed to rig off of
the interior structure, which was over 120 feet tall,” he explains.
“Our solution was lighter than air—the French Air Star helium balloons,
both the 8K and the 16K,” Adams explains. “They provided a great ambient
source for the park and could easily be incorporated as part of the entire
production design of Joy World. We then used two l8K balloons for key
and back light and placed black grid cloth on the back side of the balloons
to flag them off the background.” The balloons could easily be floated
around the interior of the dome.
The sinister world of the laboratory beneath the black towers of Babyco
was a stark contrast to the false warmth of it’s public image. “The laboratory
consisted of many levels underground,” says Katz. “So, there is no sense
of ambient lighting from the real world.”
The central area of the underground laboratory is the Habitat, an expanse
of 15,000 square feet of rolling hills, lakes, streams and ponds. Various
whimsical structures in the shapes of giant swans, eggs, toadstools and
treehouses are where the baby geniuses are imprisoned. The set was built
in a huge warehouse, larger than any existing sound stage.
It had a beautiful, skylit backing designed specifically for the film,
consisting of three pieces 20 x 200 feet. “What made it unique was it’s
chameleon-like ability to give the illusion of various times of day and
a multiplicity of colors,” says Katz. “Once again, it was the computer
program that played a large part in creating the lighting design for the
habitat. The most enjoyable part of this process was the creative license
to have the power to be mother nature. I decided with each scene where
the sun would rise and set and the moon would shine.”
Built into the backing of the Habitat is the entrance to the research
laboratory. “The laboratory is sterile, dark and foreboding. The walls
and surfaces are all highly reflective black Lexan that reflected every
source, and virtually presented the exact problems we faced with the black
Babyco Tower,” he adds.
“The lighting had to be off-axis to prevent seeing the sources,” says
Adams. “The highlights bouncing around gave the surfaces some sense of
life.”
In the lab, any area that was used to study the babies was made of translucent
white Plexiglass. Says Katz, “These areas had a hot, bleached-out quality.
This is where the Kodak Vision Stock did it’s magic. We were literally
shooting at the very end of each side of the spectrum. The stock’s latitude
was extremely impressive, the blacks held detail and whites had the quality
of over-exposure and also held detail. All these scenes were lit through
the back of the Plexiglass. The researchers were lit by bounce and reflections
that illuminated from the babies’ areas.”
Baby Geniuses was a challenge on every level of production. “The
end result is a film that is seamless in it’s marriage of visual effects
and reality,” says Katz. “I believe the audience will be totally unaware
that they are watching a film with 200 plus digital visual effects. More
importantly, the film has magic. The babies are captivating beyond belief
and emotionally touching. I believe Baby Geniuses has made a giant
step beyond current technology, and has opened doors into the next millennium,”
concludes Katz.
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Do newborn
babies have a secret language? What if these barely formed, innocent beings
can communicate in their own language with each other? What if these little
people held all the knowledge of the world? In Tibetan culture, it is
believed that children up to the age of two years hold all the knowledge
of the universe. At this age they begin to cross over into the human state
of consciousness as we perceive it. How much knowledge these ‘baby geniuses’
retain has yet to be discovered. What if adults could learn this language—could
they make a better world or destroy the one we have?
“When
writer/director Bob Clark showed me the script, I thought the idea was
hilarious,” says cinematographer Stephen M. Katz. “It was a Mission
Impossible with babies.” In the swamps of North Carolina, Katz was
shooting Secrets From The Rose Garden, with Mary Tyler Moore. On
days off, he would meet with producer/writer Steven Paul and Clark, discussing
the approach to this unique project. This was two years before principal
photography. “We would be location scouting on one picture and casting
Baby Geniuses at the same time.”