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Archeologist
with Attitude “Oh yes, it’s bigger than Bond,” opines cinematographer Peter Menzies Jr. in reference to the scale of Paramount’s much-hyped Tomb Raider feature. He tosses off that casual remark not as a boast, but rather as mere acknowledgement of a fact obvious to anyone working on a globetrotting adventure that spans location shoots in tropical and Arctic environments along with an enormous array of more exotic milieus created at Pinewood Studios in England.
Interest in Lara Croft as a film property was strong and immediate. Producer Lloyd Levin, working with Lawrence Gordon Productions, enlisted screenwriter Steven De Souza (Die Hard, Judge Dredd) to pen a draft for Ms. Croft’s first screen adventure. For a time, director Stephen Herek seemed likely to helm the adaptation; likewise, cinematographer Phil Meheux (GoldenEye) was lined up to work on the film, but ultimately, a different pairing emerged: one reuniting director Simon West and cinematographer Peter Menzies. The Australian native’s career as a feature director of photography dates back nearly a decade to White Sands, the film on which he made the transition from photographing commercials. Other notable features under his belt include a remake of The Getaway — also for director Roger Donaldson.He also shot Die Hard with a Vengeance and The Thirteenth Warrior for director John McTiernan. More recent credits include Bless the Child, The Kid, and the as-yet-unreleased comedy-thriller Down and Under, shot in his native land for Jerry Bruckheimer Films and Castle Rock.
In teaming up again with West, the cinematographer found that the pair had developed a handy form of shorthand for communicating their vision of the film. “After spending 80-plus days with a director, you can’t help picking up on certain cues,” he relates. “So starting out, we were already pretty much in synch on important matters.” Having worked together on a commercial as well as The General’s Daughter, West and Menzies hoped to create a fresh take on the adventure movie experience with their venture. That approach is something akin to one that wowed audiences four decades back when Sean Connery first slipped on his shoulder holster to portray James Bond in the seminal OO7 film Dr. No. While any number of action-adventure films might have provided pictorial references, the moviemakers did not indulge such resources. “We remembered what the Bond films and Indiana Jones pictures looked like, of course,” offers Menzies. “But this show wasn’t really a matter of copying their work, or even trying to outdo their looks. I recall that I caught Mission: Impossible 2 with a number of the crew before shooting began, but that was the great exception really, since I make a point of avoiding seeing other films while filming. I don’t ever want to allow myself to get distracted away from what I have originally set up and planned to do based on time spent with the director, production designer and costume designer. One can become enamored of some specific effect seen in another film, but that can take you off your own agenda and wind up looking like some out-of-place gimmick.” Instead, he and West viewed the 1992 documentary Baraka (Blessing), which was directed and photographed by Koyaanisqati cinematographer Ron Fricke. This meditative and majestic mood piece on expansive landscapes highlightslandmarks like the Muslim homeland of Mecca; Angkor Wat, Cambodia; Ayers Rock, Australia; Bali, Indonesia; Big Sur, California; Galapagos Islands, Ecuador; Kathmandu, Nepal; and the Egyptian Pyramids. “That film is a tremendous visual experience,” remarks Menzies. “Shot in 65 millimeter, it showcases a number of the most beautiful locations in the world, including a couple that we wanted to use in our film. What we took away from that viewing was the desire to create images that were extremely rich, but at the same time we didn’t want to force an artificial look upon the various locations. Instead, we sought to photograph them in a naturalistic fashion that brought out their beauty, as this film had, so toward that end, we studied Baraka a fair bit.” Menzies had not previously worked with production designer Kirk Petrucelli (Blade, The 13th Floor, The Patriot), but the two found themselves falling into synch very quickly. “Kirk mixed classical architecture with forms I believe he referred to as examples of ‘super-modernism,’ and we built on these kinds of opposing styles in the visuals,” he states. “I’d often frame shots that included mixes in style that created additional contrast between foregrounds and backgrounds, perhaps with the actors playing a scene in a rundown area framed against a more exotic background.” Each department felt the pressure during preproduction, as efforts had to go forward on multiple fronts in various countries simultaneously. “There were development phases going on back at Pinewood, but we were prepping for location work in Cambodia, Iceland and around other parts of London at the same time, so this made for a couple of chaotic weeks,” Menzies recollects. “I’d be squeezing in set checks with Kirk, who’d been testing various colors on cave sets, then see about taking the brightness up or down a bit to get the thing nailed before moving on to the next problem.” The cinematographer had intended to use Kodak’s PreView system, but with the exception of some make-up tests, wound up not employing it on the film. “As we were coming to the sets as soon as construction finished, there wasn’t really any time to crank up PreView to check the image and make changes. We just had to get in, shoot and get on to the next set. But the rapport between Simon and me was such that we didn’t really need the system, since we were of one mind on much of the look. But I still do want to play with that someday.” One of the most important decisions involving the translation of Tomb Raider from computer game to motion picture related to casting a credible Lara Croft — no small task, given that the character’s bounteous physique often seems to defy gravity to an even greater degree than her acrobatic exploits. Actresses Denise Richards, Jennifer Connelly, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Mimi Rogers and Elizabeth Hurley, along with a bevy of models and starlets varying in dimension from reed-thin to the more Junoesque of the virtual Lara, were all rumored to be in the running to capture the lead part. But ultimately, Oscar-winner Angelina Jolie was tagged to play the adventuress. “I don’t know that anyone else could have brought off all the aspects of this character like Angie did,” Menzies marvels. “She is so fit, so agile and obviously, so gorgeous, yet she also invested Lara with a wonderful sense of purpose, plus some nice humorous bits as well.” Jolie brought credibility to the character’s seemingly superhuman physical efforts, through a combination of acting ability and an extended fitness program, augmented as needed by wirework. “We wanted to present her in a more believable way than you might get from the video game,” the cinematographer affirms. “We wanted to keep some realistic elements, so when she was in the air, it would be because she was leaping, not flying like something out of a comic book. We had to maintain a bit of logic and realism to keep her grounded and in our world.” Although Jolie often sports Lara’s trademark tanktop-and-shorts ensemble, there are additional costume changes. But even so, this is one film character whose wardrobe doesn’t need to be color-coordinated with the locale she happens to be passing through. “She avoids the whole ‘fashion plate’ look, always remaining very tomboyish, but still looking great no matter what. There is even a joke in the movie that addresses how she avoids looking overly made up. By and large, we all liked the idea of keeping her in a fairly dark wardrobe throughout, an approach Angie seemed very happy with.” Menzies never felt the need to alter the look of scenes to accommodate his leading lady. “There’s a glamorous look to this movie, because it is a very commercial and polished-looking product we’re creating, but that’s not to say that we’re messing with things to make Lara Croft look different from the environment. We don’t need those kinds of tricks with this actress anyway, since whenever Angelina Jolie steps in front of the camera, glamour is added to the scene without my having to do anything at all. I could make her key light at three-quarters or leave her in semi-silhouette, and it wouldn’t matter — you can light her in just about any way at all and she still looks wonderful. You don’t have to frontlight her to smooth things out, and there just aren’t any problem areas to watch for. You can keep the whole mood of the set going without compromising for some beauty factor. She just walks into her key and looks gorgeous.” One example of just how camera-friendly Jolie’s visage remained under unusual lighting conditions can be seen during Lara’s passage through the Cambodian lair set — the Tomb of Dancing Light. For The General’s Daughter, Menzies had put flares into the hands of soldiers to create lighting accents for night scenes, but here he employed them as a principal source of illumination. At close range, such harsh and brilliant light might prove unflattering, or worse still, unsettling, to many an actress — especially since Menzies employs no netting or other image-softening at the camera to ameliorate such effects. Even so, no protests were heard as Jolie carried the flare, which illuminated both the actress and the set walls around her. “She looked just great, as always, even with this yellow-orange flare out in front of her. We didn’t even need to add anything to amplify what the flares supplied, which was another advantage of shooting at F2.8 — that light alone was enough to provide a fair bit of contrast as well as a sense of depth and separation.” Shooting began at the end of July 2000, with production accomplishing their initial setups at various practical locations in and about London. One of these was the Battersea Power Station, which is a landmark dating back to the 1920s that is soon to be replaced with an entertainment complex. “We used the station, which was falling down and had all these crumbling walls, as a backdrop for a meeting of the baddies,” notes Menzies. “Then after those first couple of weeks, we went on stage for a time. That was the pattern for the show: shoot on location somewhere, then go back on stage for a stretch. The film was about 80 percent studio-bound, with the two major tomb sets occupying the OO7 Stage. So the crew needed time to move sets around or strike them to make room for new ones. So during those periods, we’d go to Iceland for a week of scenes supposedly taking place in Siberia at an Inuit encampment, or do our week of Cambodia exteriors, before returning for more.” Production occupied six stages at a time for the shooting schedule’s entire run. For a meeting between the villainous Powell and the secretive High Council of the Illuminati in their chambers, production selected the Painted Hall inside England’s Royal Naval College. “This is the same room where Lord Nelson had his viewing [was laid to rest],” explains Menzies, “and as such was considered quite off-limits for much in the way of traditional rigging. We couldn’t touch anything in there, or bring any of our usual lighting units inside.” He had dealt with a somewhat similar situation on Bless the Child by floating helium lights overhead, and was able to utilize them again in this historic chamber. “I wound up having to light everything primarily through the windows to avoid damaging this sacred English room. The windows were 30 to 35 feet high, so we had two Condors on one side and scaffold towers on the other, with 20Ks outside aiming in.” Menzies also faced logistical difficulties when shooting on a number of the film’s stage sets, many so large that only a minimal light level could be achieved. “As a result, we were way down on exposure for nearly all the interiors, usually around F2.8,” the cinematographer notes. “In a way, this was good, because all of our in-set practicals could be very definitely felt in the image, but it also meant we had to be pretty close to wide open throughout, something that happened on our night exteriors as well.” One consequence of such slight exposure caused Menzies and West to forego their usual preference for shooting anamorphic. “We realized it had to be Super 35 this time out, even though that meant going an extra generation at the end of the line. The upside of that was that we were able to use wider-angled spherical lenses. I shot with a couple of sets of Primos throughout, and did a lot of work with 21 millimeter and 27 millimeter lenses, and some using 17 millimeter and 14 millimeter as well. In anamorphic, lenses that wide have just too much distortion, but for this show it worked just fine.” Menzies photographed interiors and night exteriors exclusively on Kodak Vision 500T (5279), using EXR 100T (5248) for day exteriors. “We had two Platinum Panavision units, plus one of the new Millennium XLs, which was great for times when we speed-ramped,” he reports. “We needed the pair of Platinums because two cameras had to be going pretty much the whole time. We made accommodations with Kirk [Petrucelli] so that track could be laid most everywhere. Though, in the end, we mixed dolly moves with a lot of Technocrane action that often utilized the Libra head. There was a bit of handheld as well, and lots of Steadicam to cover various running and jumping shots.” Steadicam work became the one area where Menzies managed to draw upon the services of a past veteran. “Being that this show was set up in England, nearly all of the crew was new to me, and I to them. Fortunately, I was able to bring in my Bless the Child Steadicam operator David Emmerichs, who had also worked with Simon on Con Air. When David came in, the crew was very accepting of him, and it worked well for Simon and I to have a friendly face around who already had a good idea of what we were after. That let us get to it so much quicker, which benefited the actors, since they didn’t have to get bogged down waiting for us to resolve technical matters.” Much of Tomb Raider takes place within Croft Manor, the grand old estate that Lara has inherited. The Manor was created through a combination of location and stage work, with exteriors filmed in Harfordshire at Hatfield House (built in 1655). Bridging the elegance of this historic exterior with Lara’s own minimalist decorative sensibilities, production designer Petrucelli’s various interior manor sets conveyed a requisite sense of epic sprawl and splendor, but were also sprinkled with modern accoutrements throughout. “The Croft mansion was built across three separate stages. We’d shoot for a few days in one of them, then switch over to another while the crew readied the first for some bit of rigging or getting blown up.” On all the Pinewood sets, Menzies used tungsten lighting (supplied by Lee Lighting, UK). “That’s always my preference, whenever possible. I find being able to use those Fresnel lights produces beautiful results, and there are other great qualities as well — they’re quiet, so the sound department just loves them. We ran all of the tungsten units back to dimmer boards, which allowed us to exert very fine control over them from a single point, which also sped up our ability to change.” In order to embellish the set coloring, the cinematographer used CTS at a variety of intensities over his lights throughout. A key storypoint is reached when Lara experiences a detailed dream involving her father, which seemingly occurs within the manor. “Shooting that scene took us back in a way, as a kind of flashback to the old days of shooting commercials,” Menzies details. “We combined speed-ramping, going up to 40 frames-per-second and back, with some rather frilly lighting effects, overexposing the image somewhat while flickering the lights and creating moving shadow patterns. Pretty much all in-camera shots, which is fun, and by changing the frame rate on a selective basis rather than using it constantly throughout, we were able to keep the power of the effect.” Another major sequence ensues in Lara’s home as the archeologist-with-attitude battles against a huge robot. Even though many shots featured a computer-generated combatant, there were often components of physical effects involved as well. “Chris Corbould did the physical effects on this show, and built a robot we could shoot on set that Angelina could actually grab onto. It also blew up quite nicely, so we were able to get a good deal of it done live on set. Some of our shots were used as lighting reference for the animation, though other bits wound up being in the actual film. The stage effects throughout the show were marvelous, which was a relief, given that nearly all the sets have some mechanical or articulated aspects. The robot was a good example of how various departments worked together, since visual effects were able to enhance all of this tremendously. Even so, I thought it was wonderful that we had such a great starting point on set.” “We’ve all seen films where actors wind up having to stand against greenscreens for a long stretch of time, and this can create problems with eyelines and such,” continues Menzies. “By giving them a prop to work with, an opportunity is created for a more sophisticated and credible performance, a fact that we were all conscious of. Whenever possible, we created the Tomb Raider world in a practical fashion — to give the actors a real space to play in. That is how Simon likes to approach action sequences no matter what the context, and it really does benefit the performers as well, since they can look round and see what it is their characters are in for on a set walk-through.” Menzies finds that addressing postproduction effects is often principally a matter of sorting out issues during prep. Facilitating this process was visual effects supervisor Steve Begg’s background, which extended beyond matters strictly digital. Begg began his career under the stewardship of Derek Meddings, the famed British effects maestrowhose credits include Roger Moore’s first five OO7 films as well as the Pierce Brosnan debut GoldenEye. ButBegg successfully transitioned into the digital age with his work on GoldenEye and Lost in Space, for which he employed a mix of traditional miniature photography and CG techniques. “Prep is the time when we can all explain our problems to one another,” the cinematographer reveals, “and I must say, the visual effects people we dealt with were most accommodating [UK effects houses Mill Film, Cinesite, Peerless Camera Company and Computer Film Company each worked on the film]. The plan, which we followed throughout filming, was that we would shoot as many plates as possible for them, then move on and let them come in to scan the sets. This allowed them to recreate the environment in the computer in 3-D. There were also the occasions when we’d give them extra passes, sometimes shooting an empty set before we smoked it up, or grabbing a background focus pass. It never became a real issue, because we were organized enough that this didn’t slow us down.” Sequences of Lara traveling to and across Siberia were filmed in Iceland. A local company, Saga Film Productions, provided support services for the weeklong shoot. “In Iceland, we had a great little first-unit chase with Angelina racing the bad guys across this glacier on dogsleds, and it is all her,” Menzies relates. “This actress was extraordinary in her love for doing her own stunts, and that afforded us great freedom in covering the action. We tried to do our shooting on an area of glacier that contained crevices and some dirty ice. This created some contrast, letting us stay clear of the white-on-white look and added depth. We also found some locations where the edge of the glacier was starting to break up that worked well for this.” To extend a darker ambiance in the following Siberian cave set scenes, only a small amount of the stage construction utilized white materials. “We had the initial point of entry that transitioned from location footage to our set, and that area had a lot of the usual carved polystyrene, plus I think a bit of wax for translucency, but we’re through that fairly quickly and go right into a black rock cave. Again, Simon and I were in agreement that we wanted to get away from the white look, which didn’t do anything for the story we were telling.” The Siberian tomb set — dubbed the Temple of 10,000 Shadows — features the huge “Orrery.” This is an articulated model of our solar system with illuminated planets spinning on separate arms in different directions around a central-mounted, internally lit model of the Sun. “Chris Corbould had rigged this monstrously-huge apparition, which had a Victorian clockwork feel to it. We had mist below, with all sorts of lights rigged beneath the set to provide a hot steamy look.” The film’s climactic action takes place beneath Cambodian temples, where Lara struggles with stone monkey statues that suddenly spring to life. Aboveground shots leading into this action featured the majestic temples of Angkor Wat (built in 900 A.D.), a location familiar from 1964’s Lord Jim (shot by Freddie Young) and most recently in Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love. “The people there were quite wonderful and helpful. They allowed us a measure of access that was quite extraordinary, given how sacred these lands are to them.” Menzies believes himself to be a direct beneficiary of the artists and engineers who erected Angkor Wat. “Whoever built this, laid everything out in a way that was extremely user-friendly for DPs and production designers,” he acknowledges. “Everything faces the right way with respect to the Sun, and so we were able to shoot some fantastic looking, quite lovely early morning sunrises. They even let us build a village set in front of Angkor Wat, and again, due to the way things are laid out, the single spot available to us was perfect photographically. Seen in relation to the actual temples, the village was caught in this gorgeous three-quarter backlight that really showed off the location. We were fortunate in another aspect as well. Even though we were shooting near the equator, by shooting in November, there was still a long period of early morning light. So we were able to get much more out of our days there than we had expected based on our scouting, which was done in June. But as beautiful as it turned out, most of the Cambodian shots are really just about geography, giving us entrances and exits from the tombs, where the real action takes place.” Lara is not alone in her exploration of the Tomb of Dancing Light, as her opponents also descend into the lair. “The cave had a varied look, which was fun to play with and kept things fresh on my end. It was pretty dark to start with, and then got a bit brighter further down in the descent, before dropping off to almost total darkness at the end. It was a matter of painting the caves as well as setting light levels. Early on, there is only some filtered light coming in from above, ostensibly sunlight [from HMI Mole beams with full CTS] that has been broken up into shafts by tree roots. That illumination, along with flashlights carried by the bad guys, is about all that we had in there, which kept things pretty moody — at least until things start to explode. From there, we open it all up and let a lot of light in, using 10Ks, 20Ks and Par Cans.” While Menzies always prefers to have the option of floating wild walls out to accommodate lighting and camera moves, using wider lenses allowed him to occasionally keep the walls in place and shoot sets intact. “Sometimes I found that keeping the set together let us work a bit faster, so it was a useful fallback approach.” Filming wrapped in mid-January 2001, though a round of pick-up shooting for Tomb Raider began in April. Having already committed to another feature, Menzies was unavailable to shoot these additions. “There’s a week’s work involved, but Simon West has still got a really good handle on the look of it all. My gaffer Perry Evans is over to help him out, and director of photography Dick Pope, BSC [Topsy-Turvy, The Way of the Gun], who spent some time with Simon beforehand, shooting the scenes. Some additional days were also shot by the second-unit DP Ben Seresin (Best Laid Plans, Circus).” With Paramount hungry for a new franchise to backstop Star Trek, and many key Tomb Raider artists already contracted for two follow-up films, it seems likely that Lara Croft’s guns will again be blazing on cinema screens for years to come. “I would imagine we’d all like to go back and do another one,” Menzies muses. “This was often tough, but we all enjoyed it thoroughly. For myself, I’m quite pleased with some of the images, which may be among the best we’ve done, but there’s always room for improvement the next go-round. Simon has a whole bunch of different projects he wants to do [including a long-awaited adaptation of TV cult classic The Prisoner], so coming on for another go may just be a matter of being in the right place at the right time.” While acknowledging that the studio and most involved have high hopes that Tomb Raider can become a breakout hit by besting much of the summer competition, cinematographer Peter Menzies believes that, “the film will deliver a great two hours of entertainment” — regardless of its box office outcome. “There’s a huge built-in market amongst the video gamers, but you need more than that on a film this size. A whole new audience has to be drawn in as well, and it could be that casting a proven talent and Oscar-winner like Angelina has given the endeavor a legitimacy it might not otherwise have had with mainstream audiences. Plus, there are other attractive factors. The boys have got gorgeous Angelina to look at, and at the same time, teenage girls can admire this beautiful woman out there kicking butt and beating the boys at their own game!” • |
Tomb
Raider
The
Tomb Raider storyline revolves around an upcoming conjunction
of planetary bodies in our solar system, and the relationship between
this occultation and the Clock of Ages, an ancient artifact linked to
incredible power. With one part of the puzzle in hand, Lara embarks
on a trek to recover the remaining missing pieces. She soon finds herself
competing with Powell (Iain Glen), an enemy of her late father Lord
Croft (Jon Voight), and the Illuminati, a secret order seeking to possess
the secrets for themselves. Aided and abetted by characters created
freshly for the film, Lara faces down a variety of human and mechanical
monstrosities while attempting to keep the source of ultimate power
from those who would misuse it, dropping wisecracks and baddies as she
proceeds unstoppably toward victory.