An Old Friend for Dinner
Dante Spinotti, ASC revisits the world of Hannibal Lecter in Red Dragon

By Pauline Rogers • Photos By Glen Wilson

Few people in life, let alone in the movie industry, have the chance to “do it again” and, maybe, get it a “little more right.” Of course, if you are legendary producer Dino De Laurentis and award winning cinematographer Dante Spinotti, ASC, taking another crack at the Thomas Harris novel Red Dragon (the original title is used this time) is more than just possible––it’s a Fall blockbuster, for sure.

For Dante Spinotti, it is a chance to revisit the material that made him a name in the American movie industry. Only this time, instead of his Manhunter director, Michael Mann (the two also teamed for The Last of the Mohicans, Heat, The Insider), it’s his The Family Man director, Brett Ratner, behind this high profile remake.

“What fascinated me about revisiting a plot that I remembered without much effort was being able to take the story in a different direction, cinematically,” says Spinotti. “Michael’s Manhunter was very film language oriented––the suspense of the story and the richness of the story were made to work by Michael’s filmmaking style and his ability to put the camera in places where it expressed the suspense and the story. It was so advanced, it told a lot of people how to shoot a certain kind of movie,” he explains.

“Brett wanted to rely on the power of the script written by Ted Tally and the talent of Edward Norton (as ex-FBI agent Will Graham), Anthony Hopkins (as Hannibal ‘The Cannibal’ Lecter) and Ralph Fiennes (as Francis ‘The Tooth Fairy’ Dolarhyde) to tell our story.”

Although he’d had innumerable conversations with De Laurentis and Ratner before the beginning of the shoot, Spinotti had a mere three weeks to prep this picture due to his busy schedule. He literally left Roberto Benigni’s Pinnochio while the film was still being loaded onto the truck in Italy, to come back to the States to begin Red Dragon. “I wanted to do a movie that had a visual aggressiveness––not a picture with good looking shots, pretty images and sweet composition,” says Spinotti regarding his prep work.

“The idea Brett and I talked about was to create the story in solid monochromatic blocks, changing the color pallet from one situation to another, only when necessary,” he explains. “We would let one color be dominant, depending on the scene and the emotional issue.”

How to accomplish this with the cinematic tools available came a little later in Spinotti’s preparation process. He’d recently seen Ocean’s 11 and the process behind this picture brought something to mind that Spinotti had done before, which was to push the 5279 stock two stops in the processing. By exposing it at 800 ASA, it allowed him to work at low lighting conditions and come close to existing light sources (like in the main house set). Increasing the contrast (and the grain) gave him the basis for the new look of Red Dragon. He then asked production to use Vision Premiere stock to print the dailies, so that he could see the high level of contrast and learn how best to handle the actors, lighting, and tools.

Even though Spinotti knew that he could not shoot wide open at a T2 or a T2.8––because the anamorphic format chosen has a shallower depth––he still wanted this tool to give the story a greater stage presence. The bigger negative allowed him to push the envelope. And, he knew the grain would still be acceptable, if he stayed within the T2.8 to T4 ranges on interiors. “We could still use real sources and it wouldn’t be hard for our camera crew to follow focus,” he says confidently.

“Our crew, Michael Weldon first assistant and Paul Santoni second assistant did a remarkable job. My long-time assistants have moved up and Brett suggested I bring these two into the mix. They took to the format and performed even better than I had expected under some very difficult conditions.”

This is very evident in one of the first sequences in the film, where Hannibal Lecter is dining with (and perhaps on) several members of an orchestra at his house in Baltimore. “It’s a candle lit dinner (and he’s probably killed at least one of them before it) with a chandelier at the top of the room,” says Spinotti. “We used candles to add lighting to the scene and to help with the eye light. We added a soft ring light on top of the table to enhance the chandelier effect.

“Our production designer Kristi Zea and costume designer Betsy Heimann gave us rich sets and costumes. Even though pushing two stops in the development sometimes is not as faithful to colors, their collaboration with this technique allowed us (especially in the dinner sequences) to have a warm and yellow-looking scene, as if all that was lit was candle light,” he says.

One of Spinotti’s favorite scenes to shoot in the picture was an early Anthony Hopkins scene. “It’s the opening, in a concert hall, where Lecter is sitting in the audience listening to a piece and one element of the orchestra (conducted by Lalo Schriffen) isn’t exactly right. We wanted to introduce this piece with a sweeping movement that would take in the audience, the orchestra and of course, Hannibal,” he says.

“We shot it at a concert hall in Pasadena, with a lot of extras,” Spinotti explains. “The building had extremely interesting decorations on the wall, which we under lit with strip lights for the background. We then had a number of PAR 64s coming down on the stage and the orchestra.

“My gaffer, Jeff Petersen, changed the bulbs out and put them on a dimmer. He then put several rows of PAR 64s behind the orchestra and added 9-Lites hidden on the balcony and 10K bounce into muslin (with LCDS) right and left of camera. Several floating balloon lights rounded out the lighting on this huge location.

“The main problem in this set was to light the hall and the audience in a way that implied darkness but we still had to see Lecter in his row,” Spinotti adds. “We had to have good visibility for his close ups. We didn’t want his face under-exposed because of the way we were treating the negative. When you push it like we were, you can’t under-expose the 5279 or you get strange colors and skin tones.

“As the camera, which was on a Technocrane and a Libra head, went in on him, we brought up a little fill from PAR lights that were on the edge of the balcony and on dimmers. By focusing them into the bead board that was brought forward outside the range of the camera, we had enough even lighting.

“Operator Jimmy Muro (now a DP) is a master of making such moves, and he pulled it off unbelievably well,” Spinotti adds.

As with Manhunter (with William Petersen as Will), the audience meets the retired FBI agent when his former partner (played by Harvey Keitel) goes to his home and asks for his help despite the dismay of Will’s wife (Mary-Louise Parker).

After being convinced by Keitel’s character to look into the investigation, Will goes alone to a house where one of the assassinations took place. “We go to the house at twilight, with Will looking around using a police torch flashlight,” says Spinotti. “Here, again, I tried to add an emotional transition with color. We decided to go for a saturated and dark blue (about a stop and a half under to create the color of twilight). We bring Will around the house with only the torchlight breaking the darkness.

“This was an interior and exterior Los Angeles location,” Spinotti continues. “When he turns the light up in the bedroom and sees the remains of the killing, we wanted a single stark light from the main chandelier, which was in the middle of the bedroom. All we had to add was a simple ring light above the real chandelier that was set in a very low ceiling.”

This sequence is where the audience is introduced to the reason Graham is so good at his job––and the reason he stopped doing what he does. In his head, he goes into flashbacks that allow him to mentally reconstruct what might have been in the mind of the killer.

“We lit the shots extremely simply,” says Spinotti. “Like the moment when Will sees the terrible things that the killer does to the eyes of his victims as he sees himself reflected in the eyes of a child’s doll.

“We did this with a very flat front light, again using the ring light.”

Spinotti says that this version of the Thomas Harris story is more faithful to the book. It is a story not about only a few characters, but about the people around them as well. It also explains more about the early life of the troubled killer and why he turned out the way he did.

“Through the early tests and the early shooting days, I learned how to handle the contrast for this film,” he adds. “The key to making this effective and real was to find ways to keep lights in the actors’ eyes. We were constantly refining our approach to fill light situations and finding different angles to place the lights for the eye reflections. It was basically about having one key light and the proper amount of fill in the eyes.

“The crucial placement of Kino Flos or Dedolights really worked to support the actors and thus the story. We often used a Bobinette to control the intensity of the fluorescents, barely lighting the set at all.

“As we went along, we became very adept at controlling the Kinos in terms of color. The fascinating thing about doing this movie was really about lighting the faces of these wonderful players.”

For Spinotti, one of the most interesting elements in this version of the story is the love that develops between Dolarhyde and the blind woman, Reba, played by Emily Watson.

The two characters first meet in a photo dark room. Fiennes is supposed to enter the room in total darkness, as she handles infrared material. Darkness is always a cinematographer’s nightmare. “To light the sequence, we decided to use tiny reflections off metallic cans or the glass behind the actors,” Spinotti says. “We rigged Kino Flos on the ceiling around the perimeter of the room (cool white) for a hint of light (a blue/green rendering) that complimented the infrared material. The idea was to expose the Kino Flos a stop and a half under with a barely visible element on the screen.

“As she finishes what she is doing, she goes for the light switch, and we let the regular Kino Flos come on,” he continues. “The trick was to maintain a balance of levels that was accurate––playing the dark blue/green around the room in a functional way.”

For Spinotti, another interesting and extremely human sequence between these two characters happens late in the story. “Dolarhyde has knocked Reba (Watson) out and brings her to his house (an old mansion),” Spinotti explains. “He has become frantic and sets a fire that gets out of control. As he pours cans of gas all around the house it quickly takes over the walls and curtains.

“This was a complicated sequence to shoot because we had to be in the middle of the flames as they engulfed the actors,” he continues. “It was a strong safety issue, yet we wanted to stay true to the story.

“Handling the fire safely became a technical question. We did a lot of tests on the level and exposure that the fire required, finding a way to safely work with bright interiors and exteriors that would go at least two stops over.

“We found out that a 4.5 or a 5.6 stop worked because we could read the details of the fire and at the same time read the actors’ faces––even when the set was almost completely engulfed in flames. We didn’t want the fire to go white and lose detail. Our special effects people helped us a lot by rigging the fire safely, even putting fire bars behind the cameras to enhance the lighting.”

The post explosion sequence, where Reba has been left alone at the burning house, when the FBI and Graham arrive, was shot at the Disney Ranch. The exterior of the house was supposed to be located in a fairly out of the way area of land. It had a long driveway in the foreground and trees in the far background. It also had a beautiful neglected garden. “We didn’t want to add a cross light effect for the cars when they arrived, so we placed everything carefully,” Spinotti explains.

As the shot opens, Spinotti and Petersen added PAR 64 bar lights that the electricians would swing left to right, thus enhancing the effects of the headlights of the foreground cars rushing into the shots.

“When the cars came in, the blue/red lights on top of the cars did the rest of the lighting,” Spinotti adds. “It’s a simple concept, but it worked great.

“We had the camera on a Titan crane,” he continues. “The camera looks at one of the cars below it, then comes down and tilts up past the four or five cars to see the whole house, which was really burning.

“To see the environment around the house, Jeff brought in 12 or 15 Dino lights with Half CTS gel. They were all on dimmers and chasers to reach far away into the trees, as if they were lit by the burning house.”

For the sequence where the house explodes, camera placement was coordinated by stunt director and second unit director Conrad Palmisano and second unit DP Dwayne Manweller. “They had ten or more cameras running––some high and wide on cranes, others in strategic positions,” Spinotti explains. “The only camera I placed with great passion was positioned pointed toward a carved wide fountain and into the water. So, when the explosion comes, we see the whole house reflected in the water and debris falling into the water itself.”

When Spinotti and crew were shooting the interior of Dolarhyde’s house for these and other sequences, they used what they call DNA lights––equipment that Spinotti, Petersen and Jay Fortune have created over the past few movies (The Wonder Boys and The Insider). This is a series of PAR 16 strips (45 watt bulbs) with cross light for faces that replicates the light from practicals, without looking like film lighting.

Ask Spinotti about other sequences that impact the story and he will go to what will probably be some of the strongest images in this film––Lecter’s cell. “It is an exact duplicate of the Silence of the Lambs cell. The same production designer did both movies.

“What I added to the cell was the sense of the archaic, which conveys the idea that evil is timeless,” says Spinotti.

“The environment is many floors below the prison. We enter it through bricks and stones that show the depth of the building. The crossbars on the wall are in contrast to the updated video control system. This is a perfect way to evoke a sense of evil that has gone through the ages of humanity.

“We imagine some tiny windows high up and tall hallway arches,” he continues. “To create the impression of sunlight coming from far away, we used ACL bars, 8-bulb aircraft landing lights with 28 units that could be narrow spotted and directed for a hot look. This made it feel like the sun was trying to fight its way through the openings like air vents. We then added smoke for atmosphere and used the lights to wash down the walls.

“We added our DNA lights (PAR 16s) and a few Kino Flos for the eyes.”

Since Graham goes back to Lecter’s cell several times, Brett Ratner tried to vary the light – and the camera angle, so that they weren’t always shooting two actors through a plastic door.

“One of my favorite parts of the cell shots is when Lecter offers to help Graham find the killer, in exchange for a beautiful lunch cooked by a great chef and with the best wine,” says Spinotti. “We could really change the mood of the cell here. Our light, enhanced by the candles, became very warm. All of a sudden, we are in a high-class restaurant incorporated in Lecter’s cell. Just watching Anthony Hopkins playing the scene in this environment was wonderful and a highlight in the movie.”

Once in a while, Lecter is let out of his cell for exercise in what is supposed to be a basketball court in a high safety area. “Lecter is leashed to a bar above the court,” Spinotti explains. “He walks back and forth through this cage. Will walks around him, slightly wide, behind a security line that he can’t cross.

“It was an interesting place to light,” Spinotti adds. “We wanted sunlight coming through the windows above. But there was no room outside the windows to work. So, we put mirrors on the high part of the rig, in a narrow alley, and used 7K Xenon units in the street focused into the mirrors to put light into the room.

“The main light came from six 1200 PAR HMIs with narrow beam lenses hidden in lamps designed by production. They looked like containers, which made it look a little like a boxing ring.

“When Hannibal, coming from the shadows, crosses under the lights he is over exposed four to five stops, but it is a fantastic image. He becomes like a ghost and almost disappears into the gray/cold environment. All you see is the stark blue of his eyes. The light really makes it look like the light of madness and evil.

“For me, it is one of the most successful lighting sequences we did,” he adds. “And I couldn’t have done it without this incredible crew. Jeff Petersen is a fabulous gaffer, Scott Robinson as key grip created some wonderful tools. I really had a very important experience with [assistants] Michael [Weldon] and Paul [Santoni]. Weldon is an incredible gentleman and his accuracy surprised me, even though I have done a good 30 or 40 movies. It was like working with my family on a wonderful picture.”