Lisa Ploss of Q1 Production Technologies was able to make available 12 VL3000 Spot luminaires for Taylor and Duggan to show them the versatility of the strobe on the fixtures. She also made arrangements with rigging gaffer Rod Feldmeier to create a small set at the location where they were shooting at the time so that the Duggan, Taylor, Proyas and members of the art department could see exactly what the shoot would look like and how the luminaries would fit into the rig for final construction.
"The best feature of the fixtures is their versatility, and the fact that they are contained within a single unit," Duggan said. "It was easy to program different effects from the remote control desk, and it was easy to experiment with the fixtures. We could have achieved some of the effects otherwise, but it would have involved a lot of R&D with lighting devices built from scratch, with time and resources we didn't have."
There are several scenes in the film where vehicles are driving at high speeds through an underground network of tunnels. The stationary vehicles were mounted on hydraulic gimbals so that they could be tilted in any direction and also do a 360° spin. The vehicles were to be filmed against a green screen with background details composited later. Duggan needed realistic lighting effects and movement over the cars for the scene.
Using the Vari*Lite fixtures, Ploss programmed a very convincing chase sequence that verged on strobing yet gave the feeling of high-speed movement. From there, the crew scaled up the lighting rig and mounted the 40 VL3000 Spot luminaires to a dual 50ft run of diffused panels. Ploss then programmed different strobe and chase speeds to match the speed of the vehicles.
"The look was very convincing," Duggan said. "The source of the lighting reflected exactly as it would from banks of fluorescent lighting in an underground tunnel on the vehicles and actors traveling at high speed."
While the gimbal-mounted car was positioned on one end of the stage, another car, used for interior shots, was fixed at the other end. The entire lighting grid was built on a track system and moved from one end of the stage to the other to maintain the identical lighting and set-up. It took the crew only five minutes to move the entire grid from car to car.
"Without the automated fixtures, we would have had to have used a lot more mechanical devices to create the same types of effects," Taylor said. "It would have been a lot more time consuming and not nearly as versatile. If we had all of the mechanical devices, it probably would have made it impossible to shift the whole grid like we did."
With Ploss's programming, the lighting sequence gave the impression that everything was traveling at the same speed. Another flexibility bonus with the automated fixtures was the ability to quickly and easily vary the rate of the lighting chase. When the vehicles were not supposed to be going as fast, Ploss simply adjusted everything down.
"What's great is being able to program several different reads and immediately show them to the director of photography," Taylor added. "It's all right there at your fingertips. If you did it with conventional fixtures, you would have to raise the rig and bring it back dow
