Epic-shot Anamorphic feature film trailer for Fire With Fire

[Adam Beck]

Hey Chris,

Saw the movie last week thanks to Redbox. It was awesome, and I loved that you did a commentary on the film along with the director. You could say I watched the file twice that night so I could hear how you shot the film. I've got a couple of questions on shooting the film.

How did you light the liquor store, I believe the director said you didn't have much time to block the scene?

It was mentioned you shot two cameras shooting one side of the dialogue (profile and OTS), then reversed with both cameras. Was it for time (only 20 days) or continuity? Do you always shoot this way or do you ever pick of singles of each actor when shooting with two cameras?

I loved the ally scene where you lit Mr. Willis with the flashing lights from the cop cars. What else did you use to light that ally?

It had to be pretty cool to film Mr. Die Hard!

 

[Christopher Probst]

How did you light the liquor store, I believe the director said you didn't have much time to block the scene?

Thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed it. With that amount of shooting time/budget and inflexibility of schedule, it can exponentially increase the possibility of the movie looking low-budget and cheesy. And there are definitely aspects that make me cringe! But I tried as hard as I could (and used every trick I could) to try and elevate the scale of each scene photographically. The liquor store had existing cool white fluorescent fixtures above that I used as is, and then I augmented those with my own Kinos fitted with matching tubes.

It was mentioned you shot two cameras shooting one side of the dialogue (profile and OTS), then reversed with both cameras. Was it for time (only 20 days) or continuity? Do you always shoot this way or do you ever pick off singles of each actor when shooting with two cameras?

The two cameras were a necessity to get coverage in the time we had but it did also help with continuity. I typically tried to keep them on similar sides to allow for more interesting lighting. There are times where two or even three cameras were shooting any direction they wanted!

I loved the ally scene where you lit Mr. Willis with the flashing lights from the cop cars. What else did you use to light that all?

I was quite pleased with the look of those alley sequences. That was one location I fought hard for extra lighting gear as it was an important action beat in the middle of the movie and had a lot of rich texture potential. As I mentioned in the commentary, I had three condors for that location: one on each end of the alley for an 18K backlight, and one in the middle hidden in a parking lot that we closed in with additional fence-walls. The middle condor was a 20-by Flyswatter UltraBounce that we'd arm around for some ambient top light depending upon where the cameras were pointing. The rest of the lighting was some bare kino tubes strapped to walls, some streetlights and streetlight washes from about with double-orange gelled 2Ks, and the a matching kino on the ground to upright Bruce like the light was bouncing up. A little shape was assisted by an 8-by frame on the ground half-lighting faces with a half-blued 5K....

 

[Michael T. Sanchez]

Looks very cool Christopher, congrats! I'm going to be checking this out as soon as I can - looking forward to more work from you!