I’ve just returned to Hollywood from spending a week in the jungle, where I visited cinematographer, John S. Bartley, ASC on the set of the hit television show, Lost. One of the most ambitious and cinematic network series on the air today, the show packs in an hour the production value of a big budget studio feature. Shooting on location in Hawaii might sound like a glamorous proposition, but imagine having to carry heavy camera cases, lighting equipment, or pushing around a video village cart in the sand or over thick vegetation roots on the jungle floor. I personally didn’t have to lug anything around, but was eaten alive by mosquitoes, covered head to toe in mud, and basically a hot, sweaty mess by the time I got back to my hotel room each night.
Lost is currently finishing production on their fifth season, for a total of 17 episodes. A typical episode is shot in 10 days, with two of those days including a 2nd unit shooting simultaneously. Like most one-hour dramas, Lost has two cinematographers that alternate with each episode allowing one to prep, while the other shoots. Cort Fey was shooting 2nd unit and location scouting, while I spent time on set with Bartley. My visit coincided with the production of the two-hour season finale, an animal all its own, scheduled for 20 shoot days with 7.5 overlapping 2nd unit days. I was sworn to secrecy about any plot points or story reveals, which was fine by me as a huge fan of the show! With all the time travel, flashbacks and flash forwards in the narrative of Lost, and by shooting scenes out of chronological order, it was actually very easy to stay confused about the story. For me, I was primarily interested in learning about how John Bartley captures the beautiful images he does on film and about the challenges, as a cinematographer, he faces every day on a show of this magnitude.
John S. Bartley, ASC on set.
“The light is constantly changing and the weather is unpredictable, so getting the scene to look consistent is one of my biggest challenges,” says Bartley. Shooting mostly with available light, with the exception of a condor carrying two 18K HMI pars, Bartley frequently has to make exposure changes to compensate for the direct sunlight or cloud cover that filters through the canopy of the jungle. When shooting a scene and coverage on a beach with changing light, Bartley says it’s best to match to the sky and ocean on the horizon because they don’t change to the eye, and if they remain constant through the scene, the coverage will be less distracting when cut together.
Bartley primarily shoots Kodak film stocks 5205 (250D) and 5219 (500T), with a little bit of 5212 (100T). He likes to use 5205 for color saturation and contrast on day exterior and sometimes even night exterior or stage work because he says he finds the 500T to be “too bright.” “Daylight film looks a bit warmer, so I don’t have to put any gels on the lights. The 250D has great blacks; they’re like velvet. I’ll even use the 250D when I shoot a night scene at the Dharmaville Camp and rate it at 500. I don’t see any more grain and I’ll shoot the whole scene, interior and exterior on the 250D so it will cut together nicely.” Bartley also tells me one of his secrets is to sometimes use a 2-stop polarizer to take the sheen and glare off of actor’s faces while shooting 5219, underexposing slightly for better saturation.
Over the course of the last year, Lost has shot approximately 3,000,000’ of film, making it my single largest television account to date. Kodak Hollywood ships film to the Honolulu production office on a weekly basis, but they actually prefer to order it in large quantities, and believe it or not, ship by boat. Since 9/11, there has been an increase in incidents of x-ray damage to raw stock, and even though the production has had several meetings with the TSA, Lost can’t afford to have any more shoot days ruined by radiation fogging. Co-Executive Producer, Jean Higgins has found a work-around, as she tells me with a smile, “We ship the film with the vegetables! In a refrigerated container on a cargo ship!”
The ambitious scope of the show makes for a grueling production schedule. A typical day can average 37 – 49 set-ups, depending on the intricacy of the scene, whether it’s big action with lots of stunts, which Bartley would typically set up three cameras to cover, or several actors with lots of dialog in one location. “The schedule on the show only allows you to do what you can do – it is what it is,” Bartley says. Because the scenes are usually new set-ups that they haven’t shot before and because of the tight schedule, there is very little time to try things out, forcing Bartley to run with his instinct, and sometimes preventing him from using the lighting set-ups he would like. “It’s not ideal having dailies three days behind, but we make due.”
On the road to the jungle in Oahu.
By the sheer nature of shooting on location on an island, Lost has to deal with challenges that are almost unimaginable to those working in the comfort of Los Angeles. The week just before I arrived, while shooting on a remote beach location, a wave swept away two camera slates and almost took out a 35mm camera, which John was able to grab before it landed in the ocean. During my visit, production was scheduled in the jungle near Kane’ohe on the windward side of the island, about a 45-minute drive from Honolulu. Over the weekend, heavy rains flooded the set and left virtually everything two feet underwater. The producers had no choice but to hire a crew to pump out all of the water less than 24 hours before Monday’s call time.
But despite the production challenges Bartley faces each day on set, he tells me he absolutely loves working with the actors. “Working with such amazing actors is one of my favorite things about shooting this show. It’s all about making the actors look good, especially the women,” says Bartley. “They put a lot of trust in me to make them look good.” He also loves the exotic locations and despite the challenges of floods, mud and mosquitoes and waves, he loves shooting in such an exotic locale. Bartley also adds that there is no other way to shoot the show except on film, because of the physical demands on the equipment, and because film is the look of the show. Overhearing our conversation, Producer Jean Higgins summed it up nicely by saying, “The romance of Lost would be lost if we didn’t shoot it on film.”
Surfboards on the camera truck.
After spending a week with the production, it was clear to me that shooting a television series in Hawaii is very different from shooting one in Burbank. There is a family atmosphere on set, a feeling that is like “home away from home” for the crew, many of whom are from the mainland. Bartley gives a lot of credit to his camera crew, saying they are some of the best in the business, adding that a few of them are even surf legends as well. Surfboards line the ceiling of the camera truck and are used on location days that happen to be near good surf, as the crew hits the waves at lunch or before call time. Even though the days can be long and the work can be demanding, I could tell these guys love what they do and are having a good time. I mean, how bad can life be when you’re living and working in paradise?
This post originally appeared on 4.06.09 at PluggedIn, a blog about Kodak products and customers: PluggedIn
