Daily Planet Plaza - May 2005

A night-time view of the Daily Planet entrance, built onto the side of sound-stage #2.
 
Doing the plaza shoot was pretty harrowing. One of the Assistant Directors ("A-D's") stood right beside me, watching my every move and issuing a stream of instructions into a walkie-talkie, telling the grips and gaffers [1] to turn this light on, that light off, to get out of the way, increase the steam etc.
 
During re-loads some of the crew noticed I was still using 35mm film. As the entire production was famously digital [2], I had to endure endless ribbing about this: “Jeeezus, film! Where'd we dig this fossil up from?! Hey — Filmboy — back to the Twentieth Century for you!” Just to aggravate them, I mentioned I was also timing the night exposures with a mechanical stopwatch. More head shaking and smiles over that one :?)
 
As before, overhead portions of the panorama (shown in green) were supposed to be replaced with a computer-rendered building and sky. For general remarks about filming, lighting and set design, see the interview with Director Bryan Singer and DP Newton Thomas Sigel in Amercian Cinematographer July 2006 [3].