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Inspiration on the Ice Planet
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 Shooting a scene for Ice Planet. |
"I've looked at paintings all my life and base my filming decisions on certain artists' concepts. I lit the interior of the ice caves like an Italian Renaissance painting, whereas for the closer quarters I created the ambience of a Rembrandt painting with pools of light rimming the faces." The artistic approach of Michael Hofstein, Los Angeles-based Director of Photography, has resulted in superb visual effects in Ice Planet, a futuristic new science fiction pilot film.
The two-hour film, due to be broadcast in the fall on American and European television, will pave the way for a five year run of one-hour episodes. Produced by H5B5 Media AG in Munich, Germany, and shot almost entirely in a former warehouse, the dialogue is in English, with an American influence in the eclectic cast and crew.
Set hundreds of years in the future off the planet Jupiter, a colony from earth is attacked by aliens. A spaceship carries the survivors to the Ice Planet, but their battles continue. The aliens are being added in post-production, along with many other visual effects.
"There was a gigantic 5,000 m2 of stage," recalls Hofstein,"and the technical challenges were massive. I needed a higher speed stock that would give me the look and the latitude I required, together with a range of colours. Kodak 35mm Vision 500T (5279) is exquisite; it fulfilled all my expectations and proved to be incredibly versatile." Kodak 35mm Vision 200T (5274) was used for a short exterior dream sequence. Hofstein worked with ARRI 535B and 535AB cameras and an ARRI 435 for the wide-screen high-speed shots, 10mm to 150mm Zeiss lenses and a 200mm Century Precision Optics lens.
Hundreds of lighting units, c-stands, scrims, diffusion and flags were needed for the myriad sets, linked corridors and stage 'exteriors'. "I created a very warm tone for the space station 'exterior' sets with a combination of tungsten lights and CTS/CTO gel to represent Jupiter's reddish glow. That warm theme was carried to the space station corridors, although I changed the lighting between night and day because the human colony needed to maintain a rhythmic sense. The control room and command areas required a more mechanical, militaristic type of tone, so I had tungsten lights with blue gels. A deep red gel on pulsating tungsten units and a lighting change gave the effect of 'Red Alert.'"
Several rear-lit green screens and one front-lit green screen (47 meters in length x 6 meters high) were used to create composite views of Jupiter and space. On one set at Kirkov Base, there were eighty rear-lit panels on dimmers linked to a control board, each using a different light. Also in this set there was a rear-lit green screen. "I developed a rear-lit screen to reduce green screen spill for Drop Zone in 1994 and felt comfortable using it again," he adds.
Hofstein wanted a cold, foreboding look for the vast ice fields and caves, similar to the thick early morning fog that blanketed the fields while he was filming in Munich. Special effects supplied the heavy fog and several Licht Technik's "Bag-o-Lights" were used for lighting. An ARRI 4kW HMI was placed in each of the inflated translucent tubes and covered with 1/4 CTO; with the aid of computer-controlled colour changers, an aurora borealis form of "other worldly" light was successfully created from beyond the fog.
"It was an incredibly long and involved shoot and communicating between several cultures and several languages was a real challenge," admits Hofstein, "but the only real hitch was when we attempted to remove several walls during set changes; they were so well constructed that we ended up having to literally tear them apart. I tried my best to explain to the crew that in Los Angeles, sets are built to withstand point 7 earthquakes but we are still able to remove the walls for shooting!"
Data File
Ice Planet
Executive Producer - Hendrik Hey
Producer / Writer - Michael Conford
Production Manager - Guido Hesse
Director - Winrich Kolbe
Director of Photography - Michael Hofstein
1st Assistant Camera - Christine Wagner
Clapper-Loader - Rainer Christoph
Key Gaffer - Peter Koschorreck
An H5B5 Media AG Production
Biography - Michael Hofstein
Michael has been a Director of Photography since 1985. As a visual artist, he has worked as cinematographer in many countries including China, Italy, Spain, Germany, and Mexico. He has photographed commercials, movies, music videos, and episodic television. He has also been the visual effects cinematographer on the Hollywood blockbusters Drop Zone and Rush Hour. He learned the craft of camera while working as a Camera Assistant and later as a Camera Operator during the 1970s and early 80s in Los Angeles at Paramount Studios and Twentieth Century Fox. He worked with and learned from many of the great cinematographers at that time. As a visual artist, Michael studies painting and composition. Inspired by the works of Rembrandt and El Greco, Camille Pissarro, Gauguin, and the American painter Edward Hopper, he patterns his lighting style on the work of these earlier visual artists. He looks towards their works as a continual source of stimulus and lighting ideas. As a respected cinematographer, Michael wrote a chapter published in the American Cinematographers Manual about the preparation of the motion picture camera for production. As a member of an Eastman Kodak Company focus group in the mid 1990s, he helped in the research and development of the low contrast ultra latitude 320T-5287 colour negative film.
His feature film credits include:
Ice Planet, The Learning Curve, Baby Luv, Underground Comedy Movie and Ora e Per Sempre.
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