As part of their strategy, the card-counting crew visits a Vegas strip club; the location was actually a dance hall in Boston. “Robert and I wanted a fantasy strip club,” recalls Carpenter. “We scouted a few clubs in Vegas that really weren’t what we were looking for; they were pretty confining and not glamorous at all. The dance hall wasn’t the greatest space by any means, so I hid the location with smoke and mirrors — quite literally. Our production designer, Missy Stewart, put in our own stage and poles, and we installed a truss with our own lighting.“There was a bit of an issue about how to represent a high-end strip club in a PG-13-rated film,” he continues. “I decided I would confuse the eye a bit and project images onto the stripper’s bodies. We got hold of some computerized lights from High-End Systems, DL-2s, that can project whatever imagery you feed them via a computer. You can also animate the lights, like Vari-Lites, and we ganged a number of them together to move around the dancers. I put a few fixtures we had left over into the background and aimed them back at the camera. The programming was so precise that we could choreograph the lights to sweep through on a certain line [of dialogue], which was very cool. We also integrated some Source Fours and Vari-Lites into the club lighting.”The students eventually rebel against their professor, and he gets back at them by sabotaging their solo adventure in Vegas. When Campbell returns to Boston, he confronts Rosa at his house during a faculty reception. “That scene was my homage to [Vittorio] Storaro [ASC, AIC],” laughs Carpenter. “It was snowing outside, but we made it a lush, warm afternoon. We pushed hard light through the windows, Maxi-Brutes and Par cans, and I shot with a daylight-balance setting in the camera so the tungsten light would go very warm.”Carpenter discovered a relatively new tool while in Boston, the LRX light, which was provided to the show by Available Light in New York. “Many people don’t know about the LRX, which is similar to the Bebee Night Light,” says the cinematographer. “My gaffer, Len Levine, who is constantly saving me from myself, introduced me to them when we were shooting in an enormous gymnasium that was completely surrounded by windows. I was on the fence about whether to bring in any lighting, and Len said, ‘Why don’t we just shut off the inside mercury-halide lights and go from outside in?’ We weren’t able to get a Bebee unit into Boston, but our unit production manager, Bryan Thomas, found the LRX fixtures in New York. They’re remotely controlled swiveling and focusing units that can be hung in different configurations from a garden-variety Condor. From inside the gym, Len was able to completely control the lighting [outside]. The LRX became a real lifesaver in daylight situations where we got to the location and the outside ambient light had tanked. We used them to make our own sunlight.”The actual coverage of card playing was an element of 21 Carpenter and Luketic decided to shoot after the fact. “We decided to shoot the actual movement of the cards on the Blackjack table after we shot the scene with the principal actors, after [editor] Elliot Graham cut the scene together so we’d know exactly what we needed to build the drama of the game,” says Carpenter. “Realistically speaking, there’s no drama in close-ups of cards, so we had to figure out how to make it look exciting.”After testing the P+S Technik Mini-Skater dolly, Carpenter turned instead to the Panavision Frasier lens system for shooting the card tables and cards. “The Mini-Skater is great, and I will use it in the future, but for what we were trying to do, the Frasier worked for more of the shots,” he says. “With the Frasier, I could adjust my horizon in-shot by rotating the lens as I needed, and by using it on a dolly or jib arm, I could move in several dimensions.”Surveying his first digital show, Carpenter notes, “I’m happier with 21 than I have been with any film of mine in a long time. Robert Luketic is a smart, passionate director who knows what he wants, but he also knows how to communicate his needs in a way that allows you to contribute. He doesn’t micromanage the details; he trusts your instincts and gives you plenty of room for self-expression. Overall, I’m thrilled with the results we achieved with the Genesis; they’re very cinematic, and I think viewers who are unaware will be hard-pressed to say this movie originated digitally. The Genesis is a great tool, and it’s only going to get better. I wouldn’t hesitate to use it again.”
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