Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/619377
P E R S P E C T I V E | J A N UA RY / F E B R UA RY 2 0 1 6 45 To accommodate the necessities of natural light, I designed two buildings in the fort that were mirror images. This allowed the one that faced east to be shot in the morning and the other that faced west in the afternoon. The sun shining into a building was the only source of light during the day in these dark log buildings. Still, lighting was difficult because there were no windows, just doors. At the time of our story, forts could be anything from a pile of logs to a palisaded village and a workplace for the trappers. Several scenes inside the fort, the captain's home and office would have been impossible to shoot without windows, because of the cold weather and the lack of light. At the time of this film, settlements were new and windows were still a few years away. I took license and had several leaded glass windows built to help illuminate the interior spaces. In the barracks and mess hall, parts of the walls and roofs could be removed to bring more light into the structures. Later, in Los Angeles, a Pawnee village was built at Big Sky Ranch and a similar trick was done with the domed mud ceilings, designing parts of walls as large as 12' x 12' that could be removed for lighting. Chivo likes as big a natural light as possible so that the light will wrap around the actors. The backgrounds would be darkened so that the actors would show up against them, like in a Caravaggio painting. Whenever there was more than one source of light entering a set, the grips would block other light sources to avoid turning the actors into a "light sandwich." The only light besides the sun available at the time of this film was from fire, candles and torches. The kerosene lamp had not been invented yet. We made three- and five-wick candles to get more illumination from them and set decorator Hamish Purdy created some rough candle chandeliers to light the dark log interiors. Scenes shot at night were always around a fire or involved torches. In the parks and Indian lands, we would darken all the trees to simplify the background and separate it from the actors. The parks—nobody really—wanted us painting their trees, so dark dry color was used, mixed with water and no binder to darken them, it could easily be removed at the end of the shoot with more water. I designed a modest keelboat for the trappers to navigate the rivers, but the special effects technicians outfitted it Top: The church was prefabricated in a small space under the production offices and could not actually be assembled until it was placed on location. The frescoes were printed on the Art Department printer and aged into the foam walls by an excellent paint crew headed by Aaron McCullough. Bottom: A set still of the finished church assembled on location on Indian land outside of Calgary.