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This was a major decision that created much of the film’s look. Mann was determined not to use any more artificial light than was absolutely necessary. He relied to a considerable degree on the existing street lights, neon signs, vehicle headlights, and other sources in the locations where filming took place. To achieve an eerie glow, his team came up with a cutting-edge combination of technologies.

Although
Part Three
will deal with miseen-scene first, here we’re beginning with cinematography. That’s because certain choices about photographing
Collateral
were absolutely central to its final look and also dictated many other decisions.

For many decades, traditional Hollywood productions employed cameras loaded with rolls of photographic film. For exterior scenes shot at night, large banks of specialized spot- and floodlights would pump enough illumination into the scene to register on the film stock. If not enough light was used, objects in dark areas would tend to go a uniform black.

Mann and his cinematographers decided to shoot extensive portions of
Collateral
on recently developed high-definition digital cameras. Those cameras could shoot on location with little or no light added to the scene
(
1.1
).
They could also capture and convey the distinctive night glow of Los Angeles. As Mann put it, “Film doesn’t record what our eyes can see at night. That’s why I moved into shooting digital video in high definition—to see into the night, to see everything the naked eye can see and more. You see this moody landscape with hills and trees and strange light patterns. I wanted that to be the world that Vincent and Max are moving through.” Cinematographer Dion Beebe enthused, “The format’s strong point is its incredible sensitivity to light. We were able to shoot Los Angeles at night and actually see silhouettes of palm trees against the night sky, which was very exciting”
(
1.2
).

The filmmaking team pushed the digital cameras’ capabilities in one particularly dark scene, when Vincent stalks one of his victims in a law library with huge windows overlooking the cityscape. In several shots, the characters become visible only as black shapes outlined by the myriad lights behind them
(
1.3
).
As we strain to see who is where in each shot, the suspense is heightened.

Though digital cameras could pick up a great deal in dark situations, the audience needed to see the faces of the actors clearly. Much of the action takes place inside the cab as Max and Vincent drive around and talk. The filmmakers had to light the actors’ faces, but they wanted the added illumination to be so low and diffuse that there would not seem to be any artificial light within the cab.

To create that effect, the filmmakers tried an innovative approach: electroluminescent display (ELD) panels. It’s the same technology used to make the light-up backings of digital watches and cell phones, but it had never been employed in lighting units for filming. Flexible plastic panels of various sizes and shapes were custom-made for the production, all with Velcro backings that would attach to the seats and ceiling of the cab
(
1.4
,
1.5
).
These ELD panels could then be turned on in various combinations. Although they look bright in
Figure 1.5
, the effect on the screen was a soft glow on the actors. In a shot like
Figure 1.6
, we might simply take it for granted that the light coming through the windows and the glow of the dashboard panel are all that shines on the characters. Such dim illumination on their faces allows the lights visible through the windows to be brighter than they are, helping to keeping the city “as much of a character in the story as Vincent and Max were.”

Here’s a case where an artistic decision led to new technology. The filmmakers could have said, “We have various types of lights available. Which one would work best in the cab?” Instead, they realized that the type of dim illumination they wanted could not be achieved by existing lighting units. It was a problem, and one that the team went to considerable lengths to solve by ordering a new type of light made.

As a thriller,
Collateral
contains several dynamic action scenes, including a spectacular car crash. The plan was for a cab going nearly 60 miles per hour to flip and then bounce and roll several times before coming to rest on its top. At that speed, the vehicle would have traveled hundreds of feet. The filmmakers had options about how to portray the crash onscreen. They could have put the camera in a single spot and had it swivel as the car rolled past, keeping it in the frame from the beginning of the accident to the end. That would have been a good idea if the scene showed us the crash through the eyes of an onlooker whose head turns to watch it. But there is no character looking on.

The filmmakers wanted to generate excitement by showing several shots of the car rolling, each taken from a different point along the trajectory of the crash. One possible approach would have been to have multiple cabs and execute numerous similar crashes, each time filmed by a single camera that would be moved between crashes from place to place to record the action from a new vantage. Such a procedure would have been very expensive, however, and no two crashes would have taken place in exactly the same way. Splicing together shots from each crash might have created discrepancies in the car’s position, resulting in poor “matches on action,” as we’ll term this technique in
Chapter 5
.

Instead, the team settled on a technique commonly used for big action scenes. Multiple cameras were placed along the route of the crash, all filming at once
(
1.7
).
The economic benefits were that only one car had to be crashed and the high expense of keeping many crew members working on retakes was reduced. Artistically, the resulting shots allowed the editing team considerable flexibility to choose portions of any of the shots and splice them together to match the action of the car precisely
(
1.8
,
1.9
).
The result is an exciting series of shots, each taken from farther along the path of the crash and keeping the cab in clear view.