We Own the Night - Joaquin Baca-Assay Recreates New York in the 1980s

by David Heuring

Joaquin Baca-Asay jumpstarted his career with the independent feature Roger Dodger in 2001. "Everything we did in that film was completely conscious," he says, "but it is meant to look like we caught it by accident."

In the ensuing six years, Baca-Asay's commercial cinematography career has taken off, and he is now shooting and directing high-end spots under the banner of Park Pictures. His "Defy" commercials for Nike Air Max recently captured top honors at the Association of Independent Commercial Producers annual competition.

Roger Dodger caught the eye of director James Gray (The Yards, Little Odessa), who envisioned a similarly dark visual language for his next project, We Own the Night. Set in New York City in the 1980s, that film tells the story of two brothers on opposite sides of the law. The Russian mafia is vying with a tight-knit group of police officers sworn to bring them down. Eventually the brothers become entangled in a dangerous conflict. Robert Duvall, Joaquin Phoenix, Mark Wahlberg and Eva Mendes are in leading roles.

Of the 50-day shoot, 49 days were scheduled for practical locations. The budget for We Own the Night was roughly $20 million. Baca-Asay's largest feature film budget previous to this project was under $4 million, so he saw the picture as an opportunity to step up. "I was excited about the script, because although in some ways it's a genre film with gangsters, good guys and bad guys, it deals with the subject in a very mature, thoughtful way," he says.

Gray and Baca-Asay looked at prints of dozens of films and viewed parts of many others while developing a visual style for We Own the Night. Their touchstones included The French Connection and The Godfather: Part II. Both of those films were framed in the 1.85:1 aspect ratio. "James envisioned a more personal story," says Baca-Asay. "He didn't want to up the majesty level with a 2.35 frame. We also didn't want to lose the verticality of some of the amazing spaces we were planning to use around New York."

Through extensive testing with Joe Violante at Technicolor, Baca-Asay found the recipe to achieve the look Gray had in mind. "James wanted it to look like a film shot in the 1970s," says Baca-Asay. "He was incredibly specific about that. I kept shooting tests until we got it right. I used (Kodak VISION2 Expression 500T) 5229, exposed at 500 and pulled one stop in development. I also used an eighth Coral filter for the entire picture. This caused the blacks to warm up slightly, with desaturated colors. In exteriors, the result is cool daylight with just enough warmth for healthy skin tones. "It's a look I've always liked, and discovering how to achieve it photochemically was very exciting for me," he says. "Joey V. at Technicolor loves taking risks and pushing the film to the edge. The images look a little underexposed and thin, and the blacks are milky, which I like. I like stressed-looking film, but I also like images that are very much in control. I feel lucky to work with directors who also like that look."

Phoenix's character lives a hedonist lifestyle complete with drugs and debauchery. Baca-Asay worked to give the glitzy dance club where the character works a romanticized, fun feeling. "We want the audience to sense that he is having a great life, even though he is doing some things we might judge as wrong," says Baca-Asay. "That way he has something to give up. The club itself is not like the real thing. Instead, it's a wonderful, glamorous memory of what clubs were like in those days."

Scenes in the club, which is called El Caribe, were filmed at three different New York locations. The front half of the interior was filmed at a restored movie palace in the Bronx. "I made the front half of the club very sultry and beautiful, inviting and warm," Baca-Asay says. "There was a lot of wood and beautiful detail that we tried to sculpt with light. For ambience, we used balloon lights that are cubes rather than spherical. They were like big floating soft boxes. We could move them around very quickly over crowds, and we could attach sides to control the light. They were extremely useful and convenient."

The cube balloon lights also came in handy on club exteriors, which were filmed outside a theater in Harlem. Baca-Asay lit to emphasize dramatic arches in the architecture, and hung gelled fluorescents to create interactive lighting that would help integrate a large neon sign that would be added in post.

"For exteriors I tried to stay with a sodium vapor look, because we didn't have the time or budget to change everything to the more period-accurate mercury vapor," he says. "Instead we had the balloon lights made with sodium vapor bulbs in them. It is very difficult to match the color and quality of sodium vapor light, but fitting the balloon lights with sodium vapor lamps allowed us to hang a beautiful soft orangey light over the main scene that matched the existing light perfectly."

The main part of the dance club was filmed at Webster Hall in Manhattan, which is also a former theater. Many important scenes take place there, including a big party with as many as 30 cops. Gaffer Jay Fortune put together a prelight crew and brought on a board operator to recreate the 1980s club feeling.

"Working with Jay was fantastic," says Baca-Asay. "With smaller budgets, you find yourself having to light in these situations while everyone waits and gets nervous. Here, everything was in place. We fine-tuned for an hour or two and then we were ready to shoot. We had more than 20 motorized lights brought in, and used a lot of strip lights. We did a lot of straight-down lighting, partly as a sincere homage to Gordon Willis, but also because it is practical. You can light a room that way, and it looks cool in every direction. There is enough light for depth, and the walls don't get too bright."

The strip lights were MR-16s, which are small and focusable with parabolic reflectors that render directional light. In the cyc strip configuration, they give off light that wraps nicely. "We used those to make warm patterns that we could blast down and mix with the more typical flying shafts of light," says Baca-Asay.

Several scenes were filmed in a cavernous Catholic church in Brooklyn. Duvall's and Wahlberg's characters have a serious talk with Phoenix's character, appealing to his family loyalty and asking him to betray his underworld friends.

"That was a real pleasure to light," says Baca-Asay. "Once again we lit the space first, accenting and sculpting the existing architecture, which allowed the camera to look in many directions. We often lit from below using PAR cans with a little added warmth, again trying to create an idealized version of the space. Then we lit the people separately. I find it much easier to think using that approach."

Later in the film, an intense car chase includes Phoenix, Mendes, Duvall as well as some Russian gangsters. Most of the scene is played from Phoenix's point of view. When a semi-truck jack-knifes in front of him, he crosses the median and drives against traffic before returning to his original lane.

"I had never done any chase scenes on this scale," says Baca-Asay. "The producers assumed that we would have to do much of the chase sequence against green screen, but that option turned out to be insanely expensive. We had a rig brought out from Los Angeles that allowed us to bolt a car chassis directly on, and shot some incredible footage with Joaquin Phoenix at the wheel. We also towed the car for some shots, and we had a station wagon with the same front end as our hero car that we were able to rig cameras to."

The chase scene was scripted to take place during a torrential downpour. Baca-Asay had already shot some scenes leading up to the chase using rain machines. But, the stunts were deemed too dangerous to attempt with wet roads. Digital Domain created artificial rain and composited it into those shots.

"They did an amazing job, especially considering that they didn't get ideal plates and elements," says Baca-Asay. "It looks completely photo-realistic. Often you can barely see through the windshield. There are times when we wanted the audience to know where he was in relation to everyone else, and other times when we want them to lose track because of the rain. That was a fun sequence to conceptualize, execute and see finished. It looks incredible, thanks to Digital Domain."

Baca-Asay says that working with an experienced and talented operator took the images to another level. "I knew that Craig (Haagensen) would be an excellent technician, but he also brought an amazing amount of heart, artistry and intuition to his work as operator and second unit director of photography," says Baca-Asay. "His true greatness was in what he could create on the spot, in concert with the actors, in a very visceral way. He had a technique that I called the Haagen shake. During these chase sequences, he could shake the camera in a horizontal motion that made 20 miles per hour feel like 80. It reminds me of the shots of the Apollo rockets leaving the atmosphere - it feels like everything is breaking apart."

Baca-Asay also had praise for key grip Billy Miller and first assistant Eric Swanek. "They were sharp, fresh and extremely experienced," he says. "I refer to Eric as the Michael Jordan of camera assistants. There is so much he can do that I assumed was impossible."

The story ends in an otherworldly environment: a meadow in Queens that is filled with eight-foot-tall grass. "There's an elaborate manhunt and shootout that was also an incredible experience to shoot," says Baca-Asay. "There's a wide angle shot with 200 police officers and dogs disappearing into this grass. A strange weather front was coming in with strong winds that added a weird effect. Joaquin's character emerges from a burnt field surrounded by smoking, burning grass. We used a super long lens, which threw some parts of the frame out of focus. It's quite a dramatic, evocative sequence for me."

Most scenes were covered with two ARRI cameras, an LT and a Studio, and Cooke lenses. Occasionally, Baca-Asay made use of the ARRI 235. "I love the 235," he says. "I bought some Sony video goggles on eBay for 300 bucks, and you can plug them into the video assist of the 235 and get incredible shots. I've done shots where the camera was held outside the window of a moving car looking back in to get the driver. It's a great tool. You can make up interesting and unusual shots very quickly, and yet you're shooting in 35 mm format. All the while I have the same Cooke lens in front of the camera and the images are luscious."

Gray and Baca-Asay began the picture with a completely photochemical path in mind. "Digital intermediate (DI) does give you tremendous control, but in my opinion you lose picture quality," says Baca-Asay. "We didn't want to do a DI that would lower the resolution. But, a funny thing happened. The visual effects shots that had been worked on digitally actually looked cooler, due to the subtle degeneration. It looks more '70s,' basically. So, now we plan to put the images through a digital intermediate, and match the images in terms of color and contrast to our best photochemical print." We Own the Night was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival and became the subject of a bidding war. Columbia Pictures picked up the film for distribution and plans an October 2007 release in the United States.

Gaffer Jay Fortune says of Baca-Asay: "Joaquin has a lot of guts for a young cameraman. It was a pleasure to work with him. The most interesting aspect of the shoot was pushing the film to the limit to make it look gritty."