We used a 435 and Justins Cameflex shooting with F64 for most sequences, switching to '84 for the night shots.

We could only shoot when the public wasn't there, before 10am and after 5pm and we had to remove all our lamps and other kit during opening hours.

This was a hell of a problem because the director wanted the domes to glow green at night and each dome is 250 metres across!!

An endless amount of 12K's and 6K's being rigged and aimed at empty air.

We couldn't see where anything was pointing until it got dark but we needed to shoot in the last seconds of the light to get the balance right.

We had the lamps in and roughly set by 8:30pm ut couldn't see any effect from them at all. I'd used a program on my Palm to calculate the right balance between civil and nautical twighlight and had told everyone that it would be 9:54 that the balance was right.

I have to admit that I started to lose it when at 9:30 none of my lights were visible. I wasn't helped by a photographer from National Geographic making comments about about my competence or lack of!

Happily it all started to come together at 9:45 and the stills guys motordrive started to go wild, we held off shooting for a while longer and got 6 takes of the crane move bewteen 9:50 and 10 pm.

I notice that the stills guy was happy to take credit for the photographs he shot with my lighting :-)

Director Noel Kearns

Production Company National Geographic

Colourist Gary @ Red

Gaffer Ossie Jung