Rainbow (1996 Film) - Production

Production

Principal photography began in Montreal on September 21, 1994, the start of a nine week shoot that would take the cast and crew through to the end of November. This included two weeks of blue screen, or in this case green screen studio filming.

Clarenceville, a 30-minute drive from Montreal, was the site of the important cornfield scenes (doubling for Kansas), and the opening and closing of the film features aerial footage in New York and Hawaii. The remainder was shot in Montreal.

Montreal was chosen for the production site due its ideal mix of architecture and weather conditions which closely approximated those in the script. "When the script was originally written, the locale was set in Washington D.C." Visual Consultant, 2nd Unit Director and Executive Producer David L. Snyder stated. "When we arrived in Montreal Bob and I made the decision to change the locale to New Jersey and not move the production around, as we had found everything we needed in Quebec. A fictional city located in New Jersey can be fairly nondescript and much less identifiable than Boston, New York, or Washington for that matter."

"Using composite photography, the view from New Jersey looks like New York. And Montreal was perfect in every way for our purposes; the suburb Outremont, where the school scenes are filmed, is an older, residential area which had a choice of schools to shoot in. Montreal also has both that traditional 1950's downtown look you find in so many American cities and hi-rise contemporary structures & municipal complexes"

"There's a schematic geography to all this," adds Snyder. "And we have all these different looks we've been able to achieve, plus the interior of a TV broadcast studio (shot at the TVA building which houses working studios), commercial streets and the area where the diner and comic book store are. We wanted Jackie and her boys to reside in an urban environment at a specific economic level and we've been able to do that here."

Hoskins chose Snyder to establish the appropriate look after their experience working together on Super Mario Bros.

Pre-Production commenced at Ealing Studios, London prior to the move to Montreal. The Ealing conferences dealt with script readings and visual concepts, including some preliminary filming of various 'practical' man-made rainbows.

Once in Canada, Snyder then met with Production Designer Claude Pare and asked him to turn his concepts into reality, which included design ideas for the Hudson Harbor settings. A primary task involved taking a French-Canadian city and replacing all the French language signage with English language graphics and signage.

For a film that’s featured set-piece is a ride through the Rainbow and whose story features the loss of color to the world, costume designer Janet Campbell's role was especially important. Said Campbell: "I'm trying to impart a timeless look to the characters, because the producers want the film to become a classic to be watched forever. So I've avoided that heavy grunge look so prevalent among kids today . Instead, I've given them a classic look."

Each character's look was also designed to reflect his or her individuality. "Steve is one good example," says Campbell. "He's older than the other kids and is a rebel, so the colors I've chosen for him are darker. But toward the end, when his true nature begins to shine through, the colors of his clothing become brighter."

"Another example are the uniforms of the Tigers, the gang that Steve wants to join. Although they're quite similar, each one sports something colorful that shows that member's individuality, like a patch, a vest, a shirt or whatever. Yet, you can still identify them as the Tigers."

The best example of Campbell's attempts to showcase color came in the guise of Jack The Prophet, the character which warns about the impending advent of doomsday. "The Prophet is a street person, so we decided to have him attach the objects he finds on the street to his coat. His coat becomes a mass of bright ribbons, buttons and other objects and when the color begins to fade from the world you'll notice that his coat will become desaturated with color."

"Those small objects are proof that a designer's job is as much about good shopping as good designing. You'll notice in the film that the photoshop attendant in the Kansas airport scenes is wearing a camera shaped bolo-tie. I wanted to give the character a fast-food sort of look and while lying in bed one night, I thought of that bolo as a way of accomplishing it. It's a little thing but it imparts an overall look to the character."

In early October, in the area of Montreal known as the Plateau Mont Royal, the cast and crew spent several days filming both the inside and outside of an authentic American diner. The Galaxie Diner, transformed for the film into Ynez and Charlie's Galaxie Diner, serving Spanish-Chinese food, plays an important part of the film. It's the site where the kids first see the colors in the Rainbow's soil.

On day thirteen of filming, October 9, the cast and crew moved to the center of downtown Montreal and Square Dorchester (which features imposing statues of two early Canadian Prime Ministers). The warm sunny conditions were perfect for shooting the film’s pivotal riot sequence.

About seventy-five extras were needed to portray a mob brandishing baseball bats, overturning cars and generally causing havoc as the world turns headlong into disaster. Opposing them are 15 members of Montreal's actual SWAT team (many of whom had prior experience working on films) and several mounted policemen.

The eight-strong stunt crew included veteran, five time world karate champion, Jean Frenette. He performed the motorcycle jump over a car and through the deadly ‘Wall of Fire’, with a pillion rider seated behind him. "It's very difficult because I've got another rider with me and I can't afford to slow down," Frenette admitted just prior to the stunt. "And I don't have a crash helmet. When the character sees the world coming to an end around him, he can't worry about the helmet."

To achieve the floating quality for the interior of the Rainbow, originally the traditional special effects concept of harnesses and wire rigs hanging the actors from the rafters was suggested. However, the film's Visual Effects Supervisor, Steven Robiner, brought in from Sony Pictures in Los Angeles, had a different idea. Robiner said "Aesthetics was my main concern; we wanted to show the kids really floating through the rainbow, and none of these actors were gymnasts so I felt strongly that it would be much easier for them to express this feeling of floating and weightlessness being underwater. It was also going to be much easier in the post production process to composite the children within the rainbow, and not have to worry about hand-painted wire-removal" Robiner's plan was to submerge a green screen inside a diving training pool that had an instructors window, under the water, at the side. Fortunately, a nearby Montreal university, located in Montreal's east end, had exactly the type of pool he was looking for. At first this underwater concept was questioned as being too radically different and untried, however after Robiner pointed out that this would also save the production about 3 days of shooting because more than 70% of the rainbow interior scenes could be all shot at this one single pool location with a locked off camera and lights, the producers agreed and the underwater shoot was accepted. Robiner said, "The underwater shots were particularly exciting. It was important because we had to accomplish that weightless look perfectly for the shots inside the rainbow. You can't do that by using a rigid harness. Just ask Bob, who was well aware of that, having spent two weeks wearing such rigs in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?. It was very uncomfortable for him."

To help the children adjust to this potentially hostile environment, the producers engaged the services of aquatic consultant Daniel Berthiaume. "I had to go underwater and push or pull them to keep under at first," says Berthiaume. "Later, we used weight belts, but it wasn't easy at first."

"So to help them gain confidence, I asked them to do things naturally, the way they wanted to. After a while, they were more confident." Floating, she says, was the most difficult thing for the kids to master and they had to be at the right level for the camera. So in tandem with a scuba diving team who could help them take off their mouthpieces at the bottom of the pool and then float upwards for the camera, Berthiaume succeeded in helping the crew get the necessary shots. Members of the local swimming team were also used as doubles.

Shooting under water lasted for two full days and Berthiaume was in the water for periods of three to five hours at a time.

The last portion of the shoot continued on a large sound stage in Montreal, where the Visual Effects segments involving the kids traveling through the rainbow was to be filmed. The stage's 3-story high walls and floor were all painted with the special green colored paint necessary for the compositing process. Special mechanical seats, platforms and camera rigs concept designs were made by Steven Robiner and John Galt and then engineered and built by Special Effects Supervisor Antonio Vidosa and his crew. Robiner said "Artistically and technically, Antonio is like a DaVinci, he's incredible -- working with him was a fantastic experience." For a shot in which the four kids are to float, spinning in the form a circle with each child holding the hand of the kid on each side of them, with their heads together and feet at the outer edge, then they let go their hands and each spin off and away from the others. Originally it was suggested to do this with the four actors hanging on wires, but Robiner rejected that idea because "hanging four kids on wires just seemed to be a dangerous and time-consuming idea, on top of being difficult for them to perform in..." Robiner continued, "...so, I sketched my conceptual design for how to handle this critically important shot using a custom-made large, radial, four-armed spinning platform where each arm would also have an elbow and another arm which in turn held each of the four kids lying on their chests and hips. I showed it to Antoni, and he got it right away, no further explanation needed... then three weeks later the entire rig was engineered and completed."

In order to produce a shot in which the kids are supposed to be spinning head over heals while floating in the rainbow, another rig was used that let the actor remain motionless while the camera rotated 720 degrees over his head, behind his back, and then under his feet and up again. The old style HD cameras had umbilical cables for power and signal transmission which needed to be carefully wound around a large spool as the camera rotated.