OFF-CENTERPIECE : MOVIES : When the CIA Draws the Line, You Just Wing It

When filmmakers prepared to shoot one of the most striking sequences from novelist Tom Clancy’s “Patriot Games,” they faced a major obstacle--the CIA.

While director Phillip Noyce and producers Mace Neufeld and Robert Rehme had received lavish cooperation from the Central Intelligence Agency in making the film, the agency balked at giving them access to its infrared, high-altitude satellite photography which it uses extensively. In the scene, former CIA analyst Jack Ryan (Harrison Ford) watches beamed infrared satellite footage of a deadly raid on a North African desert terrorist camp by members of a British commando team.

So, without the cooperation of the CIA, what did they do? They invented their own.

“They allowed us access to other areas and equipment, but the infrared, satellite stuff was strictly off-limits,” explains Noyce, who says the CIA required them to sign non-disclosure agreements regarding the rest of the research they did for the film. “It’s very controversial, being able to watch people through buildings. It’s also a bit chilling, because being able to see rooms at will anywhere in the world is frightening.”

Infrared photography (sometimes referred to as thermography) is a process that’s been around for a number of years. It picks up objects by registering their heat value. For instance, humans shot with the process will show up as a dark shade of white, while a fire would show up as very white. Such objects made of wood, concrete or steel, however, would be virtually ignored, due to the fact that they give off no heat.

According to Neufeld, the filmmakers looked at video footage from the Gulf War shot from an unmanned missile to use as a guide. “Although it (wasn’t) infrared photography, we were told that it is substantially similar to what high-altitude satellite footage looks like,” he says. “That was our main reference even though we also had the assistance of Tom Clancy’s description in the book.”

Although actual infrared photography has been used in several films, including “Predator 2,” Noyce decided not to use it for a number of reasons. “For one thing it’s expensive,” he says, “but the most important reason why we didn’t do it was because we were going to be shooting in the desert and in the daytime, the whole desert would give off heat, which would make it impossible to shoot the sequence properly.”

Instead, Noyce and his crew, after months of experimentation, duplicated process with their own ingenious idea. Although the scene in the film takes place in a North African desert, the sequence was actually shot in Brawley, a small town east of San Diego, close to the Mexican border, where a terrorist training camp was built. To give the aerial shots the illusion of being similar to the X-ray infrared photography, the roofs of the tents were covered with a see-through netting.

Over 40 actors and stunt men were dressed in black body suits, which would then subsequently appear white after the video images were filmed and reversed, making it look like it was shot in the infrared process. As the scene rolled and the British commandos attacked the terrorist camp, a camera, mounted on a helicopter hovering 800 feet above the location, rolled. Because real explosions wouldn’t register correctly when the film was reversed, air mortar machines were loaded with black cork, carbon and peat moss and set off during the filming. Again, these showed up as white clouds when the film was reversed.

The negative of the completed footage--shot on 35-millimeter film--was then scanned into a computer by Video Image and converted frame by frame into computer data.

The CIA did let the filmmakers see other equipment, including the Richardson photo enlarging table at the National Photo Interpretation Center at the Navy Yard in Washington, which is used in a key scene in “Patriot Games.” It’s here that satellite photos are enhanced either optically or digitally and where the machine becomes somewhat of a police sketch artist, manipulating and making speculations about what is there on film. A Richardson table was provided by the manufacturer.

“Patriot Games” also features surveillance equipment currently used by various worldwide security organizations. The optroscope, a tiny lens at the end of a piece of tubing that can be attached to a camera and run under a doorway, is used extensively by New Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorist unit, SO-13. It was suggested to the filmmakers by a London security expert hired as a consultant.