Working Hollywood: Theatrical lighting designers Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer

When they were growing up, Jules Fisher dreamed of becoming a magician and Peggy Eisenhauer trained to become a concert pianist. Eventually they ended up joining forces to bring their special combination of hocus-pocus and musicality to films, including this month’s “Burlesque,” through theatrical lighting design.

Traditionally, film uses close-ups in the same way that theater uses spotlights: to direct the audience’s attention. However, with a résumé that includes Broadway and off-Broadway shows, operas and concerts, Fisher and Eisenhauer bring their dynamic, theatrical lighting sensibility to film sets, where lighting is usually more static.

“We can move and change the light in the course of a film to help express emotions,” explained Fisher. “What we do is supply, frequently, motion in the light: It gets brighter, it gets dimmer, it changes color, it moves around the performer, it’s cued musically, things happen to the rhythm of the movie. So the lighting for film that we do is really an emotional embodiment of the story.”

Fisher and Eisenhauer — who have worked together for almost 25 years — met at Carnegie Mellon University, when Eisenhauer was a freshman and Fisher was a professional giving a talk on campus. “I’m the elder statesman,” joked Fisher.

Their first show together was Bob Fosse’s final original musical on Broadway, 1986’s “Big Deal.” Since then, they’ve designed lighting for the original Broadway production of “Angels in America,” Quincy Jones’ Millennium Concert, the 2004 revival of “Assassins” and the 2007 staging of “Il Trittico” at the Metropolitan Opera. They’ve also worked on films, such as 2002’s “Chicago,” 2003’s “The School of Rock,” 2005’s “The Producers” and 2006’s “Dreamgirls.”

For “Burlesque,” Eisenhauer said, “our main contribution was to make the environment of the club part of an emotional environment. And all of that environmental lighting as well as what is really the hot center of the club environment, which is the stage and musical numbers, is treated as a character in the piece.”

All systems go: Fisher and Eisenhauer created an elaborate lighting system of about 340 fixtures, ranging from sharp-edged spotlights to soft fill lights. “Unlike typical film lighting systems, this was a more theatrically or musically, concert-based system that allowed us to instantly change the values — color-wise, intensity-wise — at a whim,” said Eisenhauer. Fisher added, “This kind of equipment is rarely used in motion pictures. In the course of a scene, the lighting can get brighter, it can get dimmer, it can change its color and move around, and the shape of the beams can change. And because it’s on the computer, it’s instantly repeatable. So all that’s available to us like paintbrushes.”

Color and light: Fisher and Eisenhauer also command an extensive palette. “We don’t have multiple stagehands with clothespins and large sheets of gelatin,” said Fisher. “Instead, we push a button on the computer, and it’s instantly blue or slightly blue-green. And we can literally dial in any shade of any color. Inside each light, each one has multiple color filters. Without going into Newtonian science, with three colors — red, blue and green — you can mix every color in the spectrum.”

Old flames: Even though their system is contemporary, some of their fixtures are not. “We consider ourselves to be prop masters as well,” said Eisenhauer. “The period that was chosen by director Steve Antin and the rest of the artists involved was that the club might have been taken over and refurbished, or brought back to life in around 1978, 1979. So we actually hunted down period lighting fixtures that are still good fixtures and put them into the picture and kept the more seriously modern technology out of view.” Fisher confessed to being a pack rat when it comes to old lighting fixtures. “They usually just throw this stuff out,” he said. “I always save one or two and put them in my basement so I can give them to prop people and say, ‘Here, make 12 of these.’ ”

A more flattering light: In addition to the lights looking good, the people being lighted have to look good. “In a motion picture, the person’s face, including their makeup and wrinkles and dimples and pimples, is going to be 40 feet wide when you see it in the big theater,” said Fisher. “Look at all the wonderful paintings of Rembrandt or the classicists, who found that the person will look most three-dimensional and most attractive if the light comes from a certain angle, and that happens to be 45 degrees. That’s from history, and trial and error, and observing people in light. If you notice someone sitting at a dining table and there are candles in front of him, that’s an attractive angle for lighting.”

Through a glass darkly: Lighting also has to be flattering for the camera. “We are not cinematographers, and we don’t know the emulsions of films and which film stock they use,” said Fisher. “And we have to work very closely with, in this case, cinematographer Bojan Bazelli to allow him to capture what we do on film. Is it too bright for the film? Is it coming from too strong of an angle? Will it make too many shadows? So we have to, in a sense, allow the cinematographer to adjust our lighting so it will look right when it’s on film. Ultimately, we’re making the same movie. We want it to look good, and there’s no value in us insisting on something that won’t be captured well on film.”

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