James Whitaker, ASC, reunited with director Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Caribbean, Rango, A Cure for Wellness) to shoot the sci-fi comedy Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die. Whitaker used Astera Titan and Helios Tubes to help light the fast-paced adventure.
When Whitaker received the script for Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, his reaction was “This is bonkers, I have to do this.” The absurdist story follows a time traveler (a bedraggled Sam Rockwell) who must recruit a band of strangers at a Los Angeles diner to save the world. While playing with themes of society’s relationship to AI and other new runaway technologies, the film packages a timely critique in the hero’s journey of an unlikely ensemble.
The film had to be done with a small budget of just over $20 million USD. Production planned a 60-day shoot in Cape Town, South Africa. To make the aggressive schedule a reality meant a dramatic shift in Verbinski’s approach to lighting, and this is where they turned to Astera to help with the lighting.
Good Luck is Verbinski’s first dive back into features since 2016’s A Cure for Wellness, and in the intervening years, large-format digital cinematography had matured, and LED lighting had grown from a novelty into a production essential. A director best known for mega-sized films with extensive resources, the transition to a lean independent film, while retaining the essential Verbinski-quality required some lateral thinking.
Early into prep, Verbinski was searching for solutions. They needed to come up with answers for questions such as, could we shoot night exteriors with minimal lighting? Could we light without plugging things in? Gore hadn’t worked much with LED lights.
Gore was intrigued by the LED lighting possibilities right away, and he liked the fact that Astera Titan Tubes could be placed into the ceiling without needing to run power to them. It would take less than a minute to get the tubes in the ceiling, hung safely, and with full DMX and XY control from the board. The speed and economy of battery-powered, wireless LED fixtures were liberating, allowing bolder, wider choices, even with a tight budget and schedule.
The film opens with a challenging sequence–a 12-minute dynamic monologue by Sam Rockwell’s time-traveling protagonist as he works to recruit unwilling patrons in Norm’s Diner. Production designer David Brisbin meticulously recreated the Los Angeles landmark (exercising some creative license) inside a massive dome-shaped convention space in Cape Town, complete with two and a half blocks of La Cienega Boulevard facades.
The production allocated only eight days to capture the complex 12-page sequence. They needed to be fast and to move around with something portable that could light faces very quickly.
The entire back area of the restaurant, the kitchen, and the hallways were all lit with practical fixtures that looked like fluorescents, but they were Astera Titan and Hyperion Tubes. Larger units through 8×8’ or 12×12’ diffusions were used, but often it would just use a Titan or two in a Lightsock, which might be further diffused with a 4’x4’ frame. With 16 pixels that can be individually programmed from a lighting console or the Astera App, the baton-shaped LED Hyperion and Titan Tubes offered minutely tunable lighting throughout the set.
This all-around lighting approach allowed Verbinski and Whitaker to maintain coverage from multiple angles, adjusting in the moment rather than losing time to costly re-lights. The diner is so authentically Norms, it’s easy to forget the scene itself was shot on the other side of the globe. The normality of the opening sequence lays familiar groundwork before launching the viewer on an increasingly surreal journey.
LED lighting played a big part in being able to move quickly. Only a handful of traditional HMIs were used. The production knew from the beginning that there was not going to be time for extensive lighting that would take too long to set up and utilize. The gaffer was not going to have the luxury of time to shape things.
Throughout the madcap adventure, one configuration became indispensable behind the scenes: Astera Tubes fitted with Lightsocks. They used Helios (the smallest, half-meter Astera Tube) all the time for eye lights, paired with Lightsocks for a softer effect.
Many set pieces still required extensive lighting infrastructure, with LED Moon boxes lofted from cranes and arrays of LEDs built on Gradalls and Condors illuminating entire nighttime street blocks. The Astera Tubes, bare, in Lightsocks, or in Kino Flo housings, shaped the light directly on the actors.
The combination provided soft, flattering illumination that could be positioned and adjusted in seconds–essential when shooting dozens of setups daily. The Lightsock’s diffusion also transformed the Titan Tube’s output into a gentle source perfect for close-up work, while the battery power and wireless control meant no time wasted running cables or finding outlets.
Beyond Norm’s Diner, Whitaker deployed Helios Tubes, Titan Tubes, Hyperion Tubes, and NYX Bulbs across the film’s varied locations–from sooty alleyways lit with mixed sodium and metal halide tones to a massive 150-foot-long chamber with a 40-foot-tall LED wall.
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is equal parts a rallying cry and alarm bell. It advocates for even the most unlikely individual’s ability to step in and shape the torrent of history. The movie is stuffed with innovative, delightful lighting gags, from teenage zombies lit by their actual cellphone screens to a wild digital tornado. Verbinski is known for practical effects and in-camera magic dating back to 1997’s Mouse Hunt.
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is showing now in theaters.
