Because Blade: Trinity takes place in the modern world, the look and feel of the film is markedly different from its predecessors. Director of Photography Gabriel Beristain comments on the distinction between the films in the franchise. “Blade and Blade 2 were Gothic pieces. I know that Guillermo del Toro, the second director, will hate me for saying this, but it was a Gothic film in many respects. This one is not. This is urban and gritty. This is a film that happens in the city, where the characters are real. For the first time Blade confronts and kills real people, so it takes the film to a completely different level. And it takes the photography and my camera work to a completely different level as well.”
In describing the colors applied to the various films, David Goyer also emphasizes the distinctions between each film in the franchise. “Our palate in the first Blade included a lot of blues. In Blade 2 there were a lot of ochres and yellows. Because we shot Blade Trinity in Vancouver, we have a lot of greens and a lot of fluorescent lights. Vancouver has zoning laws that require all the office buildings have green glass, so I decided to embrace that. Vancouver is also called the Emerald City, and even though the film isn't set there per se, I decided that we would incorporate that greenery into the look of the film.”
Beristain explains how the film’s lighting corresponds to the emotional evolution that Blade undergoes in this third film. “When I shot David Mamet’s The Spanish Prisoner, I tried to adapt the lighting to the mood of the character. In a way what I'm doing here is the same. I'm making the emotions that Blade experiences define the look of the film. For the first time we’re seeing bright sets, in contrast to those moody, incredibly atmospheric, subterranean sets that we had in Blade 2. These sets are going ‘pow!’. Exploding not an explosion of color, but rather an explosion of light. And because it's the whole environment which Blade enters emotionally, I wanted my lighting and the cameras to really respond to his interior journey.”
Designed to express the new world inhabited by the modern vampires of Blade: Trinity, the look and construction of the sets was carefully taken into consideration by Production Designer Chris Gorak.
“From the beginning the main approach was to embrace this new vision David Goyer had, a global concept of a modern, dense, corporate city that the vampires inhabited more or less on top of the world,” says Gorak. “So we started there and then worked our way down to where the Nightstalkers would live on the edge of the city, out in the water. We kept this edge of the city theme for Blade and Whistler's safe house as well.”
Goyer goes on to explain how the look and design of the various sets reflect the activities of the characters that inhabit them. “Because the Nightstalkers are disenfranchised humans who don't have as much money as the vampires, they lead a more ragtag existence. So their worlds are bleaker, more cluttered, warmer. The vampires, because they're the institution and have all the money, have much cleaner worlds influenced by a lot of modern architecture. Their worlds are starker, cooler and lit more with fluorescent lights, as opposed to tungsten lighting.”
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