Principal Photography Read online

  Q: Should a film have an overall visual style?

  A: There's a visual theme that goes through. It develops from the point I first start reading a script. I immediately see that film quite clearly. There will be changes, but that basic vision will stick with me until the final day I'm at the lab fine-tuning the release print. That's my craft in a nutshell. If I don't see a film when I read a script, then I'm not very interested. If the inherent drama isn't working, then I can't see the film. A script has to be a logical, entertaining piece of drama and then I can visualize it.

  Whether you realize it or not, as a filmmaker you create your own language in every situation in the way you're going to communicate to an audience-a visual language. You can set certain rules very quickly and you don't usually do it consciously, you do it subconsciously. You start this style of telling a story and generally, if it's not too obvious, the audience goes along with it. Pulp Fiction was an extreme example of saying, "The story is going to be told this way and if you're going to enjoy it, come on board" In Baz Luhrmann's Romeo & Juliet, we opened with an outrageously stylized sequence that leads the audience into the character of the movie. This sequence served many functions. The most interesting to me was the way it transported the "masses" to a place where the Elizabethan English is acceptable. Lots of the more interesting filmmakers go for a more radical basic language of communicating and structuring their film. That has its own strengths and weaknesses, it depends whatever ways you support it.

  Q: Can you give an example of how you translated a script into a visual conception?

  A: Man Without a Face was a well-written script. When I read it, I could immediately see the character Mel Gibson had to become. I visualized a boy not unlike Nick Stahl, who played the boy very well. I'd seen enough and heard enough about Maine to know what the situation was to be like. There was some vision in my mind about the rooms. If somebody said, "Draw me that room," it would be different than the room that was finally in the film, but it would have a lot of the same elements. So, I do just pick it up and I see a movie. Some directors are actually visually illiterate because I know they can't do that. I've worked with director/writers who see the wonders of the relationships, they see the wonders of the words that they're saying to each other, but they really don't see the film that clearly. John McTiernan, who directed Predator and Medicine Man, is a wonderfully visual director to work with. Of course, it's wonderful to work with a visual director because then you're polishing the diamond, with other directors you're sometimes just out there mining the diamond. I've worked with many first-time directors; some of them are intuitively visual, some of them aren't, and some of them become visual. I worked with Paul Mazursky on four films, and it was amazing to see by the fourth film he was starting to tell me things that I told him on the first film, which we both found amusing when I pointed it out to him. I've learned endless amounts from all those people I've worked with about other aspects of this business. It's always a two-way game.

  Q: Your work demonstrates a real affinity for vistas and landscapes. Why do you think you have this ability to capture the outdoors?

  A: I love the outdoors. I live in a forest in Australia. I spent my most interesting vacations in the wilderness of the desert, which I love. So I do have a great passion for space and the tranquility it offers. I feel very comfortable in the remoteness in my forest. You just relate what you see to what you feel is in the script, and you find a place to put the camera which expresses that relationship with the place, the script, the drama, and you say, "Here it is." Generally, I can convince or explain to the director why the particular spot suits.

  Q: How much does the director of photography need to understand about editing?

  A: Because of my news background and working in a documentary organization like Film Australia, I never shoot a scene that can't be edited. Once or twice I've been challenged, somebody's editor came in and said, "I can't cut this." They just couldn't see the way I'd structured it. After work, I ducked into the editing room and said, "This is the way I shot it, put that to that, that to that," and everyone's been content. So I don't shoot anything that won't make a sequence, and usually a reasonably eloquent sequence. It's part of the gifts I think I have. Then the great editors come back and produce a scene that has enhanced what you've done and looks nothing like what you envisioned. There may be no cut that matched what you had in mind and that's the wonder of the business, but at least it will always cut the way I had it in mind. It may not be exciting, but it will always work.

  This business of visualization is not really the visualization of a static shot, it's the visualization of a sequence on a screen. It is cuts, it's close-ups, it's medium shots, it's wide shots, it's tracking shots. I can see five actors play a scene and immediately I have a pattern of the way to shoot it. That's just intuitive. One of the things I do as a director of photography is make suggestions. It's just a matter of saying, "Don't you walk across here or there. You stay in this group, then go over here." It's mechanical, but it can get you into and out of a lot of trouble very quickly. In terms of production, the skills I have save thousands and thousands of dollars in the speed in which things can happen. You're planning ahead.

  Q: Where do you see the future of the craft of cinematography? Will film survive the next century?

  A: That Panavision camera is a means of recording a performance. There's no way I can see any threat to what's basically very cheap within the concepts of a film camera. I'm sixty now. I'll just keep working until I don't get offered work of an interesting nature. It wouldn't make much difference to me whether it was recorded on laser disc, or tape, or anything else, somebody is going to have to be out there to call the shots, to call the lighting, to do all of the things I do. The whole separate little group of people who operate and maintain the camera could be retrained or replaced by anyone operating another system, but it's still going to be a system that views the scene. What we're doing is just the next step from theater. Cinema is this very flexible, portable theater we take with us, and I can't see that form of entertainment changing. The way that people view it may be different, but I think they're still going to want to see dramatic performances and dramatic plays recorded. They're still going to have to be lit, there are still going to have to be decisions made on lenses, movement, and all the other things I spoke about. Somebody-either me or somebody like me-will be around to make those decisions and be sought after as much as people in my craft are today.

  6

  John Bailey

  While Francis Ford Coppola, Brian De Palma, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and Martin Scorsese were becoming movie brat generation film directors during the sixties, a new breed of cinematographer was emerging. The seventies heralded a New American Cinema, which demanded an innovative approach to the art of cinematography. Inspired by classical Hollywood masters and the international cinema of Yasujiro Ozu, Carl Dreyer, Robert Bresson, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Bernardo Bertolucci, John Bailey, ASC, was one of this new breed.

  John Bailey comes from a blue-collar family in Moberly, Missouri. He was educated at the University of Santa Clara in California, Loyola University in Los Angeles, the University of Southern California Film School in Los Angeles, and at the University of Vienna in Austria.

  During the sixties, the USC Film School was fertile ground for filmmakers. Bailey attended the graduate program during the era when George Lucas, John Milius, Hal Barwood, Matthew Robbins, Randall Kleiser, Willard Huyck, and Walter Murch were on campus. Bailey shot as many student films as he could to learn the art and craft of cinematography.

  After school, Bailey began to work with many fine cinematographers. He was assistant cameraman to his mentor, Director of Photography Gregory Sandor, on Director Monte Hellman's Two Lane Blacktop. In commercials, he assisted Laszlo Kovacs and Philip Lathrop. As a camera operator, Bailey worked with Charles Rosher Jr. on The Late Show, directed by Robert Benton, and Robert Altman's Three Women; with Vilmos Zsigmond on Winter Kill
s, directed by William Richert; and most notably with Nestor Almendros on Days of Heaven, directed by Terence Malick.

  After becoming a director of photography in the late seventies, Bailey spent the next decade developing an impressive body of work, including American Gigolo, Ordinary People, and the visually dazzling Paul Schrader production of Mishima.

  John Bailey has worked with a diverse group of directors, including long associations with Lawrence Kasdan and Paul Schrader, and collaborations with Robert Redford, John Schlesinger, Walter Hill, Richard Benjamin, Gene Saks, Karen Arthur, Stuart Rosenberg, Michael Apted, Wolfgang Petersen, Robert Benton, Errol Morris, Jonathan Demme, Herbert Ross, Harold Ramis, James L. Brooks, and Richard LaGravenese.

  John Bailey has directed The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, China Moon, and Mariette in Ecstasy, while continuing to be a working cinematographer. A devoted cineaste, and an articulate spokesman for the art of cinematography, John Bailey is a homegrown cameraman who brings global artistic influences to American film.

  SELECTED FILMOGRAPHY

  Ordinary People

  Continental Divide

  That Championship Season

  The Big Chill

  The Pope of Greenwich Village

  Silverado

  Brighton Beach Memoirs

  Tough Guys Don't Dance

  Light of Day

  The Accidental Tourist

  In the Line of Fire

  Living Out Loud

  Q: Which directors of photography did you work with when you started out in Hollywood as an assistant cameraman and camera operator?

  A: My mentor was Gregory Sandor, a wonderful cinematographer who never really was in the Hollywood mainstream. He had worked in Cuba. He was Hungarian, but in style very American. He photographed two of Monte Hellman's early Westerns, Ride in the Whirlwind and The Shooting. I was his assistant on Monte's Two Lane Blacktop. It was my first studio picture. Gregory was a very classical cinematographer. He was a proponent of a codified system of lighting by virtue of his Hungarian training. He believed the key light should be in the direction of the actor's look and that there should be a proportionate counter-key light or a rim or hair light. The fill light was always set to a precise ratio. Greg's one-light dailies looked like answer prints, everything was set perfectly with every composition composed in balance. There was nothing ragged or erratic and, by the same token, there was nothing dangerous or unpredictable. It was absolutely classical. He was a great hard light man and he used soft light mainly for fill. I watched him work-always quietly, very simply, and always with consistency and a methodology to the work.

  I didn't assist a lot of the Hollywood "big guns" like Harry Stradling, Phil Lathrop, or Fred Koenekamp because I got in the union through the back door. I was never really integrated until I became a camera operator. I did two pictures with Chuck Rosher Jr., The Late Show and Three Women. I worked with Vilmos Zsigmond on Winter Kills, a very bizarre, offbeat picture from a Richard Condon novel. I did commercials with Laszlo Kovacs, Ric Waite, and Don Peterman.

  I was also camera operator for Nestor Almendros on Days of Heaven. As we were doing certain shots, I just said, "My God, this shot is an archetype!" Sometimes I would look through the finder and it took my breath away because it was so perfect.

  Q: What did you learn from working with Nestor Almendros?

  A: Simplicity. Nestor very much believed in a single source, either simulating or using existing light as much as possible. There was a purity and an honesty to what he did. He was not big on camera moves or fancy compositions. On one hand, you could say his work was rudimentary and on the other hand, you could say his work was just distilled to the essence. Depending on the individual film, the work looked either luminous or naturalistic because he surrendered himself completely to the material. I don't think he ever tried to transform it. What I learned from him was always to find a simple truth. Even it 'l found myself working in a complex way, I tried to keep centered on a single, clear objective because that's what he did very well. But more than anything else, what I learned from Nestor was a sense of heart and humanity. He had a very large soul and was very beloved. During the course of a production, he would sit down at lunch with different people every day to make sure that he dined with everybody on the crew. For the most part, he worked in New York and he maintained his European sensibilities. He did not penetrate or have much of an influence on the Hollywood mainstream of cinematographers of his own age-group, but he had a tremendous influence on my generation. He eventually got into the ASC, but I don't ever remember seeing him at one of the meetings or functions because he was hardly ever in Los Angeles. He hated to come here with a passion, as only a sophisticated Spaniard could.

  Q: How would you classify your visual style as a cinematographer?

  A: I consider myself a classicist, even though early on I did a couple of films like American Gigolo, which were considered innovative. I've always really loved classical cinematography and the classical filmmakers. The filmmakers I love are some of the same ones Paul Schrader loves, and Schrader was a big influence on me. I love Ozu, Dreyer, and Bresson. Antonioni is an incredible classicist, just the purity of the image. He doesn't do things strictly for the dazzle. We see more and more of that in films-the "Hey, look at me," kind of lighting and camera moves. I find the fatigue factor is so quick. There really isn't anything as ultimately stimulating, rewarding, and that has a longer hang time in your consciousness than the classical, well-composed, well-lit shot, and that's what I aspire to. There are many different ways to light classically. There's the classic Hollywood portrait lighting, there's the classic French or northern European Vermeer, soft, single-source style. The classical style really appeals to me because it is not only beautiful in its own right-it makes the viewer feel centered and really comfortable in the image-but it's also totally supportive of the drama or the comedy. The cinematography ultimately has to serve the narrative line, and classical cinematography does that best.

  Q: There are so many European cinematic and literary inputs into your work, but many of the films you have photographed are very American. That combination makes for a unique visual style.

  A: The mixture of the two has really intrigued me for a long time because I went to film school in the sixties when the French New Wave, films by Godard, Truffaut, Malle, Chabrol, and Rivette were really at the forefront.

  Q: Were you influenced by French New Wave cinematographers like Raoul Coutard?

  A: Yes, and even older cinematographers like Henri Decae, Sacha Vierny, and Henri Alekan-but also the younger ones: Willy Kurant, Jean Boffety, Pierre Lhomme-there were a lot of wonderful French cinematographers at that time. Everything about the films we were looking at was completely different from Hollywood. I was intrigued with the way they portrayed life because they weren't larger than life, they were very much of life. The films were very tactile and I loved that technique. My influences have all been European-partly because of my film school experience, partly because even though I grew up in Los Angeles, I didn't have any relatives in the business. I wasn't so interested in the studio vehicles. My love of Hollywood cinematography came much later, in the seventies, after I started working in the industry myself. Then I started to go back and really see the work of great black-and-white cinematographers like George Folsey, Arthur Miller, Leon Shamroy, William Daniels-there are so many of them. From the time I was a student, I loved Gregg Toland. As I started working in the industry, I understood there was something about American filmmaking that appealed to the whole world-the tightness, the discipline, the pacing, the moral imperative. The characters don't have too many colors of dramatic gray; they know what is right or wrong. These are some of the many elements that reside deep in our own character and psyche-those things we think of as being American. I finally had to admit to myself, "I am an American filmmaker, even though the films I really love are European films." I love Truffaut, Bergman, and Antonioni, those are my gods, but I c
an never make films like that. For me, the last fifteen years or so has been trying to come to terms with that. The fact that I have worked in the Hollywood mainstream as a cinematographer for so long finally washed over me. I made peace with it.

  Q: How did you first come to work with Paul Schrader on American Gigolo?

  A: I knew his reputation as a collaborator with Martin Scorsese on Taxi Driver and had seen his first film, Blue Collar. He was very hot and very hip. I was in awe of him. I also knew of his work as a critic. Paul really wanted a European cameraman, such as Sven Nykvist or Nestor Almendros, but they weren't available. Getting American Gigolo was a baptism of fire for me. I met with Paul several times. The first time, we talked a lot about Bertolucci and Antonioni in terms of staging, because they're both brilliant in the way they block scenes. Paul was intrigued with the formal aspects of their filmmaking. I made an impression on him, but he told my agent at the time, Jo An Kincaid, that I wasn't experienced enough, so he wasn't going to hire me. Jo An wasn't going to give up. She found out he was going to be at a party that coming Saturday night. She crashed the party, found him, got him into a room, closed the door, and said, "I'm not letting you out of here until you have another meeting with John Bailey." Paul was charmed by her, so he invited me to his house and we talked for six hours. He put up a lot of videotapes: Bresson's Pickpocket; Antonioni's La Notte, Eclipse, L'avventura; Bertolucci's The Conformist, which was a key film for both of us. Ferdinando Scarfiotti was going to be production designer for American Gigolo.