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  A common visual thread in all of Clint Eastwood's films is very strong, single-source lighting with almost no till, very severe. When Bruce Surtees was working with him, you could hardly see what was going on in the frame. Jack Green now has modified that style, but has continued it to a certain extent. It's what Clint really likes. It's not the most flattering light for him, and I didn't feel at all compelled to light In the Line of Fire the way a Clint Eastwood film would have been lit. Wolfgang and I talked about it, and we both agreed we should make him look like a leading man-sexy and attractive. Clint is a very no-nonsense guy, and very unassuming. He sometimes felt I was putzing around a little too much. He was very sweet about it, he put up with it, and it paid off. He does look good in the picture.

  Q: In the scene between Eastwood and Rene Russo which takes place in front of the Lincoln Memorial, as she walks down the steps, he talks to him self about whether she will turn around to look back at him. When she does, it is shown from Eastwood's point of view. How was that shot executed?

  A: It was an enormous cheat. I wanted to shoot it on a long lens from his perspective. However, shooting from his perspective, all you would see was the cement sidewalk down below. I looked at it, we tried to set something up, and it really looked ugly. It was not at all interesting on her. So we did one shot of her walking away, which had to be done in late afternoon light. I cheated the light when they're on the steps, the sunset effect was done with lights we took up there. Several days after we saw dailies, we wanted a cutback, so we sent a Steadicam operator back with a small unit. I didn't go there because we were doing the rooftop chase. We essentially had Rene do the same action we had done before, but it was her walking, with the Steadicamjust following her a little bit for the second cut on the turn and the look. It's an absolutely marvelous shot. In over twenty years as a cinematographer, there's hardly ever been a close-up of an actor that I didn't actually do, but this close-up of Rene was done second unit.

  Q: Was In the Line of Fire storyboarded?

  A: Only the material which involved motion control and matte work involving Air Force One was really storyboarded. The rooftop chase and one or two other intricate sequences were storyboarded, but most of the film was not.

  Q: The rooftop chase was a wonderful action sequence. 1 understand it was John Malkovich's idea for his character to put the barrel of the gun in his mouth.

  A: It totally shocked us when he did it. It's wonderful when an actor surprises you, surprises himself. He probably didn't know he was going to do it. The angle shooting down on Clint was all rigged and shot on a rooftop in Washington, D.C. We ran out of time for the up angle of Malkovich. The shot of him leaning over holding onto Clint, the sunglasses falling off of his face, and putting his mouth on the gun, was all done in Los Angeles at the end of the schedule. It was two and a half, three months later. At that point, we were not in the studio, we were traveling around. They set up a brownstone wall in the oil fields out near the airport off of La Cienega and Stocker. It was between two locations we were doing. There were two shots on Malkovich, one over Clint and the other a clean single. If you look carefully, the lighting is mismatched because it was a more overcast day when we shot in Los Angeles. In D.C., it was stark sun. I did everything I could with an 18K HMI key light to create a sunlight effect, but it was a miserable smoggy and foggy day in February near the end of the shoot. I could never get the sky to match in terms of color.

  Q: You have directed The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, China Moon, and Mariette In Ecstasy. As a cinematographer, what have you learned about directing and as director, what have you learned about cinematography?

  A: As a director, one of the things I really learned about cinematography is a validation of certain things I knew ahead of time. There isn't a single shot I would do as a cinematographer I wouldn't compromise or basically undermine, if necessary, for the sake of the dramatic moment, because that's all that really counts, and I took that with me into directing. While I had great sympathy for my cinematographers, Willy Kurant (Masculine Feminine, The Immortal Story) on China Moon, and Paul Sarossy (Exotica, The Sweet Hereafter) on Mariette In Ecstasy, in terms of anything photographic, I would be equally ruthless about saying, "No, the light can't be here because of the actor's need here," or "We've got to find another way to do the shot," or "Yes, I know you didn't like that camera move as much on this last take, but the actor was so much better and I have to move on because I've got to get three more shots in the sequence." So as a director, I'd make those decisions and compromises, but I always did them with the full knowledge that I would have done the same thing as a cinematographer. The other thing I learned was a realization of how well prepared I've been as a cinematographer. When I go in, what I bring a director in terms of thinking about the story, character development, the mechanics of the plot, the emotional line, goes beyond the literal level of what a cinematographer should do. All of the really great cinematographers are concerned with the same things. So it's been very interesting for me to work with cinematographers and see the degree to which they do or don't have those same concerns. Paul Sarossy is still young and he's very much into pure cinematography. He was very filmically literate while he was shooting the movie, but he was not concerned about a lot of the other things. Maybe that was because he felt I was sufficiently grounded in the material. It's interesting for me not to have a cinematographer propose or be involved about nonphotographic things, because I expected it. As a director, I would never feel invaded by a cinematographer who would come up and say anything about a line reading or a performance. As a cinematographer, I always try to be discreet in doing that. I wouldn't say, "Hey, that was a really crappy line reading," but there are times when you feel something has slipped by the director because there are so many things to watch. Sometimes you can see something has happened you think the director needs to know. It's not purely a photographic moment. Very few script supervisors and most people on a set wouldn't presume to deal with anything beyond the mechanics of matching and so forth. So, when necessary, I've always felt comfortable with being a second set of eyes for a beleaguered director. I know as a director, I'm open to that. Having directed, I understand firsthand just how much there is to deal with, not just in terms of what's happening for the shot, the scene, and getting the day's work done, but all the politics, all the administrative things, all the money worries, all the scheduling, all the crap that a director has to deal with that the producers say they want to protect him from-all the temperaments and egos that go swimming around every day at any given time that the cinematographer isn't necessarily aware of, all of which the director has to deal with. Even when I was photographing Nobody's Fool for Robert Benton, my own limited directing experience has made me much more tolerant, sympathetic, understanding, and supportive of whatever chaos or disorientation a director may be in. Cinematographers have to be so decisive. We can't light a set four different ways and then decide which way to light it. We light it once. As a director, you can have an actor do ten takes with different line readings each time. I can't relight the scene every take, so as cinematographers, we have to learn to live with our decisions. There's an innate prejudice or predilection on the part of a lot of cinematographers to look at directors who are floundering and say, "What's wrong with him? Why can't he make up his mind? It's so easy just do it." It's not that easy because there's so much going on. Unless you have actually directed yourself, sometimes it's hard to understand all that can make it difficult for a director to get through a scene. I understand that better now, having been there myself.

  Q: Throughout film history cinematographers have made the transition to directing, but this seems to be happening with greater frequency now.

  A: Yes, more and more. Caleb Deschanel (Being There, The Black Stallion), Jan DeBont (The Fourth Man, Basic Instinct), Mikael Salomon (The Abyss, Far and Away), Chris Menges (The Killing Fields, The Mission) John Seale (Witness, The English Patient), and Michael Seresin
(Fame, Birdy) have directed. More and more cinematographers who have been working for fifteen or twenty years, who came out of film schools or art schools, out of an informed technique and a sense of film history and tradition are not narrowly working only as cinematographers, but are truly filmmakers. They're filmmakers with a full-blown filmmaking aesthetic. They happen to be working as cinematographers, and it's natural because they bring a sense of informed drama and involvement with a script and the acting to their work because they feed off of it. Their work refracts back onto it. So coming from that background, it's natural to make a transition. Even though the industry has been slow to take to it, it's a very natural stage of development for the more informed cinematographers in the same way that editing is. Everybody thinks the only way to do it is to come out of writing, but writing is not necessarily the most relevant. That may seem heretical for me to say because a lot of the directors I've worked with and love-Robert Benton, Paul Schrader, Lawrence Kasdan, and Jim Brooks-are writer/directors. I've just finished a film with Richard LaGravenese and Stacey Sher. It is Richard's debut from an original screenplay. It was thrilling to watch him becoming a director as he discovered the transition from written word to the visual shot. He is going to make important films in the future. My best relationships have really been with writer/directors because there is a sense of authorship in the material. They became directors because they wanted to protect and interpret their own material, not because they necessarily initially came from a visual or editorial aesthetic, but because as writers they felt that their material was not being served in the way they wanted to. It's kind of a back door approach, yet that's the approach the industry has looked upon as the front door. That is changing now. Recently, it seems like every other film is being directed by an actor. It makes a lot of sense on the level of acting, but not necessarily on the level of anything else. The fact so many of them have been so successful is also really a testament to the incredible skills and artistry of the people they surround themselves with-the production designers, the editors, the cinematographers. I don't mean to malign any particular actor, but many actors have basically lived between the set and their motor home and really don't know the nuts and bolts of what happens on a set because they walk onto a set when they're ready to shoot.

  Q: Where do you see your future headed? Will you continue to direct and photograph projects that interest you?

  A: Yes, I'm going to do both. It took three years before we got Mariette In Ecstasy put together. I couldn't shoot two or three movies a year anymore. So I became even more selective about the films I did. I shot one film each of those three years, and all three are films I'm very proud of. So what it's done is made me use a purifying fire to get rid of the dross and just really look for the gold of what it is I want to do as a cinematographer. I want to continue shooting. There's something so gratifying about just making a movie. A cinematographer gets to come on when it's been cast, when the money's there, when all the bullshit with the studio is either peaked or has slightly past, and you get to go out and make the movie-it's the best part. So I don't want to give up shooting. Robert Benton told me I'll have to give up shooting. I said, "Does that mean for you, too?" and he said, "No, no, no, you give up shooting for everybody except for me." But I won't. It is important to keep working as a cinematographer. The very cinematographers attracted to directing are the ones attracted away from it because when you direct you get to work with actors, story, and narrative. They're the very ones that should continue to be shooting movies and not guys who are just shooters. So yes, there is a dilemma there. But I fancy I can do both. If it's going to take me two or three years to do a movie as a director, it's got to be something I really want to do and believe in.

  Directing Mariette In Ecstasy was a magical experience, the postproduction was a nightmare. Though I was also one of the two producers, I didn't have control of the film. Against my and Ron Hansen's desires, the film was recut and a plodding and lead-footed narration voice-over was added. The intention of the film, a faithful adaptation of Ron's novel, was thwarted, and the spiritual journey of a tormented young girl was glossed over with an air of sanctimonious piety. Ron and I are chagrined with the final film. It has not been released.

  Cinematography is still a pretty protected domain. Even allowing for digital technology, the parameters to change a cinematographer's work are very small. Directors have always been vulnerable to producers and studios, maybe more so today. Cinematographers can still be a maverick breed.

  Dean Cundey

  Dean Cundey, ASC, is widely known as a director of photography on largescale, complex special effects driven films. This career path began with low-budget genre films on which he learned his craft.

  As a child, Cundey was interested in school theater and magic shows. For an eighth grade term paper, he had the ambition to interview television directors about their vocation. By high school, Cundey decided he wanted to become a production designer. He was on a design track at California State before transferring to the UCLA Film School after he attended a cinematography class with the legendary black-and-white master cinematographer, James Wong Howe. Howe's professionalism and artistry inspired the young Cundey to become a director of photography.

  In 1978, Cundey met director John Carpenter and photographed Halloween, a film which helped forge a renaissance in horror films. Cundey had a long association with Carpenter on The Fog, Escape to New York, The Thing, and Big Trouble in Little China.

  In 1984, Cundey began another intense collaboration, this time with Robert Zemeckis, as director of photography on Romancing the Stone, the Back to the Future trilogy, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, which garnered an Academy Award nomination for Cundey, and Death Becomes Her.

  Dean Cundey has photographed two films for Steven Spielberg, Hook and the box office phenomenon Jurassic Park. For Ron Howard's Apollo 13, Cundey worked closely with the effects team to create a period film about the space race without one shot of stock footage. The Flintstones and Casper brought the classic Toon characters to the screen, employing bright colors and a fanciful photographic style.

  SELECTED FILMOGRAPHY

  Ilse, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks

  Halloween

  Rock 'n 'Roll High School

  Separate Ways

  Galaxina

  Without Warning

  Escape fom New York

  Angels Brigade

  Separate Ways

  Halloween III: Season of the Witch

  D. C. Cab

  Jaws of Satan

  Warning Sign

  Who Framed Roger Rabbit?*

  Back to the Future Part II

  Hook

  Casper

  The Parent Trap

  Q: How did you become a cinematographer?

  A: As far back as I can remember I've been very interested in the film business. I helped put on the grammar school play, and in high school I was fascinated with theatrics. I was the production manager of the senior musical. I was a magician as a kid, so I've always been fascinated by the idea of creating an illusion for an audience, whether it was painted sets that looked real for a play, a musical, or magic. In eighth grade, we had to do a term paper and choose an occupation that fascinated us, so I immediately thought about television and motion picture directing. Not having access to any motion picture directors, I interviewed a couple of television directors.

  In high school, I had a pretty clear idea I was going to be a production designer. I had gone to the set designers' local union and said, "How do you become a set designer?" and they said, "You have to have a degree in architecture." As I was reading about what it takes to get a degree in architecture-calculus and civil engineering and beam stressing-I didn't see exactly how it would apply to the film business. So I went to California State, Los Angeles for two and a half years. I was taking design, graphic design, history of film, and theater, aiming towards going to the UCLA Film School. I was going to specialize in scenic design. I transferred and actual
ly got into the film school. Today, there's a very high application rate to get into USC, UCLA, and any of the film schools. I don't think I would be able to get into film school now if I applied with the background I had.

  [ was taking film classes at UCLA, but also continued some of my architectural classes. In my senior year, I took a class James Wong Howe (Yankee Doodle Dandy, Had, Seconds) was teaching. Stephen Burum (Mission Impossible, Hoffa, The Outsiders), who is now a working cameraman, was the teaching assistant. The class was immediately filled. I talked to Steve and weaseled my way in as an observer, then ended up being allowed in as they increased the size of the class. To me, it was the most valuable class I had taken in film school because here was not only a working professional, but a legend who gave us insight into the techniques of real filmmaking. We had a little three blank walled set. Twice a week, James Wong Howe would show up and say, "Now we're going to light this in a particular style, today it's a seedy hotel room" He would go through the thought process of how he would create the mood and style of this hotel room with nothing in it but a table, a chair, three walls, a window, and a door. We were also his crew members, so we had to actually move the lights and set them up. He would tell us, "No, no, no, you've got to put the barn doors like this!" Not only did I gain insight into actual, creative cinematography, but we all learned how to use the real lighting equipment, the real grip equipment; flags and nets. I came away from that class with the most clear understanding of the creative process, how James Wong Howe worked, and how cinematography worked. I wanted to be dynamically involved with the process as opposed to sitting over a drawing board and working away from the set. So at that point I decided to turn to cinematography. I try to go to film schools as much as possible and give back some of that professional insight I got from James Wong Howe.