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  Q: Do you think your initial interest and study in production design has benefitted you as a director of photography?

  A: Yes. I have always been interested in three-dimensional design, buildings, and spaces. Also, I worked as a draftsman, so I understand construction techniques and how to read drawings. I relate very much to the production designer, their job, the challenges and the problems. I evaluate the work they do based on the result they want and not just, "I want another window for lighting," or "There should be no ceiling because we won't be able to light it." So I really enjoy helping production designers solve their problems, at the same time helping them solve my problems, and helping both of us do something better than we might do if we were just doing it on our own. Film is so collaborative, you really have to understand other people's jobs. In cinematography, you have to understand the problems and challenges-the physical, visual, and optical effects in accomplishing any piece of action or creating an illusion to photograph a shot so it can be delivered to the editor and they can use the piece. You have to understand what it is an editor needs to put together a sequence. If you're always thinking, always being creative and everybody's collaborating, it makes the job we do a lot of fun.

  Q: Halloween employs a very effective use of the camera frame. Throughout the film, the viewer's eyes are constantly darting at the edges of the frame waiting for Michael Myers, a murderer who has escaped from a mental institution and is stalking the Jamie Lee Curtis character, to jump in and scare us. How did this concept come about?

  A: Before Halloween, I had worked on about twenty low-budget films, action adventure films-projector fodder for the drive-in circuit. The learning process was, "How do you get the day's work done? How do you light a set with the least number of lights because you don't have much to power them? How do you shoot a car chase so it's effective?" It was a lesson in efficiency. I got to watch directors and got an understanding of the storytelling technique. So, prior to Halloween, a lot of good work I'd done was just learning how to get a movie shot. What was interesting to me about Halloween was John Carpenter's definite aesthetic sensibilities as far as composition. He was a very good collaborator. I realized I had learned how to work as effectively or efficiently as I could. Here was an opportunity to explore other things.

  Halloween was a film about composition of the frame. How do you create tension, expectation, or suspense just by framing a shot? Certainly the audience has become conditioned to understand a moment in a film by the music and sound effects, but sometimes blatantly or just subconsciously, the frame is creating an emotional response. A lot of times it's a simple, nicely composed close-up, but other times, by placing the character off to one side and composing for the door that's back there, you can imply something is going to happen. Somebody is going to come through the door. Sometimes you're just doing it to artificially build the tension because you're now going to surprise them by having the character come from the other side of the frame. We would work on that kind of blocking or composition of the scene. For me, Halloween was a great step in learning how to manipulate the audience-to create an intended response from them, or to fool the audience so you can really catch them the next time. John Carpenter wanted to do Halloween with no blood, no gruesome, grisly violence. He wanted very psychological suspense and not blatant slashing. One of John's great strengths is understanding the filmmaking process, the psychological, emotional response an audience has to a particular technique or scene in a film. Halloween started or restarted a trend because horror films had been around for years. One of the satisfactions is we made a very low-budget film, on a very short schedule with a minuscule crew and equipment, and it did become a classic of the genre. Halloween started a lot of people making films, some successfully and others not so successfully because they did go for the gore and didn't necessarily understand you could do it a lot more effectively just with mood, composition, music, and sound.

  Q: What films did you and John Carpenter screen while you were preparing to shoot Halloween?

  A: We screened several Howard Hawks films. John was a great fan of how Hawks told a story and used the camera. Sometimes John would deliberately choose not to move the camera, and other times we would. The Steadicam had recently been developed and John immediately saw it as a tool for moving the camera and moving the audience through a scene. So we would screen a Hawks film and John would say, "But we're going to use contemporary equipment in order to do it." The opening of Halloween, which is a long, continuous moving shot, was done with the Steadicam. I had heard about the Steadicam and used it a little bit prior to Halloween. At that time, almost nobody knew how to use it. My camera operator, Ray Stella, and I traded off doing the opening shot because it was so long and tiring. We did the one shot for an entire night. When I worked in low-budget filmmaking, I always looked for some new piece of equipment or lighting technique I hadn't had a chance to experiment with, that I could learn to use or try out no matter how low the budget or how silly the script. That was one of the great benefits about Halloween and working with John Carpenter. He was willing to experiment with the Steadicam to see what was possible.

  Q: Your first film with Director Robert Zemeckis was Romancing the Stone. When you read the script, how did you conceive the film visually?

  A: My agent said that Michael Douglas was producing a film and there was a relatively new young guy directing. They sent me the script. It was interesting because Diane Thomas had never really written a script before. It read very much like a paperback novel. It had the stage directions a reader would read, but the audience wouldn't necessarily see-little descriptives like, "The door smashes open and the most gruesome man we've ever seen steps in," "In the rafters, a spider faints." That's not something you normally see in a script. The rule of thumb is you just describe only what the audience will see because you're trying to create an impression of the film. So in reading I thought, "This could be very interesting because if this Zemeckis guy, whoever he is, can create this kind of feeling for this action/adventure, romantic/adventure, comedy film, it might be a lot of fun." Then I met Zemeckis, and he obviously had a vision for the film. He was constantly rewriting the script more for storytelling with film. It had a lot of really interesting romantic visuals. I scouted locations in Mexico with Bob, and he was very open to my input. Logistically, it became the most difficult film I had ever done because we were shooting in really muddy groves in remote areas of Mexico on rainy days where it was very difficult to get equipment in and out of the country. We had an excellent Mexican crew who had done all of the big John Wayne Westerns. They had great stories about all of these old films they had worked on and they were extremely experienced, which really helped us.

  The story was the classic guy and a girl who seem at odds at first, but develop a relationship over a period of time. It was taking the Kathleen Turner character, a mousey woman who still is appealing, but always out of place, tentative, and unsure of herself, and helping her develop this self-assured attitude. That was partly make-up and wardrobe, but also in how we photographed her. She becomes a little warmer. When she first arrives in Colombia, or Mexico as it really was, we worked with overcast, very cool light, cool colors, and finally moved towards the warmer scenes where it was candles and firelight. Her flesh tones become warmer and more appealing. You develop a feeling as you watch a scene rehearsed and say, "Oh, I see, now she's going to make a turnaround where she becomes intrigued by the guy. So now she should become a little more appealing to him and to us. Okay, why don't we have her stand over here next to this table lamp for when she turns and tells him that line." Those are things you do instinctively. You do them consciously to a certain degree, but hopefully you are reacting as the audience reacts (or you understand how you want the audience to react) at a particular time. You start to build in this grammar, a vocabulary they are used to.

  Q: So you apply these instincts while you are actually watching the rehearsal as opposed to intellectually imposing it when you first r
ead the script.

  A: Yes, I used to go through a script and start to mark out things. I would do little sketches of shots I thought would be effective. I would make notes about filters and start to preplan. Then you discover it isn't at all how you had envisioned it. The location isn't the same, or the director has a different approach, or the actors are taking a whole different attitude. So, now I read a script for the story content, an understanding of the characters, where the locations might be, but because those change so drastically, or they decide to build a set, or they don't have the budget to build a set, I don't invest a lot of pre-thought into a script. When I prep a film for four or six weeks, I'll talk to the production designer. I look at the set drawings and we'll scout locations. I'll talk to the director and maybe we'll look at a couple of films. He'll talk about how he sees a scene. Then I start to coordinate. The production designer will say, "We need to put a sky backing outside this window, how big should it be?" You start to solve the technical things. Then you begin to get involved and say, "I was thinking about the time of day in the script, how about a nice sunset backing?" You start to contribute more towards the end of the prep period. Hopefully, you've lined up a lot of the elements when you start filming. You go to a location and it's not sunny, it's rainy. So someone will say, "Let's change this to a rainy day," and that alters what you were going to do, or you find some way to make it look like it's a sunny day and that changes how you shoot-you can't look out the windows. So I'm reacting in a way that coordinates all of the other elements and serves the story, the director, and all the people involved.

  Q: Have you ever had an editor on the set to talk about coverage or shots that may be necessary to make a sequence work?

  A: Yes, it's fairly common. Sometimes we get down to the end of the day and we're missing a particular shot. The director and I will say, "What if we do a shot that combines two or three shots?" Then the film goes off to the editor and they start to cut it together. Most of the time, editors are working very much up to you. So it's not uncommon for the editor to come back three days later or in dailies and say, "The sequence worked perfectly," or "I'm sorry, it didn't cut together." The editor explaining what worked and didn't work is part of the learning process and one of the ways we can make the film effective. Video assist is extremely valuable. We have the film on the set all the time.

  Q: How is video assist employed during filming?

  A: On all of my early low-budget films, we never dreamed of affording video assist. Often I was the operator, so I was actually able to look through the camera. As films got more complicated and I was able to have an operator, he would watch. The director and I would stand next to the camera and watch the action, but we never really saw through the camera. The advent of video assist has made a huge impact. There was trepidation at first that it would be a committee process and would slow the process down. In my experience, that never really occurred. It became a great tool and time saver. The prop guy didn't have to ask, "Was that prop in-frame? Do we need to have this table dressed?" Even though they had been able to look at the direction the camera was pointing in and had been told there was a 50mm lens, there are people who don't understand how big the frame of a 50mm lens is. Now they can look at rehearsal on video assist and see exactly what is in the frame. The assistant directors know whether they have to get extras in the background. People can make their own evaluations. Video assist has speeded up the process considerably. The director can instantly assess whether the actor entered frame exactly on his line or whether he was partly in or out of frame and any of the things you normally had to quiz the operator about. Sometimes the camera operator was just worrying about keeping sandbags or lights out of the shot and wasn't watching the performance. It has become a very valuable tool for that reason.

  Q: How often do you record video assist during shooting?

  A: All of the time, and most of the time we don't play it back. A third of the time we'll play a shot back to evaluate whether the dolly move was correct or whether we captured all of the stunt work, but often we file it away. It becomes a reference for matching continuity, for how big the close-up we shot last week was, so we can match sizes. It hasn't taken creative control out of anybody's hands. People who respect a director allow him creative control without sitting and critiquing. Effective directors realize the crew is the first audience. Many times, the crew is a very productive film audience because they're in tune to films and the process.

  Q: You have worked with your camera operator, Ray Stella, for over twenty-five years. What attributes does he bring to the job?

  A: What makes Ray Stella one of the best camera operators in the business is his innate instinct for good composition. It is something you can learn, but it's really part of an artistic sensibility. You either have it or you don't. He's a very effective people person. He relates to directors. Spielberg goes through operators constantly because he's very demanding. Steven enjoys operating himself, he's very critical about composition, and Ray doesn't take it personally. He can separate the personal and the demand for a good film. Ray relates well to actors, the difficult actor doesn't annoy him. He works well with people. Film schools teach you technique and the mechanics of filmmaking, but they don't always teach you to deal with a lot of creative people, egos, personalities, the politics and protocol of working with a big crew or a small crew. Ray goes between the personalities and the technique-operating the camera, the composition, moving the dolly, and all of the things which are part of capturing the image with the camera. He's interested in the shot. Ray can be tenacious when he thinks it's important to do one more take or that the shot would be improved by a slightly wider angle. He will move the camera back, even if it means we have to clear part of the set, but if the director says, "Let's make the shot wider," he doesn't immediately say, "No problem," because he realizes now we have to move all of this stuff. If it won't improve the shot, he'll say, "I don't think it will help." So he's able to evaluate the important aspects of a particular shot and deal with a lot of the elements.

  Q: In terms of protocol, does Steven Spielberg talk directly to Ray Stella or will he talk to you and then you'll talk to Ray?

  A: All of those. If I have to do additional lighting or we need to change something on the set, Steven will start with me and then it will filter down. If it's slightly moving the camera, panning faster or slower, Steven will address Ray directly. Again that's one of the valuable aspects of video assist.

  Q: How did you get the assignment to shoot Project X?

  A: Typically, on a film I have anywhere from four to eight or more weeks of prep. Project X is the shortest prep I ever had, it was about three or four days. I had been working on Big Trouble in Little China and the art department was right across from the Project X art department. I ran into the production designer, Lawrence G. Paull (Blade Runner, Back to the Future trilogy). I'm always interested in design, so I went over and looked at his drawings and plans, and he said, "We're building this big vivarium." I said, "Who's shooting it?" It was the English cameraman, John Alcott (Barry Lyndon, The Shining). As we were shooting, I would drift by. They were building the set. Larry talked about the floor because they wanted to try to do dolly moves without putting down tracks. I talked to John Alcott about the skylights and how they were lighting the vivarium. Then, just before we were wrapping Big Trouble in Little China, the production manager, producer, and Larry Paull came by the set and said, "John Alcott just died ... so we're wondering if you would be available. You would be the logical choice because you've followed this whole thing." It was to start the week after we finished. At lunch, I would go over and talk to the director of Project X, Jonathan Kaplan (Heart Like a Wheel, The Accused). I walked the set with Larry, started prepping, and ended up having a week to rig the lighting and to prepare the show. Prep is really good, but if you have good people who are preparing the show, you can just walk in and do it. I was fortunate I had worked with Larry and had met Jonathan Kaplan a couple of times. He w
as another Corman graduate. They had done a little bit of second unit, they had shot tests of some of the chimps and had worked with the trainers. Learning about the social structure of the chimps was interesting. One of the things I enjoy about filmmaking is we get to learn and experience a lot of things that people in their usual walks of life don't get to do.

  Q: Did the chimpanzees have to hit marks for the camera like actors do?

  A: Yes, if they could. Some chimps are very quick learners, others are not. Some are very willful-it's all part of their structure. They all aim for dominance. They were able to hit marks and understand English, something like, "Put your feet down," the chimp would immediately sit very calmly. They would put a big red dot on the floor and say, "Go to your mark," and the chimp would go and stand there. Eventually, they'd go to a smaller mark and then a tape mark. So after the process of learning, the chimp was rewarded by friendliness, grooming, and affection if he followed the orders.

  Most animal training is looking for a trait that is natural, rewarding it so it becomes repeatable, and then adapting that trait to something we find cute, effective, or part of the storytelling.