Principal Photography Read online

  One of the satisfactions I've had is to know that so often the techniques and the effects have not all been done. They build on techniques that have been done, but by being able to take them just a little bit further, you develop new techniques. I can trace very clearly in my mind the progression of the films I've been involved with, from the original Back to the Future through Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and the other Back to the Future films to Jurassic Park, to The Flintstones, to Casper, and now Apollo 13.

  Q: Often, the director of photography is responsible for creating the background plate used in a special effects shot. What is involved in the process of working with the special effects team?

  A: The usual process is working out beforehand with the director, the storyboard people, and the special effects people the intention of a particular special effect shot. What you want it to look like, what it's suppose to accomplish, how the action is supposed to go. You work out the techniques they either know or think they will use. Then my job is to provide them with the materials they need to accomplish it. Most of the time, it's a background plate. It can be much more. Typically, a plate is a shot you shot on a location which is the background and something is going to be put in front of it. The plate may be used in the rear screen process or blue screen. Later they have to do the part of the shot that is put in front of this plate. The plate could be a simple locked-down camera shot going behind action. It can be as simple as panning and tilting. It can be two or three passes with a motion control camera over the same scene. It can be all of the action of an entire scene with the exception of the characters being flown on wires, cable, or a rig that's going to be removed later. Sometimes it's a lot more complicated. So the plate is the term for the raw material that is then going to be processed in some way by the effects people. The effects people used to shoot most of their own material. If they were going to put the castle on the hill, they would go off and shoot the plate of the hill, then go back and put the castle on. Often, the first unit didn't even know about it. They might have been part of it, but it was all shot by the special effects people. Now, more and more the visual effects people will be on the set and will be part of the collaborative effort. It will still be my jurisdiction to light and shoot the scene, but it is all done with the input and information the effects people will provide when you're on the set. It's gotten complicated, but also a lot more interesting. The effects are less and less something that are added to the movie or cut into it. Now it's becoming a much more integral part of the action. The computer is going to allow us to do so much to first-unit work. To enhance the sky, to remove wires and telephone poles is not necessarily considered an effects shot, but it is an enhancement to the first-unit work. That work is becoming an exciting aspect of visual effects because now it becomes a tool we can use to en hance what we do and not just some kind of a special shot that gets cut into the picture. So what lies ahead is very exciting.

  Q: Do you feel it's important for a director of photography on features to also shoot commercials, television, and documentaries?

  A: The audience now is a great deal more sophisticated than they were when this business first started. We are so used to all kinds of visual information. You go home and watch television, there's everything from old movies to contemporary movies and sit-corns to commercials and MTV. Every kind of visual storytelling possible is there. It's now getting to the point where it's going to be interactive, a whole other era of visual storytelling and audience involvement. In the early silent days, filmmakers felt they had to be photographing a stage play. You had to see the actor full-figured because producers would say, "The audience won't understand if they don't have feet and we can't cut to a close-up because there's no body!" The audience learns pretty quickly. Now, there's almost nothing we can try that an audience can't learn to understand. As a director of photography, it's important to understand all of the visual storytelling techniques being done. So I shoot and direct commercials. You learn to pay attention to all kinds of documentaries, television, and commercials. You don't want the audience to become smarter than you are and understand more about the language than you. You always have to stay with the visual vernacular being spoken by all of the filmmakers and how you can use it as part of your storytelling.

  Q: You started in low-budget filmmaking and have worked on bigbudget films which utilize state-of-the-art technology. As we near the next century, where do you think the filmmaking process is headed?

  A: Things always run in cycles. As the pendulum swings, we develop a technique-the computer and digital technology, for instance-and it's used in a very dramatic, dynamic way like creating the dinosaurs for Jurassic Park in such a way that it is obvious we are being shown a special effect. There's no way you can believe that there's really a dinosaur. So as an audience you know it's a trick, but it's done so well you don't know how they did it. People begin to use the techniques for great, impressive effects, but then we also realize it can be used to put in a sunset instead of a bald sky, so the audience isn't aware of it as an impressive special effect. It just becomes part of the techniques we use, just like the first person who dollied a camera. That very first close-up in The Great Train Robbery where the cowboy shoots the gun was a striking visual image. Everybody became aware of it, and now when we see a close-up we think nothing of it-it's just part of the process. Effects will always be used for impressive and unusual films, the Stargate kind of movies, but I think also as they become economically feasible, we'll start to use effects for just everyday enhancements and as another tool. The same way with interactive. It's going to go off into some very strange directions for a while. It will become real showy to the extent they play video games now. My son is just out of USC, and he is exploring computers, interactive, and filmmaking from that standpoint. People are going to look very hard for some way to make an interactive story, but over a period of time it may become just another technique. It won't be just sitting in front of a television and going off in all kinds of directions, but it will be just something we haven't thought of yet, just another way of intriguing an audience to following a story and becoming involved. It's hard to say what that will be-it's all part of this evolutionary process.

  8

  Edward Lachman

  Edward Lachman, ASC, is an explorer of images. A cinematographer who has worked worldwide, Lachman discovers his images in photographs, paintings, movies, screenplays, as well as in life.

  Lachman's grandfather owned vaudeville theaters, which evolved into the first American movie houses. His father was a film exhibitor and distributor. Lachman first became interested in painting while studying art in Europe, and during the seventies he completed a film appreciation course at Harvard. He began shooting a wide range of documentaries which investigated political, social, and aesthetic themes through a myriad of photographic styles. In 1974, he shot his first fictional feature film, The Lords of Flatbush. Lachman was a camera operator and second unit director of photography for Robby Muller, Sven Nykvist, and Vittorio Storaro, and is one of a select cadre to work with four of the most influential German directors of the seventies: Werner Herzog, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Wim Wenders, and Volker Schlondorff. This international experience has influenced Lachman's cinematography on uniquely American projects such as Desperately Seeking Susan and Light Sleeper, as well as international works like Stroszek, London Kills Me, and Mississippi Masala.

  Edward Lachman's documentaries and films include: Christo's Valley Curtain; Say Amen, Somebody; The World of Mother Teresa; Stripper; Tokyo-Ga; Chuck Berry, Hail! Hail! Rock 'n'Roll; Ornette: Made in America; and Passion: The Script. Lachman has worked as director and cinematographer on A Family Affair, Route 66, Blue Train, Report from Hollywood, Songs for Drella, Red Hot and Blue, and A Day in the Life of Country Music.

  Edward Lachman has worked with a diverse group of directors, including: Gregory Nava, Paul Schrader, Mira Nair, Hanif Kureishi, Dennis Hopper, Susan Seidelman, Shirley Clarke, Jean-Luc Godard, Bernardo Bertoluc
ci, Nicholas Ray, and the Maysles brothers.

  An independent craftsman and artist, Lachman's New York home is a spacious loft which serves as his base of operations in a life filled with constant travel and filmmaking. He owns his own camera equipment, which he employs in a career that defies classification. His versatile camerawork expresses a voracious interest in images and the world. Edward Lachman described himself to Sight and Sound magazine as "a visual gypsy," a phrase which translates to a provocative and aesthetic experience for audiences viewing films which bear his name.

  SELECTED FILMOGRAPHY

  Stroszek (codirector of photography with Thomas Mauch)

  Little Wars

  A Gathering of Old Men

  Less Than Zero

  Light Sleeper

  London Kills Me

  Selena

  Q: Throughout the development of your career, paintings, still photographs, and movies have influenced your visual sensibilities. What images influenced you to become a cinematographer?

  A: I studied painting before photography. I was interested in German expressionism because there was a visceral need to get an emotional quality and feelings towards the subject matter on the canvas. German expressionism was an outgrowth of impending doom between the wars. It was a very emotional approach to painting, abandoning academic conventions to create an expressionistic realism. Then I got interested in photography and had taken a film appreciation course at Harvard. I became cognizant that images didn't just appear on the screen. Italian director Vittorio De Sica's Umberto D greatly influenced me, as it relied heavily on images to create the story of a lonely pensioner. How De Sica told a story in just image and mood was a revelation. In the Dadaist period, Duchamp and Man Ray took commonplace objects from the real world and made a statement that this could be art too. Our perception of what we see creates it as a form of art. I've always liked what the found image could represent. So all of this attributed to the idea I could take a camera and create stories. Being frustrated learning the technique as a painter, film was a more immediate way for me to respond to images. I made my own films, and people always seemed to connect to the imagery. I approached a story by drawing back to painters and other visual references in photography as ideas to a story line. People then asked me if I would be interested in shooting their films. I thought this would be an inexpensive way to learn how to make films for myself, and I ended up becoming a cameraman.

  Q: Is it the cinematographer's role to capture the director's vision or to express their own visual ideas?

  A: Some directors are more visual than others. So I've always felt my job was to read the script and then bring forth visual ideas to contribute to whatever ideas the director has. Some directors formulate an idea and others don't. It is always that marriage between the director, production designer, and the cinematographer to create a visual world, but it has to emanate from the story. Every script should find its own filmic language, its own visual grammar, and the discovery of that grammar has always been an important aspect for me. It's something that evolves. You bring in a lot of visual ideas and references. They could come from books, films, or paintings. Whatever the visual references are, it's important to play that game with each other to then find what's unique about that script, that story.

  Q: Is there a protocol for how that process unfolds? When you read a script, do you share your visual ideas with the director right away or do you want to hear their visual ideas first?

  A: It depends, when you read the script you might know the director's work, you know what kind of world they inhabit. Sometimes with first-time directors, it's more of an involved process in finding it together. I'll ask the director what their visual idea is towards the script, then I can come in with many ideas of my own, but it's essential to hear what's important to the director and what their visual interests are in the story line.

  Q: There is a strong international sensibility in your work. How did European influences affect your approach to cinematography?

  A: While in art school in France, I met Werner Herzog at the Berlin Film Festival. He really gave me my first start by working on documentaries, La Soufriere, How Much Wood Could a Woodchuck Chuck, and Huie's Sermon. That led to working with Wim Wenders on Lightning Over Water and Tokyo-Ga, then with Fassbinder on Blue Train, and then Volker Schlondorff on A Gathering of Old Men. I think I was the only cameraman who worked with all of the formidable directors that came out of Germany in the seventies. Their visual styles emanated from a philosophical and a political context. I learned through each director's perspective that one could find their own language to tell their stories.

  Q: How do you develop visual ideas out of a story?

  A: On True Stories, I worked with David Byrne, who has a highly visual context to his ideas. The reference there was literally the shopping mall Photomat, how Americans see themselves through themselves. Another reference was the style of William Eggleston, who is recognized as the father of American contemporary color art photography. His work is a seeming amateur style of fragmented snapshots depicting everyday life. David Byrne and I tried to actually break convention of what would be considered good cinematography, for instance, a balanced frame by the use of color, light, or composition. When the average person takes a photograph of themselves, they're more interested in the content than a formalistic approach to the image. I tried to actually photograph things in a certain randomness, like cutting off buildings, cars. or people in awkward compositions like a home movie. When the film was finished, I realized it didn't bother people as I thought it would, but created its own aesthetic. Desperately Seeking Susan was shot in two separate styles. The first style was derived from the German expressionistic school, where the colors were more primary and saturated in the dark and foreboding Lower East Side world of Madonna. The world for Rosanna Arquette was more naturalistic, embodying a suburban pastel and opaque palette. On Making Mr. Right, the director, Susan Seidelman, and I were searching for a style and we finally approached it as if it were a Roger Corman film. It was a take on B-movie science fiction films, where the style would be flat and have a pop quality to it.

  Q: Does this process of developing the visual style have to be complete by the time you start shooting?

  A: Not always. You go in with certain ideas, then you try to ascertain how to achieve these ideas technically. A lot of it comes intuitively, and it happens during the process. You don't always see it in the first week or two of dailies, but if you're true to what you are doing, you start to see a certain style emerging. One of the most important roles of the cinematographer is to be stylistically visually consistent in your approach to the story-not one day doing Max Ophuls camera moves, and the next doing Yasujiro Ozu tableaus. What the aesthetic is and how you approach the story line is very important. You work very closely with the director about whose point of view the story is being told by and why. The photography is about the point of view in the storytelling, and that gives you reasons for what you do with the camera. In the American studio system, you are expected to shoot multiple coverage to be able to select a point of view in the editing room. The difference between the European and independent cinema and the American studio system is you don't have the time and money to film extensive multiple coverage of a particular scene. You have to rely more on the strength of the camera to convey the story. Then, out of necessity, that locks you into a certain approach.

  Q: How does the approach of working in long takes affect a film?

  A: When actors know they're going to play a scene in a long take, there's an energy that can happen in real time between the camera and the performance. You can't create the same tension in cuts. American films are getting better and better visually. The audience has become more sophisticated about filmic language through music videos and commercials. Today, with film stocks, lenses, and the labs being so good, it's almost what you don't do that creates the image. It's knowing what not to do, trusting what you're doing in the storytelling, and trusting tha
t images can tell a story. Part of the problem in the States is that we have relied so heavily on dialogue, having come out of a culture of literature and television. We rely so heavily on the written word to translate an idea and we don't trust how images can express an idea. Look at Red or any of Kieslowski's films, or the films of the Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar Wai, who directed Fallen Angels and Days of Being Wild. They have an understanding of images that threads the emotional context to the story line. Words are an intellectualization of an idea, but images are the emotional fabric of the story. There's an intelligence there, we don't always have to be force-fed. I can go back to a Robert Frank image, time and time again, and learn something about myself through it because it's not always an easy read. There's more happening to express the idea that I'm supposed to get. It's about the interrelationship between an image and elements within an image. I'm always searching for images that are contradictive and play off of each other-elements that allow the audience to participate and be challenged. That's what you would expect from a painting or a photograph. I greatly admire Conrad Hall's work. He is always creating a world for his characters within an emotional context, as in the scene in Searching for Bobby Fischer where the little boy goes behind a stained glass window and you see him as a silhouette. It says everything about the ambiguous nature of childhood, about who that child was going to be, and it was also a mirror for the child-something we couldn't see. I get an emotional feeling from open-ended images that have something to say within the context of the story line.

  Q: Many American directors like Martin Scorsese, Brian DePalma, and Quentin Tarantino utilize images in their work from films they admire. You have worked with many European directors who were equally inspired by other films, but incorporate images in a different context. How do they manage to bring an original visual style to their work?