Principal Photography Page 8

  Q: How did you achieve the tough and dirty look of Manhattan's Upper West Side in Panic in Needle Park, and how did you work with the director, Jerry Schatzberg?

  A: When we read the screenplay for Panic in Needle Park, I remembered seeing in Poland a black-and-white film directed by Gillo Pontecorvo called The Battle ofAlgiers. I loved this film. I mentioned it to Schatzberg. We got a print, and he agreed it was something to take seriously. What was wonderful about The Battle of Algiers is you really believed all that happened in front of the camera wasn't staged, but that the camera just happened to be there and it was really life. So we ran it a couple of times. Before we started, I shot quite a few tests. Again I used long lenses. The film stocks were slow, the lenses were lousy, and a lot of the film was happening at night. To light Broadway and Seventy-second Street at night using 600mm, 800mm lenses is a nightmare, but slowly I managed to get the mechanics of it. I explained to Ray Emeritz, a technician at General Camera here in New York, what he had to build for me so the assistant would be able to follow focus with those long lenses. I am still in contact with him-he's now in his eighties, still working on machines. Ray built a large panel and a gear system for us. We worked it out over weeks of shooting tests. Knowing what you want to do and finding aids from technicians is easy once you decide, "This is the way to go "

  Q: Were those long takes that follow Al Pacino walking on the opposite side of the street dolly shots?

  A: No, the camera was stationary. When you use long lenses to that extent, they look like dolly shots because the relationship doesn't change. The problem for Schatzberg was he couldn't see performances. So after the second day, he was on the set looking at the actors through a pair of binoculars. It was so far away, but by doing it, we were able to get that look of the stacking up of the perspective of people. After three days, the producer, Dominick Dunne, got a call from Darryl Zanuck, the head of the studio in Los Angeles. He said, "What is this Holender doing? It's supposed to be a New York picture. I don't see any New York there!" We said to Dominick, "Tell him this is the way we want to do the picture. We have an idea." So he called Zanuck and said, "That's the way we want to do it," and Zanuck apparently said, "Well, it's cheap enough, let them do it."

  Q: Panic in Needle Park looks so much like a documentary. Were those studio or practical locations?

  A: They were mostly locations, hotel rooms, and a variety of places, but they were all lit. We were basically doing the same kind of lighting approach as Midnight Cowboy. By then, I was much more comfortable. Midnight Cowboy was a real pain in the neck because none of the technicians on the crew were used to lighting sets the way I wanted them lit. The lighting instruments were not available. Soft light was considered only for portraits by still photographers.

  Q: Were these lighting instruments available in Poland? Many Polish films have that soft-light look.

  A: Right, but in Poland we built the instruments for soft light based on still photographs by American still photographers. We saw the work of Irving Penn, Art Kane, Richard Avedon, Bert Stern, and all these still photographers using soft light. We wanted to do that in film. Those instruments were not available, but they're simple to do. You ask somebody to do something out of metal. You bounce a light so somehow it works. We started doing it in Poland. Then I came to the United States thinking the lights were going to be fantastic, and I walked into the studio-nothing, just Fresnels and hard lights. I said, "What happened to the style of all those American still photographers?" "Oh, those are only for amateurs and still photography, we don't use it in film." "But this is how I want the film to look." "Oh no, we don't have anything like this." So I started taking those Fresnel lights and bouncing the light, doing things nobody felt very comfortable with.

  Q: What is a Fresnel light?

  A: A sharp light, a sharply defined shadow-basically a concentrated beam of studio light, not natural light as you see from this window falling on my face.

  Q: Couldn't you have adapted some of the lights Richard Avedon and other still photographers were using at the time?

  A: No, those were studio bank lights. Eventually, the film industry caught on and started building soft lighting instruments, but after years of resistance. They tried to keep it away; when they couldn't, then you go and get change.

  Q: Street Smart has a great New York look, although it was shot in Canada.

  A: Ninety-nine percent of Street Smart was shot in Montreal. I had a streak of those. The Idolmaker was a New York, East Coast picture shot in Los Angeles. Street Smart was a New York picture shot in Montreal. Then I did The Dream Team, which was a New York picture shot in Toronto, and To Kill a Priest, which took place in Poland and was shot in France.

  Q: Was Street Smart as much of a challenge as The Idolmaker in capturing a New York look?

  A: No, it wasn't as much of a problem because the look of Montreal is much closer to the look of New York than Los Angeles exterior locations are to New York. Shooting in Los Angeles for New York-you're talking about difficulty! New York has humidity in the summertime, which diffuses light. Los Angeles light is as hard as it comes, it's directly over your head-it's just very tough to match.

  Q: The soul food restaurant that the Morgan Freeman character used as an office to do his business as a pimp had a very authentic New York look to it.

  A: That was shot in New York, in Harlem on Lenox Avenue on 126th Street. We had five days or so in New York at the end of the schedule. That's how studios always think: let's shoot 95 percent of Toronto material and then come to New York for atmosphere. Of course, you don't want it to end up looking like a postcard, so you try to incorporate it.

  Q: Did lighting the black actors in Street Smart demand a different approach?

  A: Very much so. Actually, in Street Smart the problem was accentuated because among black actors, Morgan Freeman is very dark. What doubled the problem is that Christopher Reeve is pinkish white. In the scenes when they were both playing, especially in a violent scene when they are moving around in physical contact, it was an enormous task to keep the light separated from one actor to the next. I had to balance it out, it was difficult. In Fresh, they were all black actors, it was much easier-the tonality is the same. You learn not only how to light faces, but to use the faces as a piece of sculpture like a metallic surface that reflects light. You use the skin as a reflective matter. I would bring light out of the frame to model the face to show the angularity of somebody's facial structure by reflecting it in the skin. It works very well, and it brings the eyes out.

  Q: In Street Smart, the characters had their own spaces which reflected their personalities. Morgan Freeman had the soul food restaurant. Christopher Reeve's loft was upscale in a manner that reflected who he was. Then there is the magazine office, and the restaurant which reflected Reeve's boss, the editor-in-chief of the magazine he worked for. Do these spaces give you the ability to comment on the characters photographically by your use of lighting and camera movement?

  A: It does, and you certainly use images you remember as proper to the kind of environment you're creating. It helps you on the location scout long before we start filming. It helps you in lighting those interiors because you see these kinds of people sitting at Elaine's or in some restaurant and it feels like something you can relate to. That's why I think it's so important to get to know the fabric of life you are trying to re-create. If you don't know it, you don't know what to do. You're just making believe.

  Q: Do you have a philosophy about photographing comedies like The Dream Team?

  A: Comedy is one of the toughest things to interpret on film. Somebody has to say, "This is the kind of comedy we're doing and this is the key in which this comedy is going to work." There's a standard way of thinking that cinematography in comedy ought to be bright and flat. Nobody needs a cinematographer for that, they need a lighting technician to make it happen. If somebody told me that, I wouldn't be interested in doing it at all. Not to say that a great comedy couldn't be done by applyin
g those parameters, but it doesn't appeal to me. Then there are great comedies. Gordon Willis, in the heyday of his relationship with Woody Allen, did some pretty damn good comedies, and they were not treated the way we just talked about.

  Q: You seem to have had good relationships with production designers.

  A: What gives me a good basic level of understanding with any production designer is that I studied architecture for three and a half years. Once you have that behind you, you can find a mutual language. Knowing how they think, you can also sit down with a piece of paper and lay out the film. An art director has to sit down at one point and start doing a floor plan. The cinematographer or director should be able to read it. It also helps when I talk to the grips. I know where to suspend a beam to be safe. You relate to it, not only through the experience of being on the sets, but also by knowing how construction works.

  Q: Do you think that understanding architecture also helps your sense of composition?

  A: Of course, but that's not the only way to get there. Somebody who paints or photographs could easily get there. A lot of people in my profession who are wrapped up in the business of doing one picture after the next do not allow themselves to recharge their batteries. They don't go to the museums often enough, they don't see those photo shows at which one can capitalize on ideas. It's nice to finish the project, get something and put it back in, read and even talk to friends, instead of just mechanically going from one project to the next.

  Q: What do you look for in a relationship with a director?

  A: I used to feel my way through and tried to justify this and that. As the years went by, it became clearly defined in my mind, there's no ambiguity any longer. Directors are basically broken down into two categories: directors who direct and directors who pretend to direct-nothing else matters. Those who do direct are directing in a creative fashion and in an administrative fashion. If you have never worked with the director, trying to decide, is he somebody who pretends or is he somebody who really does? That's the hard part. And if he does, what is the reason he is doing it? If the cinematographer is pursuing his own interests, not thinking what the director wants to do, he is a pompous ass. It's a conflict-ridden relationship. As soon as you answer all of those things honestly, and if you're correct in your judgements, the better off you are. I find, if the script appeals to me as a story I would want to hear over dinner conversation, that's a good sign. Now I meet with a director. If I find he indeed is someone who is interested in the process of filmmaking and if he really wants to do the film, that's another plus. So you go on. Sometimes you are fooled-you hope for the best and take it as it goes.

  Q: Is it important for the director and the cinematographer to collaborate on the vision of a film?

  A: Very much so. I am very much against a cinematographer who has a vision and is going to realize it no matter what. It's an ego trip. It all stems from what is written on those pages, and it is really up to the director to convey that to everybody he is working with: the production designer, the cinematographer, costume designer, composer, and so on. It is a collaborative field and somebody has to bring those elements together. If the director does everything correctly, he will bring those people together. Every time you look at a good film, it seems like everything got together. You look at films where suddenly the music is fantastic and nothing else seems to make sense. Everyone says, "Wow! Wasn't that music great?" Great for what? If you're interested in music, why don't you go to a concert, not to see a film. The same thing about the cinematography. If the film is terrible and the cinematography is good, it means that it attracted attention to itself for no particular, necessary, good reason. There are directors who chose to contact these cinematographers to do work with them. What's known as the look of that cinematographer fits the director's way of thinking about the visual end of the film. I like the work of these cinematographers, but that kind of "Thisis-what-I-do" work doesn't interest me. There's a certain amount of challenge in reading every script that interests you differently and finding a visual interest different from the others you have done in the past or different from similar films done by other cinematographers. If you find an individualistic visual equivalent to express your interest in a story, it's gratifying.

  Q: So, you always start from ground zero with the script. You don't start by saying, "I like back light," or "I like diffusion," or "I like long lenses."

  A: Yes, depending on the reading process of the script and conversations with the director, back light, diffusion, raw stock, lenses, and filters ought to serve what you want the film to look like. Then, you apply knowledge of all of those technical elements to fit that. If you try to do that in reverse, it's idiotic. It's like a tail wagging the dog.

  Q: How do you communicate with the director about the look of the film during the early stages of preproduction? Do you talk about color? Do you talk about metaphors? Do you bring in photographs? Do you screen movies?

  A: All of the above. Usually in the first meeting with the director after you've read the script, either the director or I will bring in films that came to mind as a good example of treatment of this particular script; some movies done thirty, forty years ago, classics, some more recent. As the process continues, we often see those films either together or separately and we talk about it. We'll rent video cassettes and run them at night and in the morning meetings and say, "Yes, I like this, but I think we should explore it further." Still photography comes in very handily. I find myself relying on still photography more and more. Still photography is its own art form. There are books available in every book store, and exhibitions of still photographs are abundant. It's also something you can open the page to and stare at. The look of Fresh was based on Alex Webb's book of photographs. I was looking for something to suggest to the director and to the production designer and I found this photographer who photographed lives of Hispanics. I brought it to a meeting, and from this book came a whole slew of ideas that made their way into the film. You can now find an equivalent of this in any style that you want, it's just a question of seeking it out-it's available.

  Q: Do you think paintings are effective in communicating a visual style for a film?

  A: Yes, before photography became so widely acceptable, painting was it. Today, photography replaces painting because it is closer to what we do and it's usually not removed by generations. It is easily understood. You can Xerox a page or have a print of it made. You bring it to the production office, pin it to the wall. The costume designer can see it, and the set designer says, "Yes, I know what you mean." As they say, one picture is worth a thousand words. It is easily accessible. You can sense it, you can relate to it. You know that it was done through lenses on film emulsion and in a laboratory. What kind of paint did Rembrandt use, and what kind of window was he by for this one light source? It's just easier to talk about photography and it helps to demystify it. When you talk about paintings, it becomes an almost "artsy"/religious experience, which by the way, a lot of cinematographers like.

  Q: What is a good way to learn about cinematography?

  A: When I was studying in the Polish Film School, I remember looking at Citizen Kane and being totally in awe of it. So we got a reel of the warehouse scene from Citizen Kane and put it on a flatbed going back and forth. A couple of colleagues and I made a sketch of where the light sources were. We didn't build a set, but we arranged elements in a studio to look like what they had. Then we lit it and shot it. We sent it to the lab, got it back, put it on the editing table, looked at it, went back and said, "Okay, we screwed up because this is different." We did it four times-by the fourth time, we didn't do it as well as Gregg Toland did, but at least we got in the area of similarity. I tell students to find a still photographer they like, find a photograph-anything: exterior, interior, a portrait, a nude-I don't care what it is. You have a studio, you have lights. Light it, see if you can reproduce something you like. Use your own judgement. What is it you like? Learn the technique. Get a sense of it.
If you want something changed in the photograph, change it. Expose the negative, send it to the lab. You can do it with a still camera, you'll get some sense of it. Two hours from now you have a print.

  Q: Where do you see your profession of cinematography headed in the future?

  A: Everybody is looking at this profession with a negative feeling that video is going to replace film, that theaters are going to close down and everybody is going to be watching films in their living room. I don't happen to agree, unless of course, extraordinary social upheavals are going to change the way we live. If people won't go out because they're afraid to go out, that's a different story, but if life continues in a fairly civilized fashion, I think possibly a new style of movie theater will be created and flourish. Those are going to be more of an event movie theater, which is going to be more reminiscent of the good days of the thirties and forties. They're going to be large, with terrific looking screens, fantastic sound systems, comfortable seats. Possibly the tickets are going to be more expensive, but people are going to look at it as an event and they are going to go to the movie theater like people go to a Broadway theater. Given a choice even today I try to avoid these little multiplex theaters. Going to The Ziegfeld here in New York is a treat. It looks so great and it sounds so good-so why wouldn't other people want it?

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  Don McAlpine