Jean Yves Escoffier: Pools of Light & Night Exteriors

From American Cinematographer, Card Sharks by Jean Oppenheimer (October 1998)

For night exteriors, he used a Lee 104 deep amber gel to suggest the warm sodium-vapor lights now being used in the Big Apple (the city formerly used mercury-vapor streetlamps, which weren't as warm). "The night stuff was beautiful," marvels New York-based gaffer Ramsey. "Some of the streets where we shot were very mundane, junky little lower East Side streets. But the way Jean Yves shot them, with the contrasts and pools of light, really brought them to life."

Night street scenes are Escoffier's favorite milieu. "I love to do the city by night," he says in a reverential tone. "It is like a painting." With a laugh, he adds, "I am a happy person by night."

The cinematographer sought to make the film's exterior night scenes more dramatic and expressionistic. "People who are addicted to playing cards are like night birds," he suggests. "They have strange minds. They are alone in the world. I didn't want them to appear in the normal light of the city by night, so I completely changed the light."

Escoffier created his dramatic nighttime exteriors partially through the use of Dino lights, which were aimed through custom-made cookies to create strong pools of light, so that people walking down the streets would travel in and out of the illuminated areas. The characters' faces were almost always highlighted with eyelights, which were either attached to the camera or held by a crew member walking beside the actor.

Jean Yves Escoffier: Dark Walls & Set Lighting

From American Cinematographer, Card Sharks by Jean Oppenheimer (October 1998)

"I like dark walls because film is about people; each time you have a bright wall, the wall is stronger than the character. I like the reverse [situation]. I also like the lighting to be in intimate relationship with the set. I don't like anything artificial. The ideal situation would be if we could shoot the way the light is naturally, but obviously, if you do that, you would have too many cosmetic problems, and it would be impossible to read the subtle expressions in the actors' eyes. However, I like to go as close to natural as possible. I like to design the tension, the darkness and the brightness the way life would give it to you."

- Jean Yves Escoffier

Janusz Kaminski: Painting Tonal Separation (for Depth)

From American Cinematographer, The Last Great War by Christopher Probst (August 1998)

“Tom Sanders did a great job with the coloring and in making the buildings distressed and dark, but the one thing that really made the look of the movie was working with the standby painter, Joe Monks. When we started working in Ramelle, if we felt a building was too bright, and that bringing in flags and cutters for a simple day exterior shot would involve too much work, we’d have Joe come in and make the building darker. We’d give him a 10’ by 40’ wall and in five to 10 minutes he’d be done. That gave the sets much more depth and separation.”

-David Devlin (Gaffer for Janusz Kaminski on Saving Private Ryan)

Ward Russell: Directors & Blocking

From American Cinematographer, Elusive Truth by Christopher Probst (July 1998)

"I'm used to working with directors who are very visually oriented, so I was quite happy to discover that Rob has a very strong visual sense. I find that my work gets that much better when I have a director who has an idea of what he wants and understands what my contribution is. Before going onto each set, we had a lot of discussions concerning the lighting. He's very conscious of light and understands how its direction and mood works; when we went into a scene, we were able to talk about the light source, and we almost always agreed on the best angles from which to show the set. Some directors don't even think about the set; all they consider is the actors, the words and how they go together. That method is the most difficult way to work in terms of lighting because once the director has staged the scene, you then have to figure out how to light the given set to the way he's staged the action. It's much easier — and usually more visually interesting — if the director understands the set and the angles that will be the most visual, and then encourages the actors to work within that environment."

- Ward Russell

"The fundamental language I refer to in staging is: where are the triangles in the shot, and where are the three planes of depth the foreground, middleground and background? Then I have to consider the look I want to achieve, the time I have, and the actors' blocking in relation to those [other] factors. I look for where my light source is coming from which I may want to be cross- or backlight and ask, 'How can I say something about the character or scene with simple staging and the right camera move without that becoming the star of the scene?' I've done projects in the past where an image we've created becomes more about how it looks than what's happening on a story or character level. Ultimately, in those cases, you fall short in a narrative sense, because you've aimed for the wrong goal."

- Rob Bowman, Director The X-Files Movie

"[Blocking a scene for the best visual angles] really is the best way of working. Once we get to a set, give it to me for an hour so that I can rough in some source lighting and then bring the actors in and stage the scene. If they don't naturally gravitate toward the light we want, then the director can encourage them to do that. That way, you don't have to fight to create a good look. Every set usually has its own look to start with, so if you utilize what you already have, it's then just a matter of adding a few final touches before you're ready to shoot. I've found that if you're shooting a certain scene and nothing is working right, it's usually because the camera is in the wrong spot. If you get the camera in the right spot in relation to the actors and the set, it all just falls into place."

- Ward Russell

Peter Menzies Jr: Depth in Night Exteriors

From American Cinematographer, A Few Bad Men by Jay Holben (July 1999)

"We had to find a way to show depth of the location without the classic 'moonlight' source. We had guys put out cable stretching several hundred yards away form the main set in all directions, and we'd put lamps out there-- nine lights, Dinos and single Mole Pars. Then we would put different gels on them, depending on where they fell into frame and the type of color contrast Peter wanted to see. Finally we would add a lyaer of smoke between the lamps and the set-- that worked very well and created amazing depth."

-Rafael Sanchez, Gaffer for Menzies on The General's Daughter

"Peter is a master at using smoke. Because we were doing a lot of night shooting in wide-open spaces, the light obviously only travels so far. Beyond that it all just goes to black, which can make for a very boring frame, but Peter had this incredible system of smoke machines and miles of plastic pipes running all around with little tine holes. He would send smoke down them, and it would slowly leak out over a wide area, creating a very moody mist off in the distance."

- Simon West, Director of The General's Daughter

"I was using the fog as separation to reduce contrast in the background, and to add depth. With stray sources placed way off in the distance, once the smoke got between them and the camera, it created this whole atmosphere that extended the set far beyond the foreground. The special effects team had these smoke tubes made out of visqueen [a material similar to that used for garbage bags]. They were about a foot in diameter, and the crew would lay them all over the place. They'd put one little smoker between every couple of hundred yards, so we could run a mile of smoke very easily. If we wanted more smoke, we could just cut more holes in the tubes, and if we wanted less smoke, we could just patch them up. It was great for the rough terrain as well; because the tubes were flexible, we could just run them out anywhere. We used them a lot around the water edges in Savannah and around Brenner's houseboat, which is the setting for a major gun battle at the beginning of the film."

- Peter Menzies Jr, ASC

Michael Ballhaus: Making 1.85 Feel Larger in Scope

From American Cinematographer, Sci-Fi Cowboys by David E. Williams (July 1999)

"Barry and I discussed the aspect ratio and film format for quite a while. At first, I wanted to shoot in widescreen super 35. After some tests, though, I felt Barry would be more comfortable working in spherical 1.85:1, for two reasons. First, I believe he feels that comedy works better in 1.85, which I think is right. Second, Barry never shot a film himself in 2.35:1. As a cinematographer, he had a very specific and precise style of shooting, and now, as a director, he also has a particular style. For example, his sense of framing is very different from what I would normally do. He likes to have the action or subject in the center most of the time, which doesn't work well in 2.35. In widescreen, you have to fill the whole frame. It doesn't make sense to have a close-up in the center of the frame and have nothing to the right or left.

Also, Barry loves wide-angle lenses, and I had never before used wide lenses to the extent that I did on this picture. Doing a close-up with an 18mm lens was something new for me, but it worked and was more dynamic. I liked that, but it was an adjustment I had to make. That type of style wouldn't be correct for every movie, but it was in this case because it feels different. In a close-up with an 18mm lens, even if the actor moves just a few inches, the effect is very different than if you're using a 50mm lens. There is a magnification to the change.

It's funny, the film is in 1.85:1, but it feels wider than that because of the use of wide lenses. You can see a lot more, and not only in terms of depth. For instance, if you have a close-up, you see a lot more of the background than you usually would. In this film, there are several scenes set in train cars. If we were on a 50mm doing our close-ups, the audience wouldn't see much of the car. With the 18mm, they can, which adds to the apparent scope of the film."

- Michael Ballhaus, ASC

Rosher & Struss: Forced Perspective

From American Cinematographer, Best Shot Films: 1894-1949 by George Turner (March 1999)

Putting the story on film was not simple. To show a village at twilight, the filmmakers contrasted the soft exterior lighting with lights coming from inside the houses. The sets of the city and an amusement park were built in a vastly over-sized scale so that the audience would see them through the eyes of the awed farm couple. Forced perspectives were built in to create greater depth, with midgets as extras in the back-ground areas.

[Sunrise (1927) had two directors of photography, Charles Rosher, ASC and Karl Struss, ASC... both of which share the first Academy Award for Best Cinematography.]

Conrad Hall & Randy Woodside: Pointillistic Reflections

Randy Woodside was Conrad Hall's gaffer on A Civil Action.

"If there's, say, a group of pictures on a wall in the shot, Connie will often say, 'Give me dot-dot-dot.' In order to provide separation between the picture frames and the wall, rather than lighting the wall up, we'll take a small unit like a pepper and come around to the most radical rake on the wall so that the light is only hitting the picture frames. That way, you provide vertical highlights on the frames in the background in order to get more separation. Basically, we're playing with reflective angles. We will also do that same technique from the front. If you're in church on a wide angle lens that reveals the whole church and all the pews, you want something on the reflective angle to bring out highlights. Everybody's first instinct is usually to use a backlight to find that reflective angle. However, people seem to forget that 180* degrees to that, there is also the same reflective angle which is coming from the camera. The courtroom in A Civil Action, had seats that were very much like church pews, so we took a light on the pin and raised it up so that it would just nick the edges. We came in from the front to define those areas against the darker background."

-Randy Woodside