Vilmos Zsigmond: Lighting

From American Cinematographer, A Transcendent Career Foretold by Bob Fisher (February '99)

"I think the most important thing about cinematography is lighting. That's how you create the mood that matches the story. The ability to light artistically is a gift from the gods. If you have the ability, you shouldn't waste it. You should be looking for ways to improve and grow."

- Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC

Alar Kivilo: Beveled Mirrors

From American Cinematographer, The Root of All Evil by Jay Holben (December 1998)

For moodier moments, Kivilo used hard light reflected into the sets using beveled mirrors.

"I'd pick a dead corner of the set and have Joey black it out so no light was there. I'd then aim Par cans or sometimes HMI Pars into the mirrors and splash light into random spots on the set. I'm always searching for the best kinds of slashes, which have an organic feel, and these beveled mirrors provided that. It was perhaps the only slightly stylized addition I made to our otherwise simplistic regime, in that there was no logical source for that kind of light; my thinking was that it was perhaps coming from a streetlight outside or something. Those scenes were about mood, and it was great to use the mirrors rather than backlight an actor. I'd just bounce a slash into the background and silhouette them against the set."

- Alar Kivilo, CSC

Vittorio Storaro: Color and Meaning

From American Cinematographer, Master of Light and Motion interview by Bob Fisher (June 1998)

"Color is part of the language we speak with film. We use colors to articulate different feelings and moods. It is just like using light and darkness to symbolize the conflict between life and death. I believe the meanings of different colors are universal, but people in different cultures can interpret them in different ways. In the opening scene, the camera is motionless and there is an absence of color, which is black. During Bulworth's first campaign stop in Los Angeles, he visits a church in a black community, where the main color in costumes and props is red, a symbol of birth and life. From the church, he goes to a meeting with some Hollywood film producers in a private home. It is a rich setting, where he raises money. Orange symbolizes that feeling of comfort. When he visits an after-hours club, we used yellow, cyan and magenta, the opposites of the three primary colors [red, green and blue] that symbolize daylight. In this scene, Bulworth is considering his subconscious feelings.

The next day, he goes to the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, where he tells people in his own party what he is thinking. It is the first time he speaks honestly about his feelings in front of the members of his party; they don't expect a politician to tell them exactly what he is thinking. The color yellow symbolizes that he consciously knows what he is doing. During a television debate, we used green to signify knowledge, because it is the first time he reveals his feeling in public. Later, one of his campaign workers brings him to her grandmother's house, where he feels safe, believing that the assassin won't find him there. We used blue to signify freedom. Next, he meets a drug dealer, who explains why he uses children to sell drugs. Indigo symbolizes material power. We don't use white in this film until he completes his journey and is a whole person.

...Each color has a specific wavelength of energy, which we perceive the same way that we feel vibrations. Even if they aren't consciously aware of it, the audience can feel a difference between high and low wavelengths of energy. They are reacting to that feeling in addition to what they see on the screen."

- Vittorio Storaro, ASC, AIC

Gabriel Beristain: Mood Lighting for Locations

From American Cinematographer, Paging Machiavelli by Eric Rudolph (March 1998)

"The scene where Ross actually gets on the moving carousel's enclosure, which helped us to create a feeling of confusion. We could not get any lighting direction that way, because it was all crosslight and flare and backlight, then darkness and strong frontlight, then sidelight. It helped to communicate the utter confusion in the mind of the character about just what is what and who is who in this nightmare."

- Gabriel Beristain, ASC, BSC

Creating the provocative lighting for the various rooms and corridors of the police station, Beristain says, was...

"...like being in a playground. We wanted a intensely hostile and scary environment, but we didn't want to go with the typical fluorescent lighting and Steadicam approach that is so often used in that type of setting. We decided to make each room in the police station look worse than the previous one. It's like Dante's Inferno; each place seems like it must be the worst, but it turns out to only be purgatory, and you keep going deeper and deeper into the gloom."

- Gabriel Beristain, ASC, BSC

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

Wexler & Hall: Overcast Weather and Contrast

From American Cinematographer, Island of Lost Souls interview by Conrad Hall, ASC (July 1999)

Hall: "I actually didn't realize the effect that the overall look of Limbo had on me until I was walking out of the theater and thought about how nice it was to finally feel sunshine. The film had a kind of pervasively claustrophobic gloom that lent to the quality of the character's lives. There's something about the sun hitting your face that makes the you feel wonderful. As you said, though, that feeling wasn't something you waited for-- it was created by the 'gaffer in the sky.' Did you shoot when the sun was out too?"

Wexler: "As you know Conrad, in a way it can be easier to have overcast light for exteriors..."

Hall: "I'm not sure if I agree with that, actually. I think it's harder to get contrast in overcast conditions, and I'm always interested in contrast. The only contrast you do get on an overcast day is color contrast-- blue against green, for example. If I had a day like that, I'd throw a large black over the actors and put them in a darker silhouette against the brighter background in order to change the almost pervasive beauty of the situation, because the [natural scenery] is so colorful. In a way, the colors can be more saturated in that even, overcast light-- unless, of course, one overexposes the way you did."

- Haskel Wexler, ASC & Conrad Hall, ASC

Conrad Hall: Contrast

"For me, the use of light is really exciting. In nature, contrast is what makes light fascinating. So the use of contrast- surprising someone with the amount of difference in those values-- is what makes things interesting. When you're driving toward the Grand Canyon, all you can see is an open plain until you suddenly come right up to the edge of it, and then you gasp because of the striking contrast of this thing being so deep. It's the same with brightness and darkness. Contrast can be used to create that same sort of breath taking sensation of too much or too little. It's a tool to work with in creating mood, but you have to be courageous. And, of course, it's hard to be courageous! It's not like the writer who can just simply rip out a page; it costs a lot of money to put images on film. There's a great responsibility to make sure that everything works, which often keeps you from getting to adventurous in the storytelling. You have to struggle with this knowledge that you can't and mustn't fail, but then again, you should always try to do more than just succeed. In telling a story, you should try to be exact in a spectacular way, and that requires courage and a good sense of your craft."

-Conrad Hall