John Toll: Story, Camera Movement & Steadicam

From American Cinematographer, The War Within by Stephen Pizzello (February 1999)

"Terry and I talked extensively about creating a sense of movement throughout the whole picture. He loves to speak in metaphors, and he kept saying, 'It's like moving down a river, and the picture should have that same kind of flow'... During prep, we had talked about various ways to create that kind of style, but we never settled on a single approach. On the first couple of days of the schedule, we shot some scenes with a moving camera on a dolly, and some with stationary cameras incorporating conventional coverage and angles. It was all technically correct, and there was nothing wrong with the scenes, but when we viewed the footage, it sometimes felt very 'staged' and overly structured for the camera.

We knew we wanted something more, so we decided to loosen up our approach a bit. As a result, there's a lot of Steadicam and handheld work in the picture. We had a great Australian Steadicam operator named Brad Shields. We allowed the camera to explore a bit, and Terry encouraged the actors to try something different if they felt like it. At times, the camera would drift from one actor to another; we might not get conventional masters or coverage, but it didn't seem that important. Every scene became a unique situation, and we just shot what seemed to be most appropriate for a particular sequence. We allowed the camera to follow the emotional thread of a scene without worrying about much else. What seemed to emerge from that was a feeling of unpredictability which completely supported the idea that Guadalcanal was a strange and dangerous place that these characters suddenly found themselves in.

Terry got into that style of shooting immediately; he has a rather spontaneous and unpredictable personality, so the idea made a lot of sense to him. Using Steadicam and handheld camera certainly isn't a new idea, but the challenge was in shooting scenes that way without drawing unnecessary attention to the techniques themselves. I wanted to use the fluid, mobile camera movement as part of the overall style of the film, but in a way that supported the story."

- John Toll, ASC


Example in Interview:

Those techniques are very effective during a key sequence in which the Americans finally overtake the Japanese in a bivouac area.

"That scene is basically the Japanese soldiers' last stand. Some of them are dying of starvation, some commit suicide, some surrender and others decide to fight to the last man. I think we really captured the chaos and tragedy of that type of battle. No one really wants to be there, but they have to follow orders, and whether given individuals survive or get killed is really just a matter of chance.

The whole sequence was done with either a handheld camera and/or the Steadicam — primarily the Steadicam — and Brad Shields did a great job on it. The Americans are running into the area and the Japanese are all around them, so you don't know if the guy next to you is friend or foe. Once we set up for that scene, we had the actors go in and improvise action. We then kept repeating the sequence over and over, following different characters through this nightmarish situation. It was semi-controlled chaos, and it wasn't over-rehearsed to the point where everyone always knew what they were going to do. There were many extras in the scene, a lot of people firing at each other, and various guys taking some predetermined hits. We just let the camerawork be as free-form as possible"

- John Toll, ASC

Vittorio Storaro: Dimmers & Limitless Possibilities

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

"You can do whatever you can imagine. In The Last Emperor, there is a long, dramatic scene in a conference room. The actors are seated around a table, and no one is moving. We used the dimmer to create the impression that time was passing and the sun outside of a window was setting. The dimmer board can also save time between setups. The gaffer, control board operator and I would arrive, and everything would be ready for us. The early dimmer consoles were made for the live theater and television. We designed a new dimmer board for Tango. DeSisti Lighting [in Italy] made it for our use."

- Vittorio Storaro, ASC, AIC

Hubert Taczanowski: Camera Lenses, Positioning, & Movement

From American Cinematographer, Rediscovering Eden by Holly Willis (March 1998)

"We never went wider than a 21mm, and the longest lens we used was the 70mm. I don't use zooms. Although there are fantastic zooms available from Arri and Panavision, I'd rather move the camera. I'm really in love with dollying and pushing in and out and adjusting. My philosophy is that when I'm looking at actors, I always put the camera on a dolly and I always make adjustments, even small ones-- 10" or 20"-- moving the camera left or right to get a better view. It's like when your watching something and someone blocks your view; you adjust by moving a little bit. That's how I approach moviemaking-- not necessarily in dramatic movements, like Scorsese does, but rather back and forth, to the left or right."

- Hubert Taczanowski

Janusz Kaminski: Artificial Nautical Movement

From American Cinematographer, Breaking Slavery's Chains by Stephen Pizzello (January 1998)

"We mainly did day exteriors on the ocean. Night exteriors and interiors involving the ships were all done on stage."

- Janusz Kaminski

Kaminski found it even more difficult to re-create the feeling of sea travel on dry land. An 85 percent scale model of the Amistad was built in the Van Nuys hangar, while a similarly sized hull section, used for interior scenes, was constructed in Universal's Stage 12. The ship in Van Nuys was built on a system of air bags which could be inflated and deflated to provide the appropriate rocking motion.

"The air bags under the ship gave us really nice movement, and we used the big tanks to dump the water over everything. We would do one or two takes with all of the effects, but then it would take 20 minutes to reset everything."

-Janusz Kaminski

... "On a few occasions we would put a slightly harder light on a Chapman crane and move the crane across the masts and ropes to create some shadow movement. It was all very subtle, because I didn't want the lighting to be vulgar. I just wanted to create a bit of movement, especially when Steven didn't want to wait for the air bags to get moving."

- Janusz Kaminski

Equally classic methods were used to generate authentic ambiance for interior scenes on the Stage 12 ship set. Since this set was not on a motion base, the crew created a sense of movement by choreographing the actors and the lighting.

"For day scenes involving the ship's hold, we used T-5 beam projectors to create hot shafts of light streaming through the openings in the top of the ship. We hung those from trapezes with rope, and I had all of these fellows on top of the boat moving the beams back and forth so you'd get the feeling that the boat was moving in relation to the sun. Aside from the T-5 projectors, we didn't use too much; we'd use the Seven-Minute Drill when we wanted to see into the shadows of the hold a bit. The day scenes, of course, had the sun as an obvious source. In terms of the night scenes in the ship's hold, if you're willing to accept some moonlight coming through the portholes, I think we've completely succeeded in creating a poor man's process on the boat. It really seems as if the boat is on the ocean."

- David Devlin, Gaffer for Janusz on Amistad

Oliver Stapleton: 'Dingle' Branches

From American Cinematographer, Enchanted Forest by Chris Pizzello (May 1999)

"I knew that the forest was supposed to feel artificial. The lighting concept was intentionally very artificial, with these very warm golden night exteriors, so I wasn't bothered by that. And then Oliver figured it out. He said, 'Nothing's moving.' And that was a major, major [discovery]. How are we going to make the forest move, yet not ruin the dialogue?"

- Michael Hoffman

Stapleton's solution was a simple but effective illusory technique known in England as "dingle" lighting.

"In England, when you set up a branch in front of a source and you get the shadow of a tree, we call it 'dingle.' In both of the forest worlds, dingle was one of the psychological tricks I used to make the scenes feel like night without going too dark. That way, I could use directional light that would feel like moonlight, rather than just having soft light blasting all around the place. Through the whole movie, I could be seen carting around dingle number 1, dingle number 2, and so on, like a kit of gels. I had branches of certain leaves and certain shapes that I would use in different situations, depending on whose face was in the scene and what kind of effect I wanted. I don't think I made a single shot throughout A Midsummer Night's Dream without some sort of branch in my hand!

We then had to figure out how to get a sense of movement in the frame. Fans make too much noise, particularly the ones they make in Rome! Instead, we had dozens of Italian crew members holding pieces of wire strung between all of the leaves and trees, and they would shake them to make the woodland move. They did this for weeks on end, which was quite tedious! But I had to make sure that was always happening, because if there was no movement in the trees, the scenes immediately felt quite dead and stagey."

- Oliver Stapleton, BSC

Rouben Mamoulian: Camera Movement

From American Cinematographer, Common Sense and Camera Angles by William Stull, ASC (Feb. 1932)

"The idea that camera movement will give cinematic movement to an otherwise static scene or study, so prevalent among directors and executives, is basically false... Unjustified movement is a sign of directorial weakness, not strength... Once camera movement is decided upon as dramatically necessary, however, director and cinematographer must cooperate closely in realizing it with the utmost of technical and artistic perfection, for a badly executed move is worse than none at all. Many factors must be considered: speed, angle, and above all, rhythm. The preceding action will inevitably have established a definite dramatic (and often physical) tempo or rhythm; the moving camera scene must follow out the same rhythm, or, in some rare instance, increase it."

- Rouben Mamoulian

Conrad Hall: "Highly Pointillistic" Approach

Over the past few years, Hall has been developing what he calls a "Highly Pointillistic" style of lighting, culminating with his work on Searching for Bobby Fischer, in which he employed this technique to its greatest degree. He again utilized this approach for A Civil Action. -AC Mag

"Early in my career, I started to use spotted-down Fresnel lamps for scenes in hallways where it was hard to hide lights. I would put a light 'on the pin'-- which means fully spotted-in-- and then raise it up behind the camera, shooting it over the heads of the characters down the corridor. I'd then just tip it down so that the hot spot wasn't really hitting anything except the far end of the hallway. The light was at a great distance, so it wasn't very bright at the end of the hallway, but I could then bring just the edge of the light down to subtly illuminate the heads of the people walking. Since that light was from the camera, the shadows wouldn't be apparent and I'd get this nice falloff on their bodies.

From there, I started to develop this sort of pointillistic sense of using light by focusing it rather then cutting it. If you hit a wall with a light and then start gradating it by cutting light off certain parts of the wall, you end up with a lot of flags. A light spotted in on the pin is like working with a finer brush, painting a certain area the way you want it to appear with the contrast you want it to have. I can't recall which film this idea started with, but I began using all of my lamps at full focus. Obviously, to create a soft light you don't focus a lamp on a 12' by 12' or 20' by 20' muslin-- you fill the muslin completely and then cut the light from there. But if you're using the raw light at full focus, it doesn't create shadows that are so sharp. If the character happens to run into the light, it creates sort of blurred shadows on the wall. The edge of the light falls off softly, but there's a hot spot in the center. I love to have people walk through too bright an area, for instance. I don't want them to stand there [in the hot spot] and deliver a page and a half of dialogue, but if they pass through something very bright for a moment it creates a good feeling of movement."

-Conrad Hall, ASC