Maryse Alberti: HMI's

From ICG Magazine, A Way With Words by Holly Willis (May 2000)

"One of the biggest challenges of the shot was lighting it, and somehow still keeping it dark and moody," she offers. "We lit it mainly from the outside with big lights-- 20Ks-- on a couple of Condors with very small lights inside." One of Alberti's visual quirks is to light night scenes with tungsten balanced lamps. "It looks more like nighttime. HMIs have this hard-edged, shiny white that I don't like for night, unless that's what you're looking for. But Joe Gould's Secret has a very strong feel of realism-- there is nothing surreal or fable-like or otherworldly, so the lighting was designed to be real. The biggest lights we had were a couple of 20ks and Nightlights. For the rest, we just went with the range of a regular tungsten package."

Vilmos Zsigmond: Classical Painters

From American Cinematographer, A Poignant Pas de Deux by Bob Fisher (December 1998)

"If you are doing a Frankenstein movie or Star Wars, it doesn't have to be realistic-- in fact, it should be more impressionistic or surrealistic. If you are telling a story about real people, the classical painters gave us a good model. They never lit anyone badly, and they never used soft light. They always had nice modeling light on the faces and darker backgrounds so the people would stand out."

- Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC