Masters of Light. Dennis Schaefer

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      UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

      BerkeleyLos AngelesLondon

      University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu.

      University of California Press

      Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

      University of California Press, Ltd.

      London, England

      © 1984, 2013 by The Regents of the University of California

      ISBN 978-0-520-27466-2

      eISBN: 9780520907652

      The Library of Congress has catalogued an earlier edition as follows:

      Schaefer, Dennis.

      Masters of light.

      Includes index.

      1. Cinematographers—Interviews. I. Salvato, Larry.

      II. Title.

      TR849.A1S331985778.5’3’092284-2512

      ISBN 978-0-520-05336-6

      Manufactured in the United States of America

      22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13

      10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

      In keeping with a commitment to support environmentally responsible and sustainable printing practices, UC Press has printed this book on Rolland Enviro100, a 100% post-consumer fiber paper that is FSC certified, deinked, processed chlorine-free, and manufactured with renewable biogas energy. It is acid-free and EcoLogo certified.

      Contents

      Foreword

      Preface

      Introduction

       1.Nestor Almendros

       2.John Alonzo

       3.John Bailey

       4.Bill Butler

       5.Michael Chapman

       6.Bill Fraker

       7.Conrad Hall

       8.Laszlo Kovacs

       9.Owen Roizman

      10.Vittorio Storaro

      11.Mario Tosi

      12.Haskell Wexler

      13.Billy Williams

      14.Gordon Willis

      15.Vilmos Zsigmond

      Glossary

      Index

      Foreword

      Near the end of his interview in Masters of Light, the Hungarian cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond responds to a question about how difficult it was for him and his friend Laszlo Kovacs to break into the mainstream of Hollywood studio movies in the 1970s. “I always tell them [students] that it will take ten years,” he begins. “Very few people find themselves becoming a cameraman after finishing USC or UCLA. Very seldom will you become a cameraman in less than ten years.”¹

      Masters of Light was published in 1984. What Zsigmond affirmed then was accurate. He and Kovacs had come up through low-budget, nonunion filmmaking, shooting action and thriller films for the B and drive-in markets. When the studio system fractured into a kind of chaos with the “youth quake” of the 1960s, young cinematographers such as John Alonzo and Mario Tosi were well positioned to walk into a moribund structure. They were also influenced by the aesthetic and technical revolution of the European New Wave, whose influence was then breaking on American shores. Several of those young European cinematographers, such as Nestor Almendros and Vittorio Storaro, benefited from this shake-up in the American industry and began parallel careers in the American mainstream: Almendros with the directors Robert Benton, Monte Hellman, and Terence Malick; Storaro with Francis Coppola and Warren Beatty. Two other American-born cinematographers, Conrad Hall and William Fraker, gained prominence by coming up through the union ranks. There is a famous photo of Hall, Fraker, Bobby Byrne, and Jordan Cronenweth as the union camera crew on Richard Brooks’s western The Professionals. Haskell Wexler, ever the rebel, clawed his way in through low-budget films in the late 1950s, garnering his first Oscar for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, a movie whose documentary style and harsh lighting of the stars Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton inflamed the conservative old guard. Wexler and Hall closed ranks from their differing origins in forming a successful company for TV commercials. Gordon Willis also began his career shooting commercials and documentaries, but he, too, spent many years as an assistant cameraman. For my own part, I began working on nonunion and NABET (National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians) features as a camera assistant. Even after getting into the union in May 1969, I fell prey to a strict seniority structure in which I was allowed to work on a feature film only after members of greater seniority had been employed. My first studio feature as a camera assistant was Monte Hellman’s 1971 Two-Lane Blacktop, now a cult classic of the era but widely reviled at the time of release for its long takes and frequently deadpan acting.

      Although the Hollywood studios were in major transition in the late 1960s, the union locals of the IATSE still wielded considerable power. Perhaps the most powerful of them was Local 659, the camera guild for Hollywood and the western region. IATSE Local 644, for New York and much of the East Coast, was only slightly less rigid. It was virtually impossible to build a feature career as a cinematographer outside this structure. One way or another, all American cameramen had to come to terms with the unions. This is part of the unstated subtext that Zsigmond alludes to in his interview.

      This apprentice/journeyman/master guild system has held sway in the American studios from the 1930s to today. But an alternative way now exists—one that could not have been foreseen by the fifteen cinematographers who were interviewed for Dennis Schaefer and Larry Salvato’s book. This new approach СКАЧАТЬ