Masters of Light. Dennis Schaefer

Чтение книги онлайн.

      I’d like to talk about some of the technical aspects of cinematography.

      Fine. I’m not bored with technology. We’re in a marvelous period to be cinematographers, because of the new technology that keeps coming out. We look a thousand percent better to a producer than someone like Jimmy Wong Howe did. Yet they didn’t know what he went through. I mean, that man was running around with a 165-pound camera and here we run around with a 45-pound camera that you can manipulate and move around. Technology to me is not a boring subject. Anything you want to know I’ll tell you, if I can.

      Harold and Maude: the film had a sort of dreamy, somber look to it, and I’m wondering how that look was arrived at, and finally how you achieved it?

      Well, Hal Ashby really was the instigator of that, as most directors usually are. They instigate what kind of a look they want. I wish that I could do that picture now, with what I know now. And also with the certain reputation that I have now, I could have been even braver than when I did that picture; because that was only the third film that I’d ever shot. And when I met Hal Ashby, I was very impressed with him because he’d done a picture called The Landlord that I liked very much. Haskell Wexler got me the job. He recommended me to Hal. So there I was in the position of really wanting to be gutsy and do something dramatically different. By the same token, I didn’t want to ruin my friend’s recommendation. And I must say Hal was very patient with me, and so I went a little bit but not as far as I would have liked to go. All Hal told me was that all the sequences with Harold in his home should have a certain sort of sterility; sort of clear, clean, pure, no diffusion. The angles were to be more symmetrical; sort of meat and potatoes. And every time we ended up with Maude, it would have a slight craziness to it, just a little kookiness, a little tip (of the camera) up, a little tip down, a little diffusion. Also in the answer print, every time it was Harold and Maude, or Maude, it was a slightly warmer, toastier, softer look. And Harold and his mother and by himself, it was a slightly colder world, maybe a more realistic world to him. I wasn’t as brave then; I wish I could do that again.

      Around that time you had, or I guess gained a reputation for working rather quickly and with great mobility. I think that’s one of the reasons why you went on Sounder. The producers thought that you could save some money.

      Yes, that was a very inexpensive film. Yes, I do work very fast. I don’t think any picture I’ve shot has ever gone over schedule. But a lot of it is, to give the devil his due, not really so much how fast the cameraman is as what kind of communication and rapport he’s got with the director. If that director is not communicative enough, then you find a lot of very fast cameramen are slowed way down. Now, the quality I have for working fast may be because I came from the world of documentaries. In documentaries I did everything myself. We functioned rather quickly, we had to get in and out, not for economic reasons but for expediency. So the first picture I did was Bloody Mama with Roger Corman, who is a fast person himself. Well, we just communicated very easily. He would say, “Are you ready?” I’d say, “Yes, I’m ready.” Even if I wasn’t ready, I would design something that would work. I was thinking two steps ahead of him. So not knowing any better, I just continued to work that way. Plus, I have tried to keep the same crew all the way through, who help me tremendously. They almost read my mind and they know how we work and how we function.

      Now Sounder was what I consider my breakthrough into the big time as far as directors go. Marty Ritt was the first big, established director I ever worked with.

      On Sounder Marty said to me, “It must have a lyrical quality,” so you find that most good art is really terribly simple. The basis of good composition and good painting is simplicity itself. And Marty is such a good stager; he stages things so pretty. And I taught him a couple of things that I brought in from my world, and he taught me a great deal about directing. And he did that very fast, and very economically. The picture ended up costing only $860,000. So we did it fast but we had six or seven weeks; it wasn’t like a movie of the week in 18 days.

      He had this wonderful joke he performed for us all the time. He had his little trailer that he would park somewhere out of the picture and he’d say, “How long will it take you?” I’d say, “I don’t know.” He’d say, “Well, just call me when you’re ready.” And we’d watch him and just before he’d get to the trailer, we’d say, “Marty, we’re ready.” And he’d turn around and look and say, “You’d better be ready.” We’d never let him get to his trailer.

      If you had to analyze it, where do cameramen go wrong when they become slow? I mean, what quality do you have, what makes you fast, what things did you nurture to give you that speed?

      Well, my theory, and really it’s just a theory has to do with the fact that in documentaries you make instant decisions because your subject doesn’t stand still for you. So you make decisions while you’re looking through the finder. What is it you’re going to stay with? And there’s a certain bravura, I suppose, in letting the camera roll on someone and knowing that, if you stay on him, that’s better than to pan over here where something more exciting is going on because out of that you might just end up with nothing. So it’s that kind of training, plus the time limits that you have in documentaries. But when I brought that to features, I think that I unconsciously applied it.

      Now, the other part of my theory is what might happen to some cameramen—and I don’t know specifically if it applies to all of them—is that you do get to a certain point where you start working on pictures of great magnitude or some very important film, and people go around patting you on the back and saying, “Jesus, you’re great, this guy is terrific. He is fast.” You might start asking yourself “why?” And that will slow you down, you see. It happens. You reach a point when you say, “Wait a minute, why am I so good, what is it about me?” So, as a cameraman, you get there, you look at a set, you start to think about it, you start chewing on it too much and then, all of a sudden, you’re taking too much time. I think that’s what happens. I went through that to a degree, right after I did Chinatown.

      On Vanishing Point, you had a film crew traveling over a lot of space and you’re filming a story that keeps moving, that’s episodic. What are some of the problems that the cameraman has to face when shooting a film like that?

      The logistics, of course, were tough: the cameras, the heat and the dust. We’d take some great chances; we did some stunts with one or two cameras and never waited to see if the lab would say it was okay. We just went on to the next location. We were very lucky; we didn’t lose a single frame, never lost any negative. For necessity’s sake it was a very small crew; the entourage for the picture was bigger than the crew. I only had two grips and two electricians and myself and a couple of assistants and that was it.

      What sort of problems did you have in the desert with the dust?

      The cameras can get thrown into worse positions than they used to. An example would be in Vanishing Point, using the Arriflex so much. And to put it in the front of a car and shock the shit out of it. Well, that camera was designed as the gun camera for the Messerschmidt so that was a pretty secure СКАЧАТЬ