Masters of Light. Dennis Schaefer

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СКАЧАТЬ of very intense, almost hermetic, human drama. It has a boiling test-tube quality to it. Test-tube in the sense too that there’s a scientific, kind of detached point of observation. The camerawork and the lighting are self-conscious enough and remote enough so that you kind of sit back from the cauldron you see in front of you. Some of the most powerful moments with the actors have a detached feel photographically. Or, at least if not detached, then certainly a feel of not being obtrusive. It’s the feeling that you’re privileged to sit there and watch it but you’re not thrown and pulled into it in a way that makes you feel viscerally distraught. It’s an observed film; it has a certain coolness to it. I tried to color balance the film in a very cool way except for the opening montage which has an autumnal feel to it.

      Honky Tonk Freeway was restrained chaos in the sense that it could have been a mishmash of. unrelated incidents. But Schlesinger had a strong sense of how it should all weave together and how the sequences should dance. There’s a lot of camera movement in the film, even more than American Gigolo, but it’s camera movement that is buried and tries to be seamless. It’s restrained chaos in the sense that I tried every way I could to keep things pulled together and unified and still be faithful to the very strong eye that both Scarfiotti and Schlesinger had, looking at the American landscape as two foreigners would look at the more visually bizarre qualities in American life on the road. I tried to enhance that as much as I could. It’s so easy, in films of that scope, to be visually all over the place. But Honky Tonk Freeway is a very disciplined film in a funny sort of way. The characters are so out of control that you couldn’t afford to have a film style that was out of control because that would just create confusion for the audience.

      The approach to Continental Divide is what the title connotes: geographic segregation. The whole point is that here are two characters that are just about as different as they could be. You have a very urban being who is totally involved in the world of newspapers and who would probably pass out the first time he breathed fresh air. On the other hand, you have a woman who has very pointedly escaped all that and has become a recluse high in the mountains. So you have the contrast of the open expanse of the Colorado Rockies and the very closed, claustrophobic world of the Chicago Loop. I tried to juggle those two different visual styles. I tried for a very strong sense of street energy around the newspaper office. We did a tremendous amount of dollying. Michael Apted loves to move the camera and the streets of Chicago are perfect for that. In the mountains, even though the characters are hiking around a lot, the camera is hardly moving. The camera is much smaller than the landscape. When you’re looking at impressive mountains, the only way you want to look at them is just stand back and look.

      Cat People is a myth and a dream. Paul and I worked toward a style of photography that on the surface seemed to be real, almost kind of quotidian in its matter of fact aspect. But it had an overtone, an evocation of a dream-like state. So the camera, when it’s moving, is floating. There are a lot of crane moves. So it just wasn’t a question of the camera moving laterally but on a crane, where it’s up, down and floating around. There’s almost a detached point of view in a lot of Cat People, where the camera is lighter than air. The characters are also kind of drifting. The whole film is somehow in a cloud. That’s not to say that the photographic style was diffuse. We didn’t want to get into a heavy fogged or diffused look. We used the sense of movement and surreal lighting for that. There are a lot of low camera angles and a lot of non-realistic lighting. It is expressionistic in the real sense of the word not just in terms of long shadows but in terms of the colors. More than any other film I’ve worked on, I really tried to go for a painterly use of light. In all my other films I’ve tried to use a very realistic basis. In Cat People I tried not to.

      How would you advise a student who felt he had talent in this area? Would you recommend the same route you took? Or are there many paths to the goal?

      There are many roads. I think that several of them can be pursued at once; it’s not necessarily just a linear progression. It’s very important for everybody to explore the maze of his mind. Shooting, and the actual work of making a film, is very important. Any kind of opportunity to shoot, to learn and to experiment is very important. But I think there also comes a point where, if you’re talking about trying to get into the mainstream of the industry, you’ve got to make that commitment. I was basically very satisfied with the route I took. I don’t necessarily recommend it for other people. But I think there is something to be said for the apprenticeship system. Assuming you’ve reached a point that you understand who you are and that you’ve spent some time working and shooting, you can try to get involved in mainstream film production at the bottom of the scale. You can start as a loader, become an assistant, become an operator and spend whatever it takes—six to ten years—to thoroughly learn all the elements. People are so impatient today. But you only get one chance, especially if you’re a director. If he screws up on his first major film, it’s going to be a long time before he’s heard from again. Even more so for a cameraman. If you jump in before you’re ready, you may get in way over your head and not work again for years. Preparation is really the keynote. You prepare and learn by watching other people. I learned from every cameraman I worked with when I was an assistant and operator. Because once you’re doing it yourself there aren’t too many people you can learn from because you’re on the line all the time. I think a lifetime commitment to learning and studying still photography, painting and all the graphic areas is real important. It’s a constant process. In a sense, you’re a student for your whole career. It’s important to keep that disposition. I think that the same kind of questioning that you do when you’re first starting, where every shot is a new experience, is important to do all the way through. It’s not a skill that you’re learning where, at a certain point, you’ve learned it all.

      I think that film schools are well and fine. I find that most of what you get out of film school can be gotten without going to film school. It’s another link along the chain, though. I’m wary of film schools to the extent that they seem to foster a sense of arrogance more and more because of the success of so many people who have come out of film schools and become incredibly successful. There’s a developing arrogance on the part of film students to think that they’re going to come in and teach the industry how it’s done. I think that’s a mistake.

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      Bill Butler

      "The day-to-day business of making movies is a matter of problem solving. You are constantly problem solving from the time you arrive on the set until you quit shooting in the evening.”

      Bill Butler has a habit of jolting people by casually mentioning that he’s working on his third career. His youthful and energetic outlook tends to obscure the fact that he did a stint in radio, moved on to a distinguished career in Chicago television and then finally made the transition to Hollywood filmmaking in 1969. And while many creative people might have burned themselves out along the way, Butler is probably now turning out the most significant work of this three careers.

      After receiving a degree in engineering, Butler worked in radio for a short time but quickly moved on to what turned out to be the ground floor in a similar but new medium—television. In fact, he helped to construct the first commercial TV station, WGN in Chicago. After getting the station on the air, he remained in an engineering capacity until one day, by some quirk of fate, he got behind the television camera. Ever since then Butler has been artistically hypnotized by that image in the camera viewfinder.

      Working at WGN also laid the groundwork for an important personal and professional relationship that continues to this day. While Butler was a cameraman at the station, WGN hired a new kid in the mailroom, named Billy Friedkin. Friedkin showed some innate talent and was soon directing television shows there. Both men were interested in the dramatic power of film. At Friedkin’s urging, they worked as a team, moonlighting on film projects for church groups and public service organizations. Several of their documentaries won film festival awards. Friedkin moved to Hollywood to test his directing mettle and Butler was to follow later.

      Beginning with his first Hollywood СКАЧАТЬ