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| John Savage stars as Steven in The Deer Hunter’s “Russian roulette” scene. |
Hot tropical sun motivated the light in the hut where this scene played out. The film’s cinematographer, Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC, relied on real sunlight augmented by a few gelled HMIs for key light, using dabs of fill light from behind the camera. But how would other cinematographers choose to light and shoot that same scene today with the advantages of contemporary imaging technology? Could a director create anywhere near the same emotional impact today by putting a DV camera on his or her own shoulder and just pointing and shooting in available light?
Bill Butler, ASC (Jaws; Grease; Frailty) admits, “I’m as excited as anyone else about the possibilities of electronic cameras. What I’m against are the people selling the idea that ‘you no longer have to be an artist.’ It’s a different curve with electronic cameras, which imposes some limits, but you still have to know how to balance light so you get whites and blacks and gray tones.”
We asked John Bailey, ASC (Ordinary People; The Big Chill; How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days) that same question. Bailey attracted media attention several years ago when he photographed The Anniversary Party in DV format. He explained that the decision to shoot digital was motivated by a few Dogme-style movies produced in available light. “I convinced [co-director/star] Jennifer Jason Leigh that film-style lighting was needed to create a sense of time and place, and to amplify the drama,” he says.
Bailey tested three different digital cameras before settling on the Sony DSR-500. “We felt that the 24p HD cameras were too cumbersome,” he explains.
How did shooting in a digital format affect his job? Was he able to work with a smaller crew and less light? “The choice of media doesn’t affect your role as a cinematographer,” he comments. “Every digital format has its own imaging characteristics. You have to think of it as a different film stock. You have to shoot tests and take each camera through its paces until you intuitively know exactly what it can do. I had the same [size] crew, including gaffers, grips and assistants, and even an extra person—a video engineer. The dynamic range and color palette were more limited than film.”
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| Top to Bottom: Cinematographers Rodrigo Prieto (with Curtis Hanson on the 8 Mile set), John Bailey, Brian Reynolds and Bill Butler weigh in on what it would take to recreate that scene today, utilizing digital technology. |
Michael Hofstein was Bailey’s camera operator during the 1980s. He has subsequently spent several years in China shooting commercials, and has compiled 10 independent feature credits, including The Ice Planet and The Learning Curve. Hofstein was cast in the dual role of producer/cinematographer during the recent production of The Seventh Lie in France. The independent feature was produced in DV with a Sony PAL DSR-500 camera, a decision dictated by budget. Hofstein says that lighting requirements were more exacting than film because of the differences in imaging characteristics. There were subtle shifts in colors and the ability to record details in facial expressions as characters moved through scenes.
Brian J. Reynolds has compiled eight nominations during the past dozen years in the annual American Society of Cinematographers Outstanding Achievement Awards competition. He was nominated in 2002 for American Family, which was produced in 24p HD, and this year for American Dreams, a 35mm production. Reynolds refined his technique for using a dimmer board to control lighting on the American Family set. He learned the technique by watching Vittorio Storaro, AIC, shoot Warren Beatty’s Bulworth on an adjacent stage while he was filming NYPD Blue some years ago.
“The dimmer board gave me the freedom to interactively adjust the angle and character of light on moving shots,” he said. “One of the biggest differences in lighting for HD is the need for more fill light, because otherwise the issues/50/images flatten out really quickly. It also doesn’t have the same latitude as film in either over- or under-exposure situations. It’s my job to work with the production designer, costumer and hairdresser to create the reality the director wants, whether I am lighting for film or video cameras.
“I remember a lighting seminar conducted by Michel Hugo during the 1970s. He told us that if we wanted to become cinematographers, we had to learn how to trust our eyes and our instincts. We had to pay attention to everything, every second we were on the set. We had to watch the actors and how they were moving. Watch the light and where the director was standing because that was probably where he wanted the camera, and we’d have to light for that perspective.”
The bottom line is that Reynolds, Bailey and Hofstein all believe that lighting the same Russian roulette scene that Zsigmond filmed 25 years ago would require more attention to fill light and produce less satisfying results if it were produced in DV or HD.
Modern technology provides another alternative. Films ranging from Frida to The Pianist were converted to digital format and timed in digital suites last year. In a Los Angeles Times article, journalist Lynn Smith quoted a “colorist” at a digital timing facility who explained how he “re-lit” scenes in a recent popular sci-fi film. Smith also quoted seven cinematographers, including Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, Christopher Doyle and Zsigmond, who told her that digital mastering is likely to eventually become a commonplace extension of cinematography, but that they didn’t think it would replace the need for artful lighting with actors on the set or in practical locations.
“You can put a window around anything in a frame and isolate it,” said Prieto. “You can make it darker or brighter, alter contrast and colors. In 8 Mile, there are scenes where I asked the colorist to isolate parts of the sky in certain exteriors and make it lighter or darker for continuity. In Frida, we made the color saturation deeper in parts of some scenes. But actors respond to light and I don’t see that changing.”
How about today’s faster films and anamorphic lenses? Would Zsigmond do it differently today with an 800-speed film in the camera magazine and a Primo lens?
The answer is that today’s more sensitive films and faster lenses probe deeper into both the shadow and highlight areas. Hofstein explains that this means he can work with smaller lighting units, but he still has to control the angle, color and intensity of light, and it still has to be orchestrated with the movements of characters and cameras.
“I can close my eyes and recall seeing The Deer Hunter on a movie screen when I was a film student,” says richard crudo (Outside Providence; American Pie) who was recently elected president of the American Society of Cinematographers. “I remember how connected I felt to the characters. The Russian roulette scene was brilliant in the way everything came together—the script, the actors, the production design and Vilmos’ sensitive cinematography. It is stuck in my memory forever. I can’t imagine how you could do it any better today.”
Kees Van Oostrum, ASC (Gods and Generals; Gettysburg) was born and raised in Holland, where he studied moviemaking. The Dutch government funded a scholarship for Van Oostrum to continue his education at the American Film Institute. That’s where he saw The Deer Hunter for the first time. It made an indelible impression.
“It was the film that showed me how the war affected ordinary Americans,” he recalls. “Vilmos created issues/50/images that were metaphors for the emotions the characters were feeling. There are meanings embedded in the light. Later, I shot a documentary in a steel mill town in Pennsylvania. Plumbs of smoke blotted out the sun and created a gray environment. I felt like I was walking into a scene from The Deer Hunter.
“It was one of the most powerful films of its time and it still stands up today. One of the fallacies is that you don’t have to light with digital cameras. The truth is that you don’t have to light to expose issues/50/images with today’s fast films either, because they see the world pretty much the way the human eye does. You use light or the absence of light as a form of expression about the meanings and the sense of time and place in stories. No one ever did that better than Vilmos Zsigmond in The Deer Hunter.”
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| Director Michael Cimino on the set of his 1978 epic, The Deer Hunter. |
Daryn Okada, ASC (Cradle 2 the Grave; Lake Placid) has deep roots in low-budget moviemaking. During his teens, he went from door to door offering to make 8mm movies of his neighbors’ pets. He began his career shooting industrial films before progressing to low-budget features and only recently migrated into the mainstream. “I remember seeing a 70mm print of The Deer Hunter with stereo sound in a movie theater in Westwood,” he says. “There was an early scene with trucks driving through the streets of the town. There was a texture created by the darkness, rain and wet road reflecting light; it was beautiful and real at the same time. I was in the moment in that world. I felt like the characters were my friends. The Russian roulette and other Vietnam scenes were a vision of hell. When two of the characters escaped, I felt like I was coming home with them. It was the longest movie I had ever seen, but I was never conscious of the time. Vilmos found ways to use light like he was painting a picture.”
In a retrospective interview about Rosemary’s Baby, which he shot in 1968, William Fraker, ASC (Bullitt; Looking for Mr. Goodbar) was asked if he would do it differently if given another chance today. His response: “If you ask 10 cinematographers how they would light any scene, presuming that everything else was the same—the director and actors, the same script and set—chances are you’ll get 10 different answers.”
Fraker contends that no two cinematographers would light the Russian roulette scene exactly the same way. “How many cinematographers would have had the guts to go to a remote location with HMI lights? They were new and there were some questions. Chances are that even Vilmos would do it differently today, because he has new experiences to draw on. Or maybe the sunlight would be falling differently, or the actors would be responding differently. Maybe the director would have a different idea. None of this is in a textbook. You have to trust your instincts.”
Charles B. Lang, Jr. compiled some 160 feature film credits—including 18 Academy Award nominations—during a career that stretched over 50 years. He won an Oscar in 1933 for Frank Borzage’s A Farewell to Arms. When Lang received an ASC Lifetime Achievement Award from his peers in 1960, he explained that he kept shooting for so many years because he was never totally satisfied with his work on any film. “I always felt if I did one more film I would get it right,” he stated.
That’s what makes cinematography an art. No one does it the same way twice. Would different be better? The answer to that question is subjective, but it is hard to imagine how The Deer Hunter or the Russian roulette scene could be any more powerful. As Crudo mentioned, those issues/50/images made an enduring impression. Few would disagree. MM