Innovation and Creative Intuition on the Set

An Interview With Legendary Cinematographer John Toll

by Jennifer M. Wood | Published February 3, 2007

John Toll

Throughout the history of moviemaking, classic collaborations between directors and cinematographers have resulted in signature cinematic styles. From D.W. Griffith with Billy Bitzer to Paul Thomas Anderson with Robert Elswit, visionary helmers have known that a loyal, innovative DP is the surest way to gain fame as an auteur stylist. 

Though cinematographer John Toll has become a frequent collaborator with several of the world's most celebrated directors, he has always succeeded in bringing his own vision to the forefront of a film's visual makeup. Though their stories could not be more different, films such as Legends of the Fall, Braveheart and The Thin Red Line share a common cinematic bond that can only be attributed to Toll's camerawork.

While still in college, Toll was offered a part-time job as a production assistant with David Wolper. "I would go out on some of these shoots and watch the cinematographers and then go to dailies and see how their work translated to images on a screen and it didn't take long for me to decide that this was definitely for me." Beginning his professional career as a camera assistant, Toll worked in television and commercials before beginning his feature film career in the early '90s. Since then, Toll has gone on to become one of the most respected DPs in the business. His work in Legends of the Fall and Braveheart earned him the rare honor of back-to-back Academy Award wins. And though he did not win the Oscar for his work on The Thin Red Line in 1998, he was awarded various other accolades from such organizations as the American Society of Cinematographers and the Chicago Film Critics Association.

Most recently, Toll's work can be seen in director Cameron Crowe's Vanilla Sky, an English-language remake of Alejandro Amenábar's Abre los Ojos. In an interview with MM, Toll discusses the impact of an Oscar, the process of collaboration and what it takes to empty Times Square.

Jennifer Wood (MM): You worked in television and commercials before your career in feature films began. What were some of the adjustments you had to make to your style and work habits?

John Toll (JT): As a cinematographer, I find the main difference between working in TV or smaller scale features as opposed to larger scale features is the amount of time you actually have to accomplish the work. Basically what this means is that when developing a visual style for any particular film, you need to do it in a way which serves the project in terms of visual intent regarding the story, characters, mood, etc. but which also allows you to be responsible to a schedule and budget.

One of my first jobs as a director of photography was shooting the TV pilot for a period western that eventually became a series. The director was a man named Rob Lieberman, someone I had met while doing TV commercials. Rob is a director with a strong visual sense and he is also very well organized. We had a ridiculously short schedule for this project, something like 13 days, but we were determined to do something visually worthwhile. So we developed a photographic style that we thought could be interesting and would support the story, but would also allow us to work very quickly. Basically, we just adapted a style that we had been using on commercials; sort of a semi-documentary, available light, hand-held or long lens approach and it worked out great.

MM: You won an Oscar for your second film, Legends of the Fall. Your film career was still in its relative infancy, yet you were awarded the top honor in your craft. Was this an experience where you were able to realize and appreciate your own success, or was it an achievement that was frightening in that you knew you would have to live up to it on future projects?

JT: A bit of both, really. I honestly didn't expect to win and was surprised when I did. I remember leaving the stage and looking at the Oscar and saying to myself 'You just won an Academy Award,' like I needed to hear it to believe it. I definitely appreciated the fact that I won, but I didn't take it for granted that it would necessarily guarantee anything in the future. I probably thought about whether I could live up to that accomplishment, but not for long because I was just about to begin the color timing for Braveheart at the lab and most of my energy was going into that. I was fortunate that I was at the final stage of production on a picture and finishing a project, rather than walking on to a set for the first day of shooting and starting something from scratch.

MM: You've worked with some of the film industry's most celebrated directors, including Francis Ford Coppola, Terrence Malick and Cameron Crowe. What did you learn from these partnerships about the moviemaking process?

JT: I've learned something from every director I've worked with. Quite often it was all positive, valuable knowledge based on their past experience. Once in a while it was a good lesson in what not to do because the results were less than we had hoped for. But in my mind, great filmmaking is all one big experiment. The best filmmakers are innovators and the best films are made when motivated by a passion for a story and fueled by creative intuition. Experience is certainly valuable, but not the key ingredient. Most of the directors I have worked with have aspired to do great work, and when it was great it was great because they were exploring ideas that were new to them and allowed themselves to be open.

MM: Describe your ideal director-cinematographer collaboration: At what point would you begin working on the film? At what point would the collaboration end?

JT: In my mind, once a cinematographer starts working on a film and begins a collaboration with a director, they should never actually stop being a part of that film, ever. This is because cinematographers provide a unique function. Other than the director, they are the only people on a film directly involved with the visual content throughout the entire production process. They essentially are the eyes of the film.

In pre-production, they work in collaboration with a director and a production designer to help develop and design a visual style for a project. During production, they work closely with the director in planning and shooting individual sequences-actually creating the imagery. And in postproduction, they participate in supervising the final color correction of both the film prints at laboratories and the digital masters at digital facilities. This level of participation is essential because it is very important that someone is there, beginning to end, to guarantee that the visual intent of the project as originally conceived and executed is what actually appears on the screen.

In the extreme, this involvement should extend even as far as restoration of a film many years after an initial release. Cinematographers know more than anyone about how their films are supposed to look, even years after they have been released. The cinematographer of E. T., Allen Daviau A.S.C., has just finished the color timing of the film prints for that film's re-release. And as newer digital mastering technologies are introduced, cinematographers are usually called to do new video transfers of films they photographed years earlier.

MM: Do you prefer to have a lot of freedom on the set, or do you prefer working with a director who has a strong idea of what s/he wants?

 JT: Working with a director with strong ideas can be a liberating experience for a cinematographer, provided they have something in common to begin with. A director with strong ideas who encourages collaboration will get the best from all of the creative members of a crew because it gives them the freedom to pursue ideas that are focused, and quite often the ideas are improved in the process.

Going all the way back to D. W. Griffith and Billy Bitzer, I think that the best films have been made through great director/cinematographer collaborations and a good collaboration will usually elevate the work of both the director and the cinematographer. Some of the best examples of this are probably Orson Welles/Gregg Toland, David Lean/Freddie Young, Richard Brooks/Conrad Hall, Bernardo Bertolucci/Vittorio Storaro, Francis Coppola/Gordon Willis, but there are many, many more.

MM: At what point do you like to come into a film and begin your planning of the shots? Two of the most incredible scenes in Vanilla Sky are two that couldn't be more different in nature, but were probably equally hard, logistically, to create. The first is the scene of an empty Times Square; the other is the club scene, where Tom Cruise's character, David, first goes out with his mask. Can you talk a bit about the planning and execution of these two scenes?

JT: I like to be involved in helping to design an overall visual style, as well as shots for individual scenes, as early as possible after agreeing to do a film. In the case of Vanilla Sky, I had worked with director Cameron Crowe on Almost Famous and he encouraged me to get involved in Vanilla Sky as early as possible. For a number of reasons, none of them good, we actually had a very short period of time to prep Vanilla Sky. So it all came together quickly, especially Times Square. The contrast between the scene in Times Square and the scene in the club is pretty interesting because we were looking for both similarities and opposite extremes in both scenes.

Times Square was all about trying to put Tom's character, David Ames, into a surreal environment where he discovers himself alone in one of the busiest cities in the world that has suddenly become empty of people. In the nightclub, he finds himself alone in a surreal environment in the middle of a crowded dance floor. In the club he's alone in a sea of people. In Times Square he's alone in an abandoned city.

Times Square was a pure exercise in planning and logistics as much as cinematography. We received permission to shoot there after much negotiation. We had tremendous cooperation from the New York City Mayor's Office and Lt. John Battista from the police department. They wanted to help us as much as possible. However, because of the difficulties in controlling Times Square and the nature of the scene (there could be no traffic or pedestrians visible between 48^th and 39^th Streets on both Broadway and Seventh Avenue because we wanted to do a camera move of at least 180 degrees), they were reluctant to encourage us because they were afraid we wouldn't be able to get the shots we were planning.

They were politely saying that they would help us as much as possible, but we were probably being overly optimistic. Of course we imagined that what they were really thinking was that we were out of our minds and we would never be able to get the shots we were planning in the amount of time we had to do it. They said they could get us two hours of traffic control, between 7 and 9 on a Sunday morning, but after that they wouldn't be able to hold or control the traffic.

The idea of the main Times Square shot was to introduce Tom Cruise as he drove into Times Square, the camera seeing north of 44th Street, up a completely abandoned Broadway and Seventh Avenue. The camera moves toward him as he gets out of the car and into a close-up as he realizes NYC is abandoned. Then, as he runs away down Broadway, the camera moves behind him and cranes up to see an empty Broadway and Seventh Avenue south of 44th Street. We planned to do this in one shot and with no CGI. In addition, we needed several other shots of Tom in close-up running down Seventh Avenue.

On the day, everything worked really well and we pulled it off. Thanks to the NYPD and great support from our NY production team we had exactly two hours to work in Times Square. The execution of the shot required an enormous amount of coordination between the grip department and our Steadicam operator, Larry McKonkey. It had taken us half a day to design the shot and then half a day to rehearse it with Tom. This had taken place in a parking lot in Brooklyn while we were still in prep.

We had recreated the Times Square set in the parking lot and spent the time there designing the shot, rather than trying to do it in Times Square on the day of the shoot. It was complicated because Larry had to start the shot walking toward Tom and the car, move to the close up and then move behind Tom and step on to a crane and get up in the air quickly before Tom began to run. The crane had to move into position and meet Larry and the Steadicam because it would have been visible in the first part of the shot, so the timing was pretty tricky.

Key grips Herb Ault and Richie Guiness did great work coordinating the crane move and it all worked. It was one of those days when it was pretty exciting to be around because it was high energy and all go. We knew that if we didn't get it on that first try we probably wouldn't get a second chance. And it was such a unique experience to be in the middle of Times Square and see it abandoned. It actually was a little spooky.

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TAGS almost famous cinematography john toll tom cruise vanilla sky

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