Masters of Light. Dennis Schaefer
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it sounds like Terry Malick knew very specifically what he wanted?
At the same time, nothing was that rigidly planned. We would find things on location also; there were many things that would just happen. As we were doing the film, we would be finding things. There was lots of improvisation in the shooting, in the acting and all respects.
For instance, there would not be a call sheet that went into great detail as to what we were to shoot that day. Our schedule was dictated by the weather, the conditions and the way we were feeling. This made some people on the crew, which was basically a Hollywood crew, unhappy.
Who determined which sequences were to be shot in the “magic hour” and which ones were not?
Well, it had to do with the logic of it. For instance the scene in which Richard Gere has a fight with a worker who asks him if his sister is keeping him warm; well that scene takes place at lunch time in the fields so obviously it could not be the “magic hour.” So there’s a logic to it. And also we shot at the “magic hour” when actually, in the movie, it was supposed to be dawn or dusk. But that’s a known fact—that farmers wake up very early to do their work. So we shot in the “magic hour” for both sunset and dawn sequences. It made sense, it wasn’t gratuitous. And some scenes, like the scenes by the river with Brooke Adams, they had to be shot at the “magic hour” because it was supposed to be after work. So it was all justified by the logic of the script.
Did you use any filters or put anything in front of the lens?
No, not at all. We didn’t use any filters or any diffusion; we wanted the image to be very sharp and crisp. We didn’t use any fog filters either. We sometimes took out the 85 filter in order to gain one stop in exposure, a supplementary stop. In doing that, of course, the image becomes bluish. In some situations, like when Richard Gere and Linda Manz are roasting a chicken in front of the fire, it worked very well and we left it as it was without color correction. It all became very blue, you remember? And the only thing that has color is the fire and the sparks of fire. But in other scenes, we had the lab correcting the color so it wouldn’t be so blue and so it would match with the rest of the film.
How did you go about shooting those night exteriors, especially the scene where they have the celebration around the campfire?
For that scene, we used a new technique, at least as far as I know. We used propane bottles with burners to simulate the light of the fire. I mean, normally when you shoot a scene that’s supposed to be firelight, you have a spotlight and you wave and shake pieces of clothes or plastic or something in front of it to imitate the flickering of flames. But that always looks very phony and ridiculous. So since my technique has always been realism, I thought why not go to the real thing and use real fire? So we had the bottles of propane with the burners and we put them as close as we could to the faces of the people, but out of range of the camera. We lit it exactly as we would light it with electric light only we used a flame instead. And that light had the real flickering, the real movement and also the color temperature because it’s very warm and has its own kind of reddish quality that you don’t get in electrical light. You know the scene when the fiddler is playing and all the people are dancing? All that is lit with propane.
And of course that made the gaffers, the grips and the prop men unhappy. No one knew whose job it was to handle the propane. The electrician would say, “That’s not electricity so why should I be lighting with that; it doesn’t belong to me.” The prop man would say, “Why should I be handling these bottles? This is lighting.” Nobody wanted to take care of it. It was confusing.
Concerning that night sequence with the grasshoppers and the fire, did you enhance that light? It looked perfectly natural.
The fire was shot actually as it was. It was real fire. No enhancing, no nothing. In fact, if you light fire, you spoil it. Because if you overlight a scene where there is fire, then the fire doesn’t give the proper effect. We did some tests, of course, and we saw that it looked better that way; that it looked better without any kind of “enhancement.” Then when we had scenes of people’s faces looking at the fire, we would use the flame of propane bottles in order to control the effect.
What about that great sequence right before the burning with all the lanterns and commotion?
That was in the script actually; Terry had the idea of people carrying lanterns. The problem is that when people carry lanterns in film, they usually light nothing. Because the lanterns are just props, you see. But we wanted the lanterns to really light the scene. So what we had were some battery belts with electricity hooked up to the lanterns which had warm color bulbs in them so that it would give the color temperature of a flame; not white light. What was important was that the people were carrying lanterns that actually did give light; it doesn’t matter whether it was a real flame or electricity. What we wanted was that those lanterns would actually lead and that they would be believeable.
So we had some smokey color on the lanterns and so on; there was a prop man who did some research on it and we did some tests. Later on I used that technique again in Goin’ South on the mine scene. If you have real lanterns with real petrol, they really give so little light that it doesn’t read; the film doesn’t register.
But that was the extent of your lighting in that sequence?
No, I had some fill light, too. We had some machines making smoke and I used some back light in order to make the smoke appear quite strongly; otherwise the smoke wouldn’t have been visible. I had some front light also, but very little. I used the front light in a way that the lanterns that the people were carrying would actually do the lighting job.
What percentage of the film would you say is shot with natural or practical light?
Almost all of it. There was very little lighting. Only the scenes at the end where the jealous husband goes up and finds her in the room; there we had a couple of lamps with lampshades in the room but we did some lighting there also. But the lighting was always justified because it was coming from the direction of the actual light. Also when you had views of the house from the outside at night, of course that was artificial light in the windows. We needed it stronger than it was in reality, but not by much; it was very close to the truth.
When we had day scenes in the house, it normally was window light actually lighting the scene. We had done some tests; some with artificial lighting and some without and Terry liked it better without the lighting and I did too. So the window light would be the light that was doing the job.
And you would prefer to use the natural light anyhow?
Well, it’s always been my thing. I did a lot of that in The Marquis of O but this movie gave me a chance to do it again, even more so. Rohmer, you see, doesn’t like high contrast; he doesn’t like black backgrounds, he wants you to see things. So with Rohmer, although I had the window light doing the job, I had to put some fill light up so that the backgrounds could be seen. On the other hand, Malick liked to leave things the way they were, which, of course, made me very happy.
That would also be responsible for the skin tones; they had a sort of soft, glowing quality to them.
Yes. At the same time, the scenes had to be staged with the consideration that the depth of field was very small. And that’s where a director like Malick is very important for that kind of movie. The lens is wide open so that the actors would be in focus at one point and then go totally out of focus at another point in the same scene. But Malick was very much aware of this; he would stage the scene so that both of the actors would be in the same focal plane.
In Days of Heaven the colors are very saturated; what causes that effect? What were you doing to give it that saturated look; is it because of “the magic hour”?
I suppose so and also because we had to push the film.
How much?
One stop only. Also things vary from lab to lab. That film was developed in a provincial lab in Vancouver called Alpha Cine and they did a very good job. So it gave a different quality to the film. Otherwise, both Days of Heaven and Goin‘ South were shot with the same camera and the same lenses; so was Kramer