Masters of Light. Dennis Schaefer
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Marty is the only experience I can give you as I have worked for him more than anybody else. I’ve done six pictures with him. What happens is, I can’t really describe it. It is a chemistry situation. It’s just something that functions. I have a tremendous love for the man and his talent. He has a tremendous amount of respect for anybody that knows what they’re doing, and that already opens the door for anybody to be creative. And I can’t tell you what it is; all I know is that if he called me to do a picture tomorrow and I have another picture going, I’ll drop the other picture and go with him. Because I know that under his auspices and guidance, I will have total freedom to just go as far as I want to photographically. Plus he also, in his own way, teaches me a great deal about directing, which I want to learn about. He teaches me a great deal about the discipline of filmmaking and I find myself making sure that when I compose a shot it isn’t a self-indulgent thing; it isn’t a cameraman’s shot but it’s something that’s appropriate to the story and he brings that out in you. I think maybe that’s what happens with a lot of other relationships like that. The director and cameraman are almost equal in stature but yet each one knows his position. I don’t know what else to tell you about that. It’s not easy to be articulate about it.
It’s a tough thing but there’s a lot of people out there who want to break into the industry. Can you say what’s the best way, or the way that worked for you?
Everybody’s gotten in differently. For me, it was a matter of being there at the right time and being tenacious about it. That should apply to everybody who wants to get into the industry. There’s no such thing as just flipping right into becoming a cameraman. And this really sounds boring, like an old cameraman talking, but if someone had told me in 1969, “You got to shoot Black Sunday,” I would not have been prepared. I would not have known how to do that. So that somehow God gave me the thing to do at the right time. Bloody Mama showed me I could do that kind of picture and Vanishing Point was still within the realm of reality for me. By the time I went to Get to Know Your Rabbit, I had two pictures under my belt; enough to control people, enough to know how to work stage lighting. Sounder was very tough. Lady Sings the Blues was tougher, and so that by the time I got to Black Sunday my control of the technology was totally secure.
I was in the union retroactive to 1964, but actually did not become a union Group 1 until 1966. And in three years time, by 1969, I was shooting a picture, and that’s very fast. And I’ve not been out of work since. But a lot of that has to do with the quality of what I can do, and a lot of it has to do with being tenacious enough to study and to learn. Because I didn’t go to school, but I don’t say that you shouldn’t go to school. If you go to school, you get a lot of that out of your way. But if you want to get in, go to work, if you can, for a documentary house or go to work for a commercial house, public television but whatever you do, don’t stop shooting. Keep shooting and teaching yourself, go out and do it even if it’s just a still camera you’re using, develop your own stuff, look at it. That taught me a lot. I learned a lot. Get books like, hopefully, this one. It will provoke questions. I give a lot of cinematographers’ manuals to people, not because they’re necessarily the Bible but they will provoke questions. Why use a neutral density filter? Why? Why an 85B as opposed to 85 A or 85C? The book doesn’t tell you, but if you look at it and you see this guy is using a 23A and a 20 something 5 red and blue filters to shoot day for night in black and white—why? And it gets the, saliva going and gets all of these fundamentals into a nice secure place so you can say, “I know it.” Now someone says I want to shoot this kind of picture and you’ve got the technology out of the way and you can get into the artistic realm.
That goes back to what you were saying about being able to look at a situation and make decisions. You’re secure because you’ve been there. And therefore you know what you’re doing and you do it. So, like you said, I guess that takes time.
I think that’s what kids nowadays can do; shoot film, borrow cameras, do whatever they can but keep shooting. If you can get a fairly decent film together, there are enough people in this town who will look at it and that’s a way to get into it. Then if you have the fortitude to stay in a loading room, if you have to be in a loading room—be in a loading room. Whatever way you can get in because there is a tremendous need for new cameramen in the industry. The old ones are not being accepted by the new directors, you know. The new guys, the kids coming out of UCLA and USC that are directors, they don’t want to hear from an old cameraman. They want a Zsigmond, they want a Kovacs, and if there’s a better one coming up, they want him. They want Michael Chapman or they want one of these new guys who are coming up. Fujimoto, they want him now, because he’s done something. Also because he relates closer to them; maybe they are on the same level intellectually. I intimidate certain new directors, you know, and so does Gordon Willis and people like that. You get a new guy who calls you up and says, “Do you mind shooting this for me?” Well you can hear in their voices; they automatically assume that I’ll say, “No” or “Here’s the way you do it, kid.” I don’t do that. I have worked with first-time directors and I don’t think a single one will tell you that I have ever ramrodded him in any way whatsoever. I may have coaxed them to do better, but that’s the reason they would go for newer people and there’s a need for those people.
You can go to work for commercial houses that have a union/non-union situation. You go to work for their non-union situation. You must make a pest of yourself. Otherwise you ain’t going to get anywhere, they aren’t going to come to you, and that’s always the advice I give. The union is not that difficult. First of all, it’s not a hiring hall. They don’t get you the job, so don’t make them a bad guy right off the bat. Use them.
What about documentary work? What did that, in a nutshell, basically teach you that would come in really handy later on in features?
What I learned primarily from documentaries was coverage. In documentaries, a lot of times, you are forced to cut the material yourself, but when you have a situation, an event happening and you are documenting it, obviously you can’t be at both places at once with one camera, so you must make the decision of how to cover it kind of like a master shot. When the event is over with, somehow find some other element that is the cutaway from when you were out of focus or whatever and if you learn that, it applies to features, even better. If you really know that, you can make a feature run much faster. You can say to the director, “Here’s a place you can cut.” The most important thing you learn is how to think on your feet. Which is really the basis of what a good cameraman is: to be able to think on your feet. The one thing it does not teach you, because you’re by yourself and you don’t have a director, is how to handle people. But that you can evolve in projects when you work with other people doing your own films. You can learn how that cameraderie has to be established by going on sets. The egos in this industry are so horrendous that you really should study how not to behave, you know what I mean?
On your first feature, Bloody Mama, how did it feel that first day and you were finally the DP, you were to run the crew. How did you prepare for it?
I didn’t know anybody in the crew. Roger Corman was a major producer and he was directing. I got my crew just from the recommendations of the American International people. And so when somebody would say to me, “Well how many 10Ks do you want?” I really didn’t know. So I kept my cool as much as possible and tried to visualize from what I had seen at Fox, the behavior of the cameramen, and what I had done in documentaries; out of that came a behavior where I made, thank God, the right decisions. So I talked to Roger; he said, “I want a very raw, cold look. I don’t want anything glamorous.” And also I went to the lab. At that time the lab had nothing to do with me because I was nobody and they said, “Well, do some tests and we’ll develop them for you.” Well, I didn’t have the facility to shoot tests and I didn’t get a chance to test anything. So I really went very unprepared, and the crew I got was not the world’s greatest. They were the ones who wouldn’t cross the line; the electricians wouldn’t help the grips, etc. But because I came from documentaries I was physically doing work myself and that was against the rules too. But Roger kind of liked that. He liked the fact that I climbed up a ladder and set a light and did this and that. Eventually I charmed the crew into kind of joining me a little bit and they liked the idea. So maybe what I was doing