Masters of Light. Dennis Schaefer
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the shadows and did not let the distant sunlight overexpose too much. It was very valuable to me. We were able to use it in the wee hours of the day or in the morning; we just kept changing the ratings for the appropriate exposure. Of course, we stayed with the same film stock at night. I knew what the film could do at night and that was no problem. The question was basically if it could hold up as well and be equal to the quality of 5247 on day exteriors. And I found that it was.
I also understand that the 5294 stock is now out; this stock is supposed to be a refined version of 5293.
I have used it. It’s probably a little bit finer-grained stock. I find that the latitude is very good; if forgives you for over- and underexposing a bit. It doesn’t make an enemy out of you if you make a small mistake. I think that with the 5294, Eastman is legitimately saying that it should be rated at an exposure index of 400. That would be a good mean exposure for it but you can, as I have done, go up to 2000 indoors and at night. And you can rate it down to 125.
You wouldn’t be shooting exclusively with 5294 now necessarily?
Oh sure, there’s no reason to use 5247 anymore.
You mean this is a better film in all respects?
Yes, if you look at Crosscreek and Scarface, they don’t look any different than if they had been shot with 5247. Where I rated 5293 rather high at 2000 ASA, it looks like 5247 pushed one stop. But that’s not objectionable. I would use it overall because I think it’s great. The nice thing that Eastman has done is now they have come out with a compatible print stock so that it’s able to pick up the subtle nuances of the 5293. The only case where I might not use the new film stock is if I was doing a picture with a tremendous amount of opticals, with layer upon layer of negative going to be laid on top of each other. Then I might go with 5247 because of its finer grain. I think 5247 is still a very fine piece of material but why start out using it on a film and then find you can’t shoot with it because you run into some dark sequences?
Have you had any experience with lightflex?
I haven’t tried lightflex yet. I’ve done my own version of lightflex, which is what Ozzie Morris did on Oliver Twist and those movies back then. What you do is put a controlled amount of light on a net in front of the lens to give a certain washed look to the print. I did a little bit of that on Backroads and The Cheap Detective. But now they have lightflex which is an actual unit that goes on the matte box and it has absolute control over the amount of light that you can expose to it. It’s a very effective way of getting a certain look. But I haven’t had the occasion to do a picture that called for that type of thing.
Will it replace flashing? Do people still flash film?
I think a few people still do. But it would replace flashing; I would prefer it over flashing because I would have absolute control. I could look right through the matte box and know exactly how much light I’m putting on the film. I’m curious to see what 5294 would look like if you flashed it. I know I will probably experiment with it on the next picture I do.
You’ve also had some experience with the Panacam.
I used the Panacam a great deal to do some of the video sequences for Blue Thunder. I’m very impressed with the camera especially because it uses all the Panavision lenses. It’s very much like a motion picture camera except that it’s recording on video. A lot of the video cameramen are very happy with the idea that the video designers have now made a camera that’s more comparable to the movie camera.
The idea is that the quality of video will improve as more motion picture cameramen cross over and do video with this type of camera?
That’s the hope. I just did an MTV thing for a rock group. But they wanted it done on film because they wanted a “film look.” Some of the things on MTV are very creative and almost all of them are done on video. It would be interesting to see some of them done on film because the opticals would be much better. There is a quality that the lighting cameraman for cinematography brings to his work that the electronic cameraman doesn’t because he’s restricted by the electronics. But now people like myself and others I know are doing some video things. We don’t know the rules; we don’t know any better so we light it as if we’re shooting film. Then we get together with the engineers and see how we can overcome the problems. And most of them are quite open and cooperative about it.
The technology should not control the art. The art should control the technology. The technology should be for servicing the art and not vice versa. TV and video has a tendency to control the aesthetics because of all the electronic technology it deals with. I know it doesn’t have to be that way because otherwise we wouldn’t have Masterpiece Theatre and those things that have been so beautifully done in England with the electronic system. I know that it can be done here. In the future, I can see a lot of episodic television being done with the Panacam on video because the quality will be just as good if not better. It would help bring the cinematographer’s techniques into the video realm and episodic TV would look ten times as good. It wouldn’t be so flatly lit and so boring to look at.
Have you seen the reel on the Skycam?
Yes, the Skycam is a Garrett Brown invention that Panavision is developing a lightweight camera for. It was just marvelous to see the things that this camera can do; it looked like it was literally suspended in air. It’s a very ingenious design of poles very high up that suspend the camera. It’s gyroscopically and radio controlled and it does everything but make martinis. I see a great value to it; you could use it in sequences where you couldn’t lay a dolly track. For instance, in a battle scene or something with a great many people, where you want the camera to travel around at people’s eye levels and then move all the way up and see the entire overview.
Do you think it’s quite a bit of trouble to set up?
No, it’ll go through the same growing pains that the Steadicam and the Panaglide went through. In the beginning, everybody overuses them like crazy; now they are starting to use them properly. The Skycam is going to have the same problem. It’s going to be used like crazy until some good, intelligent directors use it appropriately. For example, the Steadicam was used very appropriately in The Shining but it was not necessary in many other films I’ve seen. The visual is such an important aspect of our business that when a new piece of equipment comes out, it has a tendency to be overused. But it has to go through those growing pains otherwise you never discover what its limitations are.
I think the same thing with the 5294 stock. Cameramen are a little more conservative about the film because they get used to one thing and they don’t want to change. But as they start to discover the value of 5294 and how versatile it is, you’ll see more and more people using it and eventually pushing the film to its limits. I went to 2000 ASA on it and I think that’s about the limit on it. I did do some tests at 4000, 6000 and 10000 ASA and got an image, believe it or not!
Didn’t you use the 5293 stock on Blue Thunder?
Yes, but we didn’t have enough for the whole picture. We used it for some of the night sequences with Roy Scheider on Hollywood Boulevard, we used it for the scenes inside his apartment and we used it for some of the process photography in the helicopter where we’d get a lot of depth of field. I rated it 1700 ASA and got an f5.6 stop which gave me more depth of field. We wanted to use it for all the night photography but we couldn’t get it.
That was your first experience with the 5293; how did you feel about it at that stage?
I loved it. I did some very extensive tests on it. At that time Eastman was a little hesitant for this film to be used in a major motion picture because they really weren’t sure of the kind of animal they had created. And it would have been very risky had it been a failure. But I felt very confident, once I tested it, that it would be good.
The end of the picture, with all the slow-motion night photography of the train crashing into the helicopter, was a once-in-a-lifetime shot. There was no gambling there. I had to shoot high-speed cameras with very little light and I had to rate the film at around 1600-2000 ASA. And we got a very good image out of it. If we had not been able to shoot that scene with 5293, we would have had a full day’s rigging of lighting just to get the lights