Masters of Light. Dennis Schaefer
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purpose.
It’s been a long long time since cameramen carried any weight whatsoever. And I think that gives rise to everything in this book because it’s a subtle change that people haven’t caught up with yet.
Well, cameramen, at one time, had a great deal of power in the studios. People like Leon Shamroy. When they were under contract with the studios, they had a tremendous amount of power. But it wasn’t directed in the right direction, I don’t think. Because in those days a director went to Fox and he had a film to shoot. He didn’t ask for the cameraman, the studio said, “Leon’ll shoot that one for you.” And that was it. And the director was the slave of the cameraman because of the technology and the enormous time that it would take to do pictures like that. I mean, I remember when I was at Fox for about six months as an assistant. I remember walking on sets with Leon Shamroy and the director literally changing the shot for the convenience of the mechanics. In other words, Leon would say, “You can’t do it that way! Put him over there! Move him over there, it’s much easier to light from here.” And that was totally against Francis Ford Coppola’s philosophy, against any of the younger guys today. They revolted, and I don’t blame them. The mechanics should adjust to the artistic, to the aesthetics, not the other way around. That is a rule, as far as I’m concerned. There should be no such thing as the cameraman saying to the director, “You’ll have to change your staging because I can’t shoot it through a hot window.” You should have the knowledge to say, “Okay.” And if you’ve got a reflection problem, solve it. If the director is asking for a total impossibility, you must be articulate enough to say why it is. But not say, “Put it over there.” You say, “Where would you like to do it? I can’t do it here; can you find another spot to do it in?” That’s the way to approach directors. So now you’re finding a resurgence in the power, so-called “power of cameramen,” because you are dealing with newer directors and younger directors and people that are interested in not just the artistic but also the mechanics. And you find that most of us really trying to satisfy that ego are getting more into the director’s rice bowl, so we can understand where he’s coming from. And as a result, we’ve become a more viable instrument for the director, so they give us a little more credit. And you find directors really wanting Vilmos Zsigmond or Lazslo Kovacs to shoot their picture and they are going to bat for them. So that’s okay with me, because it’s really back where it should be. As you know, the first directors were cameramen. Now it’s leaning more in that direction. There’s a great collaboration. There’s no ego problem either. Roman Polanski and I had no ego problems. I didn’t have any ego problems with Mike Nichols. And Marty Ritt and I certainly don’t have ego problems. We respect each other’s ability, that’s all there is to it. In the old days there used to be that sort of thing but for a valid reason. The director didn’t get along with the cameraman because he was at his mercy.
He wielded the power and would tell him “No,” and that would be that. That’s interesting because it becomes apparent to us that there were subtle changes that took place in Hollywood maybe ten years ago that are just now starting to have an effect to the point where people can say, “Well, you know, it’s really changed.” Now you’re really starting to see things done differently and this is one aspect of it.
Well, you’ll find the 15-20 of us that work all the time. We are hired and we attend rehearsals. We’re there to watch where the head is going. That was unheard of. That had never been done; where a cameraman was hired in advance enough and asked to be present at rehearsals, just to be on the sound stage where they were walking through the scenes. And most of us now are dealing with art directors and wardrobe designers. I walked in to see Edith Head on Pete and Tillie. I went with Marty Ritt to see Edith Head about the wardrobe for Carol Burnett. She was very funny. She said, “I haven’t seen a cameraman in my office in 15 years.”
How do you choose your film projects?
By the quality of the script. That’s sometimes more important than the director. I feel that if the script is there, then the next thing is I meet the director. He interviews me and I’m interviewing him at the same time.
Do you plan to go into directing exclusively now? Will you still work behind the camera? What’s your approach in that area?
No, not exclusive. I’ve done CBS Movies of the Week; I want to do some more of those. I would like to do some features as a director. I don’t want to stop shooting; I like it too much and I’d be very frustrated if all I did was directing. Because it is frustrating to a degree, especially the post-production aspect of it. But as long as Marty Ritt’s alive, I’ll probably sit around and wait for him to shoot some more movies. Now I can limit myself as to who I work for. I have enough offers to direct so that I don’t have to worry about where my next job is coming from. I like directing very much; I like shooting and directing even better.
On this Movie of the Week, you wore both caps; you directed it and you shot it too. Was your attention divided? How did it work out?
I found it to be very easy. I used my regular crew and they know what I want as a cameraman. So I can give them the set-up and I can go away to work with my actors; then they call me when they’re ready. I come back in, watch my actors go through it, maybe change the lighting a little bit and then we start shooting. I’ve found it easy to do that. My concentration was 90% towards my actors and 10% towards my cinematography which just fell into place. It wasn’t difficult at all. It might be difficult with a strange crew. In certain projects it might be difficult also. I might get into a very heavy dramatic piece where I really should have a cameraman do it so I can deal more with the script and the actors. But I’m not going to give up cinematography.
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John Bailey
"Cameramen don’t necessarily determine the look of a picture as much as the cameraman and director together. It’s a dialogue. For me, the most successful experiences are with a director who already has some kind of vision.”
Due to union seniority rules in Hollywood, most cinematographers are just beginning to hit their stride and explore their potential around the age of forty-five. John Bailey, in his mid-thirties, is making his mark ten years early. After seven features in the last five years, he has rapidly gained a reputation as a cinematographer with fresh insight, invention and the ability to carry it off on the screen. Another Hollywood overnight success? Not when you hear about Bailey’s fifteen years of hustling.
An alumnus of the University of Southern California Graduate School of Cinema, Bailey attended at the same time as George Lucas, John Milius and Randall Kleiser. And while these fellow students were directing films within a few years of leaving the academic halls, Bailey was still struggling to get his union card. In his two years at USC, he shot dozens of student films and later he worked on low-budget productions, always gaining valuable filmmaking experience in the process. After getting his union card, he was an assistant cameraman for five years and then moved up to camera operator on films such as Three Women, Welcome to L.A., The Late Show and Days of Heaven: the traditional Hollywood version of working your way up through the ranks, though for Bailey the process was somewhat accelerated. He paid his dues to become a director of photography, always trying to align himself with cameramen, directors and projects that he felt would be the most beneficial to him in terms of personal growth. He prepared for his DP role by watching, working and learning from every cameraman he ever worked with and now it’s paying off. He is not a slave to any particular style or mode of shooting; stylistically, Ordinary People and American Gigolo are worlds apart. Bailey is adamant about giving every film its own unique personality, trying to let the visual style reveal and reinforce the ideas inherent in the material. In the ranks of Hollywood cinematography, Bailey is a relative youngster, but that’s exciting because he has the imagination, capacity and time to take his visual concepts to the limit in the years ahead.
Boulevard Nights was your first film as director of photography?
Yes and it’s a film I’m very fond of. It came out at the same time as The Warriors. There was a lot of turmoil about gang pictures and violence. The Warriors made