Masters of Light. Dennis Schaefer
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It wasn’t an exploitation film. It wasn’t as much about violence as about the relationship between two brothers who happened to live in the barrio. I found it very intriguing because, as a personal experience, it was like making a film in a foreign country. We employed a lot of local people; many of the secondary characters in the picture were gang kids. We had people who wouldn’t show up because they’d been busted. It was a sociological experience as much as a filmmaking one. I’m very close to it; it was a nice film for me to have done at that point.
What was it like your first day as director of photography?
I felt very confident because Michael Pressman and I had prepared everything carefully. We had been to the locations. We had worked out a shot list. We knew exactly what we wanted. It was a day exterior so I didn’t have any lighting to worry about but we did do a couple of very nice dolly shots. So it went very smoothly for me.
No anxieties, no apprehensions?
Oh I had a certain amount of anxiety; I do when I start every picture. But it was evolutionary for me. When I did my first show as an assistant, I was probably more nervous than my first day as a director of photography. The first day of my first show as an operator, I remember being very nervous too. It takes about three pictures before you really start to feel confident and comfortable. And sometimes not even then. The first day of Cat People was tense for me because it was a very difficult day on a small set. Certain famous concert musicians, for instance, say that every time they’re standing in the wings waiting to go on stage, they don’t know whether they’re going to overcome the nausea to be able to go out and do it. That’s true for anybody who’s been putting their ass on the line, where you have to go out and perform. If you’re just punching a time clock, then it’s a different story.
How did you originally become interested in cinematography?
I guess it goes back to when I was in college and first started seeing foreign films. This was the early sixties. I started seeing Bergman and a lot of the early French New Wave films, the early Truffaut, Chabrol and Godard. It was a kind of filmmaking unlike anything I’d ever seen. And I realized the excitement was in the imagery more than in what was being said, especially with the Nouvelle Vague filmmakers. I knew I wanted to get involved in film. I finally decided to join the graduate program at USC, which was just starting up. They had their undergraduate program for many years but the graduate program was new. It was a very heady two years. Since it was a new program, they didn’t have a notion of how it should be structured, what the academic requirements were, etc. It was very freewheeling and very exciting. Basically what I got out of it was the opportunity to look at hundreds and hundreds of films. We’d run Museum of Modern Art prints of twenties German expressionist films over and over again, all night long. We did things like that. I was at USC at the same time as George Lucas, John Milius, Hal Barwood, Matthew Robbins, Randall Kleiser, Walter Murch, Willard Huyck. After they got out of film school, they really started working in the mainstream of the industry and doing their own films. I was still struggling to get into the union as an assistant.
Did you go into the program with the idea of a career in cinematography or did you just want to be in film in general?
The whole notion of image making and how the image process fit into the narrative line of filmmaking really interested me. And just in the course of looking at all these films—turning the sound off and just watching the shots, running them back and forth—I decided to take a cinematography course. The teacher, Gene Peterson, was a very dynamic and energetic guy who really turned me on to cinematography. He’s not by any means a theatrical cinematographer; his background is in documentaries. But he was so positively certain that films were made by cameramen that he kind of convinced me. That’s when I decided that regardless of what I wanted to do later on, I had to have a firm grounding in what the camera was, how it worked and what its power was. For the two years at USC, I concentrated on shooting student films. When I got out I started working as an assistant at whatever odd jobs I could. It became more and more of a commitment and an obsession. Once I got into the union, I felt at least I was in the ballpark and had a uniform. I might be a batboy but someday I’d be a pitcher. It was just a question of putting in the time. I became aware very quickly that there were a lot of directors of photography that didn’t have the kind of obsession or even the interest that I and some of my friends had. So I felt there wasn’t that much competition; that there were a lot of people hanging on. I decided to try to single out the cameramen, directors and projects that I felt could be the most beneficial for me in terms of personal growth.
What determines a good composition or a good frame to your eye? Is it symmetry, lighting, color, focus? What are the determinants?
I think for any given shot there are a number of elements that, at different times, may have greater or lesser value. If the shot is totally abstract, it’s basically the color. You have to decide what color will recede and what color will assert itself and how you balance them. When you’re dealing with monochrome, it may be just the question of the light. You decide whether you want a very strong back light or cross light, etc. So there’s really no formula for it. The first thing I look at when I set up a shot is the composition; that’s what I analyze first. The important considerations are color, the focal length of the lens, movement, structural balance and focus. Those are the principal elements and I run through them unconsciously every time I pick a shot. I spent four years as an operator and, because of that background, composition is very, very important to me. I don’t think there are too many American cameramen who have real concern with composition; a lot of the foreign cameramen do. If you came out of non-union productions, where you basically operated and lit everything yourself, the last thing you were able to consider was how to compose a shot, especially if you were on short schedules. You were so busy lighting and setting the thing up that composition became sort of an afterthought. Because I had absolutely nothing to consider for four years except to study fifteen different ways to compose any given shot, it became very crucial to me.
But operating was a good preparation for moving up to director of photography?
Yes, it was. Also I was able to dispassionately analyze the styles of different cinematographers. And there are a lot of cinematographers that have either come up through non-union productions or commercials where they have essentially been their own boss from the beginning. They haven’t had the luxury that I’ve had. I was just this morning discussing the same thing about directors. Unless a director has theatrical background from the stage, he hasn’t had the opportunity to watch other directors work. He doesn’t know much about directing films except what he’s learned himself. And the same applies to cinematographers who have essentially had no one else to study, except for monitoring their own work. I’ve had the privilege of working with a lot of cameramen that I thought were very good and I learned a lot from them. So, in that way, it was excellent preparation.
What cameramen or photographers have had an effect on the way you look at things?
Gordon Willis, more than anybody. I don’t speak for everybody my age, but for me he is the preeminent American cinematographer. I think he’s single-handedly responsible for the respect and acknowledgement that cinematographers now have. He has consistently aligned himself with brilliant directors and material. A lot of other very good cameramen have not had that instinct for picking the right directors and the right scripts to attach themselves to. Gordon has. Even those of his films that have maybe been flops, have been interesting films. Photographically, I like his lighting very much; he’s very courageous. He’s obsessed with control of composition to the extent now that I think he’s almost become a still photographer. He doesn’t move the camera anywhere near the amount he used to and when he does move it, it’s very deliberate. As soon as you start to move the camera, you lose control over the lighting and you lose control over composition. It’s just inherent; there’s no way you can prevent that from happening. For me, it’s a tradeoff and it’s a fair tradeoff because I love the excitement of moving the camera. So what I lose in control in the other areas, I gain just by the energy and the momentum of being able to move the camera. Movement makes your job very challenging. If you’ve got a dolly or a crane shot moving from one corner of the room to the other and you’re panning around two hundred and seventy degrees, you have to figure out how the hell you can light the damn thing, especially