Masters of Light. Dennis Schaefer
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for the strip of beach that it was on but rather because of what was under the house. That row of houses was all on pylons and it had just such a bizarre sense—houses hanging right above the sea. In a sense, it was a landscape of the mind, being under that house and walking along there. The end of the sequence plays with Richard and Nina against some of the posts. The tag shot is of them leaning up against a couple of the supporting pillars of the last house and beyond you see a little cove and a boat. It’s just like it’s the end of the world. It’s at a point where Gere is in total despair; he feels that the world is closing in on him and there’s nowhere for him to go. And yet the shot has an incredible kind of sensual density to it though it’s a very despairing moment in the film. Paul and I were constantly intrigued with that kind of juxtaposition.
On day exteriors, you somehow have to impose your will on the environment. You have to work with what is given. How do you do that?
A lot of times you’re lucky enough to have a director and producer who share that kind of concern. They will want to shoot certain scenes under specific light conditions, such as Schrader wanting to shoot at magic hour. Redford wanted to shoot at a certain time of the year in the Midwest; when the leaves were falling, when the skies were leaden and overcast and you have that almost English light. So that makes it very easy when you schedule those things. But that doesn’t happen a lot. Beyond that, for me it’s a question of finding compositions and movement. There’s not too much you can do to control sunlight. Some cameramen who don’t like hard sunlight will stretch huge parachutes or silks up to filter and soften the light. But that doesn’t fundamentally change anything; you can’t affect the colors or anything. It’s still there. I like harsh sunlight; when it’s very clear and sharp, I like it a lot. There’s a lot of it in Honky Tonk Freeway because everybody is on their way to Florida to find the sun. I made the most of using the hard sunlight. On Continental Divide, we wanted the mountain sequences in Colorado to be very sunny, bright and saturated. We were lucky that we got it; there was little overcast while we were there. The Chicago scenes we wanted to be almost claustrophobically sullen. It was starting to get pretty late in autumn and the skies were leaden and dark. We shot a lot around the Loop. So that the sunlight, when it did come, never much reached us. It was like shooting in the canyons of New York. All day long we had this grey, unappetizing light. I liked that because that’s the way I wanted Chicago to look in contrast to the mountains.
What are the first things you do when you begin to light a set or location? What are the things that get your immediate attention?
The first thing I look for is a light source, assuming that it’s a scene that warrants source lighting. Or even if it isn’t, I have to have an imaginary source even if there’s no logic to it. I have to find someplace where I could imagine, either on real or surreal terms, there would be illumination. If you’re on location, that’s usually easy because nature speaks to you very clearly. That’s one reason I like to shoot on practical locations. If we were to shoot in this house, I could probably shoot most of the day with existing light and maybe a little fill. It’s a look that’s hard to duplicate on a sound stage.
That natural light look?
Yes. The look you get from a real house or store is hard to duplicate. When I’m on stage, I will try to duplicate it. In Ordinary People, there’s a story point that the meeting that Conrad has with Dr. Berger takes place between four and five o’clock. The time that the story spans is approximately early October until February and that’s basically when the days are getting to be their shortest. One hour of time in the late afternoon goes through a great change of light quality. So each one of those meetings is set up to have a very different light. We started off with an afternoon scene in an overcast light; the second meeting had just pieces of sunlight; the third was a very stylized sunset; the fourth was magic hour with some blue light outside; in the fifth there was full night with an outside neon sign flashing. The last meeting takes place in the middle of the night and I basically wanted to feel that there was nothing on in the room except the overhead light that Berger turned on as he opened the door. I wanted it to have that gritty, grimy feel that you have in the middle of the night with just a single light on. The light source wasn’t in the picture because it was high overhead. It was a coop light like Gordon Willis uses. It was very intense for the center of the room where they sat most of the time. It fell off as you got closer to the walls. I didn’t use any other light so the farther they got away from the light, the darker they got. When Conrad retreated into the corner, he got very dark and gritty looking. Then when they were under it, the light was very hot on top of their heads. So that’s the kind of thing it was in terms of deciding how to light a set; it was all of a piece.
A lot of times on practical locations I’ll run into fluorescents. Rather than turn them off and try to control the light, I’ll usually use the existing fluorescents and supplement them with our own. I love fluorescents. There’s a unique look they have that just can’t be duplicated any other way. The newspaper office in Continental Divide was all done with fluorescents. Fluorescents have traditionally been a bane to cameramen and most cameramen just hate them. But Gordon Willis used fluorescents for the Washington Post sequences in All the President’s Men. That was a stage set and he could have installed any kind of lighting he wanted but he chose to put in hundreds of fluorescent units and place the ballasts along the outside stage wall. He didn’t correct for them in the camera; it was all done in the lab as far as I know. I used to correct fluorescents with filters. Now I don’t. I just let the lab make the correction and they turn out looking quite good. But the fact that you have assaulted the negative—and that’s the only way you can describe it—with that green light that fluorescents have when they’re uncorrected, there’s a residual texture that is very much the way institutional lighting is today. It’s part of an emotional attitude we have about office buildings. To do it any other way just doesn’t work for me; I like that fluorescent look.
Do you pay any attention to lighting ratios and color temperatures? All the cinematography books written for students emphasize them.
That’s a tyrannical old-guard way of looking at photography. While that was pretty much in vogue when I was studying cinematography, it’s been pretty well thrown out now. Color has become such an important dramatic accent that cinematographers deliberately violate balanced color now. But no, I don’t pay much attention to color temperature at all. In fact, I use a lot of gels to alter it. As far as lighting ratios are concerned, I used to do that. I used to light very strictly by ratios because I wanted consistency. I didn’t want one close-up to have a four-to-one ratio and another one a six-to-one ratio and then have to intercut them. Now I just fill by eye. I’ve had that much more experience. Most cinematographers do fill by eye.
What has been your experience with the higher speed Kodak film stock 5293?
The first time I used it was on Without a Trace and I’ve used it to some extent on every picture since then. I used it a lot on The Big Chill; almost all the interiors are photographed with 5293. Then, at the time I was doing The Big Chill, I was answer-printing several other films and I became very critical of contrast and grain problems, especially going through the dupe with 5293. I guess I should have expected it with the higher-speed film but everybody seemed to be so enthusiastic about it when it came out. Plus it looked so good in daily form that nobody anticipated having problems. But we were having so many problems with print stocks that it diverted us from the real problem of 5293. I came to terms with it head on when I was doing Racing with the Moon. It was a period film. I didn’t like the dailies I was getting the first week and I decided to shoot certain scenes using 5247.1 saw a marked improvement because I was using the new modified 84 print stock. So I used very little 5293 on Racing with the Moon. Looking back on it now, I think the 5247 stock is far superior; it’s got more latitude, it’s less contrasty, it has much less grain and it holds up better through the intermediate dupe. I’m trying to avoid using 5293 but that’s a moot point now because it’s been discontinued and replaced with 5294, which is supposed to be a little bit faster. Now I’m using some 5294 for the first time on The Pope of Greenwich Village but I’m not particularly enthusiastic about it. I’m only using it for night exteriors. I’m going to continue to use 5247 as much as I can.
So right now you feel that 5294 has limited applications.
It’s