Masters of Light. Dennis Schaefer
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important that they get along because they’re spending more time with each other than they are with their families. I want to let them do their jobs and not step on their toes. The more freedom you give the individual crew member, the harder he’ll work and the more committed he’ll be to the film. I really believe it’s a collaborative medium.
So you’re not too autocratic?
I try not to be. But just as the director has a strong conviction about the dramatic and narrative values, the cinematographer has to have the same conviction about the overall photographic values and, to a greater or lesser extent, all the designed visual values. The production designer or the visual consultant is not usually on the set that much. As with Nando on the films we’ve done, I become his eyes and ears on the set. So I tend to be very strong when we want something a certain way that we have discussed. But I try to assimilate everybody’s point of view because you never know where tremendously wonderful ideas come from. I don’t believe in the autocratic approach though I believe very much in the auteur concept of filmmaking.
I would think that everybody in your crew would have a basic idea of what you want and they try to stay within that realm without going off the deep end.
Sometimes exactly what you need is an off-the-wall idea. Because even if it’s not an idea you want to consider, it may force you to think in a slightly altered mode. It might bend your own perception to come up with something even better. Most of the time now, I’ll ask the operator, “What do you think? How would you like to frame this?” and basically look at his idea before I show him what I want. I used to always show the operator the composition I wanted and then ask him whether he liked it or saw something different. Now I try to ask him first because it puts him in a position of being a contributor rather than doing it the way I want it. Sometimes I get some terrific surprises.
How important is photographic style in determining the success of a picture?
That’s really hard to say. In the case of Honky Tonk Freeway, almost none at all. The design of the film was terrific; Nando did a fabulous job of catching a certain gone-crazy pop Americana. I’m happy with my work in it. The critics, however, have trounced the film. I think it’s one of those films that five years from now somebody may look back on it and say, “Why did that film take such a beating; it’s kind of interesting.”
I don’t know; I think maybe the technical credits don’t really matter that much, except in a case like American Gigolo, where so much of the style was the content. I think that if the photographic style, the design, the music and the wardrobe had not been all complementary, the film would have really suffered. In Ordinary People, I think it enhanced the film a lot but I still think it would have been as powerful a film as it was without it. Take another film that I think had the same kind of impact on people, The Great Santini. In terms of the technical level of execution, The Great Santini is a much simpler film. But a lot of people were very moved by it and had the same kind of dramatic experience. I think that’s basically why people go to movies. It’s a typically Hollywood conceit that we think the packaging of the film is so important. If the sound is muddy and incomprehensible and the photography out of focus then you’ll have a problem. For instance, as much as I like John Cassavetes’s films, the lack of technical values, especially in his earlier films, made it very difficult for an audience to put up with what was going on.
Along the same lines, how do you think the average audience perceives the cinematography of a film?
I don’t think they pay much attention to it. What they notice are pretty exteriors, you know, postcard photography like sunsets, mountains and oceanscapes. A lot of the response I get on Continental Divide is about how beautiful the mountains were. The part of the film I’m most satisfied with is the claustrophobic segments in downtown Chicago around the Loop at night. Cinematographers and the general audience are looking at very different things when they talk about photography.
You’ve worked with an interesting range of directors with diverse backgrounds. What talents and abilities do you regard as essential in a director and in your working with him?
A strong narrative sense is the most important. The director is the custodian of the story the same way the actor is the custodian of his character. An actor can’t be expected to go beyond his own character and understand the whole weave or the whole pattern of the film. A cinematographer can’t be expected to. Even the writer, who is hardly ever around, is fairly insulated from the day-to-day goings on. It’s really the director who has to understand the unfolding of the story. Most people go to the movies to see a good story. That’s the most important thing. Schlesinger is a very good storyteller. Despite the inherent difficulties with the script of Honky Tonk Freeway, there’s a very intricate weaving of the characters, especially as they all come together in the scene in the fish restaurant. Schlesinger knows how to do that and all his films have that same kind of quality. Redford had a tremendous ability to focus in on the details of unraveling the story. So much of the strength of Ordinary People comes from very specific detailed behavior. And Redford has an incredibly incisive eye for gesture and nuance. That’s part of the whole success of that film. That non-verbal storytelling is a part of storytelling too. A lot of the really wonderful moments in Ordinary People go beyond the dialogue, as good as it is, into little quirky things, especially with Tim Hutton’s character.
A director’s awareness of photography, design and even editing is really secondary, assuming that he gets proper coverage. A good editor and a good cinematographer will be sure he gets that.
What films are you the most happy with and why?
As films or as photography?
Both, as a total piece and as to your work.
As a total piece, I guess Ordinary People is the most satisfying for me and not simply because it won so many Academy Awards. It represents the kind of film I want to make. It’s humanitarian filmmaking. For me, Ordinary People was the strongest synthesis of all the filmmaking elements. I was so pleased with what Redford and I were able to do photographically, within the context of not distracting from what the story was about.
Stylistically I’m very, very happy with American Gigolo because it was the first piece I did where I felt I had enough freedom to do almost arbitrary things. Things that would not be distracting but would flow into the whole feeling of the film. I’m very happy with Honky Tonk Freeway. Structurally, it was the most complex film I’ve ever worked on. It was really like fitting together the parts of a puzzle. Every day it was fascinating to me to watch how Schlesinger was going to pull it off. It was a very ambitious undertaking. I am amazed, given the density and complexity of the film logisticially and character wise, just how much of it did come together.
Honky Tonk Freeway looked like it had an incredible amount of logistics involved.
Just moving the equipment from one place in the country to another was difficult. There were a tremendous number of car mount scenes and they are infuriating because it’s so hard to get the camera exactly where you want it. It’s hard to shoot from one vehicle to another and to coordinate the movement of the vehicles. It’s very difficult to shoot moving cars at night and not make the lighting look artificial. We had a couple of involved rain sequences at night which were difficult. It’s hard to create the illusion of rain and depth with moving cars on the freeway. After you have the lighting roughed in then you have to light the rain as a separate element. It’s the first complex rain sequence I’ve ever done. Schlesinger was totally uncompromising. He’s used to creating depth in his pictures; usually as far back as you can see in the frame, there’s something happening. That’s the way he wants it and rightly so. It was a real challenge for me to work in depth the way he wanted.
On Honky Tonk Freeway was there a lot of second-unit work? I’ve always wondered on a logistical film like that how much work you do and how much does the second unit pick up?
There was more second unit work on that film than anything I’ve ever done.
In your experience, what kind of work is relegated to the second unit?
Almost anything that does not involve dialogue and principal actors could be considered second-unit work. Certainly stunts could be considered