The movies that inspired me in my youth

[Mark Dunn]

It was studying this movie that I figured out a basic lighting principle, which could be described either as “when a face is lit in half with the key coming around just enough to light the second eye, put the camera on the shadow side of the face”. Or another way to think of it is “light from the direction that the actor’s eyes are pointing in terms of screen direction (if the actor is looking screen right, then the key should come from the right side of frame)”. Or “put the key light coming from upstage and the camera downstage”. It was studying this close-up of Ripley at the end of the movie that I figured this out.

 

I'm sure David knows this but it's called "narrow lighting" in portraiture- as opposed to "broad" where you light the side of the face nearest the lens.

[Phil Rhodes]

I always thought they were lighting her to look like a planet in orbit as viewed from out-system. The trick is used in Aliens, I think, when she's in suspended animation and they transition to a shot of Earth.

[Bill DiPietra]

I always thought they were lighting her to look like a planet in orbit as viewed from out-system.

 

That's an interesting interpretation and quite plausible. Never thought of that.

[David Mullen ASC]

#7. I would be remiss if I didn't bring this up:

 

I watched a LOT of “Star Trek” growing up, mainly the re-runs in the early 1970’s, sometimes appearing twice a day at some point, once right after school and then again late at night. I can’t say whether the show had a big effect on my cinematography, but there must have been some sort of impression made (or else what were those hundreds of viewing hours for?) Of course I originally saw them out of order, though having read “The Making of Star Trek” by Stephen Whitfield (c.1968), I knew how they were originally shown. Recently I read the three volume book set “These Are The Voyages” by Marc Cushman, which broke down every episode by their shooting order, giving a description of what was shot each day based on production reports and interviews. The books are a fascinating glimpse into TV production in the mid-1960’s.

 

It’s interesting for me to compare the 1st pilot (“The Cage”) shot by William Synder, with the 2nd pilot (“Where No Man Has Gone Before”) shot by Ernest Haller, and the series shot by Gerry Finnerman. In some ways, though Finnerman was the youngest (only 35 when the series began), and had to deal with a shorter schedule than the pilots, he did the most elaborate work – he seemed to be motivated to show what he could do with shadow patterns, colored lighting, diffusion on close-ups with flags creating shadows across the foreheads, chest, etc. The second pilot, shot by Haller when he was about 70, is lit the most flatly and high-key. Snyder’s work on the original pilot is somewhere in-between the two looks. I think Finnerman also benefitted from working on the Enterprise Bridge set repeatedly, figuring out the best angles, because it has always been a difficult set to light and stage actors in, even in the later movie series. It’s a round room with reflective surfaces, multiple levels to the floor, and everyone ends up staged in depth from near to far (often with Kirk in the center), creating focus issues.

Keep in mind that this show was all shot on 50 ASA tungsten stock, Kodak 5251, and often with T/4 zoom lenses.

I like the more monochromatic color schemes of the original pilot, though having the uniforms be blue, greenish-gold, and tan is a bit problematic, tan and gold being so similar (it's funny because "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" had a similar color scheme and had some tan uniforms and a few brown uniforms, which I didn't think was a good combination -- brown was so 1970's. The tan was OK because it reminded me of U.S. Navy khaki):

As you can see, the lighting for the 2nd pilot is a bit flatter:

Whereas when it went to series, it got a lot richer and moodier. The tan costumes got replaced by red, and the red was added all over the art direction - the bridge elevator doors and the railing and the navigator's console all got painted red. The collars became black.

[Jay Young]

I grew up with TNG of course, and it was fantastic. I have since wanted to watch the original series but I can't abide by the "update" they did for Netflix. I love the fact that it got a decent treatment, but can I just get the original rotoscope work? I want to see what they did back then, to see the hard work that was put in, not see what could have been if computers....

 

I find myself constantly returning to the whole Star Trek franchise, but if I had to pick a favorite based on storyline alone, it would be Babylon 5. Still I love the moody style of lighting in the original series.

[Phil Rhodes]

 

 

having read “The Making of Star Trek” by Stephen Whitfield (c.1968)

 

I had an original copy of that (which was ten years old when I was born...) and read it until the covers fell off. Probably still got it somewhere.

 

P

[Bill DiPietra]

 

 

 

I've been re-watching the entire original series over the past month or so on Netflix. The shot above - one of the moodier lighting schemes often used for Kirk - appears to be from The Naked Time (from the first season) While I love the lighting in those kinds of shots, if you watch the entire scenes, it didn't always match with the rest of the lighting. It almost became something of a motif because it was done in many other epiodes.

 

I've been observing the color palettes from the first two seasons (in my opinion, the meat of the series) and notice that most of the scenes which take place on the Enterprise are comprised mostly of primary colors (with a few exceptions in Kirk's quarters or in a briefing room, etc.,) and that most of the scenes that take place on the planets use a subrtractive palette or even party colors at times.

 

I actually like the updated effects that they've used with the exterior of the Enterprise and some of the alien spacecrafts (e.g., The Doomsday Machine.) But I agree - sometimes it's a little too much and I would rather just see the old-fashioned, cheesy effects as they were initally done.

[David Mullen ASC]

The blu-rays have both versions, the original vfx and the CGI ones. The dupe stocks used for the original vfx aged worse than the camera negative, which is one reason why they decided to re-do them.

 

The later Trek movies are an interesting case study for me of the same sets and actors being shot over years by different cinematographers; I could probably teach a whole class in the lighting of the Enterprise bridge set... Anyway, when students sometimes ask what the difference in look is between spherical and anamorphic lenses, I often show these two frames, one from "Star Trek VI" (Super-35 spherical) and the other from "Star Trek V" (35mm anamorphic):

 

 

 

Before the existence of VCR's and DVD's, I used to buy paperback photo-novels of these movies -- I have ones for "Star Trek: The Motion Picture", "Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan", "Close Encounters", the first episode of "Battlestar Galactica", and "The City on the Edge of Forever" episode of the original series.

 

Studying the photo-novel of the first Trek movie, I started noticing the use of split-diopters because of how they cause the horizontal rail of the bridge to get broken in some shots. The two panels of Kirk and Decker show how the rail is broken in the tighter 2-shot but not in the looser shot over Ilia's shoulder:

 

 

Talking to Richard Kline over the years, I know that they used the split-diopters to create the deep focus look that Robert Wise liked so much for directing a scene (maybe he picked that up because he was the editor of Orson Welles' first two features), while still allowing them to shoot in low-light to balance with the 16mm projectors all around the set creating the monitor images. I'm guessing that most of the bridge scenes had to be shot at f/2.8 (in anamorphic on 100 ASA 5247). You can tell when they boosted the light level for using zoom lenses or for the VistaVision plate shooting of the view screen direction, because the monitor screens and blinking lights all look dimmer in those shots.

 

You can see the split in the rail here:

 

 

Whereas the split is hidden better when the background was a blank wall or had a vertical line in it:

 

[David Mullen ASC]

"Star Trek: The Motion Picture" is mostly a prime lens movie, but it's interesting that anamorphic zooms were so popular in the 1970's considering that they were only an f/5.6 wide-open (maybe f/4.5) and film was only 100 ASA -- look at "McCabe and Mrs. Miller", so many anamorphic zoom shots in small, dark rooms.

[Phil Rhodes]

 

Ah, the Meyer star trek. Always my preferred era.

 

Near-meaningless side note - I only just noticed everyone's smartly-tailored red jacket fastens in the same direction, regardless of gender. Welcome to the year - what's it supposed to be - the 2280s.

 

I was lucky enough to interview Michael Okuda about his work on the original series revamp. I liked what he'd done and still think it was done very appropriately.

 

P

[Alexandros Angelopoulos Apostolos]

Any films or scenes from films that influenced you that have a warm colour palette?

 

I see a lot of dark, grey, blue and a lot of artificial, studio lighting?

 

:)

[Satsuki Murashige]

Well, wait until David gets to the Bertolucci films shot by Storaro!

[Mark Dunn]

Oh, I don't know; this is pretty cool.

 

OTOH........

Edited January 14, 2016 by Mark Dunn

[Satsuki Murashige]

Was thinking more of his yellow Paris period of 'Last Tango in Paris' and also 'The Sheltering Sky' which are both warm-toned throughout. But certainly 'The Last Emperor' has lots of warm scenes, it's just that the color is used much more symbolically throughout.

[David Mullen ASC]

#8. I started college at the University of Virginia in the Fall of 1980. Going off to college was a big enough transition but this was also the first presidential election I could vote in, and near the end of the semester, we heard the news that John Lennon had been killed -- the campus was filled with the sounds of “Imagine”. There was a fairly large main street cinema in Charlottesville and I saw “Apocalypse Now” for the first time there, even though it had been released the year before. This was a time when I was just starting to watch a lot of serious R-rated dramas and foreign films rather than just the mainstream stuff. U.Va took cinema-watching seriously; there were revival screenings all over campus, particularly by the English Department, and there was Vinegar Hill Cinema, the small revival theater in town. A lot of these older movies shown on campus were probably 16mm prints, which was not uncommon back then. Projection across town was uneven enough for me to learn all things that could go wrong during a movie screening.

 

What I remembered most strongly about “Apocalypse Now” that first time was the overpowering sense of dread and pervasive darkness in the interior temple scenes at the end. I had seen dark scenes before, but I couldn’t remember a sequence where that mood was sustained for so long. Later I learned how the sound design was also contributing to that immersive effect, but at first I mainly noticed the lighting.

Less than two years later I also saw “Reds” and started reading everything I could about Vittorio Storaro. In many ways, he is an excellent study for the film student because he could articulate the intellectual basis for his decisions, unlike many other visual artists who cannot always explain where their ideas come from. Before Storaro, I hadn’t realized that the cinematography in a movie could be structured in the same way that the narrative was structured, that you could design an overall arc to the lighting and colors beyond what you did scene-to-scene to tell the story. He made “Apocalypse Now” before his interest in color symbolism, so the design of that movie was more centered around light rather than color.

There is a visual conflict between what Storaro called “artificial” energies and natural energies that mirrored the conflict between the U.S. military and the Vietnamese fighters. The American forces are symbolized by modern electrical lighting that seems out of place in the jungle environment, whereas Kurtz and the villagers are represented by natural light and pre-electricity sources like fire. This manifests itself most clearly in the Playboy Bunny Show at night in the jungle, but also in the Do Long Bridge battle sequence. The lights hitting and flaring the anamorphic lenses create a surreal visual experience. Later Storaro famously extended this sort of visual symbolism to include color, which I think comes together so well in “The Last Emperor”. Even today, when I breakdown a script and plan a visual structure, I often go into WWSD (What Would Storaro Do?) mode.

I find that most movies fall into two basic structures, one is a journey from A to B, and then other is a conflict between the worlds of A and B. So either the movie starts as one thing but ends at another thing, or it cuts between one and the other. There is a third type of film, the one that doesn’t change, it has the same tone and look throughout, like a world that you cannot escape, almost like it is hovering in some sort of oppressive twilight (or a happy summer’s day). Of course, I'm simplifying, there are movies with A, B, C, and D worlds and conflicts, etc.

Horror films, being in a genre that lends itself to stylization, are good examples to study these structures. Many start out in a pleasant sunny everyday world but end up in some sort of expressionist nightmare, often at night. Others juxtapose a reoccurring nightmare against the recognizable world. And others just suck you into an oppressive nightmarish environment from the first frame and never let go, and never really change (except maybe at the end, if it ends happily.) Anyway, I first learned how to design the look of a movie from watching Storaro’s work and reading articles about those movies.

[David Mullen ASC]

You can see the influence of Storaro in how I approached "Twin Falls Idaho" -- the movie starts out in blues and greens to create an unsettling feeling when these conjoined twins are introduced, and then warmer colors come in as the female character develops feelings for them.

 

 

 

 

[Bill DiPietra]

I still find that to be one of your most visually striking films, David.

[David Mullen ASC]

#9. To diffuse, or not to diffuse, that is the question. I’ve always been attracted to impressionistic photographic images, from the Pictorialists of the early 20th Century, to the gauzy romanticism of the late Silent Era movies, and through all those heavily-filtered movies of the 1970’s. And yet I also like sharp, large format still photography, and 65mm cinemagraphy like in “Lawrence of Arabia”. I guess ultimately I just like interesting images, and I like strong visual statements, whether that statement is diffused or razor-sharp.

Related to this, in terms of comparing low-key naturalism to more theatrical stylization in movies, I recommend reading Patrick Keating’s book “Hollywood Lighting: From the Silent Era to Film Noir.” In the chapter “The Art of Balance”, he divides the studio-era cinematographers into two camps: the Classicists and the Mannerists. The Classicists were people like William Daniels, Charles Lang, and Joseph Walker, which attempted the cinematic idea of the image being in support of the narrative, making careful compromises between all the needs of the cinematography, from making the leading actors look attractive while maintaining the proper mood, being realistic when needed, or romantic when needed, without pushing the overall movie to follow a strong personal ideology about lighting. The Mannerists, according to Keating, were people like Gregg Toland, Lee Garmes, Leon Shamroy, and John Alton. They tended to have strong stylistic tendencies, whether they were hyper-realists (at the expense of glamour), expressivists (who valued atmosphere and mood above all else) and pictorialists (who valued beauty and aimed for a painterly ideal.) Now I don’t necessarily agree with all of his conclusions but he makes a good case about the different attitudes towards the image, that some cinematographers were more careful (or cautious) than others about satisfying a lot of goals, aiming for some ideal blend of techniques and balancing the need for atmosphere against making the stars look good, etc. while others were more driven to create a dominant look for a movie, even if it meant sacrificing some traditional things that the studio expected in their movies.

Even today, I see some cinematographers who generally seem to aim for a sort of low-key naturalism where the lighting is as realistic and motivated as possible, and photographic tricks and image artifacts are kept to a minimum to avoid distraction, while others feel less bound by realism and prefer a more emotional and expressionistic approach, and embrace photographic artifacts at times, who don’t mind calling attention to some strong lighting effect (if it seems psychologically true to the moment, whether or not realistic.)

I am in neither camp; maybe like a lot of people who work in the middle, I feel that I have to be stylistically flexible to suit a wide range of projects, maybe it's that I have to be aesthetically open-minded in order to deal with a wide range of directors (who can have the luxury of being aesthetically close-minded and artistically pure ;) )... but the truth is that I love variety more than anything. I love cinema in general, from 3-strip Technicolor musicals, to b&w film noirs, to gritty semi-documentary dramas, to the more romantic of fantasies (or more fantastical of romances…) I like films that are visually subtle and austere, and I like films that are visually bold, even unashamedly over-the-top.

Sometime in 1981 I saw “Excalibur” and fell in love with the romantic look of the movie (actually the movie has both scenes shot in a harsher gritty style and other scenes that are highly diffused, following the highs and lows of King Arthur’s struggles.) I read in American Cinematographer about Alex Thomson’s use of Harrison Black Dot Texture Screens and a white net behind the lens. Later in the 1990’s I came across Gerald Hirschfeld’s book “Image Control” about filters and Thomson talked about his use of filtering over the years on various movies. Personally, I haven’t shot much with nets compared to glass diffusion, though this past year I used them on a film meant to look similar to Hitchcock’s “Marnie”, which was heavily netted. Anyway, the start of "Excalibur" is one of my favorite opening scenes in movies, from the fire-lit woods through the misty dawn when Merlin receives Excalibur from the Lady in the Lake, with Wagner's music playing throughout.

[Alexandros Angelopoulos Apostolos]

Well, wait until David gets to the Bertolucci films shot by Storaro!

 

I will!

 

I just had a thought that I'd like him to cover foreign films and cinematographers he found influenced him. I hope that's coming, too.

 

 

Related to this, in terms of comparing low-key naturalism to more theatrical stylization in movies, I recommend reading Patrick Keating’s book “Hollywood Lighting: From the Silent Era to Film Noir.” In the chapter “The Art of Balance”, he divides the studio-era cinematographers into two camps: the Classicists and the Mannerists. The Classicists were people like William Daniels, Charles Lang, and Joseph Walker, which attempted the cinematic idea of the image being in support of the narrative, making careful compromises between all the needs of the cinematography, from making the leading actors look attractive while maintaining the proper mood, being realistic when needed, or romantic when needed, without pushing the overall movie to follow a strong personal ideology about lighting. The Mannerists, according to Keating, were people like Gregg Toland, Lee Garmes, Leon Shamroy, and John Alton. They tended to have strong stylistic tendencies, whether they were hyper-realists (at the expense of glamour), expressivists (who valued atmosphere and mood above all else) and pictorialists (who valued beauty and aimed for a painterly ideal.) Now I don’t necessarily agree with all of his conclusions but he makes a good case about the different attitudes towards the image, that some cinematographers were more careful (or cautious) than others about satisfying a lot of goals, aiming for some ideal blend of techniques and balancing the need for atmosphere against making the stars look good, etc. while others were more driven to create a dominant look for a movie, even if it meant sacrificing some traditional things that the studio expected in their movies.

 

I'm trying to find another similar post of yours. It was in a thread about a cinematographer, where you say how he broke away from the harsher, studio-era lighting or something like that. Can't remember who it was about. Perhaps Gordon Willis or someone like that.

Edited January 17, 2016 by Alexandros Angelopoulos Apostolos

[David Mullen ASC]

I haven't really gotten to foreign films yet, other than my original post on seeing "Kagemusha" just because I've basically just gotten through my first year of college when I was 18-19. But it's coming.

 

But if you are expecting some sort of moment of revelation where I reject hard lighting as a principle, then it isn't coming. I don't see cinematography in those sorts of terms, that there is one superior way to make movies and everything else is wrong. It's all about context for me, what best serves the story. Also, the more I study cinema, the more I love older films so my appreciation for classic Hollywood lighting has only gotten stronger.

 

However, certainly the study of soft lighting techniques has always been important to me -- it's often a challenge on any number of levels, mainly for me, how to light softly and yet retain mood and contrast. How to have soft yet shadowy lighting. Anyone can flat-light a shot with a big soft bounce or something.

 

You are probably thinking of my post on David Watkin and "Help!" -- Watkin was at the forefront of using soft light in the 1960's. But even he didn't shy away from occasionally lighting something hard with a harsh arc light if it was dramatically appropriate and motivated by the light in the space. Nor did Gordon Willis avoid hard or semi-hard lighting. It's just that these guys were more likely to light a scene hard because that was natural, not because they were copying old studio style high-key lighting effects. The light would be hard because the source was, let's say, a bare light bulb or a single candle or a streetlamp, etc. Not all light in the real world is soft after all.

[Satsuki Murashige]

I just had a thought that I'd like him to cover foreign films and cinematographers he found influenced him. I hope that's coming, too.

 

Alex, you have this unpleasant habit of treating the contributing members here like your own private DJs that you can request songs from. It's a bit disrespectful of people who are being extremely generous with their time and their knowledge. I would appreciate it if you dialed it back a bit.

[Alexandros Angelopoulos Apostolos]

 

Alex, you have this unpleasant habit of treating the contributing members here like your own private DJs that you can request songs from. It's a bit disrespectful of people who are being extremely generous with their time and their knowledge. I would appreciate it if you dialed it back a bit.

 

Request is not the same as a wish. Satsuki, I would also appreciate it if you dialed back a bit your misinterpretations of what I post. What you now said simply is not true, and is disrespectful.

[Alexandros Angelopoulos Apostolos]

Mine is to ask, and it is for people to reply. Or – not. I think I ask politely. Actually, I'm sure I do. How it gets translated wrongly, I don't know. So I will continue to ask, and people may ignore me.

[Freya Black]

Mine is to ask, and it is for people to reply. Or – not. I think I ask politely. Actually, I'm sure I do. How it gets translated wrongly, I don't know. So I will continue to ask, and people may ignore me.

 

 

Of course we can ignore you but people are keen not to.

 

I get the impression from a couple of your posts that you feel a bit paranoid and that people are trying to get at you but that isn't what is happening at all. When Satsuki says "dial it back a bit" he is just politely trying to get across the message "hey tone it down!". That it's a bit too much for people. Have you forgotten in the other thread where Satsuki went to so much trouble to help you with your questions! He even got out the photoshop! He is just trying to point something out to you about the way you are coming across.

 

People seem to really like your enthusiasm and definitely don't mind you asking questions (although if you ask too many at once it can be overwhelming for people) which can be seen from the amount of effort they have gone to in order to try and answer them.

Check out the long responses you received from both David and Satsuki in that Woody Allen thread. They really went out of their way for you.

 

It's a common thing these days that people seem to think that forums are a good place to go to get answers to questions but that isn't really what forums are about. On forums people offer up their opinions of things as best they can from their own point of view and there is a big social aspect to it too. Nobody here is paid to answer peoples questions. They just reply to people as best as they can as a favor to try and help people who are interested and want to go further in their understanding.

 

It's a big favor from someone when they write a long reply to try and answer your questions especially if they are a really busy member of the ASC.

 

So in short people are impressed by your enthusiasm but less by the way you come across as quite demanding which I'm sure is accidental but none the less is how it appears. They are just letting you know that's how you are coming across tho, so you can do something about it. :)

 

Freya

 

(Well that's my new Years resolution broken already. I really did try, honest. I guess I'm going to have to try and rethink that one a little bit)

[Alexandros Angelopoulos Apostolos]

 

 

Of course we can ignore you but people are keen not to.

 

I get the impression from a couple of your posts that you feel a bit paranoid and that people are trying to get at you but that isn't what is happening at all. When Satsuki says "dial it back a bit" he is just politely trying to get across the message "hey tone it down!". That it's a bit too much for people. Have you forgotten in the other thread where Satsuki went to so much trouble to help you with your questions! He even got out the photoshop! He is just trying to point something out to you about the way you are coming across.

 

People seem to really like your enthusiasm and definitely don't mind you asking questions (although if you ask too many at once it can be overwhelming for people) which can be seen from the amount of effort they have gone to in order to try and answer them.

Check out the long responses you received from both David and Satsuki in that Woody Allen thread. They really went out of their way for you.

 

It's a common thing these days that people seem to think that forums are a good place to go to get answers to questions but that isn't really what forums are about. On forums people offer up their opinions of things as best they can from their own point of view and there is a big social aspect to it too. Nobody here is paid to answer peoples questions. They just reply to people as best as they can as a favor to try and help people who are interested and want to go further in their understanding.

 

It's a big favor from someone when they write a long reply to try and answer your questions especially if they are a really busy member of the ASC.

 

So in short people are impressed by your enthusiasm but less by the way you come across as quite demanding which I'm sure is accidental but none the less is how it appears. They are just letting you know that's how you are coming across tho, so you can do something about it. :)

 

Freya

 

(Well that's my new Years resolution broken already. I really did try, honest. I guess I'm going to have to try and rethink that one a little bit)

 

There you go again. “Paranoid”. No, I'm not paranoid. I'm just irked that Satsuki, David, and now you, keep saying things – that I'm demanding, that I'm yelling at you to solve my problem, and so forth – which I'm not, and I don't know how to defend myself from it, yet keep the discussion moving in the direction I planned (but which somehow keeps getting derailed). All I ever wanted were educated guesses. How people thought that I was asking them for the exact recipes is beyond me.

 

Then there's another thing that irks me, which I wasn't going to mention, but here I go, and that's that people were thinking how it's impossible to get any closer a recipe about how that whole warming went, and that it was all production values, yet Juan Melara proved that wrong. Satsuki even opened Photoshop and edited photos in it. Satsuki, why haven't you mention that before?! We lost so much precious time and bickered about insignificant matters because of it.

 

David and Satsuki are invaluable for this community. David's tirelessness has no limits. And I think I made them aware of the fact that I appreciate it. I don't want to go any further for now. I feel like I derailed the thread about David's influences into a thread about me. Which is not what I wanted to do.

Edited January 18, 2016 by Alexandros Angelopoulos Apostolos