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[Ignacio Aguilar]

Yesterday I wrote:

 

Vilmos Zsigmond also had problems on the set of Close Encounters of the Third Kind and the film was finished by William Fraker, Douglas Slocombe, John Alonzo and Laszlo Kovacs.

 

John Alonzo replaced Stanley Cortez on Roman Polanski's Chinatown. Cortez wanted to photograph Faye Dunaway with some diffusion filters and Polanski rejected.

 

John Alcott shot the Dawn of Man sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey when Geoffrey Unsworth left the film due to previous commitments.

 

Oswald Morris replaced Ted Moore on James Bond's The man with the golden gun when Moore became ill.

 

Nicolas Roeg was replaced by Freddie Young on Doctor Zhivago due to creative differencies with director David Lean.

 

Duke Callaghan replaced Gil Taylor on Conan, the barbarian. George Lucas also wanted to fire Taylor on Star Wars.

 

Karl Walter Lindenlaub replaced Caleb Deschanel in The Haunting. I guess Jan de Bont must be a nightmare as director to cinematographers because Don Burgess was replaced by Jack N. Green on Twister, too.

 

Thomson's Alien3 looks the same as Cronenwerths, but Bush's Aliens was lit against what Jim Cameron was after, and Biddle got the vision overnight-

 

I think Alex Thomson's work on Alien 3 looks very much like Cronenweth's work on Blade Runner because that was the look Fincher wanted from the beggining. Now I'm tired of the way Fincher's films looks (though I liked Alien 3 and Se7en at the time they were released) because it's the same concept again and again, done by different DPs (Thomson, Khondji, Savides, Cronenweth, Hall Jr.).

 

I also dislike the way Aliens was photographed, specially in comparison with the original film, which was superbly shot. I'm not surprised when the IMDB says that Cameron approached Derek Vanlint (Alien's cinematographer) after he fired Bush. Apparently, Vanlint refused and recommended Biddle. But, to my tastes, the film was lit too flatly, was too grainy and had that bluish tint Cameron seems to like so much.

 

For you guys that love David Watkin's work, you should hear Peter Hyams' audiocomentary on Hanover Street. Too much light during some scenes to Hyams taste!

[David Mullen ASC]

Actually, "Aliens" was shot in standard 1.85. "The Abyss" was Cameron's first Super-35 blow-up to 35mm anamorphic. Cameron says that the post people and lab talked him out of Super-35 on "Aliens." Cameron disliked anamorphic lenses ever since working on the miniature effects for "Escape from New York".

 

Originally it was Scott's and Vanlint's idea to shoot most of "Alien" with practical set lighting too and they designed the sets with that in mind -- but found they still had to cheat things to look good. I don't the problem with "Aliens" was Biddle, who went on to do fine work with Scott on "1492", I think Cameron is no Ridley Scott when it comes to a visual sensibility (that's not necessarily an insult because Scott is a genius at visuals and probably Cameron would agree.) Anyway, "Aliens" doesn't look as good as "Alien" but it is not a bad-looking movie either -- it does the job. I like the whole sequence where the troops enter the compound in the rain and start searching the coridoors.

[Carlos M. Icaza]

The joy of cut and paste, and never having to turn off your machine.

 

Sorry to hear that the forum was hacked. Anyways, here is my post from the previous day, with a follow up.

 

For those interested I had posted this regarding the camaraderie that exist between fellow dp's.

 

What happens to camaraderie that exist between fellow ASC members and non ASC members at the level we are talking here, Hall, Dexler, Deakins, ZIgmond and others, when one replaces the other? Does the camaraderie ends when one DP replaces the other? is there bad blood between them? What happens when they bump into each other at the ASC clubhouse? Or does this camaraderie even exist? How do these top DP's at this level compete against each other? or is there such competition to begin with ? Are they so sought after that they don't compete against each other? Do they recommend each other? Call each other about projects/directors/producers/stars/etc ? Do they ever call each other up and ask for assistance?

 

Just curious. They seem so amicable they seem to have the upmost respect for each other, but am sure there have got to be some stories....

 

My follow up was, what is the International Cinematographers Guild? I was driving in LA the other day and I happen to pass the ICG. I was stumped when asked what the difference was between the ASC and ICG.

 

I know the ASC is the society of cinematographers and is one of the most respected monikers in the DP world. But I don't know anyting about the ICG. Is it the same as the ASC ? or different. Also, do you have to be in the union to be a "Hollywood" DP?

 

Thanks and hope we don't get hacked again :huh:

 

C.-

[Laurent Andrieux]

Back to the main topic: One should always, when called for replacing someone, try to figure out what happened for the previous person being fired. And also, figure out what the remaining team (ACs, gaffers, grips) feel about it. Sometimes they change the all team, sometimes not.

 

Once, I was ACing a young DP who got fired. The production asked me if I would then turn as a DP. I said no. Because the reason why the previous DP got fired is that she would never say "no" to the director's demand, and that was a mistake. We were shooting in some kind of special conditions in the desert in Africa, and not anything was possible. Because she wouldn't say no, there actually were problems on the daylies.

 

I liked better saying no, as the time they needed to find another dp, I could make things go on, that means, rebuild the set (that was a cause of the problems).

 

What is funny about this, is that the production wanted so much keeping on shooting (better than what they thought was a waste of time, ie, rebuilding the set) that they sent me their cuttest girl in a hot tee-shirt she was naked under, telling me from very close "I heard you're a very good dp, aren't you ?". I just asked : "really ? Who says that ?" I had no reply, and I turned off !

 

I knew that if I just said yes and begin to shoot, I'd have the same problems as the former DP.

 

So if you know and can analyse the original problem, you can get a chance not being fired yourself!

[David Mullen ASC]

Yes, "Aliens" was shot on 5294 probably -- because the original 5293 was obsolete by 1983 and 5295 didn't come out until 1986. After 1986, a number of films either used 5294 or 5295 as their high-speed stock until both were replaced by 5296, the first EXR 500T film.

 

It's hard to beat the smooth look of the 5247 / anamorphic lens combination used for the first "Alien" movie though, but one can certain justify the "grittier" look of "Aliens".

 

I thought "Alien Resurrection" looked fine EXCEPT for the Super-35 blow-up, which was too soft & grainy for my tastes. At the time, Khondji was switching from using EXR 200T (used on "Seven") to 500 ASA stocks. He later settled on using mostly 320T low-con stock. Don 't know what he used for "Wimbleton."

 

The movie itself, though, is rather bad. "Alien 3" is probably the closest to the look of the first "Alien" film. It's too bad that the story is so excessively grim and depressing (versus just plain dumb as with "Alien Resurrection.")

 

"Seven" is such a seminal film that I think future generations will see its importance photographically the way that "Blade Runner" has become a key work of 1980's cinematography. To me, only Gordon Willis has gone as far as Khondji did on "Seven" working at such minimal levels of visibility, skirting underexposure. Of course, that's a Fincher trademark but I don't think Fincher's other movies have been quite as visually engrossing as "Seven".

 

--

 

ICG (International Camera Guild) is the IASTE Local 600 Camera Union. The ASC is not a union but an honorary society. Other honorary societies in Hollywood include SOC (operators), ACE (editors), CSA (casting), MPSE (sound), etc.

 

Anything shot in Hollywood above a certain budget (like 3 million) will probably be a union production, so it would be near impossible to shoot major films without being in the union. Outside of California, non-union budgets can get a little higher. For example, "Dances with Wolves" was a somewhat famous example of a 15-million dollar non-union production (however, the majority of the crew people involved were union members, which tends to happen because experienced crew people tend to be in the union anyway.)

 

The camera-grip-electric union -- IASTE -- allows members to work on non-union films, but other unions like the DGA and SAG tend to not allow their members to work on non-union films. Almost all films made, for example, are done under SAG rules with SAG actors even if the crew is non-union.

[Ignacio Aguilar]

Ironic comments from Hyam on Hanover Street- his best looking film afterall!  I love the restaurant dinner table sequences in that movie, they look so timeless.

 

I love that scene, too. The overall film is a little dumb, but Watkin's single source lightning (in anamorphic and very shallow focus) makes it worth a watch.

 

Yes, "Aliens" was shot on 5294 probably -- because the original 5293 was obsolete by 1983 and 5295 didn't come out until 1986. After 1986, a number of films either used 5294 or 5295 as their high-speed stock until both were replaced by 5296, the first EXR 500T film.

 

David, do you know if they used VistaVision for effects shots?

 

James Cameron says on the audiocommentary of Aliens (the new DVD on the Quadrilogy set) that if he made the film today, he would shoot it 2.35:1 to match the ratio of the first film. He also complaints about the grain. I saw his later films on the theater and none of them were so grainy. Perhaps he started to overexpose his negatives on Abyss.

[Carlos M. Icaza]

David,

 

Thanks for your explanation.

 

C.

[Jarin Blaschke]

I don't think Willis and Fincher would last one day together. As much as I love Fincher, I suspect he gets 'up and comers' in order to simply carry out exactly what he wants.

[Carlos M. Icaza]

I got to chime in on this one.

 

I thought the cinematography on Fight club was as bit as effective as in Se7en.

 

It had the right color elements and right set dressing and design. The house was incredibliy lit and the juxtaposition of Norton and Pitt was intense. Just as in Se7en, Morgan and Pitt.

 

C.

[David Mullen ASC]

I find "Seven" more visually engrossing, but that's because "Fight Club" does not have the same degree of dark and creepy settings. To me, there's nothing in "Fight Club" as moody as the search through the Gluttony house. Not really a fault of the cinematography, just two different stories.

[Coyote]

-Dick Bush replaced Ernest Day on Victor/Victoria (judging by Day's workon Superman IV, reasons were probably obvious )

 

 

Well, to be fair to Day, those big, expensive effects movies must be nightmarishly difficult to shoot; just look at, say, the highly uneven work Geoffrey Unsworth did on the original Superman. Day did a more than serviceable job on A Passage to India- granted that David Lean wasn't known for tolerating mediocre work from anyone.

 

(And, strange trivia- did you know Dick Bush was also fired from Sorcerer by William Friedkin? Seems he didn't get along well with visual auteurists.)

[Max Jacoby]

To go back to the original question, while I haven't yet been on a shoot where the Dop got fired, I have several friends who went through that situation on a film called 'Octane'. From what I gathered after the first week they were so behind schedule that the insurance comapny demanded that either the director or the Dop got replaced. Of course they sacrificed the Dop, along with his gaffer, operator and focus-puller. For anyone who has seen the film, it is all night exteriors on a motorway and was shot during the middle of the summer. The shooting days were so short that the schedule was impossible to make. On top of that it wasn't even the original Dop who slowed them down but somebody else (guess who...).

 

So after the weekend the new Dop came in with his crew and his lighting brief was pretty much the following: Be fast!

[Ignacio Aguilar]

fstop, great post!

 

By the way, do you know which scenes of Superman were shot by Alex Thomson? He was credited as Additional Photographer.

 

As for Passage to India- let's just put it in context: David Lean had the whole film regraded unrecognisable by himself after HATING Day's rushes and the two fell out (documented in Lean's Biog)- not just that, but many of the big special effects plates as well as all of the big location photography was actually handled by Robin Browne. There are far more composite shots in the movie than anyone would have you believe.

 

I have read that preparing Nostromo, after Alcott's death, Lean asked David Watkin to shot some tests for the film, but Lean disliked the results and offered the job to Thomson.

 

Anyway- I may dislike Day as a DP, but on the other end of the spectrum, he's one of the most influential action unit directors of all time (the Lotus car chase from The Spy Who Loved Me)

 

I think he shot the Iguazu chase for Moonraker, too.

[David Mullen ASC]

Thomson did Second Unit work, not whole scenes. I recall a photo of him shooting parts of the high school football scene in Canada, for example. Who shot the NYC police chase scene, leading up to the dock shoot-out? That sequence always looks sort of out-of-place, like something out of "French Connection"...

 

Last time I was in NYC, I was walking around the neighborhood of Grand Central Terminal and suddenly realized I was standing in front of the building and lobby used for the Daily Planet, which was cool!

 

I just bought "Tess" on DVD. Now I'm waiting for "Murder on the Orient Express" to come out on DVD. Actually, what I'd like is an obscure Unsworth-shot film called "The Abdication", as well as this bad comedy called "Lucky Lady", his most over-Fog-Filtered movie.

[Mitch Gross]

Lucky Lady! All I can remember from that terrible film was that I could barely see the damn thing! Like watching a movie through a glass of milk.

[David Mullen ASC]

"Lucky Lady" had some very romantic glamour lighting, almost a homage to the 1920's glossy fashion look (more so than even "Cabaret"), even in some incredibly tiny sets like on the boat. The day exteriors were the most heavily fog-filtered (maybe even a #3 Fog!) exaggerated by the glare off of the water, almost causing a white-out at times - sort of surreal by design, I think. But the trouble with the film is that it is an unfunny comedy and Burt Reynolds, Gene Hackman, and Liza Minelli are probably the worst romantic triangle you could come up with. Unsworth really had his work cut out for him making that trio look sexy together.

 

Personally, the stylistic leaps of "Superman" -- from the dreamlike Kryton scenes to the Americana John Ford-ish Smallville section to the fast-paced Howard Hawksian Daily Planet stuff is what makes the film interesting to me.

 

Speaking of Unsworth, one of my favorite bits of lighting he did was for the opening dawn sequence in "A Bridge Too Far", using smoke and silhouettes in this dark Dutch apartment as a family wakes up to hear Nazi tanks rolling through town. He wasn't often allowed to make a scene very dark, but he could do very moody work when required, like the day-for-night barn scene in "Superman" when Clark Kent finds the crystal. "A Bridge Too Far" has some very dark scenes in it.

[Stephen Press]

In 1995 I made the move from New Zealand to London and while I was trying to get connected I struck up a good relationship with a hire company. They sent a lot of "rescue" work my way. Production stuff where half way through the shoot they look at the rushes and realize the DP is a disaster. (It is unbelievable how many car salesmen in their late 30's get a bit of cash, do a course and then think they are a DOP. The only skill they have is to talk their way in over their head.)

 

So I would come in with little time left and most of the budget spent and try and start from scratch. It was mostly fantastic. The production team were usually just so grateful to have someone who actually knew what they were doing on set and would give 100% As well I loved the challenge of getting the best possible product with what was available. The only downer is that often some key style decisions have been made and you have to live with them.

Hard work but if the project didn't suck it was worth it.

[David Mullen ASC]

Does anyone know who the first DP was on "Excalibur"? I was told that this guy had just bought a new meter that perhaps was screwed up, because he managed to severely underexpose the opening nighttime battle scene just when the studio was visiting to watch dailies, so he was fired and replaced by Alex Thomson, who had shot the wardrobe tests for them.

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

> In 1995 I made the move from New Zealand to London

 

Under what conceivable circumstances would you have made that decision?

 

Phil

[Stephen Press]

After 14 years in what is a very small market pre LOTR I felt I had gone as far as I could go. So I wanted to see what the world had in store. I loved working in London. There were a lot more opportunities than NZ in fact sometimes I wish I hadn't come back but my wife and I had two small children and she had very bad postnatal depression. You have to do what you have to do so now I have to break into the NZ market all over again. :)

[Ignacio Aguilar]

I've just read this on the IMDB's trivia section for 1941:

 

Cinematographer William A. Fraker was reportedly fired late in shooting due to creative differences with Steven Spielberg and John Milius. The rest of the film was shot by Frank Stanley.

 

This is the first time I've ever heard of it. Anyone knows if its true? Frank Stanley is credited as "additional cinematographer", but on the "E.T." AC issue Spielberg said that the first offered the film to Bill Fraker. Fraker was busy, so he offered it to Storaro, who declined and finally he decided to give the chance to Allen Daviau, who had shot "Amblin" for him back in the late 60's.

 

1941 contains some of the best miniature work ever IMO and I think it's the most amazing photography Fraker ever did together with the opening scene of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind".

[Ignacio Aguilar]

Back to the Pink Panther films: Unsworths Return was beautfully lit with smoked sets, exotic location work and a poetic consistency throughout- it's exactly the way the Bond films SHOULD have been shot around this time! Day's work however is full of more flat lighting, overcast skies (the French royalty moment at the end of the movie is completely underwhelming and colourless thanks to Day's lazy photography), Diane Cannon looks TERRIBLE with some hideous sidelighting (this was when she was younger too, yet Billy Dickson made her glow in her 60s on Aly McBeal!) and the location work looks like some 16mm news footage the BBC was banging out at the time. Oh, and the sets always look like sets thanks to Day's fondness for multiple-shadow-itis.

 

I come to the rescue of this post as I've seen Geoffrey Unsworth's The Return of the Pink Panther tonight.

 

Once again I agree with Tim's comments. I have even thought about the look of the James Bond films of that era -specially The Spy Who Loved Me- while viewing the location work in Morocco during the scenes featuring Christopher Plummer! :)

 

Freddie Young did a Bond film; it would have been fun that Unsworth had done that too.

 

Of course this film wasn't an important assignment to someone with Geoffrey Unsworth's body of work, but his mix of studio and soft lighting, and Peter MacDonald's classic yet dynamic compositions and camera movement are a real pleasure to watch. I believe that this film has to be the less foggy-filtered of his "post-Cabaret" era, as the filters really blow overexposed areas only a few times (but I may be wrong, the DVD I've seen was pretty bad).

Edited September 25, 2005 by Ignacio Aguilar

[Tim J Durham]

During the filming of "Days of Heaven", as he was going blind, Nestor Almendros had to be replaced by Haskell Wexler. I'm not sure, but I don't think Almendros left due to his eye problems. I remember Wexler talking about it during "Visions of Light" and he said nothing about Almendros going blind.

 

From Ebert:

"Days of Heaven's'' great photography has also generated a mystery. The credit for cinematography goes to the Cuban Nestor Almendros, who won an Oscar for the film; "Days of Heaven'' established him in America, where he went on to great success. Then there is a small credit at the end: "Additional photography by Haskell Wexler.'' Wexler, too, is one of the greatest of all cinematographers. That credit has always rankled him, and he once sent me a letter in which he described sitting in a theater with a stopwatch to prove that more than half of the footage was shot by him. The reason he didn't get top billing is a story of personal and studio politics, but the fact remains that between them these two great cinematographers created a film whose look remains unmistakably in the memory.

 

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.d.../401010327/1023

[Ignacio Aguilar]

During the filming of "Days of Heaven", as he was going blind, Nestor Almendros had to be replaced by Haskell Wexler. I'm not sure, but I don't think Almendros left due to his eye problems. I remember Wexler talking about it during "Visions of Light" and he said nothing about Almendros going blind.

 

He wasn't going blind, of course. That's a legend. He simply left the film because the shooting got too long and he had another commitment with a Truffaut film in France. He had left the Spanish film Cambio de Sexo (Vicente Aranda, 1976) the previous year, when got the call to fly to Canada and shoot for Terry Malick.

 

Almendros recived three Oscar nominations and other awards after Days of Heaven, so his eyesight was still out of question. Wexler's story is a bit questionable IMHO, since he only shot for a few weeks and the bulk of the film was shot while Almendros was the DP (according to this article, Wexler shot only the last 19 days). I believe that Wexler shot the early scenes at the fundition, but I don't know what else he did. The overall look of the film is VERY consistent, though I recall Wexler mentioning that he had introduced some light diffusion which wasn't in Almendros footage. In the book 'Masters of Light' Almendros talks quite a bit about this film.

 

 

P.D. Almendros was born in Barcelona, Spain. He was raised in Cuba, but he went on to study in Rome at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in the late 50's. He moved back to Cuba and started to shoot his own films, but they were banned by the Cuban regime, so he moved again to Europe and started to photograph films for directors of the French New Wave like Rohmer or Truffaut. Cambio de Sexo remains as Almendros' only Spanish credit (the film was finished by José Luis Alcaine, one of the all-time top Spanish cameraman, whose career was flourishing back in those days).

Edited September 25, 2005 by Ignacio Aguilar