American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 16

Above: Director
Roger Christian
(right) points Sir
Maddox (Tony
Vogel) toward his
destiny. Right:
Cinematographer
and future BSC
member Roger
Pratt tries to
provide cover
from the
incessant rain as
Christian checks
the framing of
the Panavised
Arri 35 II-C
camera.

"I think if I'd have gone off with an
experienced cinematographer, they'd have
just said, 'You can't shoot this,'" the director
continues. "Roger had the instinct and bravery that made this work."
As the collaborators plunged into
preproduction, a handful of visual references
came to the fore. "I love Tarkovsky," Christian notes. "I looked at a lot of Bergman
films. I also hero-worshipped Kurosawa."
The latter, he observes, "always set his films
in these incredible landscapes. I knew Scotland would give me that, and we could get
there on the train." Another inspiration, he
adds, "was [Frank] Frazetta's painting Death
Dealer. That was a model for my Black
Angel - if I could create one with no
money!"
The Kurosawa influence also
prompted Christian and Pratt to shoot
anamorphic 35mm, and so they rented a
Panavision C Series lens package and a
Panavised Arriflex 35 II-C camera from
16

February 2016

Samuelson's in London. For film stock,
Lucas and producer Gary Kurtz donated the
short ends left over from The Empire Strikes
Back - predominantly Eastman Kodak
100T 5247 - on top of which Christian
could afford to buy only three complete rolls
of film.
Pratt's lighting package for the
seven-day shoot comprised a single
Redhead, which he supplemented with
bounce boards while taking advantage of
the late-autumn light. "I knew right before
winter hits, the skies in Scotland are just
stunning, with these veins of light coming
through clouds," Christian recalls.
"It rained the whole time," he
continues. "But the rain in Scotland is like a
mist, which added to the beauty of these
shots." To supplement the natural mist, he
adds, "John Beard, the art director, would
use a handheld smoke machine." Pratt
carried neutral-density filters, as well as a
polarizer to heighten the cloud formations,
American Cinematographer

but most of the film was shot clean and,
out of necessity, wide open.
Early in the shoot, Christian says, "I
saw Roger puzzling over his light meter, and
I said, 'Roger, do you have a problem?' He
said, 'Look at the meter. It's telling me there
isn't enough light to shoot. Now look
through the camera.' We looked through
the camera, and he said, 'It's stunning.' So
he literally threw the meter over his shoulder, into the dirt, and said, 'That's it! We're
going by instinct from now on!'"
Transporting its equipment in a Volkswagen Bus driven by grip Tony Andrews,
the production shot in locations from Eilean
Donan Castle, which served as Maddox's
home, to the town of Dunoon, where
Christian secured an indoor swimming pool
in which to film the shots of the drowning
knight. "We hung a piece of black velvet in
the pool so the background would be
black," Christian explains. After securing
the camera in an underwater housing, he
adds, "Roger went in the pool with the
focus puller, Brian Herlihy."
In post, Christian worked with editor
Alan Strachan at Samuelson's Production
Village. It was Strachan who suggested
step-printing Maddox's fight with the Black
Angel to create a stuttering slow-motion
effect. "I would like to have done the fights
really down and dirty, but without a stunt
coordinator I couldn't," Christian says. "To
make it work, it had to be fairly stylized.
"I also had a contract that said [the
film needed to be] 25 minutes, and when
we cut the film together, we were short,"
he continues. "So we step-printed the
fights, and that brought the time up to 25
minutes exactly!"
Black Angel's negative was
processed at Rank Laboratories in Denham,
England, where the final color timing was
also performed. Once completed, the film
had to be shown to Lucas, who was joined
by a small but formidable audience that
included his Empire Strikes Back cohorts
Kurtz, associate producer Robert Watts and
director Irvin Kershner. "That first screening
got me under the table," Christian recalls
with a laugh. "I'd made this film with no
money and short ends, and suddenly there
it was on the biggest screen in Pinewood
[Studios]. It was incredibly frightening. But
George liked it - they all did - and he

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