American Cinematographer - March 2009 - (Page 56) A Very Active Member Top: Mankofsky mans the Mitchell BNCR on the set of Testimony of Two Men, a 1977 miniseries for Universal TV. Yust (far right) directed one chapter of the three-part postCivil War costume drama, with Leo Penn helming the other two. Middle: Mankofsky checks the light level on the fill side of Christopher Reeve’s face during production of Universal Pictures’ timetravel romance Somewhere in Time (1980). Bottom: The director of Somewhere in Time, Jeannot Szwarc (right), peers over Mankofsky’s shoulder as the cinematographer lines up a shot. was about to return to California, a stroke of luck occurred during a handball match at the local YMCA. (He still plays the game to this day.) His opponent, Jim McGuinn, a producer of educational films at Encyclopedia Britannica Films, asked if Mankofsky would be interested in shooting a series in Florida. Over the next 13 months, Mankofsky shot 161 half-hour 16mm films that comprised a complete lab course in chemistry. One of his frequent collaborators at Encyclopedia Britannica was director/ producer Larry Yust. Their 1969 film version of Shirley Jackson’s short story The Lottery, part of Encyclopedia Britannica’s Short Story Showcase series, gave Mankofsky the opportunity to try diffused light, a technique that had not yet gained a foothold in the industry. His dilemma was how to shoot a film with an outdoor setting on a studio-bound set. “Outside, even on a sunny day, the light in the shade is soft — it’s just ambient light,” he notes. “The only way to do it I could think of was to hang a bunch of big bats in the permanents and shine Maxi-Brutes through diffusion material.” Mankofsky’s work at Encyclopedia Britannica was a training ground, much like music videos and commercials are to today’s cinematographers. “Each film was an opportunity to do something that I added to my book of knowledge,” he says. “Because each film presented its own problems, the cinematographer was, among a lot of other things, a problem solver. I learned as I went along. Of course, I made mistakes. I did everything — aerials, time-lapse, high-speed. I can’t even swim, and I shot water work! In my nine years at Britannica, I don’t think I had to reshoot anything. I’m sometimes asked how I learned composition, and it just came to me.” He adds that Yust was such a stickler for symme- 56 March 2009
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