American Cinematographer - October 2008 - (Page 78)

Filmmakers’ Forum The DI, Luddites and Other Musings by Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC s a film-school student, I sought any and all information I could gather from everywhere and anywhere. American Cinematographer was a primary authority because the information in its pages came through the patronage of the American Society of Cinematographers. It is the same today. From my many sources, I learned a lens operated to its best advantage at an aperture of T4-5.6. I learned lighting involved the use of a keylight, a backlight, a fill light, an eyelight, and something referred to as a kicker. I learned my negative needed to be meticulously exposed so as to print at a mid-light of 25, and that a true cinematographer used Brute Arcs to light a set and a geared head (operated by a specialist) to achieve smooth camera-panning shots. But I also learned Raoul Coutard operated the camera himself, and that he would often shoot with a handheld Camiflex camera and sometimes light his shots using household bulbs and tinfoil reflectors. I learned John Alton, ASC was ostracized in his time for his radical approach to lighting, eschewing the use of greenbeds and declaring, “It’s not what you light, it’s what you don’t light” that’s important. I learned Conrad Hall, ASC overexposed his negative by some 21⁄2 stops to achieve the stunning anamorphic images in Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here (1969), a technique he repeated for the exteriors in the 1:85:1 feature Fat City (1972). I had seen Peter Watkins’ films Culloden (1964) and The War Game (1965) before the latter was banned by the BBC for something like 20 years. Both films had a profound effect on me, A the first for its contemporary reportagestyle re-creation of the battle of Culloden (“They have created a desert and called it peace,” declares a reporter while viewing the historic battle and its aftermath), and the second for depicting what, in 1965, could very well have been our imminent, all-too-possible future. Both films were made for the BBC in grainy black-and-white in a 1:33:1 aspect ratio; Culloden was photographed by the late, great Dick The DI is a powerful tool, but it holds no threat to the filmmaker, only opportunities. Bush, BSC, and The War Game by Peter Bartlett and Peter Suschitzky, ASC. Both films were handheld and sometimes out of focus, they lacked any sense of artifice, and they were the most powerful films I had seen, both then and perhaps since. In 1968, I saw Once Upon a Time in the West, and in 1969, The Wild Bunch. At the National Film School, I learned the latter was shot by Lucien Ballard, ASC using 35mm film in the anamorphic format and blown up to 70mm for projection at the larger theaters, while the former, shot by Tonino Delli Colli, AIC, was photographed in Techniscope, a 2-perf pull-down system with a negative area of just 9.47mm x 22mm. (That would be a poor man’s Super 35mm, I suppose!) I loved both films then and still watch them often. In his 1974 philosophical study of the concept of quality, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig never seems to come up with a definition of quality, but both Once Upon A Time in the West and The Wild Bunch still define quality for me. Stylistically, they are quite different, a product of the opposing systems of image capture the filmmakers used, selective depth of field against deep focus, etc., but they are equal works of — and I use the word cautiously — art. The messages for this student of cinematography remained confused. What was the right way to approach cinematography? What was the best way to create an image? Why was there no test I had to take before I became a cinematographer? Many years after I left the National Film School, I visited Conrad Hall on his island paradise off Tahiti and spent evenings talking with him over dinner at the home I share with my wife, James, in Santa Monica. James and I rebuilt our house in 1999, and I was keen to show Conrad my new darkroom; after a break of some years, I had become keen on taking still photographs again, and the darkroom had been a prerequisite of our new home. My expectations were shattered when Conrad pronounced the photochemical process “antiquated.” Why wasn’t I using a digital stills camera? All those messy chemicals! You could not predict what Conrad would do, certainly not when it 78 October 2008

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - October 2008

American Cinematographer - October 2008 Contents Editor's Note Short Takes: DirecTV's "Fourth Wall" Campaign Production Slate: Prison Break Production Slate: Need for Speed: Undercover Middle East Intrigue Kingdom of Light Memoirs of a Spook Landmark Gains Post Focus: An Overview of the ASC CDL Filmmakers' Forum: Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC New Products & Services International Marketplace Classified Ads Clubhouse News ASC Close-Up: Ross Berryman

American Cinematographer - October 2008

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