American Cinematographer - December 2007 - (Page 52)

Blood on the Streets throw another camera in there. I’d say, ‘No, no, we’re good,’ and Ridley would say, ‘We can sneak in another camera over there and hide it.’” Scott set an aggressive pace for the production. Swanek, who assisted Savides on Birth, The Yards (AC Nov. ’00) and Finding Forrester, notes, “I’m usually pretty meticulous about keeping a shot book, but I just didn’t have the time to keep up with three cameras rolling all the time. Our script supervisor, Mary Kelly, said we did around 8,000 shots — and that’s first unit. The second-highest shot count for me was The Interpreter, which had around 1,750!” Savides adds, “I’d never shot a movie with Ridley before, but some of the crew had, and they all said they’d never seen him use so many cameras or work so fast. At first I was concerned about the speed and seemingly roughshod cavalierness we were working with — it was a bit like shooting that TV show Cops, only with a full-sized movie crew. But I soon started to see that Ridley’s method was working for the film. Movies are really a bunch of things collected together, and the things that contributed to making American Gangster work so well were the speed at which we shot, the number of cameras we used, and the colors we chose to integrate. All of that contributes to the overall feel.” Because of the aggressive pace, Savides adopted a lighting style that emphasized minimalism. “I basically worked with whatever was there, naturally,” he says. “We embellished it when necessary, added to it when we had to, but for the most part we worked with the natural light we had at the locations. If I knew a scene was going to go long and the light would change, we’d just work to emulate the [original] natural light as much as possible.” Savides attests that he doesn’t often light people, he lights environments. “It’s a bit ironic because I come from a stylized way of working, but I don’t really know how to light people Above: Roberts suspects Lucas is exploiting the U.S. military to import his heroin in the caskets of servicemen. Below: In an attempt to prove his theory, the cop and his crew tear apart the interior of a military transport plane. Savides used the Arricam system as his primary camera package, and those units were out in force. The main package began as a Studio, two Lites, and an Arri 235, but after Scott decided that most of the sequences featuring Roberts should be handheld, production replaced the Studio with a third Lite. “We had a lot of cameras going on every scene,” recalls Savides. “At times we had up to five, and we never shot with less than three. After Zodiac, which we shot with two cameras, I made a note to never, ever work with two cameras again, but then I get onto this show and we never run less than three! “Once I understood what Ridley was doing, however, I stepped up to bat — we all did,” he continues. “Ridley is an unbelievable filmmaker; he lives and breathes it. It’s so easy for him to walk onto a set and rattle off how a scene will be put together. It’s nothing for him to 52 December 2007

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American Cinematgrapher - December 2007 Contents Editor's Note DVD Playback Production Slate Irretrievable Deeds Blood on the Streets Fantastic Voyage Promise Fulfilled Short Takes Post Focus Tomorrow's Technology New Products & Services International Marketplace Classified Ads Ad Index 2007 AC Index ASC Membership Roster Clubhouse News ASC Close-Up

American Cinematographer - December 2007

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