American Cinematographer - March 2016 - 60

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A Legacy of Excellence
From left: Naia
Hall; Haskell
Wexler, ASC;
Conrad L. Hall;
and Toll at the
Eighth Annual
ASC Awards
ceremony,
where Conrad
received the
Lifetime
Achievement
Award.

it to various areas of the deck. I had him
make a bar that went across my lap that
I could press my knees up against to
keep myself upright and still be free to
hold the camera and operate, just like
the revolving room, and it worked great.
The Australian sailors immediately
nicknamed the sawhorse 'Trigger' and
put reins on it. It was still a tough shoot
for everyone, but we became fairly efficient and even began doing two-camera
coverage. Carroll and I each operated,
because there wasn't room for anyone
else on the boat!"
Wind was not a financial
success, but Toll's expert photography
- capturing the excitement and
majesty of the subject - caught notice,
and Toll was soon introduced to director Edward Zwick as a possible cinematographer for his upcoming
Western-themed drama Legends of the
Fall, based on the novel by Jim
Harrison. Toll knew the book well, and
his visual approach was inspired by the
still photographer William Albert
Allard's naturalistic work in documenting contemporary cowboys, as well as
films such as Terrence Malick's Days of
Heaven, shot by Nestor Almendros,
ASC. During their meeting, Zwick was
impressed by Toll's take, yet wary of
hiring a cinematographer with just one
feature credit. But, in the end, he was
convinced to take the gamble.
"We put enormous energy into
taking advantage of the natural beauty
of the locations," Toll says. "I put great
effort into making the lighting feel as
60

March 2016

natural as possible. This often meant
planning how to take advantage of
natural light and shooting at the best
times of day, but our schedule meant
this wasn't always possible, and we
sometimes put a great deal of effort into
making it look as if we weren't doing
anything at all!
"During prep," he continues, "we
went through the script and for individual sequences we attempted to designate
certain times of day, or even weather
conditions, as a way to support various
parts of the story. We weren't always
able to stay with this plan, but Ed Zwick
and first AD Nilo Otero went to great
lengths to support this idea as much as
possible."
Toll's efforts in Legends earned
him widespread praise, the Oscar for
Best Cinematography, and ASC Award
and Camerimage nominations. But
months before the film even premiered,
it angled Toll's trajectory further
upward. Actor Mel Gibson was prepping his second directorial effort, the
epic drama Braveheart, and, Toll says,
"Mel was casting the movie and asked
Ed Zwick if he could see some film of
the actors in Legends of the Fall, which
was still being edited. After Mel looked
at about a half-hour of the film, I
received a call to meet him. They said he
was directing and starring in a movie in
Scotland. It sounded quaint - I
thought it couldn't be very complicated
if he was directing and acting in it. Then
they sent me the script about two hours
before I met Mel. Legends of the Fall had
American Cinematographer

some limited battle scenes, so I understood how complicated they could get,
and I was reading this script thinking,
'They can't be serious...?'"
During their dinner meeting, the
enthusiastic Gibson peppered Toll with
questions about how he envisioned
approaching the ambitious story. Gibson
was impressed, and, like Zwick before
him, took a chance even though "Mel
could have hired any one of a dozen great
cinematographers with experience on
huge movies," Toll remembers. "I kept
asking myself if he was going to wake up
one morning thinking what a mistake he
was making!" But the collaborative result
was nothing short of breathtaking, and
the film would earn numerous accolades,
including Toll's second consecutive
Academy Award and the ASC Award
for Outstanding Cinematography.
"Suddenly people were asking,
'Who the hell is this guy?'" Toll says with
a laugh. "However, by that time, I just
intuitively knew how to do things, in part
because I'd learned a creative process
from some of the best in the world."
Toll's more recent credits - from
the pilot of the hit series Breaking Bad; to
the snarky superhero-adventure Iron
Man 3; to his current project, the edgy
and out-there sci-fi series Sense8, created
by his Cloud Atlas and Jupiter Ascending
collaborators Andy and Lana Wachowski
- reveal an artist still striving not only to
tackle new creative challenges and master
new technology, but also have fun while
doing it.
"Revisiting some of my work in
connection with this award from the
ASC, it's hard not to think about going
back and reshooting various things," Toll
says. Asked if there was a particular
project he would like to revisit for a
creative makeover, he smiles, and after a
brief pause replies with a laugh, "Probably
most of them! Why does that scene look
that way? What was I thinking? When
it's good, it feels really good, but getting
overly impressed with your own work is
probably the worst thing that can happen
to your creativity."
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American Cinematographer - March 2016

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