American Cinematographer - June 2020 - 76

'70s Cinema in AC

Cinematographer Gilbert Taylor, BSC (grasping light stand at left) observes as the Star Wars crew, and actors Alec Guinness and Mark Hamill, prepare
for a take on location in Tunisia. "The trouble with the future in most futurist movies is that it always looks new and clean and shiny," director George Lucas
(second from left) told AC in July 1977. "What is required for true credibility is a used future. The Apollo space capsules were instructive in that regard.
By the time the astronauts returned from the moon, the capsules were littered with ... candy wrappers and old Tang jars, no more exotic than the
family station wagon."

how the effect was going to look on
film. We shot it on 35mm negative,
using high-speed lenses, with an
exposure between T1.5 and T1.7.
"What made the light rays show
up in the fog? I think it was mostly the
breaks in the mirrors, or even the dirt
spots on the mirrors, the footprints.
Those elements created a sort of
pattern for the light. I think that in
order to show light rays, you have to
have a discontinuation of the light
here and there. If you don't have those
breaks (or those dirt spots in the
mirrors) then what you have is actually an even spotlight effect. In this
case, our spotlights were beamed in
from various angles, and the rays
were reflected from the mirrors at
angles complementary to those. The
result is light bouncing around from a
variety of angles to create a dazzling
effect."
Prior to Close Encounters,
June 2020

Spielberg's Jaws - shot by Bill Butler,
ASC - made the March 1975 cover.
Years later, Spielberg told AC, "One of
the biggest honors I've ever received
was when the magazine put [Jaws] on
the cover back in the '70s. Everybody
has their own measure of success; for
me, it was getting the cover of AC."
Spielberg's coveted cover was
accompanied by an article written by
Mik Cribben, who was welcomed
onto the production's location sets on
the Massachusetts island of Martha's
Vineyard, just south of Cape Cod.
Cribben provides a vivid, firsthand
account of the filmmakers shooting a
climactic scene in which the great
white launches itself from the ocean
and lands on the poop deck of the
Orca, the fishing boat skippered by the
flinty shark hunter Quint (Robert
Shaw): "The whole afternoon was
spent in preparing the shot, and as it
approached 5:30, the end of the day, it
American Cinematographer - 100 Years

looked like they were never going to
get the shot off, but just before 5:30
everything came together and Steve
Spielberg decided to go for the shot.
He called 'Action,' and he got a lot
more than he called for. Steve, Roy
Scheider, Dick Butler (Robert Shaw's
stuntman and no relation to Bill), Bill
Butler, three camera crews and three
cameras were all aboard the [Orca].
When the shark came down on the
boat, it looked like an explosion, and
for 30 seconds, all hell broke loose.
The weight of the shark caused the
boat to fill up with too much water,
and it started to go down like a stone.
I saw Roy Scheider dive into a mass of
nail-filled pieces of wood splintered
from the transom by the shark and did
not see him come up for a long time.
Other people were jumping clear of
the boat, and people on other boats
were rushing to help them. There was
much confusion and people were

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