American Cinematographer - September 1968 - 34

the maximum effective use of the tal¬
ents of all three, which meant the
maximum effective use of their three
weeks on location and their modest
budget.
While on location they also saved
time, film and the expense of a re¬
turn trip by arranging to screen
rushes of footage shot five days be¬
fore. The delay between shooting and
viewing was due to the time of ship¬
ping to and from their remote loca¬
tion in Humboldt County, California,
and the lab in Los Angeles. "We took
a projector with us, and the three of
us would view the rushes in our motel
room. It took awhile for us to get
a photographic feel for nature,"
Greenwood says.

Chew back-packs his Eclair camera and gear
op Redwood Creek. In the dense "forest
primeval" behind him the difference between
sunlight areas and shadow was sometimes as
much as three F-stops.

film the opening fog sequence seems
all of a piece, but actually, it was
shot at different times of the day and
on different locations, by the sea, and
in and around the forest. We also got
an aerial sequence to show the for¬
est's vastness." To show the integral
relationship between the trees and
other plant and animal life. Chew
also sought out birds, spiders, and
blooming flowers. "To fulfill the script
we also needed a tree-felling se¬
quence, shots of the trees being
trucked off, and shots of a loggedout valley," Chew says. "In short, the
rough script saved us from getting
lost in the woods." Thus preparation,
on an ideational level, guaranteed

Had they not been able to view
rushes, the fog sequences that open
and close the film might have been
omitted. The fog shots, according to
Greenwood, were important to the
mood of the film and also the hardest
to get. "Without them," he says, "the
whole mood of THE REDWOODS would
have been different. Mark's script
called for shots that would create a
mood of mystery and give us a sense
of the primeval age of the forest. By
linking the ocean and the trees with
the motion of the fog, we hoped to
suggest something like the dawn of
life." The film-makers learned that the
best time to shoot fog and ocean was
in the late afternoon. During the sum¬
mer, the fog builds off-shore in the
afternoon and rolls in slowly with the
setting sun's rays lacily penetrating
and accenting the inner texture of the
fog. "We couldn't shoot the forest in
the late afternoon because the fog
was too thick when it hit the trees;
also the light level dropped so low
we couldn't get an exposure," says
Chew. "So we shot the tree part of
the fog sequence in the morning be¬

The King Screen Productions film-makers. (LEFT) Greenwood, (CENTER) Harris and (RIGHT) Chew.
The Seattle, Washington production company, though only three years old, has already gained
an international reputation for documentaries and television spots which it has produced. Besides
the Academy Award for "THE REDWOODS," King Screen Productions' films have won eight
international awards.

tween ten and eleven, at the end of
the fog cycle; that is when the fog is
burning off in the rising heat of the
day. It was a nice effect, for the fog
was heavy on the ground, and thin¬
ning toward the treetops. And above
the trees, there was a trace of the
sun's color. All this emphasized the
height of the trees. They seemed to
be emerging out of a great depth."
From the rushes Chew learned that
while in fog he had to underexpose by
a half to a full stop from what his
meter was reading, if he was to pick
up the textural details of the fog.
In sunlight, the light was broken up
into moving pools of light and sha¬
dow. "The difference between areas
of light and shadow was sometimes
as great as three stops, which was
beyond the contrast latitude of our
film (ECO 7255)," says Chew. "So we
avoided areas of splotchy light and
tried to do most of our filming within
the forest where the light was more
even. This was difficult, especially in
the pans. However, we were lucky in
that one afternoon there was a thin
cloud cover which acted like a screen
and diffused the light evenly over the
forest floor."
The aerial shots were taken from
a Cessna 185. To diminish the effect
of the plane's speed over the treetops, Chew shot at 48 frames per sec¬
ond when shooting out to the side and
32 frames per second when shooting
toward the front. "We never could
get a direct frontal shot because of
the propeller," Greenwood says, "but
we approximated frontal shots by tak¬
ing advantage of Dick's courage.
We'd be flying between fifty and sixty
miles an hour at just under six hun¬
dred feet off the ground. Dick, wear¬
ing a safety harness, would half climb
out onto the wing strut with the Arri
16 S and run off a hundred feet at a
time. If he climbed in and out of the
plane at that speed, there was the
danger of his getting dizzy, so he
stayed outside and I would load for
him." The day before when they had
made a reconnaissance flight, the
weather had been perfect for shoot¬
ing. The day of the shooting, the
weather at the motel had been good,
but at the airport it was cloudy. When
they arrived at the shooting site the
sky was alive with moving clusters of
clouds which would intermittently blot
out the sun. Also, there were pockets
of warm air gushing out of the trees
which made for a, sometimes, bumpy
Continued on Page 681

AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER, SEPTEMBER 1968

American Cinematographer - September 1968

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