American Cinematographer - August 1987 - 51

became almost black. Against that
little bit of blackness was that

Undemater
unit director Jordan
Kline

(foreground)

deep, deep blue sky above and
those great billowing clouds. Also,

and undemater

had the black actors who
looked great in frontlight. That is

Romano with Mario
Van Peebles in a

totally opposite of what I like

minisub. below:

cameraman

we

to

Romano follows

do.

"So, there

are two

Gavin

differ¬

particles in the air, such as smog
and other things you don't want
to photograph. It just hangs on the
cyan. The haze filters we used cor¬
rected

a

lot of that.
"I used

pola screens to
help keep flares off the water and
to put a little more life into the
shark by giving the material of the
shark's skin some reflective quality
that kept it from looking like a
piece of rubber with no kicks on
it. The backlighted scenes looked
great and we went mostly sil¬
houette. We shot in sidelight and a
little in frontlight so we could use
pola screens and literally take out
the reflections from the sky and
actually see right through the
Otherwise we tended to
lose the color of the water. I used

water.

some

superfrost and

very

fine silk

that can't be gotten easily. I
order them from France. One is
called Atamine and the other is
Souffle."
Th e beauty of the
Bahamas is undeniable. The
nets

weather, however, is unpredict¬
able, McPherson admitted.
"The weather
every

single day, and

some scenes

be continued

over two or

to

more

changed

days. We

always con¬
matching; some¬
were

cerned about
times the scenes

were

sunny, some

days heavily overcast. Sometimes
change during a shot. I
was always debating with myself
how long we could wait, and
it would

sometimes

we

couldn't wait any

McKinney

on

free ascent to

ent looks in the Bahamas scenes:
the frontlight with all the spec¬
tacular colors, and a backlight
condition where the figures go to¬
ward silhouette a lot. I used haze
filters sometimes when the air was
a little murky, to cut through the
ultra violet. The cyan layer is af¬
fected most by ultra violet and is
the most sensitive to unwanted

had

Pete

surface

during

scene

of shark attack
boat.

longer. It was very frustrating
me, but Joe was always flexible

to
to
the esthetic needs of the scene."
After months of work in
the Bahamas, the company re¬
turned to Universal City to make
the climactic scenes. McPherson
then took a close look at several
other pictures that were shot in

Super

35.
"I did

not

particularly
films," he

like the quality of those
decided. "Whether it

was

the

granularity

or the contrast, I didn't
like the look. It could have been
done by the optical printer, the

print stock or numerous other
things. Fred Austin at Deluxe lab
was very kind in helping me to
analyze all the different ways that
we could conceivably create an
anamorphic print of a Super 35
neg."
Over a period of several
weeks after the company's return
to Hollywood various methods
were
cause

tested. Time was limited be¬
Universal was locked into a

promised release date of July 17.
"There will be only one original
print," McPherson said at the
time. "That's because of the time
it takes, probably 12 frames per

minute, which ties

up the
and there just isn't
enough turnaround time. They
take the original and make an ana¬
morphic print and then have the
sound track put on. Another way
we're looking at is from the origi¬

printer

August 1987

-

nal to anamorphic intermediate
print, and from that they contact,
dupe and print. When that hap¬
pens the lights tend to change and
we'd have to re-time it, which may
be significant at this juncture. Yet
another possibility is to make a
straight flat contact and then
anamorphocize.
"We also tried an optical
blowup from the original to
65mm IP - flat, of course - and re¬
duced that to 35mm anamorphic.
By reducing it we get a much
tighter grain to look at (except
compared to the original, which
looks like dailies), but we lose
some contrast

American

and it is somewhat

Cinematographer

49

on a
American Cinematographer - August 1987

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