American Cinematographer - May 1988 - 64

I did The Gumboil

cars

which

miles
a

are

an

Rally with,
capable of doing over 100

hour. We had

a

Titan

crane

couple of times, two Fisher dollies,

and

a

Condor crane, which is like a

cherrypicker. We had to wedge
the Condor because

up

we were on a

tones. He's the star, so

must know what to

do about it.

controllable

"We

shot

on

Eastman

always have, and it looks right on
the button. We shot a lot of night
stuff with natural light - with al¬
most no light in the Mercedes
scenes
using fast lenses at T1.3 or
T1.2. One night we were keying at
eight to 10 footcandles. I stayed
with Zeiss high speed spherical
lenses until they decided we were
going too slow, so I said, 'Fine we'll go with the zoom,' and I
brought in a 5:1 zoom. It's a good
lens. Again, rating at 500 inside even in a
daylight interior - I was
working at 3.9 and 4."
A green house with an
overhanging porch was used as the
home of Mrs. Murphy, the mother
of the 13-year-old pregnant dope
addict. Shapely Bobbe Jordan - she
was the
singer-dancer leading lady
of the Barbary Coast TV series wore
padding under her clothes to
de-glamorize her for the mother
role. Before she played some scenes
-

with Mitchlll in front of the

house,

Glouner had neutrals

on

placed

windows and set up some

and

the

HMIs

large reflectors on the sidewalk
yard. "We were lucky in that

nobody walked up onto the por¬
so we just filled them in with

ches,

some

out

reflectors," Glouner pointed

afterward.

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Los

May 1988

I

was

cars

balanc¬

before

picture. I got light

we

grey

for his car. The seats were dark, so I
put sheepskin covers on them. We
did everything to enhance seeing

5247 and 5294. A lot of guys rate 94
at 350 or 400, but I rate it at 500,

and

show. We colored the
made the

brightest

62

the set with five other

ing Scoey to everybody in the pic¬
ture. He's primarily a video man, so
1 explained to him that we have
from black all the way to white in
our
grey scale for this show. Once
we had a
pure white blonde and
Scoey walking around in an alley at
night, so we had both ends of the
grey scale working. We never got in
the middle, so that means a tough

ideal conditions, and
the cinematographer

MOBILE LIGHTING, LTD.

on

people, all with different skin

for it and set up

Of course, movies are
never made under

light source

had him

hill. The

grips built a big platform
parallels. We had a
10K on it at night. I had two 750
amp generators for the lights.

The world's

"Our
biggest photo¬
graphic problem every day was that
we were
shooting Scoey with ev¬
erybody else, and he's black while
many of the others are white. We

Scoey when he

driving be¬
major hos¬
pital, he's big time, he drives a big
Mercedes and you've got to see and
hear him. Scoey never faltered or
gave us a problem. Not once did he
say 'can you go faster?' or 'can you
do it another way?' He has a lot of
charm and really carries himself
cause

was
he's the head of

a

well."

Glouner

used

a

white

stand-in for the white actors and
black stand-in for the black

During

a

a

men.

lunch break the white

stand-in, Tony Loria, amused the
with a Humphrey Bogart im¬
pression. "Tony is a night club com¬
crew

ic

on

the side,

and he's also

a

production manager," Glouner re¬
marked. "He really knows the
business, so he gaffed the standins." Emphasizing the importance
of these men to the cinematogra¬
pher, he added: "I can't light air."
Glouner's

favorite

is

a

night shot made at the neighbor¬
hood location. "That'11 be the fea¬
ture

the

shot, with the skyscrapers in
background. We lit two city

blocks

-

mile. It's

it looked like about

a

half

of the

biggest shots
they've done in TV in years. We had
to keep that in balance at anywhere
one

from three to 10 footcandles. We

gave it a couple of high points and
had Art Dixon and his son bring

their truck out there and water
American Cinematographer - May 1988

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