American Cinematographer - October 1989 - 70

Reflections 11:

Elmes

by Benjamin Bergery

Fred Elmes has shot some
of the best, and most dis¬

wander, and I start to
wonder whether there's

quieting, independent

something back there,

American films. His ev¬
ocative work with direc¬
tor David Lynch in Blue
Velvet
and with Tim
Hunter in River's Edge is

whether there's

watching.
"By not ex¬
plaining everything with
light, darkness gives my
imagination an opening.

,

especially noteworthy.
Though different in

So sometimes I choose to
hold back light in areas of
the frame, because I
don't want to explain the

theme, both of these

"Off-Hoilywood" films
created shock waves with
their depiction of the dark
underside of small town America. Elmes'
other recent features include Permanent

Record, a thoughtful story of teenage
suicide, and the black comedy, Cold Dog

Soup. Elmes is currently shooting his
Lynch, entitled Wild at

third film with
Heart.

Although Elmes resists being
typecast as a "dark" cinematographer,
many of his films display a richly modu¬
lated world of shadows, suffused with a
sense of foreboding. In a recent inter¬

image that clearly. I want
imagine, and fish

to make the audience

for what's out there. And that allows the
audience to bring a little bit of them¬
selves into the story."
Elmes started his career by

studying photography at the Rochester
Institute of Technology. He went on to
film school at New York University, and
moved west to complete his education at
the American Film Institute. There, he

view, the cinematographer eloquently

began his collaboration with fellow stu¬
Lynch on a film called Eraserhead, an eerie short that grew to fea¬

expressed his use of darkness on the

ture

screen.

"Darkness is like leaving stones

unturned. If there's
corner

of

a room,

a

American

dent David

Cinematographer

see

all the

imagination

size, and has since become

a

cult

classic.

shadow back in the

and I can't

detail in it, then it makes my

68

or

someone

"Eraserhead

span

was

shot

over a

of four years, mostly at night. It was

just a few people; everyone pitched in to

October 1989

make it

happen. We all had very little
but we had time, so we made it
work. But of course this approach isn't
possible on a big production."
Elmes got his first taste of
bigger productions by shooting The Kill¬
ing of a Chinese Bookie and Opening
Night for one of the pioneers of inde¬
pendent filmmaking, the late John Cas¬
savetes. "They were small films, but they
were bigger than any films I'd ever
worked on. Cassavetes had a magical
sense about where to put the camera,
what vantage point made most sense for
money,

the drama of a
him."

scene.

I learned

a

lot from

Recently, it was Elmes' turn to
teach, by giving a cinematography work¬

shop for students at the University of
Southern California. He chose to shoot a

simple day interior: a man and a woman
sitting on a couch in a large room with a
window behind them.
Elmes' lighting setup was clas¬

sical, with

a

moody twist. A 5K Senior,

beamed through 216 Lee diffusion, pro¬
vided a soft key light which was supple¬
mented by a second 5K bounced off a
white card. This bounced key light
avoided

a

secondary shadow, while

ex¬

tending the spatial range of the key to
"wrap around" the couple. A 2K Junior
American Cinematographer - October 1989

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