American Cinematographer - May 1990 - 62

the longest was

100 mm. He used

Super-speed lenses, mainly for
night work, and made frequent
of both 5:1 and 10:1 zoom
lenses. The latter were always
used for variable focus rather
than for zooming. There were
use

many sequences where subtle
changes were made in focal
length while the dolly was mov¬
ing so there was never a sense of
static

images.
"There

was a

lot of fre¬

netic

activity," Kemper said.
"Tony gave the cast the freedom
to move around. I picked up on
what was going to happen dur¬
ing rehearsals and planned ac¬
cordingly.
"When

TITLE DESIGN

or

15

move

the

camera

with the

ac¬

tors who had lines and let every¬

VISTAVISION TO C'SCOPE

thing else cross in the foreground
or
background. Occasionally we
came in
very tight and sometimes
filled the screen with big heads to
bring the audience into intimate

COMPUTER MOTION GRAPHICS

eye-to-eye contact with a particu¬
lar person. That style is reminis¬

VISTAVISION TO VISTAVISION

VISTAVISION TO 1:85

COMPUTER MOTION CONTROL
SPECIAL VISUAL EFFECTS
BLUE SCREEN PHOTOGRAPHY
MATTE PAINTING COMPOSITES

INSERT SHOOTING
B & W REVERSALS

ANIMATION
FILM TO VIDEO TRANSFERS

NEWLY INSTALLED MECHANICAL

CONCEPTS 21 AXIS OF MOTION

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FOR VISTAVISION AND 4-PERF.

(213) 464-0121
60

had 14

people in a scene, say a group
therapy session, static photogra¬
phy would have been meaning¬
less and distracting. So we tended
to

OPTICALS

we

cent of Cassavetes."

There

were a

number of

zany scenes, where camera
movement and coverage was
even more free form. For ex¬

ample,

as part of their therapy,
Moore taught some of the pa¬
tients how to create commercials,
and their work was actually used

by his old ad

agency.
The patients were re¬
warded with gifts of cars by a
sponsor. That led to a sequence
where the patients were driving
cars around the
grounds. It
sounds like a scene straight out of
the Keystone Kops, but that
wasn't the case. There were no

helicopter scene where handheld
cameras were

used both

on

the

ground and in the air. In both
cases, Kemper opted for a hand¬
held look to allow the audience to
see the scene
through the eyes of
the patients.
At the other visual
treme

were

ex¬

night exterior and

interior shots where Kemper took

full advantage of the exposure
latitude of the 5296 film to record
scenes with
keylight ranging
from 4 to 20 footcandles.
scenes

"Typically, we shot those
with about 12 footcandles

of keylight," he said. "I've always
tended to work at low light lev¬
els. Even when the fastest film
available to us had a recom¬
mended E.I. of 100,1 wasn't reluc¬
tant to

use pre- and
post-flashing
techniques to squeeze a couple of
extra stops out of it. The
problem
was that I
always had to be con¬

cerned about how the lab would
handle it and worry about a

buildup of grain

or a compres¬
sion of contrast ratios.

"Now we have tremen¬
dous freedom with the 5296 film
to work with realistic
lighting
without worry about pushing the

image below the toe of the curve.
We shot a sequence in a confer¬
room, where I wanted to be
able to pull a deep focus so the
audience could see facial expres¬
sions in the third and fourth rows
of seats. In that situation, I had to
ence

bring the level of light

up to 20
foot candles."
There were night scenes
shot in the woods leading to the
barn. The cover was much too
thick for much moonlight to

penetrate. Kemper placed some
small incandescent units

near

the

tops of the tallest trees. These
were
strategically located to cre¬
ate

pools of light in the deeply

crashes, and while the action was
frantic, it was carefully choreo¬

shadowed

graphed.
Kemper augmented his
master shots with footage from
multiple handheld cameras
which captured the action in a
seemingly random, non-struc-

"I don't use blue light for
the moon because I don't feel that
is a realistic look," Kemper ex¬

tured manner. It was a taste of
freedom for the patients. A simi¬

through wavering branches and
painted the ground with a pat¬
tern of moving shadows. He used

lar tactic

May 1990

was

used to

depict

a

were

areas

that the actors

moving through.

plained.

By placing the units high
the light filtered

in the trees,
American Cinematographer - May 1990

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