American Cinematographer - May 1990 - 72

everything from sound
gaffer to key grip.
as

man to

After

camera
assisting for
cinematographers, in¬
cluding Rey Villalobos (Desert
Bloom) and Chuck Minsky, Bagdonas
pulled a three-year operating

numerous

stint on Hunter, and moved up to
director of photography two sea¬
sons

ago.

Bagdonas avoids travel
because of family considerations,
so his Hunter
assignment suits him

well. Most of the photogra¬
phy is done on Los Angeles streets,
definitely an "at home" atmos¬
phere.
very

Investment in Death is the

story of a friend of the main char¬
acter who is murdered

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by a gang,
ostensibly to prevent him from
leaving the group. The Hunter
(Fred Dreyer) breaks up the gang's
drug trafficking and shuts down
their money supply. This episode
was shot
primarily in Westwood,
Culver City, and downtown Los
Angeles. Hunter is generally shot
on the streets with
very little stage

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"The main focus photo¬
graphically is to shoot each epi¬
sode as a feature movie, not just a
television program," Bagdonas ex¬
plains. He sees the dailies and
makes as many adjustments with
the lab as possible in the time
frame. His aim is to bring the sto¬
ries to a filmic balance that keeps

them theatrical. "I

CINE-VIDEO
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Frank

Johnson

How Will
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They Remember Me?

wanted

white,

me

to shoot in black and

so we

feeling of

a

could get the real

period film."

Johnson is a native of
Rockford, Illinois. He joined the
U.S. Air Force in 1966. At the time,
he had

no

idea of what he

was

going to do with his life, and the
Air Force seemed like a good place
to find out. Enter
serendipity: the
Air Force sent Johnson to school to
learn how to become a motion

picture

cameraman.
Four years

later, after
shooting literally miles of film in
every conceivable circumstance,
Johnson took fate in his own
hands. He left the military service,
and moved his family to Holly¬
wood.

Johnson climbed the lad¬
der

a

rung at a

time. He shot docu¬

mentaries, educational films, and

low-budget independent features
for a dozen years. His first work for
a
major studio occurred in 1983,
when Disney hired him to shoot 65
mm
footage for the Epcot Center.
In 1985,

Johnson shot

an

episode of Hunter which led to
two years of filming The A Team. In
1987, Les Sheldon, who worked
with Johnson as a director on The
A Team, launched Wiseguy and
asked Johnson to Vancouver to
shoot the show.
Stevan Lamer, ASC
Snow (Beauty and the

Beast)

This is the second

con¬

secutive year

Stevan Larner, ASC,
earned an outstanding achieve¬
ment nomination for Beauty and the
Beast. It won't happen next year

(Wiseguy)

because the show

Frank Johnson was nomi¬
nated for an ASC outstanding
achievement award for an episode
of Wiseguy photographed primar¬

part-way into its third season,
despite cries of protest from fans

ily in black and white. The episode,
How Will They Remember Me? was
built around a poignant flashback
based on a brief encounter that the
hero's father, a breadtruck driver,
had with the neighborhood Mafia.
The black and white foot¬

age had the texture and tone of a
vintage 1930s or '40s movie set in
the heart of Mafia territory in New
York City. It was framed by lush
color footage of the star, Vinnie,
reading and reacting to a long lost
diary.
"We've used black and

70

pulled from color negatives. The
company (Stephen J. Cannell)

white

scenes

"but

they

May 1990

before," Johnson said,

were

always prints

was

cancelled

and critics.
Larner's

background is
unique for a cinematographer. He
grew up in Manhattan and studied
chemistry at Yale University. After
graduation, he worked at an ani¬
mation studio in New

York, de¬
dead-end, and
a
two-year apprentice
program for filmmakers in Paris at
cided that
enrolled in

was a

the Institut Des Hautes Etudes

Cinematographiques. After com¬
pleting the program, Larner spent
10 years in Algeria and France
photographing non-fiction films.
He returned home
the mid-1960s, and shot
taries for U.S.I.A. before

during

documen¬
moving to

Hollywood. One of Larner's docu-
American Cinematographer - May 1990

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