American Cinematographer - July 1990 - 79

Shooting the
climactic rescue
after Glover's
Intruder has
crashed near a
Vietnamese

Village.

tended to

spill down onto the

deck just enough so the pilots
could see the deck for landings,
even with our Par lights, there
wasn't near enough light for us to

photograph planes taking off and
landing, and we desperately
needed night shots. We finally
talked them into letting us hide
two lights - only two lights - on
the deck just to give an overall
light. When I say we lit it, I'm
talking about three or four
footcandles. It was hard to see as
it was, but we used very fast

lenses and fast film, and we

got

we were

working in all the actual

CVC rooms where all the screens
used to chart the movements of
the airplanes are located, and we

actually able to photograph
kept it all contrasty,
spooky and dark in there."
Working on an aircraft
carrier presented its own com¬
plex series of problems for the

keep

all that. We

and

film crew to solve, not least of
which was getting power to their

equipment. "We couldn't use
shipboard electricity, which is
what we'd originally planned to
do," Koenekamp reveals. "The
electricians worked out a way
where we actually put all our

be

hangar deck - includ¬
ing the electrical truck and the

first in this area."
In addition to filming
takeoffs and landings, Milius
insisted that every scene that took
a

on the aircraft carrier was
shot on the aircraft carrier. "We
did build a corridor and three

place

different rooms on stage," Koenekamp admits, "but other than
that, everything was shot on the
carrier. It was interesting because

5,000 sailors aboard," Koe¬
nekamp points out, "so just to

were

beyond the
lights is black, there's no getting
around it, but I felt that this might

it. What's out there

ship was going on its regular
routine and there were about

trucks, including two 750 genera¬
tors

on

the

wardrobe trailer

-

so we

sup¬

plied our own juice on the ship,
and the boys ran lines to the vari¬
ous

areas

we

knew we'd be

shooting in and we just tied into
them. It was a big rigging job."
It
move

was

also difficult to

equipment around the car¬

our things out of their way
get the necessary equipment

to where

wanted it was

tough.
Moving equipment from one area
we

to another

was

also hard because

door is a hatchway with a
lip at the base. When we wanted
to move the dolly down the hall,
we had to
pick it up and carry it
over the
doorway. Fortunately,
we took a
peewee dolly on¬
every

board! We used it on some of the
sets so we could have some
movement even in those tight

quarters - we didn't want to be
stagnant all the time."
the

Perhaps hardest of all for
hardworking crew was living

for two weeks

on

the aircraft

car¬

rier, and observing their rules.
"The

living quarters were so
small, I felt like I was in jail, to be
honest!" Koenekamp shudders at
the memory:

"You couldn't

anywhere, there

was

go

nothing to

rier for a number of reasons. "The

do, and all you wanted to do was

July 1990

American

Cinematographer

77
American Cinematographer - July 1990

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