American Cinematographer - November 1990 - 49

of shallow or questionable charac¬
ter.

Satire is the thread which
holds the fabric of Wolfe's story

together. It's not pratfall kind of
humor. It's much more like the
smile which comes to your face if

you think about an overly diligent
traffic cop finding a parking ticket
on his own windshield.

Zsigmond also watched a print of
Citizen Kane, which he hasn't seen
for years. He wanted to review
how Gregg Toland, ASC used
wide angle lenses, and shot scenes
from low angle perspectives.

Zsigmond believes in being him¬
self, but there's nothing wrong
with seeing how Toland did it.
DePalma wanted to set

up for a slide from para¬
dise into oblivion with the theory

McCoy

being, the bigger you are, the
harder you fall. Zsigmond shot
large parts of the film with ultra¬
wide angle lenses from low
angles, creating larger than life
characters, and amplifying the
poshness of rich environments.
He actually crafted two
complementing looks for the film.
One is hyper-reality, the upscale
look that DePalma and Sylbert
outlined in the first meeting with
Zsigmond. It is characterized by
the use of acrylic colors - mainly
blues, yellows and greens - in
costumes and sets. Zsigmond lit
for a deep stop, usually around
T-4, which yielded sharp depth of
field, crisp images and a maxi¬
mum

tion

amount of visual informa¬

on

the screen.
The second look is

only
subtly different. Call it reality. It's
a downscale look which provides
a visual
signature for life in court¬
rooms, jail cells and on the streets
of the Bronx. Colors of costumes
and sets are comparatively
muted. Zsigmond also mixes

yellow and orange light
with cool blue moonlight more
freely in these settings. The feel¬
ing is a little more chaotic.
warm

In both

filter, number

one.

Sometimes,

Zsigmond switched from a Primo
lens to an Angenieux zoom lens
for close-ups of the women. The
older lens has some natural diffu¬
sion built into the optics.
Subtleties like this aren't

easy to pull off. The cameraman
has to understand exactly how the
diffused footage will intercut. The
audience has to feel rather than
see the shift in the
quality of im¬
ages.
Another concept Zsig¬
brought to the film was use
of the super-1:85 aspect ratio for
production. Basically, this al¬
lowed him to expose images right
up to the edges of the frame, in¬
cluding the space usually re¬
mond

served for the sound track

on

the

print. This increased the image
area
by around 20%, resulting in
a richer
picture. Zsigmond be¬
lieves that the difference is par¬

ticularly evident on 70mm release
prints.
Zsigmond's tools in¬
Panaflex Platinum cam¬
with a package of 10mm,

cluded
era

a

situations, he

14.5mm, 17.5mm, 18mm, 21mm

only used diffusion on the camera

and 27mm hard Primo lenses and

lens for

a

close-ups of actresses.
Mainly, in these situations, he
used the

new

Tiffen soft effects

17.5 to 75mm Primo

There also

were some

20 to 25

moving shots made with

November 1990

zoom.

a

light¬

weight camera on an image stabi-

Willis is in

]jzer

of disorder,

"Brian wanted to break
down the limitations of the static
camera and create a more
sponta¬

SraE'swi

real-life look with

neous,

no

im¬

pression of staged scenes,"
Zsigmond explains. "We were
almost always moving, either
with a Panaglide or on dolly
tracks."
There's

sequence where
McCoy is surrounded by report¬
ers and
photographers on the
steps of the courthouse. It's rain¬
ing hard. Zsigmond's operator,
Larry McConkey, walks the Pana¬
glide camera smoothly through
a

the crowd. For that moment, the
audience feels what it is like to
walk in McCoy's shoes as he starts

his slide to the bottom of the heap.

Zsigmond credits the
technology
with giving him more freedom to
satisfy DePalma's appetite for
evolution of fast film

camera

when

a

movement. He notes that

director is

making 360

degree
room

moves, there isn't much
for a cameraman to hide

old-style lights.
Zsigmond devised

some

ingenious ways to light. For ex¬
ample, in a cavernous interior of
a

courthouse

American

lobby, he floated

Cinematographer

a

47
American Cinematographer - November 1990

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