American Cinematographer - January 1993 - 47

thus rocked, Goodman Brown re¬
turns to the village to live out his

as a distrustful curmudgeon
steadfastly maintains that the
simple, pious folk around him are
in reality a pack of rabid devil-wor¬
shippers.

days
who

In the end, the Devil comes
to

Shell) enters the woods, the story

Young Goodman Brown was unusual
regards. Most of the
scenes were
photographed using

slides from the sunny, coral-tinged
ideal of a New England village into

in several

dark, surreal forest alive with for¬
bidding mystery. Cinematogra¬

two cameras in order to facilitate

a

pher Roxanne di Santo used light¬
ing and photography to imbue
both the village and the woods with

collect his

coverage

and stretch the schedule;

adventurous, unrealistic color
palette was used to render the
an

night exteriors eerie and disorient¬
ing; and the pic¬
both

due, reminding

ture

Goodman

photographed
and printed
with Agfa film

Brown of what

the Bible says -
that Satan is the

was

stocks, used
further aug¬

king of deceit,

to

and that the
fateful night in
the woods was

ment the offbeat

perfect ex¬
ample of his
technique. Hav¬
ing taken the

tasy, a fairy

color palette.
"It's fan¬

a

tale," says di
Santo of Young
Goodman Brown.

"The film makes
think of
Hansel
and

bait, Goodman
Brown has be¬
come

me

the prop¬

erty of the devil,

Gretel, and

while the God¬

approach was
to give the feel

fearing people
of the village re¬
main beyond

our

page:

Minister gone

bad
George Burroughs
(played by Gregory
Itzin, left) is
confronted by the
ghosts of his former
victims

as

he

tortures the

(Angela Baker, in
tub). Young
Goodman Brown,

played by Tom Shell,
watches in horror at

right. This page, top:
For day interiors, di
Santo keyed through
the windows and

used coral and CTO
for a Dutch Masters
feel. Three centuries
ago, a woman
believed to be
room

pictured.

Below, right: When

possible di Santo
and director Peter

George emulated
compositions of

the

Edvard Munch.

Below, left: Di Santo
lines up a shot with
Arri BL 4 while

an

looks on. (Color
illustrations are
frame reproduc¬

tions.)

film,

director Peter

George and
producer Rob¬

these character¬
istics.
Di Santo is

graduate of
New York University's film school
and has a pair of low-budget

by Robert Tinnell
Directed by Peter George
Director of photography,
Roxanne di Santo

a

features and numerous commer¬
cials to her credit, including spots
for McDonald's, Chrysler, Squirt,
and some of the earliest ads in the
influential Michelob Dry "Bold,

Wet, Dry" series. Highlights from
her music video credits

are

k.d.

of a dramatic fairy tale."
When di Santo and direc¬

George discussed the visual
approach to the film, they
tor

discovered a shared admiration
for another fairy tale-tumed-film:

Excalibur, photographed by Alex
Thomson, BSC. For example, in cer¬
tain flashback scenes, di Santo used
net at the back of the lens and dif¬
fusion on the front, which was done
in Excalibur throughout.
a

lang's "Trail of Broken Hearts," Ar¬
Development's "Everyday
People," UB40's remake of "The
Way You Do the Things You Do,"
and Melissa Etheridge's "2001."
Di Santo's approach to

"We watched Excalibur
several times before we shot," di
Santo continues. "Thomson used a
lot of magenta mixed with firelight

January 1993

American

rested

Produced

a

witch lived in the

Richard Rutkowski

Young Goodman

ert
Tinnell
found an un¬
beatable loca¬
tion - the ac¬
tual site of the witch scare, in east¬
ern
Massachusetts. Humble
wooden buildings from the era still
stand outside the town of Danvers,
surrounded by a few quiet stretches
of hardwood trees and several fruit
orchards. The filmmakers secured
the right to photograph in and
around these period buildings to
lend an air of authenticity to interi¬
ors and village scenes.
Once night falls and
Goodman Brown (played by Tom

helpless

Anne Putnam

first assistant

his insidious
reach.
To commit
Brown to

Opposite

Cinematographer

45
American Cinematographer - January 1993

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