American Cinematographer - January 1993 - 54

"For my part, I used fairly
small sources like 2K soft lights
with 216 or opal or tracing paper on

Top: Joe,
Aldolpho,
Jackie

(Elizabeth

them, which allowed

Bracco)and
Suzie (Debbie
Mazar) form a

me

to direct

soft

light into small areas very pre¬
cisely. For the daytime scenes, I
would light the windows and
bounce lights off the floor into cards
all over the place, because real day¬
light always seems to be coming
from everywhere. Outside the win¬

giddy Conga line
as they
anticipate their
certain

ascension to

celebrity status.
Bottom:

dows, I had some 4K HMIs on two

Aldolpho pays a

(Jennifer Beals)

small scissorlifts which we parked
on the street next to our silent
gen¬
erator. Since the windows were in
the shot, I couldn't use them as key

and her son

sources;

Pauli (Sam

so

visit to his
beautiful

neighbor
Angelica

I had to keep them down
they didn't flare out. I wanted
to create the ef¬
fect of window

Rockwell).
out

background, because the ST8

stock only had a two-stop range
between black & white! Two days
into the

'Wait

a

light in the
the way
your eye sees it,
which meant
that I had to
room

film, people were saying,
minute; we can't see the

actors' faces. The cameraman's

got

bring the

problems!' So they decided to check
me out.
They printed the dailies in
color, and everybody was knocked

range
of the window
down within
the range of the
film and then

out.

"By the end of the film, I
getting really beautiful dailies
on
Agfa ST8 stock by just opening
the faces up a lot more than I would
ordinarily do with color film. It was
so extraordinary looking - we got
really rich, solid, incredible blacks
that by the end of the film, Alex
wanted to print the release print on

New York's historic 4th

ST8! I told him if he loved the look

craft services; a floor down, all the

of the film on ST8, he was going to
love it more on a regular release

apartments were vacant and we

print stock."

we shot the film on the two floors
below that. There were still people

nice shot," Parmet laughs. "It's
elaborate; I handheld the camera
and walked it through her apart¬
ment. I lit it very dark in spots, but

living in the building, so we got
some serious
complaints on those
nights when we shot till four or five

you can see that there's someone
lying on the couch on one side of
the room. Then I panned over to

a.m."

someone
lying on the couch on the
other side of the room. I continued

bring the actors'
faces up."

was

-

With that hurdle

cleared,

Parmet had to deal with the insan¬

ity of shooting Rockwell's economi¬
cal opus on

real locations. "I was
aghast," he laughs. "When Alex
told me he wanted to shoot in a real

apartment building, I said, 'Why?

Why?' It basically takes place in
two rooms and a hallway, so it
wouldn't have cost him

a

lot of

money to build a set. Alex felt we'd
get an ambience there we couldn't
get on a set, and he was right."

Using Arriflex equipment
with Zeiss lenses and low-number

52

Parmet
tween 2nd and 3rd. "We

ing," he recalls. "We used the topfloor loft for dressing rooms and
used them to store

ment. "It has

a

kind of

American

Cinematographer

January 1993

his

operator on the
film, and one of the toughest shots
as

own

he handled was a free-floating trip
into the apartment next door to
Rollo's-the home of Angelica, the
woman of his dreams. "That sure is
a

panning past
to the
a

smaller

birdcage and

room.

gree pan as a
was

a

over

door, and then I moved into
We did

a

360-de-

violent pillow fight

going on.
"The room was three stops

lot of dirt and

lot of contrast

I bounced

quality," he remarks. "The art
department took the walls way
a

acted

overexposed, and the lights were
on the floor or the
ceiling, wherever
we could hide them. I used a
photo¬
flood hanging from the ceiling and

expression¬

ists

down and added

on

lights; and

frankly describes
working in the apartment building
as "a
nightmare," but he admits
that the authenticity of the location,
aided by the art department,
helped him create the weird,
grungy feel of Aldolpho's apart¬

black which put a
into the set.

building

our

Parmet

Camera, Parmet shot most of In the
an apartment

basically

took over four stories of this build¬

ProMist filters rented from General

Soup in

Street, be¬

a

a

2K openfaced

light into
it

card behind the door to open
American Cinematographer - January 1993

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