American Cinematographer - February 1993 - 44

This posh

they are in a penthouse. It is more

restaurant was

natural for them to look down
when they are looking out of win¬

another of the
film's larger

dows," Koltai says. "It is difficult to

settings.

explain, but it has a different feel¬
ing - an attitude."
Interiors and night exteri¬
ors were

recorded

on

the

new

Eastman EXR 500T 5296 film,
which is somewhat less contrasty.
"It's

a

beautiful film, but it is a little

good," he says. Koltai wanted
of the texture of a painting on
canvas than a perfect
photograph.
It didn't take much to manipulate
the image to give him that look -
his use of light and color, and an
too

more

FX-1 diffusion filter

on

the

camera

lens, increased the apparent granu¬
larity enough to suit his taste.
used a high-speed prime lens. In
those cases, he finished the scene
with the prime lens on the camera
because it was difficult matching its

color imaging characteristics with
the zoom lens. There were no prob¬
lems matching prime and zoom
lenses from scene to scene, but he

faultless communications between
the director and the cinematogra¬

pher. The penultimate scene in the
penthouse, a confrontation involv¬
ing Griffith, Goodman, Johnson
and several supporting players,
was a

volatile situation with a lot of

gave him considerable flexibility on
tracking shots. In one case, he was
shooting a moving two-shot, and
the characters strolled right up to a
mirror. Koltai made a smooth and

pushing and shoving. As the char¬
acters moved in a perfectly syn¬
chronized performance, the camera
backed away, then moved in closer,
pumping visual energy into the
scene and
building the tension in
one
long master shot. The moves
were
quite subtle, but they allowed
the camera to play the role of an
invisible performer showing the
audience the scene through the eye
of a subjective observer.
Over the course of produc¬
tion, only a few scenes were shot
from a crane, including the opening

natural-looking visual transition

of the film, which established the

which showed the audience the
real and reflected images simulta¬

setting, and a few big parties. Most
of Born Yesterday was shot from eye
level, and there are very few
closeups. "We felt that [closeupsl
would interrupt the flow of the
story," Koltai says.

that within a scene, the varia¬
tions in color rendering would be
noticeable, if only on a subliminal
says

level.

Why did he rely so heavily
the zoom lens? "Sometimes the
best size for framing an image is
81mm or 87 or 95, instead of the
focal length that is fixed on a prime
on

lens/' he explains. The zoom also

neously, perfectly sized and fo¬
cused for maximum dramatic im¬

pact.
A fair amount of Steadiwas needed to keep the
flowing at an energetic pace.
During a scene in the lobby of a
bank, for example, the camera
cam

work

film

glided with the characters from an
elevator to a door, more than 50 feet

away, in a single shot that takes
between 90 and 120 seconds to

complete.
Long, moving two-shots

42

require painstaking execution and

American

Cinematographer

Meticulous attention

was

Daylight exteriors were
recorded on the Eastman EXR 100T
5248 stock, which he characterizes

yielding a richer look than the
standby 5247 Eastman me¬
dium-speed film. Processing was
done by Technicolor Labs, with
help from John Bickford. "He's a

as

old

beautiful man," Koltai says.
"Within a few days we established
my printing lights, and the colors
that I liked. After that, every day I
saw consistent dailies."
For visual consistency,
Koltai lit for a basic stop of T-2.8 or
T-3 in the penthouse. The latter was
wide open on the zoom lens. In
some

scenes,

the audience

can see

patio and five rooms, because of
the wide doorways and mirrors -
and the fact that he was generally
using a wider angle focal length.
Koltai routinely overexposed pent¬
house interiors by a half-stop. For
closeups, he sometimes went as
much as two stops over, added
light, and then printed back in the
lab. Technicolor printed his nega¬
tive at a light in the mid to high 40s.
Koltai says this tactic renders a
richer negative with very solid

a

paid to seemingly small details. For
example, the penthouse set was
built four feet off the ground. This
indulgence was costly and served
no
practical need, but it provided
important psychological motiva¬

blacks and realistic details in both

tion for the cast. "If the actors are
above the floor of the stage, it is
more natural for them to act like

shot.

February 1993

highlight and shadow areas. The
mid-tones are very normal-looking,
he says, and both films easily car¬
ried five stops between the bright¬
est and darkest elements in each

While
exterior

filming some night
in Born Yesterday,

scenes
American Cinematographer - February 1993

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - February 1993
