American Cinematographer - August 1993 - 41

ture. You can't get too close either,
because wide angles constitute

closeups when they're projected in
Imax. We experimented on Gorillas,
getting really close shots, and it was
overpowering. Also, the closer you
get to animals, the quicker they
seem to move, which
gives you
strobing problems that make it very
uncomfortable for the audience.
"I had to get away from
this constant need in small format
to get big closeups.

Also, with Imax,
long running shots give much more
of an impression of reality for the
audience, so we try to tell a story in
one shot. What I'm
looking for
when I go out on an Imax shoot is
the shots which not only tell the
story but have beautiful light,
lovely filtering and are entirely
perfect."
As if that isn't difficult

enough, when shooting Imax one
always shoots
to

a

Opposite:

qualified."

preap¬

While Gorillas in the Midst

proved script.
"You may think

of Man

it's not pos¬

ten

sible to script
natural his¬

required 24 weeks in the field,
spread over several different trips.
"We wanted to get different sea¬
sons," he explains, quickly adding
that lugging the cumbersome Imax
camera over several
mountaintops
in the course of a day added consid¬
erably to the shooting schedule:

a

tory film, but it

actually is!"
laughs.
"It depends on
having a very
good under¬
standing of the
Warren

the advantage of
having made a film on them before,
so I not
only knew the gorillas and
their natural history, I actually
knew the gorillas we'd be working
with individually. I had an intimate
knowledge of the environment as
well, so when I sat down and wrote
the storyboard, I knew exactly what
I could

expect, bearing in mind the

limitations of the bigger cameras.
"Even so, we couldn't just
set out and expect to get a particu¬
lar shot; I'd have to have every shot
in my mind like a computer. We
might get part of something, which
I'd store away in my mind. Then,

maybe three weeks later, I'd get
another part of that same scene!
And if the lighting matched, I was

made for British TV in

weeks, Warren's first Imax film

"The

animals before
you start. With
the gorillas, I had

was

okay! Fortunately, we kept a video
8 record of everything we shot, so
we were able to
go back and look
at rushes every evening and com¬
pare them with stuff we shot weeks
earlier, which

was a

real advan¬

tage."
Mountain Gorilla

pho¬
tographed by Neil Rettig. Like
Warren, Rettig was working in the
was

Imax format for the first time. How¬

he had shot Warren's previ¬
documentary on the great apes,
Gorillas in the Midst of Man, in 1989.
"We thought it was a good idea to

ever,
ous

Imax

camera

weighed 120 pounds with one roll
of film. That's without the battery,
which weighs another forty
pounds, and we always carried two
in case one went down. The tripod
head was another 50 pounds. We
always took several rolls of film in
different stocks, because as the light
changed, we might need slower or
faster film. We had porters to carry
the equipment up and set it close to
the gorillas, but then Neil and I
would take turns ferrying the stuff
as we followed the
gorillas from
one mountain to the next. We
wouldn't see the porters again till
the end of the day, so Neil and I

the same team," Warren says.
"Neil understood the environment

struggled through the bush with a

and the animals, and we

Neil and I have bad backs."

use

that

was more

having

someone

August 1993

thought

important than
who was Imax-

camera on our

the verdant
Rwandan forest,

mountain

gorillas spend a
bucolic moment
in their habitat.

This page,
above: IMAX
crew

members

prepare a

rail

system to film
the mountain

gorillas, as one
of their subjects
bides time in the

background.
This page,
bottom:

Indifferent to

Climbing

up

Cinematographer

the

a

small but rapt
audience of
crew
a

members,

Rwandan

primate snacks
on

his

surroundings.

backs. Now both

tainside with all of this

American

Surrounded by

moun¬

equipment

39
American Cinematographer - August 1993

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