American Cinematographer - March 1995 - 38

get 2 Vi setups, which is not quite
enough to do a normal sequence.
So you have to plan sequences
that you can do in one or two set¬

Right top:
Zwick and Toll

confer with
actors on the

battlefield set,
which was
carved out

ups.

sizable chunk
of

You can't take time figuring
is, or moving

out what the shot

on a

the

camera

Calgary

farmland.

would

Below

right:
Dolly tracks
set up

one

to

around."

Occasionally, nature
deal out a perfect hand. In

instance, however, Toll's

trenches. Toll

cards were so good that the un¬
trained viewer might suspect
that the cinematographer

cites Kubrick's

pulled

were

provide

a view
within the

Paths of
as a

a few aces from his
sleeve to achieve it. "There's one
sunset in the picture that looks
unreal and completely fabri¬

Glory

visual

reference for
this

scene.

cated, but it's fully authentic,"
he

reveals.
"The shot oc¬

my camera operator, John Cloth¬
ier, to get yet another angle of the
ranch with an interesting sky.
There was so much happening,
and it was so beautiful, I couldn't

the

to war. David

shot it. It al¬
most looks like

resist."

The wisdom of Toll's ap¬

weird

some

matte

proach is apparent in the finished
film, which literally flows over
with magnificent skies and vistas.
In filming the Elysian splendors
of the terrain, Toll stayed true to
his naturalistic plan by avoiding
too many tricks. He sometimes
used very subtle neutral-density
grads to darken the sky in rela¬
tion to the land, and occasionally
added color (mostly blues) to the
composition, but in general, he
let Mother Nature provide the
palette. "I had three really good
opportunities to shoot dusk
scenes at
magic hour - a shot of
the brothers riding off to war, an¬

but

painting,

one

of the

things
I'm
proudest of
this

about

movie is that
there
mattes

are
or

no

CGI

tricks. I realize
that all of that

stuff is
derful

won¬

and

great for the
business, but I
feel

good
knowing that
there's

a

movie

other in which Brad Pitt is break¬

out there

ing a horse in a corral, and the
scene just before Tristan and

period film, in

than it

usually does. The quality

the

light source. We were basi¬
cally lighting people with re¬
flected light off the entire sky,
and the actors' skin tones took
an

on

unbelievably luminescent

quality because they were reflect¬
ing the clear blue sky as opposed

American

Cinematographer

a

-

that isn't filled

magic hour lasted much longer
of light was best on a clear day,
when the blue sky itself became

-

the Nineties

Susannah make love," he recalls.
"Because we were shooting in
Canada in June, July and August,

36

just before
boys go off

curs

to grey

tration

clouds.
"The trick, of course, is

-

to

-

having enough time to shoot
those scenes," he points out. "We
could only get about two really
good setups in the time we had
for magic hour, which was about
30 minutes. If you're really well

at the

rehearsed and set up, you

wanted

March 1995

might

rear

some

with computer
tricks."
Toll
did
add some fil¬
nets and ProMists

of the pre-war scenes

ranch in order to enhance

the happier tone that prevails
during the early part of the story.
"For those scenes, we

desperately

tried to avoid
was

shooting when it
overcast," he says. "We

everything before the
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