American Cinematographer - March 1995 - 97

Continued from page 96

province of humans.
Today, armed with a single
fact, you can speak directly to probably
more than half the population of the
Earth. That fact is, of course, their phone
number. One day we will have a compa¬
rable system for data - speak to it and
it will speak back to you. Imagine a world
in which voice-activated computers an¬

question you ask. "Can you
show me what the lower-right quadrant
of the image looks like?" "How would the
puddles look if the street lights were
swer

any

amber instead of white?" "How could the
color of the actor's shirt

change if the
sunlight were diffused by cloud cover?"
Each of these questions will be as easy
as "Open the pod bay doors, Hal."
As that capability grows, not
just in cinematography, but in every ac¬
tivity in our economy, the people who
prosper will no longer be those who
gather and manipulate information, but
those who know what to do

once that
data is presented to them. We will be
overloaded by data, and the people who
succeed will be those who know how to

triage the flow and create something
from it, rather than those who add to the
clutter. The system will reward intuition,

From the Clubhouse

James

Bagdonas, Roger Deakins and
George La Fountaine are the ASC's three
newest active members. Bagdonas' cred¬

Air America, Barton Fink, Passion Fish,

its include the series Lois and Clark: The
New Adventures of Superman, Time
Well Spent (pilot), Renegade, and 44

demption.

episodes of Hunter. Other credits are the
Movie of the Week Deader Than Ever,
the feature American Heart, which
earned him an Independent Spirit Award

nomination for best cinematography; the
TNT feature Conagher, and commercials
for Nike and New York Bell Telephone.
He has also directed several episodes of
Lois and Clark, Renegades, and Silk

Stalkings. His work on Huntereamed him

right-

1990 ASC Award and a 1990 Bronze
Medal at the New York Film Festival.

There is a certain gleeful irony
in this. The power of information technol¬

Roger Deakins' interest in film
grew from his work as a still photogra¬
pher in his native England, where one of

creativity, and subjectivity

-

brained stuff.

is automating the analytic, datamanipulation left half of brains. This im¬
proves the market power of the comple¬
mentary and creative right side. No less
a seer than Timothy Leary agrees, stat¬
ing, "Computers will replace you only to
the extent that you think like a bureau¬
crat, a functionary, a manager, an un¬
questioning member of a large organiza¬
tion, or a chess player."
And so, the ultimate irony is
that the Information Revolution may ul¬
timately reward the artists, poets, and
philosophers. Their triumph has been
long overdue. And so, perhaps, has that
of the cinematographers.
ogy

a

his commissions

was

to record the pass¬

ing way of life in rural Devon. He earned
a place at the National Film School and
spent three years there filming documen¬
taries and other students' films. Profes¬

sionally, he started out as a documentarian, and completed Around the World
with Ridgeway, about the Round the
World yacht race (for which he spent
nine months sailing); Zimbabwe and

Thunderheart, The Hudsucker Proxy, The
Secret Garden, and The Shawshank Re¬

George La Fountaine gradu¬
Playhouse in
1958 with a playwrighting major, and
was then employed by Paramount/KTLA
ated from the Pasadena

to work in live

television, news, docu¬
mentaries, commercials, and regular pro¬
gramming such as wrestling, auto races,

boxing and roller derby. He left KTLA in
1963 to work

as a

freelance director of

photography and lighting director. By
1968 he had his own consulting firm with
clients that included Disney, the NFL,
various political candidates, Ford, and
KCET.
In 1972 he left the business for
six years and published six books -
Two-Minute Warning, Flashpoint, The

Scott-Dunlap Ring, The Killing Seed, The
Long Walk, and Alumni. He spent the
years from 1978 to 1988 as a director of
photography at MTM productions, work¬
ing on Newhart, Eisenhower & Lutz,
WKRP in Cincinnati, and numerous pi¬
lots. In 1988 he performed high-definition
tests for Sony/CBS evaluating various
film stocks against high-resolution elec¬
tronic images.

Eritrea

- Behind the Lines, about the
in those countries; Rag Gonds -
India and S.E. Nuba - Sudan, two an¬

wars

thropological documentaries; and When
the World Changed, following the lives
of four mental patients and their re-en¬
try into society.
This work led to offers for tele¬
vision dramas and later for features, the

first of which

were Another Time, An¬
other Place and 1984. Since then his

has grown to include The Inno¬
cent, Defense of the Realm, Sid & Nancy,
resume

Richard Glouner, ASC and fre¬

quent collaborator Pasquale Moscatello
conducted

a

era, actors

and

workshop

on

scene at

directing

cam¬

the University of

Colorado in

early December. The cinema¬
tographer and writer/director worked
with the class to light, stage, rehearse
and shoot specifically scripted scenes on
a local sound stage. The workshop was
the second part

of

a

series

on

using the

director's tool, put on

Stormy Monday, White Mischief, Moun¬
tains of the Moon, The Long Walk Home,

by the
Rocky Mountain Filmmakers Association
in conjunction with the University.

March 1995

American

camera as a

Cinematographer

95
American Cinematographer - March 1995

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