Contemporary Cinematographers on Their Art

Pauline B Rogers

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 1998
• Print ISBN: 9780240803098
• eBook ISBN: 9781136045776
• Topic: Médias et arts de la scène
• Subtopic: Film et vidéo

The twelve interviews in this book cover all aspects of cinematography from pre-production planning to post-production, special effects, aerial photography, and second unit. Each interview gives a behind-the-scenes look at how some of the most popular shots in movies and television shows were lit and captured.

Technically and philosophically oriented, Contemporary Cinematographers on Their Art explores the tools, trends, personalities, and professional achievements of contemporary cinematographers, highlighting the behind-the-scenes struggles of the business of making motion pictures. Each chapter delves into the personal challenges, political properties, inter-departmental interactions, and artistic achievements of the artists who bring scripts to life through their choice of cameras, lights, lenses, filters, gels, and other supporting equipment.

Covering a variety of film and television genres--from soaps to half-hour sitcoms, to cable and network productions and low- and big-budget features--each interview explores the tools cinematographers use to capture their shots, from traditional equipment to innovative camera and lighting "toys," as well as the integration of mechanical and computer graphic effects.

Dean Cundey, A.S.C.

"With today's advanced technology we were able to bring 'flash' and 'fantasy' even closer together to tell a story no-one believed did happen, yet reacted as if it could."

Dean Cundey A.S.C. stands patiently in the circular driveway of his La Canada, California house on the look out for visitors. There is a quiet braying sound coming from the neighbor's corral, although the horses are nowhere to be seen. Cundey cocks his head and looks down the long driveway. He is used to visitors being just a little late, the house is hidden from view, a quiet retreat from people and problems.

"Come by way of San Francisco?" he asks with a straight face, but the twinkle in his eye is the giveaway. At first glance, the longish dark hair, graying beard, and bushy eyebrows speak of a no-nonsense manner. The twinkle in his eye and the dry voice give away his quiet sense of humor. If he doesn't tease or pick on you, then you have a problem.

"Don't know if I'm going to let you in the house, you're still an IBM person, aren't you?" he asks. A confirmed Macintosh aficionado, Cundey and son Chris have created a new computer system that will revolutionize the melding of special effects and live action footage. It is a system they used to make the straight-to-video Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves (his first directorial effort) and was used on his latest Robin Williams project Flubber, A.K.A. The Absent Minded Professor, as well as Tom Ackerman's 1998 release, My Favorite Martian.

"Watch the boxes," he says, as he winds his way through piles of packed possessions. "We are still trying to remember where everything goes." Cundey and family have just moved back to La Canada from a six month "visit" to San Francisco, where he shot the Flubber remake, based out of the Treasure Island Naval Base studio facility.

Cundey settles into a comfortable chair. "It's good to be home again," he sighs. For a man who has shot movies and commercials all over the world, the word "home" has a special meaning. At heart, he is a confirmed family man and nester. Born in Alhambra, California, his background is middle-America and family oriented. His father was a salesman for Dunn and Bradstreet and mother a housewife. Although the senior Cundey's work touched the world of Hollywood, because he had several clients "in the business," the glamour seemed very distant.

"When I was 12 we had a special tour of Disney Studios," he recalls. "I got to talk to Walt Disney for ten minutes. I was fascinated by the architecture of his theme parks. I remember asking him how to get into the world of that kind of design. My mother was delighted that he steered me toward architecture instead of the movie industry," he laughs. "They both thought that would give me a career to 'fall back on,' should I go astray!"

A camera shop located across the street from Cundey's high school captured his eye. Inside, copies of American Cinematographer were displayed. After reading the first, he was hooked. He ordered as many back copies as he could get. "In those days, they were cheaper than the newest editions," he laughs. "The ability to create illusion with iight fascinated me. I used to think how lucky these members of the A.S.C. were. I never thought I would become one of them."

When Cundey began reading college catalogs, courses like calculus and structural engineering made him think twice about architecture. He switched his attention to theater history and a few light architectural classes at Cal State, Los Angeles, and then the film school at UCLA.

Although he received some grounding from a few teachers who knew the practical side of the business, UCLA film school in the late 1960s did not prepare students for the reality of the business. Cundey realized he had to learn by doing. "It was the height of the flower child era," he recalls, not at all shy about dating himself. "The students were interested in experimenting. Alternative filmmaking and cinema verite were in.

"There was a new awareness of film as an art form," he adds. "The Graduate was a perfect example of what could be done. It had smaller, hand-held cameras, quartz lighting units, faster films, the more portable Nagra sound recorders. All contributed to freeing up the creative process. Films could be shot in actual locations under more realistic conditions. For a while, we were seeing more 'personal' films influenced by that style of European filmmaking."

Cundey's first project followed the experimental road. Project One was silent with a music track. He shot a "story" of a young man who wanted to buy a car. To earn the money, he scrounged masonite and old paint and made a piece of abstract art using roller skates, a mop, and other discards. He then cut it into four pieces, selling each at a festival. The proceeds were enough to buy the car. "Who says it had to have a great meaning," he laughs. "Sometimes we over intellectualize things!

"In class, we would sit for endless hours analyzing the deep symbology that is part of a film or a play or book. At the time, I felt impatient. What I really wanted to get to was 'how can i make this really important?' My project was my low key statement to that effect. It was complimented for its visual style."

Cundey and several other students felt restricted. Instead of making a little final project, they banded together and got permission to shoot something more substantial. One would write, another be the production manager, he would shoot and another direct. Their project would be an existential black-and-white Western.

Cundey used his high school machine shop training to build a mount for an anamorphic lens on a 16mm camera, making it possible to shoot the wide format. The crew then coerced the Paramount Ranch manager to let them use the facility. They then prevailed upon Western Costume to lend them period clothes. "It had a pretty authentic look," he smiles, still getting a thrill out of the production. "We even entered it into a few festivals. One of my partners took the film and blew it up to 35mm, and submitted it to the Academy's short film competition. Cold Sun, as it was called, became a finalist. It was up against a project called Amblin, from a young student at Long Beach State. The filmmaker was an unknown by the name of Steven Spielberg."

The week after graduation, Cundey began Chapter One of his movie career, as a make-up man on a low budget film with several school buddies. The film was produced through Roger Corman's company. The project took a week to shoot. Then, the newly married, out-of-work, Hollywood wannabe went back to his apartment to fret. Before he could work up a sweat, the phone rang. Roger Gorman asked him to do make-up on a film called Gas. "it was the last film he directed," Cundey says, sadly.

Although he was getting work as a make-up artist, lighting still fascinated Cundey. "I couldn't forget the class I took at UCLA taught by the legendary James Wong Howe," he recalls. "Between The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and The Molly Maguires, he would teach a practical approach to shooting. We became the grips, electricians, and camera crew. We built a little three-walled set - a window, door, a table, and a few chairs - and he showed us how to light that set for different moods and styles.

"One day it would be a rundown, seedy hotel, the next an elegant room. The set wouldn't change, just the lighting and equipment. We got to use professional tools and we learned the purpose of scrims. We learned where to place the flags to make the shadow sharper or softer.

"When I am lecturing or teaching, I use the same technique. You have to let your students feel the work, get inside the process."

For Cundey, one of Howe's most valuable lessons hinged on inventiveness. When Howe talked about Tom Sawyer, he explained how he created the illusion of candles in a cave, where the light source was totally artificial. "Candles with lights inside were revolutionary at the time," Cundey adds. "They added a sense of reality. That's what he was known for. That's what adds to the dramatic needs of the story."

Filmmaking has to move an audience. "In two ways," Cundey adds, that twinkle coming to his eye once again. "It moves the audience into another world, emotionally. And, it has to move them out of their house and into a theater, to spend seven dollars of their hard earned money. It doesn't matter if it is happy or sad or scary, as long as the story moves the audience through an emotional process, it has succeeded." It is a philosophy Cundey learned during Chapter Two of his career from long-time associate John Carpenter.

"Howe had inspired me. I had been experimenting and building my own reel. One day, I just 'happened' to be in the right place at the right time," he smiles, his beard twitching with stifled laughter. "After make-up, I began gaffing low budget pictures. One day, I walked into the producer's office, just as the cameraman I was going to work with quit for a better offer. The producer slammed the phone down and screamed to no one in particular. 'Now what am I going to do?' It just so happened I had my reel in the car!" he laughs aloud. "Talk about timing!"

From 1972 to 1981, Cundey shot over 30 films, many for scare-fare guru John Carpenter. Since the budgets were low, he had to learn to operate the camera as well as create the illusion through light. "It was valuable," he admits. "That's when I learned what a pan does and how to compose a shot for maximum effect."

These low-budget projects were plentiful. Independent non-union filmmakers would design posters with cars and guns and girls and take them around to foreign financiers. They would raise 100 to 150 thousand dollars - then make the picture.

"At times, I would have only about three lights available. Three small lights like 2ks and 600 watt pars. I had to look at the shot and work with what I had. You started with the image and decided what you needed to accomplish with what you had. Most of the time, you found ways to make one light do several jobs."

"I had to find a way to get in on the work," Cundey says. "So I built my own small truck. It was a Dodge van with a totally re-designed interior. It had shelves, compartments, slots - something like the one built for the television show I Spy," he explains. "This allowed cameramen to carry all the equipment needed to any location available. With a leased package of lights and cameras, I had a small production vehicle for rent, I'd circulate pictures - here's a complete package including cameraman and crew."

Cundey and team began to do a string of 14-day 100,000 dollar budget shoots. The director-cameraman collaboration was vital to this kind of project. By helping to design the shot, Cundey was able to save time and money. "You learned to edit in your head," he says. "I would look at a scene and say, 'this is a quick scene, let's play it as a two-shot at the table. We can pan the girl over the bar and we don't need the coverage, because she says only two or three lines. Now, we can spend time on the coverage in this scene....' I began to make on the spot evaluations that would give me time to spend on the more important scenes."

Of course, some of the 'evaluations' make Cundey cringe today. "Not too long ago, I was running Where the Red Fern Grows, my second film, for some kids who had never seen it. The picture had a real director - Norman Tokar. When we got to the kitchen scene, I cringed. Boy, did I ever over-light it!

"It's all a learning process," he says, shrugging. "The Carpenter era was another time for experimentation. Halloween, The Fog, Roller Boogie, Galaxina, that was a fascinating era. As the industry progresses, there are less and less places to learn. In the 1930s and 1940s directors like William Wyler and DeMille experimented in westerns. In our era, the B-movies that ran in the Drive-ins.

Those movies are still being done today, only they cost 50 million dollars to do! It's a shame in a way. People are still renting Halloween - and it cost, well, a twentieth of what the 'horror' film costs today. Escape from New York is probably the most widely recognized and talked about film we made. We used Panavision's new, at the time, Ultra Speed lenses and the relatively new HMI lights to light up whole city blocks of St. Louis.

"However, The Thing was probably the most innovative picture we did during that period." This film is where Cundey met creature-creators Rob Bottin and Stan Winston. It would be the first of many associations with the newly emerging art of special effects make-up. The Thing allowed them to use a very experimental technique called morphing. "We used special effects makeup and a rubber creature to morph the transformation. The biggest challenge was to light it so that it wasn't obvious that we were looking at a rubber object.

"When the dog split open, tentacles would come out. The organic material would change. How do you make that believable for an audience? We used very controlled lighting. Rob Bottin was very conscious of the value of accommodating the camera to further the illusion of life out of his creations. I would look for the 'best' areas of a particular rubber creature, light that, and let the weaker parts fall into shadow. Sometimes, the things you don't see are more scary anyway. I then had to design the overall lighting of that particular scene or set to justify the sketchy light of the creature. It became a thought process and technique that I've carried through to my current projects."

Cundey admits he could do a whole semester on the John Carpenter era. The team pioneered slasher films without blood. Most of the emotional reactions from the audience came from within, not reactions to the gore. "We combined images with sound and music," he explains. "We took people on a ride."

Eventually, Cundey graduated to other "rides." One of his favorites was Psycho II. "It was interesting, because we were taking a classic film from a classic director, and recreating it," he explains. "How could we create the same feeling with a new audience?

"We had the luxury of a photo book that had been published. It analyzed Hitchcock's original movie on a cut-by-cut basis. It showed us the exact composition of each shot, the lighting, and details about the set that we could study. It became our key to creating as much as we needed to the style and feeling of the original. Also, the producer of the new film, Hilton Green, had been the Assistant Director of the original, so we were constantly entertained by background stories and bits of trivia about the original. We even found some of the original set dressing in the Universal Studios' storage. We became so involved with recreating the feeling of the original, that we decided to have some fun and include Hitchcock in one of his famous cameo appearances. Unfortunately, he was dead," Cundey says, his face suspiciously blank, "so, we had to come up with some alternative way for him to appear. We felt that a photo would have been too blatant. My camera operator, Ray Stella, came up with the idea of a shadow. We cut a silhouette out of Hitchcock's famous caricature from his TV show and used it to throw a shadow of him on a wall. When Tony Perkins turns out the light in his mother's room, the shot lingers just long enough for the knowledgeable or astute viewer to recognize Hitchcock's face on the wall in the center of the frame."

Cundey pauses, listening as his answering machine clicks on. When he hears a familiar voice, he launches himself from his easy chair, jumps over boxes, to grab the phone. "Hold that thought. I have to take this conference call. It's about a commercial I might do in Mexico."

He listens quietly to the excited voice of an Australian producer. The shoot involves some difficult situations to be done in a weather atmosphere. Cundey responds to the sense of panic with the patience that has gotten him through enormously difficult shoots. "That's not a problem, I did something similar in Mexico on Romancing the Stone. We can take a look at that location, if you want."

He hangs up the phone, shaking his head. "Sometimes they get excited about the little things," he laughs, settling in once again. "Now, that's a film that pushed me into Chapter Three, and another wonderful relationship and fascinating sets of circumstances," he remarks. "Bob Zemeckis is a fantastic director ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Thomas E. Ackerman, A.S.C.
• John Bartley, C.S.C., A.S.C.
• Don Burgess, A.S.C.
• Dean Cundey, A.S.C.
• Roqer Deakins, A.S.C.
• Stephen Goldblatt, A.S.C.
• Emmanuel Lubezki, A.S.C.
• Jo Mayer
• Donald A. Morqan — (Multi-camera television)
• Donald M. Morgan, A.S.C.
• Dennis Muren, A.S.C. (Visual Effects/ILM)
• David Nowell (Second Unit Aerial Photography)
• Salvatore Totino (Commercial/Music Video)
• References