Making Movies – Summary and Notes
Making Movies by Sidney Lumet
Summary and Notes
How great to have an entire book written by a great director. Of course a lot of great information here. I need to see some of these movies I haven’t yet seen that he talks about. He seemed a little bitter in the end, but he had the right. Big key take away, always be making stuff. That’s how you really learn.
The tone the AD uses is important. If he sounds like Santa Claus chortling “Ho-ho-ho,” the actors know that he’s afraid of them, and he’ll have a rough time later. If he sounds pompous and officious, they’ll surely screw him somewhere along the line. The best are the British ADs.
There are no minor decisions in moviemaking. Each decision will either contribute to a good piece of work or bring the whole movie crashing down around my head many months later.
I also make sure that I have the time to read a script straight through. A script can have a very different feeling if reading it is interrupted, even for half an hour.
I’m not a believer in waiting for “great” material that will produce a “masterpiece.” What’s important is that the material involve me personally on some level. And the levels will vary.
I’ve done two movies because I needed the money. I’ve done three because I love to work and couldn’t wait anymore. Because I’m a professional, I worked as hard on those movies as on any I’ve done. Two of them turned out to be good and were hits. Because the truth is that nobody knows what that magic combination is that produces a first-rate piece of work. I’m not being modest.
all we can do is prepare the groundwork that allows for the “lucky accidents” that make a first-rate movie happen. Whether or not it will happen is something we never know. There are too many intangibles,
For anyone who wants to direct but hasn’t made a first movie yet, there is no decision to make. Whatever the movie, whatever the auspices, whatever the problems, if there’s a chance to direct, take it! Period. Exclamation point! The first movie is its own justification, because it’s the first movie.
The picture had better have some meaning to me. Otherwise, the physical labor (very hard indeed) will become twice as exhausting.
The Appointment meant that I had the chance to work with Carlo. And what I learned made a difference on all my subsequent pictures.
I work from the inside out. What the movie is about will determine how it will be cast, how it will look, how it will be edited, how it will be musically scored, how it will be mixed, how the titles will look, and, with a good studio, how it will be released. What it’s about will determine how it is to be made.
Murder on the Orient Express is a first-rate whodunit that keeps you completely off balance.
I had always felt that I’d seriously hurt two movies by directing them too ponderously. They simply weren’t made with enough lightness of spirit.
Certainly, The Group would have benefited from a lighter comedic feeling in its first twenty-five minutes, so that its deeper seriousness could emerge slowly.
Some things we are naturally talented for, and some things we have to learn. Some things we just can’t do. But I was determined to get this movie gay, if I had to kill myself and everyone else to accomplish it.
I don’t think I would have handled Network as well if it hadn’t been for the lessons I learned on Orient Express.
I have no preconceived notion that I want the body of my work to be about one particular idea. No script has to fit into an overall theme of my life. I don’t have one.
Sometimes I’ll look back on the work over some years and say to myself, “Oh, that’s what I was interested in then.”
Whatever I am, whatever the work will amount to, has to come out of my subconscious. I can’t approach it cerebrally.
The important thing is that the interpretation by the director be committed enough so that his intention, his point of view, is clear.
But how much in charge am I? Is the movie un Film de Sidney Lumet? I’m dependent on weather, budget, what the leading lady had for breakfast, who the leading man is in love with. I’m dependent on the talents and idiosyncrasies, the moods and egos, the politics and personalities, of
more than a hundred different people. And that’s just in the making of the movie. At this point I won’t even begin to discuss the studio, financing, distribution, marketing, and so on.
Like all bosses—and on set, I’m the boss—I’m the boss only up to a point. And to me that’s what’s so exciting. I’m in charge of a community that I need desperately and that needs me just as badly.
Anyone in that community can help me or hurt me. For this reason, it’s vital to have the best creative people in each department. People who can challenge you to work at your best, not in hostility but in a search for the truth.
Yes, Al Pacino challenges you. But only to make you more honest, to make you probe deeper. You’re a better director for having worked with him.
Boris Kaufman, the great black-and-white cinematographer, with whom I did eight movies, would writhe in agony and argue if he felt a camera movement was arbitrary and unmotivated.
There are directors who think they have to provoke
people to get the best work out of them. I think this is madness. Tension never helps anything. Any athlete will tell you that tension is a sure way of hurting yourself. I feel the same way about emotions. I
try to create a very loose set, filled with jokes and concentration.
The greatest pressure in moviemaking is when you know that you’ve got only one take to get the shot.
Interestingly enough, I don’t mind limitations. Sometimes they even stimulate you to better, more imaginative work.
I felt the picture had little commercial potential and have been grateful that a studio put up the money, I’ve done the unthinkable. I’ve taken less money than my “established price,” as I did on Running on Empty. I’ve never regretted it.
I’ve found also that actors are very willing to go along with these arrangements if they love the material, feel it’s risky, and know that everyone else will be going along on the same basis.
I’ve even asked crew members to do it; some have, some haven’t. But guess who have never gone along. The teamsters. Many of the money-saving techniques I’ve learned on low-budget movies can and should be used on normally budgeted movies. Lots of economies can be made, with no sacrifice of quality.
whenever the camera has to change its angle more than 15 degrees, it’s necessary to relight. Lighting is the most time consuming (and therefore most expensive) part of moviemaking. Most relighting takes minimally two hours. Four relightings take an entire day! Just moving to shoot against wall A, then turning around 180 degrees to shoot against wall C is usually a four-hour job, a half day’s work!
Lee Cobb arguing with Henry Fonda would obviously have shots of Fonda (against wall C) and shots of Cobb (against wall A). They were shot seven or eight days apart. It meant, of course, that I had to have a perfect emotional memory of the intensity reached by Lee Cobb seven days earlier. But that’s where rehearsals were invaluable.
After two weeks of rehearsal, I had a complete graph in my head of where I wanted each level of emotion in the movie to be. We finished in nineteen days (a day under schedule) and were $1,000 under budget.
Tom Landry said it: It’s all in the preparation. I hate the Dallas Cowboys, and I’m not too crazy about him and his short-brimmed hat. But he hit the nail on the head. It is in the preparation. Do mountains of preparation kill spontaneity? Absolutely not. I’ve found that it’s just the opposite. When you know what you’re doing, you feel much freer to improvise.
Preparation allows the “lucky accident” that we’re always hoping for to happen. It has happened many times since:
Why would he give up the total control of the creative process that a novel provides to write instead for communal control,
He said that he loved seeing what his work evoked in others.
In drama, the characters should determine the story. In melodrama, the story determines the characters. Melodrama makes story line its highest priority, and everything is subservient to story.
farce is the comic equivalent of melodrama and comedy the comic equivalent of drama.
I think inevitability is the key. In a well-made drama, I want to feel: “Of course—that’s where it was heading all along.”
And yet the inevitability mustn’t eliminate surprise. There’s not much point in spending two hours on something that became clear in the first five minutes.
Inevitability doesn’t mean predictability. The script must still keep you off balance, keep you surprised, entertained, involved, and yet, when the denouement is reached, still give you the sense that the story had to turn out that way.
Given my apprehensions about how this would play at the Loew’s Pitkin, I felt that if I reenacted the tape in the movie, we were dead. We’d never recover. That balcony crowd would never allow themselves to take Pacino or the movie seriously again.
I love dialogue. Dialogue is not uncinematic.
A character should be clear from his present actions. And his behavior as the picture goes on should reveal the psychological motivations. If the writer has to state the reasons, something’s wrong in the way the character has been written.
Dialogue is like anything else in movies. It can be a crutch, or when used well, it can enhance, deepen, and reveal.
Mamet always leaves a great deal unsaid. He wants the actor to flesh it out. So he refused to do it.
Chayefsky used to say, “There are two kinds of scenes: the Pet the Dog scene and the Kick the Dog scene. The studio always wants a Pet the Dog scene so everybody can tell who the hero is.”
As always, if there’s a potential problem, I like to bring it out in the open before we begin. So I made an appointment to see her.
My point is that it’s so important to thrash these things out in advance. If push comes to shove, you can then say the obvious truth: “This is a script we both said yes to. So let’s do it.”
I like the writer present at rehearsals. Words are critical. And most actors aren’t writers, nor are most directors.
Normally, I use improvisation as an acting technique, not as a source of dialogue. If the actor is having trouble finding the emotional truth of a scene, an improvisation can be invaluable. But that’s about the limit.
Writers are so used to being slapped around that they’re stunned that I want them at rehearsal. Only twice has this backfired.
Many of my relationships with writers have been just the opposite. My respect for them would grow so great during our working time that I’d want them in on every aspect of the production.
At supper after the screening, many of the French directors were complaining about the lack of writers. I pointed out as gently as I could that they might be at fault. Because of the “auteur” nonsense, with the all-powerful director, most self-respecting writers would, of course, resist getting involved in a movie.
Moviemaking works very much like an orchestra: the addition of various harmonies can change, enlarge, and clarify the nature of the theme. In that sense, a director is “writing” when he makes a picture.
Writing is about structure and words. But the process I’ve been describing—of the sum being greater than the parts—that’s shaped by the director. They’re different talents. Some people can do both, but I’ve never known anyone who wasn’t better at one than the other.
Most writers who began directing did so in order to protect the integrity of their work. They’d been violated so many times by directors who had no idea what they were doing that the writers picked up the megaphone in self-defense.
The director, because he says “Print,” has a lot of power. But the results are best when he doesn’t have to use it.
Style: The Most Misused Word Since Love
Making a movie has always been about telling a story. Some movies tell a story and leave you with a feeling. Some tell a story and leave you
with a feeling and give you an idea. Some tell a story, leave you with a feeling, give you an idea, and reveal something about yourself and others. And surely the way you tell that story should relate somehow to what that story is.
Critics talk about style as something apart from the movie because they need the style to be obvious. The reason they need it to be obvious is that they don’t really see. If the movie looks like a Ford or Coca-Cola commercial, they think that’s style. And it is. It’s trying to sell you something you don’t need and is stylistically geared to that goal. As soon as a “long lens” appears, that’s “style.”
But almost no critic spotted the stylization in Prince of the City. It’s one of the most stylized movies I’ve ever made.
Kurosawa spotted it, though.
beauty in the sense of its organic connection to the material. And this is the connection that, for me, separates true stylists from decorators. The decorators are easy to recognize. That’s why critics love them so. There! I’ve had my tantrum.
This, of course, brings up the auteur argument. So-and-so’s “style” is present in all his pictures. Of course it is. He directed them. One of the reasons Hitchcock was so deservedly adored was that his personal style
was strongly felt in every picture. But it’s important to realize why: He always essentially made the same picture. The stories weren’t the same, but the genre was: a melodrama, layered with light comedy, played by the most glamorous actors he could find (also the most commercially popular at the time), photographed often by the same cameraman, with music composed by the same composer. The Hitchcock team was available for every picture. You’re damn right there was a readily identifiable style.
Perhaps he chose subjects that played into his strength, what he knew was his “style.”
You can always recognize a Matisse.” Of course you can. It’s the work of one person working alone! Movie directors do not work alone. There will be a visual difference if we work with Cameraman A or Cameraman B, Production Designer C or Production Designer D.
I’ve tried to work in as many genres as possible. I have cast cameramen or composers the same way I have actors: Are they right for this picture?
Boris Kaufman, with whom I did eight pictures, was a great dramatic cameraman. We made wonderful movies together: 12 Angry Men, The Pawnbroker, The Fugitive Kind. But when a lighter touch was needed, we ran into problems. A silly little romance we did, That Kind of Woman, failed visually; The Group and Bye Bye Braverman both suffered because photographically they were too heavy. Boris couldn’t lighten up, literally. (There were reasons for his heavy heart.)
And the movies he was right for, including On the Waterfront and Baby Doll, are among the finest black-and-white pictures ever made.
Good style, to me, is unseen style. It is style that is felt. The style of Kurosawa’s Ran is totally different from the style of The Seven Samurai or Kurosawa’s Dreams. And yet they are certainly Kurosawa’s movies.
There are four primary forms of storytelling—tragedy, drama, comedy, and farce. No category is absolute.
In drama, there is naturalism (Dog Day Afternoon) and realism (Serpico). In comedy, there is high comedy (The Philadelphia Story) and low comedy (Abbott and Costello Meet You Name It). Some pictures deliberately contain more than one form. The Grapes of Wrath is a combination of realism and tragedy, Blazing Saddles a combination of low comedy and farce. These are not exact, quantifiable elements, and very often they overlap. What I always try to determine is the general area where I think the picture belongs, because the first step in finding the style is to start narrowing down the choices I’ll have to make.
The more confined and specific the choices were, the more universal the results became.
By naturalistic, I mean as close to documentary filmmaking as one can get in a scripted movie.
its ambiguity on every level was one of the most exciting things about it. I didn’t even know how I felt about the leading character:
Tragedy, when it works, leaves no room for tears.
The classic definition of tragedy still works: pity and terror or awe, arriving at catharsis.
If the leading role of Danny Ciello was played by De Niro or Pacino, all ambivalence would disappear. By their nature, stars invite your faculty of identification. You empathize with them immediately, even if they’re playing monsters.
A major star would defeat the picture with just the advertising. I chose a superb but not very well known actor, Treat Williams. This may have defeated the commerciality of the movie, but it was the right choice dramatically. Then I went further. I cast as many new faces as possible. If the actor had done lots of movies, I didn’t use him. In fact, for the first time in one of my pictures, out of 125 speaking parts, I cast 52 of them from “civilians”—people who had never acted before. This helped enormously in two areas: first, in distancing the audience by not giving them actors with whom they had associations; and second, in giving the picture a disguised “naturalism,” which would be slowly eroded as the picture wore on.
On a true tragedy, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, I took the opposite tack. We had to achieve in the production the tragic dimensions of the script. I wanted not just stars but giants. They had to be the best actors—great actors, if possible—and, in addition, have great personas.
I thought immediately of Katharine Hepburn for the critical role of Mary Tyrone. My first meeting with Hepburn did not go well. (More later.) I felt she was fighting to dominate the situation, which could lead to problems during shooting.
Sometimes the style of the picture is apparent when I close the script after the first reading. That’s the second—and easiest—Way of deciding on a style. Murder on the Orient Express is one example. There we were dealing with a melodrama that had a wonderful plot. But it also had to have another quality: romantic nostalgia. What could be more nostalgic or romantic than an all-star cast?
Dog Day Afternoon. Because of the then shocking material, I felt that my first obligation was to let the audience know this really had happened. That accounts for the whole opening section of the movie. We went out with a hidden camera and photographed every ordinary incident we could shoot on a hot August day.
When we finally cut to Pacino, John Cazale, and Gary Springer sitting in a car in front of a bank, they seemed like just one more shot of a group of people on that oppressive summer day in New York.
The script jumped forward and backward in time. Sometimes we were in the present, sometimes twenty years earlier, then five years earlier, then back to the present, then fifteen years earlier. What slowly “presented itself” was that if we visually separated the parents’ lives from the children’s, two worlds would emerge. We accomplished this through the use of color in the decor, filters in the camera, tempos in the editing.
Someone once asked me what making a movie was like. I said it was like making a mosaic.
The talent of acting is one in which the actor’s thoughts and feelings are instantly communicated to the audience.
I don’t want life reproduced up there on the screen. I want life created.
Generally, we’ll spend the first two or three days around a table, talking about the script. The first thing to be established is, of course, the theme. Then we’re into each character, each scene, each line. It’s much the same as the time I’ve spent with the writer. I’ll have all the leading actors in on rehearsal. Sometimes an actor will have a critical scene with a character who appears in only one scene in the movie. I’ll bring that small-part actor in for a day or two in the second week of rehearsals. We read the script nonstop first, then spend the next two days breaking it down into its components, winding up on the third day with another nonstop reading.
One of the interesting peculiarities in the process is that the second nonstop reading, after three days of rehearsal, usually isn’t as good as the first. This is because the actors’ instincts were pushing them on that first day. But instinct wears out quickly in acting, because of repetition. The nature of moviemaking is repetition. So one has to substitute “actions” that can stimulate emotions to compensate for the loss of instinct. That’s what the two days of discussions have been about. In other words, we’ve begun to use technique.
I don’t stage the piece in my head before rehearsals. Nor have I laid out much in the way of camera movement. I want to see where the actors’ instincts lead them.
On the final day of rehearsal, we’ll do one or two run-throughs. Of course, I always rehearse in sequence. This is because movies are never shot in sequence.
Rehearsing in sequence gives the actors the sense of continuity, the “arc” of their characters, so they know exactly where they are when shooting begins, regardless of the shooting order. Howard Hawks was once asked to name the most important element in an actor’s performance. His answer was “confidence.”
If the actors are going to hold nothing back in front of the camera, I can hold nothing back in front of them.
I don’t know if he bothers anymore, but Brando tests the director on the first or second day of shooting. What he does is to give you two apparently identical takes. Except that on one, he is really working from the inside; and on the other, he’s just giving you an indication of what the emotion was like.
Then he watches which one you decide to print. If the director prints the wrong one, the “indicated” one, he’s had it. Marlon will either walk through the rest of the performance or make the director’s life hell, or both.
Ralph paused a moment and then sonorously said, “I see what you mean, dear boy: a little more cello, a little less flute.” I was, of course, enchanted.
we talked in musical terms from then on: “Ralph, a little more staccato.” “A slower tempo, Ralph.”
An actor who must remain nameless wanted to be in on the casting of the woman who was going to play opposite him. When I asked why, he said he had to be able to relate to her sexually if he was to play the love scenes properly. So I asked him, what if the script called for him to kill her? Would he have to relate to her murderously in order to play the part?
Things were a little testy between us for the next few days.
he looked everywhere but directly into her eyes. He looked at her eyebrows, her hair, her lips, but not her eyes. I didn’t say anything. The scene was a confession by his character that he was hopelessly in love with her, that they came from very different worlds, that he was achingly vulnerable to her and therefore needed her help and support. On the day of shooting we did a take. After the take, I said, “Let’s go again, and Bill, on this take, would you try something for me? Lock into her eyes and never break away from them.” He did. Emotion came pouring out of him. It’s one of his best scenes in the movie.
She couldn’t do it. Finally, I told her that no matter what I did during the next take, she should keep going and say the line. We rolled the camera. Just before she reached the line, I hauled off and slapped her. Her eyes widened. She looked stunned. Tears welled up, overflowed, she said the line, and we had a terrific take. When I called, “Cut, print!” She threw her arms around me, kissed me, and told me I was brilliant. But I was sick with self-loathing. I ordered an ice pack so her cheek wouldn’t swell up and knew that I would never do anything like that again. If we can’t get it by craftsmanship, to hell with it. We’ll find something else that’ll work as well.
Even with as fine a character actor as Robert De Niro, De Niro himself comes out. Partially it’s because he uses himself brilliantly.
Because they are often the reason that a picture gets financed, actors tend to get spoiled. I hate those large trailers. I’ve seen trailers that are literally converted buses. The bed is enormous. The TV has a retractable satellite dish. I’ve seen the production company pay for private cooks, private secretaries, makeup and hair people who are no better than their peers but draw four times the salary. Many of the stars’ makeup and hair people engage in a subtle kind of undermining, so that the star slowly becomes dependent on them. All of this is dangerous in two ways: it costs a lot of money that doesn’t wind up on the screen; and even without meaning to, the stars begin to get a sense of power that can hurt their work.
In Murder on the Orient Express, I wanted Ingrid Bergman to play the Russian Princess Dragomiroff. She wanted to play the retarded Swedish maid. I wanted Ingrid Bergman. I let her play the maid. She won an Academy Award.
No matter how insecure, almost all the stars I’ve worked with have a high degree of self-knowledge. They may hate what they see, but they do see themselves. And you thought all that gazing into the mirror was just vanity.
How can we get actors with totally different life experiences and acting techniques to look like they’re making the same movie? The answer is remarkably simple, but like all simple things, it’s hard to achieve. Just as in life, really talking and listening to one another is very, very difficult. In acting, that’s the basis on which everything is built.
By now I have an almost set speech I make just before the first reading of the script. I will say to the actors, “Go as far as you feel. Do as much or as little as you want to. If you feel it, let it fly. Don’t worry whether it’s the right emotion or the wrong one. We’ll find out.
That’s what rehearsals are for. But minimally, talk to each other and listen to each other. Don’t worry about losing your place in the script as long as you’re really talking and listening to each other. Try to pick up on what you just heard.”
They began to read. I couldn’t hear anything. Everyone was murmuring their lines so quietly they were inaudible. I finally figured out what was happening. The movie stars were in awe of the theater stars; the theater stars were in awe of the movie stars. A classic case of stage fright. I stopped the reading and, saying that I couldn’t hear a thing, asked them to please talk to one another as if we were at Gielgud’s house for dinner.
Most good actors have their best take early. Usually, by the fourth time you’ve done it (Take 4), they’ve poured out the best in themselves. This is particularly true of big, emotional scenes.
Movies, however, are a technical medium. Things go wrong despite preparations. A door slams off the set, the microphone gets in the shot, the camera operator goofs, the dolly pusher misses his cue. When this happens, the actor has an awful time. Having “emptied out” once, he now has to fill up again. The only way around the problem is to shoot take after take, because the “refill” can come at any time after Take 8 or Take 10 or Take 12. I try to supply the actor with something new each time to stimulate his feelings, but after a time my imagination runs out.
It can make up for a deficient performance. It can make a good performance better. It can create mood. It can create ugliness. It can create beauty. It can provide excitement. It can capture the essence of the moment. It can stop time. It can change space. It can define a character. It can provide exposition. It can make a joke. It can make a miracle. It can tell a story!
Technically we refer to the lenses on the lower millimeter range (9 mm, 14 mm, 17 mm, 18 mm, 21 mm) as wide-angle lenses, and to those from 75 mm on up as long lenses.
The distance from where the image reverses itself to the recording surface (the film) is what determines the millimeter count of the lens. In drawing A, notice how much more room there is above and below the photographed object than in drawing B.
The 35 mm lens (A) takes in a significantly larger area than the 75 mm lens (B). The wider-angle lens (35 mm) has a much larger “field” than the 75 mm lens. The 75 mm lens has a long tube drawn on it… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
Lenses have different feelings about them. Different lenses will tell a… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
While he described the incidents, the scenes we’d seen earlier were repeated as flashbacks. Only now, because they’d taken on a greater melodramatic significance as evidence, they appeared on the screen much more dramatically, forcefully, etched in hard lines. This was accomplished through the use of different lenses. Each scene that would be repeated was shot twice—the first time with normal lenses for the movie (50 mm, 75 mm, 100 mm) and the second time with a very wide-angle lens (21 mm). The result was that the first time we saw the scene,… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
No lens truly sees what the human eye sees, but the lenses that come closest are the midrange lenses, from 28 mm to 40 mm. Wide-angle lenses (9 mm to 24 mm) tend to distort the picture; the wider the lens, the greater the distortion. The distortions are spatial. Objects seem farther apart, especially objects lined up from foreground to… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
Longer lenses (from 50 mm upward) compress the space. Objects that are lined up from foreground to background seem closer together. The longer the lens, the closer the objects… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
These distortions are tremendously useful. For example, if I were doing a tracking shot or dolly, or simply panning from right to left, I could create the illusion of the photographed object… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
Because it seems closer, the object seems to travel past the background at a much greater speed on a long lens. The foreground object (a car, a horse, a running person) seems to be covering more ground faster. Conversely, if I wanted to increase the speed of an object moving toward or away from me, I would use a wide-angle lens. This is… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
Wide-angle lenses have a much greater focal depth of field—the amount of space in which an object moving toward or away from the camera stays in focus without… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
Again, this can be put to tremendous use. If I wanted to get rid of as much background as possible, I’d use a long lens. The background, even though it seems closer, is so out of focus that it becomes unrecognizable. But with a wide-angle lens, although the background… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
Sometimes, when I need a long lens but want to keep the image sharper, we’ll… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
The more light, the more focal depth, and vice versa. The added light will give us a greater focal depth, compensating somewhat for the loss… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
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It gets even more complicated. Since light affects the focal depth, the stop (the amount of light allowed to pass through the lens) is very important. The stop is created by… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
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We call it opening up (letting in more light by setting the diaphragm in its most open position) or stopping down (closing the diaphragm so it allows the least… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
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It never occurred to me that shooting an entire picture in one room was a problem. In fact, I felt I could turn it into an advantage. One of the most important dramatic elements for me was the sense of entrapment those men must have felt in that room. Immediately, a “lens plot” occurred to me. As the picture unfolded, I wanted the room to seem smaller… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
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Starting with the normal range (28 mm to 40 mm), we progressed to 50 mm, 75 mm, and 100 mm lenses. In addition, I shot the first third of the movie above eye level, and then, by lowering the camera, shot the second… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
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For the first time, I tried assigning lenses to characters. Brando’s character, Val Xavier, is trying to find love for himself and others as the only possibility of his own salvation. (I once asked Tennessee Williams if the name Val Xavier was a disguised version of St. Valentine, the savior. He merely smiled that enigmatic little smile of his.) With a long
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lens, because of its shorter focal depth, the image tends to be a bit softer. In fact, by using a long lens at a wide-open stop, a close-up may have the eyes sharp but the ears and back of the head slightly out of focus. So I tried whenever possible to use a longer lens for Brando than for any other person in the scene. I wanted an aura around him of gentility and tenderness. Anna Magnani’s character, Lady, starts off as a hard, bitter woman. As her love affair with Val grows, she softens. So as the picture progressed, I slowly increased the use of long lenses on her until, toward the end, the same lens was used for Lady and Val. He’d changed her life. She was now in his world. Val’s character began and ended the same. Lady’s character underwent a transition.
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To emphasize her progression, once we were using the same lens for each of them, we added nets to her side. A net is literally a piece of net held in a rigid metal frame that fits behind the lens, outside the camera. It diffuses the light, further softening the image. The net must be used very subtly, especially when it is intercut with shots of a… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
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Clearly, there is more control on an interior, where the cameraman is providing the light artificially. But on exteriors, it’s quite amazing to see how… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
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If you’ve ever passed a movie company shooting on the streets, you may have seen an enormous lamp pouring its light onto an actor’s face. We call it an arc or a brute, and… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
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Your reaction has probably been: What’s the matter with these people? The sun’s shining brightly and they’re adding that big light so that the actor is practically squinting. Well, film is limited in many ways. It’s a chemical process, and one of its limitations is the amount of contrast it can take. It can adjust to a lot of light or a little bit… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
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It’s a poorer version of your own… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
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I’m sure you’ve seen a person standing against a window with a bright, sunny day outside. The person becomes silhouetted against the sky. We can’t make out his features. Those arc lamps correct the “balance” between the light on the actor’s face and the bright sky. If we didn’t use them, his face would go completely black. And an arc does cause squinting. (I’ll bet you thought all… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
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It’s a brutal place, filled with sadistic punishments that are meant to break the spirit of anyone unlucky enough to be there. Wanting a very contrasty negative, we used Ilford stock, which was rarely… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
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We decided to shoot the entire picture on three wide lenses: the first third on a 24 mm, the second on a 21 mm, the last on an 18 mm. I… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
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Of course, the faces became distorted. A nose looked twice as big, the forehead sloped backward. At the end, even on a close-up with the camera no more than a foot from the actors’ faces, you could see the whole jail or enormous vistas of the desert behind them. That’s why I used those lenses. I never wanted to lose the critical element in plot and emotion: these men were never going to be free of the jail or of… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
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Our goal here was sheer physical beauty. Two ways of achieving this (among many others) are the use of long lenses, to help soften the whole image, and backlight.
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Backlight is one of the oldest and most frequently used ways of making people look more beautiful.
Light is focused from behind the actor to the back of the head and shoulders. The light is of greater intensity than that hitting the actor’s face. If you’ve ever walked in the woods toward a setting sun, or looked south down Fifth Avenue on a sunny day from a slightly elevated point of view, you might remember how beautiful the leaves or the avenue… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
The movie was about corruption. So we… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
We started with an almost naturalistic look. For the first scene between Peter Finch and Bill Holden, on Sixth Avenue at night, we added only enough light to get an exposure. As the picture progressed, camera setups became more rigid, more formal. The lighting became more and more artificial. The next-to-final scene—where Faye Dunaway, Robert Duvall, and three network gray suits decide to kill Peter Finch—is lit like a commercial.… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
(All of these transitions in lenses and in lighting happen gradually. I don’t like any… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
When they’re stretched over a two-hour period, I don’t think the audience is ever conscious of the… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
Thematically it was a film about life’s disappointments. I wanted to desaturate the colors. I wanted to get that dreary, lifeless feeling London has in winter… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
The film was taken into a darkroom before we used it in the camera and exposed very briefly to a sixty-watt bulb. The result was that the negative stock had a milky film over it. When it was exposed to the actual scene, almost all the colors were far less vibrant, with much less life and… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
Here I wanted the exact opposite of The Deadly Affair. Living in Los Angeles was part of the debilitating influence on the character played by Jane Fonda. I wanted all color exaggerated: reds redder, blues bluer. We used filters. Behind the lens are little slots where frames about two and a half inches by three and a half inches can be inserted. These… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
When we could see the sky, Andrzej would add a blue filter that covered only the sky. The sky came out bluer. Every color was reinforced in this way. One day, because of smog and clouds toward the end of the day, the sky had an orange haze. Andrzej turned the scene into the color of an Orange Julius… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
since you don’t want the blue sky filter to bleed into the white building… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
Colored gelatins can also be used in front of the lights that… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
Oswald Morris, with whom I did three movies, began the technique with Moulin Rouge, where it was… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
The advantage of using gels on lights is that individual objects or parts of the set can be specifically colored as… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
Used over an entire set, they can convey a mood. Gels used on the lens cut down the amount of light and… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
Used in front of lights, the stop is unaffected or can be compensated… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
Going back to its theme (nothing is what it appears to be), I made a decision: We would not use the midrange… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
Nothing was to look normal, or anything close to what the… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
I took the theme literally. All space was elongated or foreshortened, depending on whether I used wide-angle or long lenses. A city block was twice as long or half as long, depending on the choice of lens. In addition, Andrzej and I laid out a very complex lighting plot. At the beginning of the movie, the… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
As events became more complex, as he lost more and more control over them, his moral crisis deepened. He knew he was being forced into a corner… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
In the first third of the movie, we tried to have the light on the background brighter than on the… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
For the second third, the foreground light and the background light were more or less balanced. For the last third, we cut the light off the background. Only the foreground, occupied by the actors, was lit. By the end of the movie,… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
People emerged from the background. Where something took place no longer mattered. What mattered was… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
I made another decision that seems important to me. Except for one instance, I never framed a shot so the sky was visible. The sky meant… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
The only shot that had sky in the frame was practically… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
For this picture, I wanted the exact opposite of the rigid visual structure of Prince of the City. As I said earlier, the first obligation was to let the audience know that this event had really happened. Therefore, the first decision made was that we use no artificial light. The bank was lit by fluorescents in the ceiling. If we had to supplement the light because of focus problems, we simply added more fluorescents. Outside, at night, all the light came from the enormous spotlights of the Police Emergency van on the scene. The bounce… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
Two blocks away, Victor placed a lamp to backlight the crowd standing on the corner. The lamp was placed above a real streetlight, and this… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
We had to augment it because the camera would not have been able to read the light on the crowd… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
for the improvised scenes in the street and in the bank, I used two and sometimes three hand-held cameras to… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Boris Kaufman, photographer. A lot of critics condescendingly called it a… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
critics were incapable of seeing one of the most complex camera and editing techniques of… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
If you took a close-up from Act I of Hepburn, Richardson, Robards,… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
it into a slide projector, and next to it projected a close-up of those same people from Act IV… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits. Different they look. The ravaged, worn, exhausted faces at the end have almost… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
composed, clean faces at the beginning. It wasn’t only acting. This was also accomplished… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits. Position, and length of takes. (Editing and art direction will be… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
At the start of the picture, everything was peachy-pie normal. Both the lenses and the light could have been used for an Andy Hardy movie. I moved the first part of Act I outdoors and shot it on a sunny day, so this journey into night could seem even longer. I wanted more light at the… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits each character was, whenever possible, lit differently—Hepburn and Stockwell always with gentle front light, Robards and Richardson… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
As the picture continued, the light on the three men became harsher, more severe. This pattern was broken temporarily as Stockwell and Richardson went into their lyrical arias of self-examination in Act IV, when each one explores what he wanted in earlier and less tortured times.… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
Camera position was also important visually. For the men, we started at eye level and the camera slowly dropped, until in two critical scenes in Act IV, the camera was literally at floor level. For Hepburn, this pattern was reversed. Camera position went higher and higher until in her… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
And, of course, lenses: longer and longer lenses on her as she slipped into her dope-ridden fog, wider and wider lenses on the men as… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
In Act IV, there are two climactic scenes, one between Stockwell and Richardson, the other between Stockwell and Robards. For perhaps the only time in their lives, they speak the naked,… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
As the scenes progress and the truth becomes more and more agonizing, the lenses get wider and wider, the camera gets lower and lower, the light harsher but darker, as the whole story of these people gets wrapped in night and the final, terrible truths are articulated. All in all, it was as complex a lens, light, and camera position plan as any I’ve ever… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
The Verdict, Andrzej Bartkowiak, photographer. The movie was about a man’s salvation, his fight to rid himself of his past. I wanted as “old” a look as possible. Art direction had a lot to contribute, and we’… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
One day I brought a beautiful edition of Caravaggio’s paintings to my meeting with Andrzej. I said, “Andrzej, there’s the feeling I’m after. There’s something ancient here, something from a long time ago. What is it?” Andrzej studied the pictures. Then, with his charming Polish accent, he pinpointed it. “It’s chiaroscuro,” he said. “A very strong light source,… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
Once in a while he’ll use the reflective light of a metal source… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
He pointed to a young boy holding a golden salver. On the shadow side of the boy’s face, one could discern a slight golden hue. And that’s what Andrzej… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
Daniel, Andrzej Bartkowiak, photographer. Once again we start with the theme: Who pays for the passions and… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
In addition, there is the complex time problem (jumping forward and… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
Daniel is the story of a young man coming back to life.
The sun’s rays and the chemical composition of movie film are not a happy marriage. Untreated, any day scene shot outdoors, in cloud or in sunshine, will come out an almost monochromatic blue. To compensate for this, we put an amber-colored filter in the camera. This corrects the light so that the film emerges with normal colors intact. This filter is called an “85.” When we shoot on an interior location with windows that let daylight in, we put enormous sheets of 85s over the windows to accomplish the same thing.
For Daniel, Andrzej suggested that we shoot all the scenes of the grown-up children without the 85.
It gave everything a ghostly, cold, blue pallor, including flesh tones. For consistency in interior scenes, we added blue gelatins to the lights.
The parents, on the other hand, trapped in an idealized past, were treated in the amber glow of the 85s.
At the beginning of the picture, we used double 85s on them. As Daniel slowly comes back to life, we started adding 85s to his scenes and removing them from the scenes of the past with his parents. With the parents, we went from double 85s to single 85s to half 85s to quarter 85s. On Daniel’s scenes we added quarter 85s, then half 85s, then full 85s. Finally, in a scene toward the end of the picture, when both children visit the parents in jail, we were back to normal color. Daniel had purged himself of his obsessive pain, and life could now resume for him.
The work with the cameraman is as close as with the writer and the actors.
most directors’ closest relationship is with the cameraman.
That’s why most directors work with the same cameraman year after year, as long as the style can be achieved.
Sometimes it’s important not to do anything with the camera, to just shoot it “straight.” And equally important for me is that all this work stay hidden. Good camera work is not pretty pictures. It should augment and reveal the theme as fully as the actors and directors do.
The light Sven Nykvist has created for so many of Ingmar Bergman’s movies is directly connected to what those movies are about.
Nothing can make actors feel more comfortable or uncomfortable than the clothes their characters are wearing. Aside from comfort, however, clothes contribute an enormous amount to the style of the picture.
In fact, what people really wear when getting on a train is the
last thing we would have considered. The object was to thrust the audience into a world it never knew—to create a feeling of how glamorous things used to be.
Along with camera, art direction (the settings) and costume design are the most important elements in creating the style—in other words, the look—of the movie.
Art direction had its own arc or progression, too. Early in the movie, we tried to make every background as
“busy” as possible. Out on the street, lots of automobiles, people, neon signs (cuchos fritos were a favorite). If the
scene took place in an office, the walls were crowded with bulletin boards and diplomas, federal and
local flags hung on stands. We filled the courtrooms with people and gave them no instructions on
what to wear. But as the picture progressed, we tightened the visual reins. There were spectators in the
courtrooms, but all wearing dark blue or black clothes, there were fewer decorations on walls, emptier
streets. And for the final third of the picture, the sets, like the leading character, were stripped bare: nothing on
the walls, no one in the streets, and, for a climactic courtroom scene, no spectators, just the bare wooden
benches. This helped subtly to reinforce Ciello’s increasing isolation, the loss of human contact, as he betrayed one partner after another.
When we were picking locations in Rome, he said that the secret lay in picking
the right place to begin with and then doing as little as possible with it. Given a choice between two equally good
exteriors or interiors, pick the one that is already the right color, the one that takes the… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
light. Paint if you have to, but try to find places that are closest to what you want to end… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
sounds, it opened a whole new approach for me, and this later guided me in… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
The Verdict is about a man haunted by his past. Ed Pisoni, a former assistant of Tony’s, was the art director. I told him we’d use only autumnal colors, colors with a feeling of age. That immediately eliminated blue, pink, light green, and light yellow. We looked for browns, russets, deep yellows, burnt orange, burgundy reds, autumnal hues. Studio sets were done in those… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
On Garbo Talks, a light, fluffy piece, Phil and I decided that the palette would be Necco Wafers. Charm was an important part of the movie. For those of you too young to remember,… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
Inside the package were perhaps twenty-five sugar wafers in various pastel colors: very light green, pink, tan, aqua, white. They reminded me of a Mediterranean seaside… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
In Daniel, the palette was critical. Every color that was used for the parents had to be compatable with the heavy use of 85s that gave the parents’ scenes the golden, warm amber glow we were after. The scenes with the grown-up children had to allow an emphasis on the blue or cold side. A warm brown would have fought against what we wanted to… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
In The Morning After, we looked for expanses of high color. No color was excluded, but we wanted one color to dominate each scene. Jane Fonda’s rooms were various shades of pink. In the chapter on camera work, I discussed what we did with filters to enhance the color of the sky. When I saw the orange sky in… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
The previous scene—which fortunately I hadn’t yet shot—was set at an outdoor fast-food joint. I ordered orange umbrellas over the tables so the ambient light for the scene itself would take on an orange hue. For the title sequence, I found a series of walls, yellow, red, brown, blue, and just had Fonda walking dejectedly past them. Buildings were deep blue,… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
For Q & A and Dog Day Afternoon, everything had to feel accidental—no planning, no color control. On both pictures, I told the art director and the costume designer not to consult with each other. I wanted no relationship… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
In The Verdict, we used both a very narrow color selection and older architecture. No modern… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
Conversely, in Guilty as Sin, I wanted nothing but the most modern buildings we could find. Fortunately, we were shooting the picture in Toronto, with its superb modern architecture. In no time at all, Phil Rosenberg had… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
most cameramen are so skillful that it’s hard to tell whether a scene has been shot in… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
As a general rule, if I’m going to take more than two days to shoot the scene, I’ll build… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
if the set is ornate or has very expensive detail, it may be cheaper to shoot the scene on location even if it runs more than two days. A second factor is whether or not I need “… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
Sometimes the scene requires complex camera moves or, because of long lenses, distance from the set itself. In that case… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
Dog Day Afternoon presented a difficult problem. Because so much of the action took place inside the bank, it would’ve been simpler to build the bank in the studio. But I felt it would be better for the staging and the… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
We came up with the perfect solution. We found an excellent street that had a lower warehouse floor we could rent. We built the bank inside the warehouse so I could have my “wild walls” and still have constant… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
I always try to keep my locations as close… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
If I finish a location, exterior or interior, at eleven in the morning, moving to a second location within an hour… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
I simply didn’t know enough technically to master all departments, particularly special effects. Even though I had very good people in charge, there were just too many departments that were going their own way.
The Pawnbroker was superb. This was a picture about creating our own prisons. Starting with the pawnshop itself, Dick created a series of cages: wire mesh, bars, locks, alarms, anything that would reinforce a sense of entrapment. The locations were picked with this in mind.
Nothing helps actors more than the clothes they wear.
On Family Business, Sean Connery came into rehearsal after having been with Ann for a clothes fitting. He looked happy. I asked him how it had gone. “She’s bloody marvelous,” he said. “She’s given me the whole bloody character now.”
The call sheet is our bible. It’s what we’re going to shoot that day. If it’s not on the call sheet, we don’t need it.
Generally, you try to shoot three pages a day.
Forty days is the usual time for a 120-page script of a simple movie.
Movies with heavy special effects, battle scenes, big stunts, and crowds usually run much longer.
Good PAs are a godsend and can work their way into the union after several pictures.
“Grips” are stagehands. “Carps” and “Dressers” are the carpenters and set dressers who are working on upcoming sets being built on the same stage.
I’m out my door five minutes early. I’m always early.
I like to ride to work with the AD and the cameraman. One of us may have thought of something that had been omitted. Or a new problem may have come up.
I study my script and think. The driver knows I don’t like conversation or the radio. What we’re doing matters. It needs concentration.
I don’t necessarily talk about rushes. I don’t want the actors to expect automatic praise. They have to trust me, and squandering praise destroys its meaning.
I don’t know about other directors, but I rarely leave the set when lighting is being done. First of all, there’s no place I’d rather be. Second, I love to watch how the cameraman is attacking the problem. Each one works differently.
My presence is also good for the crew. They work harder. Is the camera operator rehearsing with the dolly grip?
He should be. Has the focus puller gotten his marks (the distances between the lens and the actors)? Sometimes, when working with a wide-open stop, he has to mark the distances with chalk on the floor. How good is the grip with cutters and nets? A cutter is an opaque board or slat that cuts light off from any place the cameraman doesn’t want it to hit. A net reduces the amount of light. Each cutter or net is held in place by a grip stand, a three-legged stand with bars that can be angled in any direction to hold the cutter in place. Each grip stand requires a sandbag so that the stand doesn’t fall if someone trips over it. And everybody trips over it.
The sheer detail of lighting a set is mind-boggling. That’s why it takes so long.
The work of blocking the extras can be critical. Often the entire reality of the scene can be ruined by staging them badly.
Nowhere was the crowd more critical than in Dog Day Afternoon. We had a minimum of five hundred people a day for over three weeks. Before we started, Burtt and I broke them down to individual characters: Sixteen yentas (busybodies), who were then broken down even further—“You two know each other, you four hate those two because they’re too good at mah-jongg.” These six teenagers were playing hooky. These four arrive later and stay for the show rather than go to the movies. We made an enormous diagram of the whole area, placing each extra as he arrived on the scene.
The skill with which the extras were directed in Schindler’s List is vital to the brilliance of that movie. There are no small decisions in moviemaking.
When we actually started shooting Dog Day Afternoon, I talked to the extras for over an hour from atop a ladder. The individuals they were playing were explained to them in detail. Since we knew we’d never be able to keep the people who actually lived in the neighborhood out of the shots, we got the extras to involve the neighborhood people in the situations. It got so participatory that by the second week of shooting we didn’t have to tell anybody how to react. They just did what came naturally, and it was wonderful. One of the reasons I prefer working in New York is that real actors work as extras.
They are members of the Screen Actors Guild, and many appear regularly on and off Broadway.
Many have worked their way into speaking parts. In Los Angeles, extras belong to the Screen Extras Guild, a special union for people who do nothing but extra work. Often they don’t even know what picture they are working on. They come from all over the country, shaving their heads, dressing like Minnie Pearl or Minnie Mouse—emphasizing whatever physical characteristic they feel might get them hired, just wanting a job for 180 days a year.
If they can get into a shot of less than five people, they become “special business” and receive a slight increase in their day’s pay. If they have evening clothes, it’ll be stated on their résumé and they’ll get paid extra for a dinner jacket or an evening gown. They are then called “dress extras.” It’s thoroughly depressing.
You can tell that shooting time is close now, because the star’s makeup and hair people arrive on the set, slowly, languorously, carrying their makeup boxes, Kleenex, brushes, combs. If I sound a bit peevish, it’s because quite often these people aren’t really “making the same movie” as the rest of us. Their first obligation is to the star’s looks. They fuss, they coddle, they make themselves seemingly indispensable. And some stars are suckers for it.
The arrival of makeup and hair is the cue for the sound department to wire the actors, if necessary. On a large set, the microphone on the boom may not reach all the actors.
We take our first rehearsal. “Don’t work,” I tell the actors. “Just make the moves and use the volume you’ll be using, for sound.” I don’t want the actors wasting any emotion. They are in for a long day, and I want them to save their emotions for the take. After the first rehearsal we always have things to fix. Up until now, all lighting was done on the “second team” (the stand-ins). Now, with the “first team” (the actors themselves), there are corrections to be made. This is normal, and none of the actors mind. Then, because the actor moves at a different pace than the stand-in, a camera movement will have to be adjusted.
The varying physical characteristics of the actors may also necessitate changes. Sean Connery is six feet four. Dustin Hoffman isn’t. Trying to get them in a tight two-shot presents some problems. I tend to shoot everything at eye level, but I’m talking about my eye level. And I’m Dustin’s height (five feet six). For example: “Sean, give me a Groucho.” That means: Will you start lowering your body before you sit. As Sean comes toward us, the camera has to pan up to hold his head in the frame. Because of his height, this can mean that the camera is seeing over the top of the set, shooting into the lights. We don’t want to move the lights after all that work. And unless we want a ceiling for dramatic reasons, we don’t want to put one in. Sean does the Groucho. Most experienced actors can do it without breaking their concentration.
“Give me a slight banana on that cross from left to right.” That means: As you’re crossing, arc slightly away from the camera for the same reason that you gave us the… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
The script girl may whisper in my ear, “He’s picking up the drink a little late.” When we shot over his shoulder yesterday, he picked up his drink at the beginning of the sentence. If he’s now picking it up at the end of the sentence, I’ll have a problem later in the editing room when I want to cut from yesterday’s shot to today’s. These technical considerations are mere refinements rather than problems. Most actors are used to them after a few pictures. Henry Fonda was more accurate than the script girl. On 12 Angry Men, the wonderful Faith Hubley was script girl… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
If the shot has a complicated camera move, I’ll rehearse it as many times as necessary, until the camera operator, dolly grip, and focus puller are comfortable. A good dolly grip is indispensable. It’s not only a question of getting the camera to the right position—“hitting the mark.” He also has to be able to watch and “feel” the actor. Often, during a take, the actor’s tempo will change drastically. He may go much faster or slower than… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
During these rehearsals, I’m constantly telling the actors not to work full out, just to walk it until all… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
On the first shot, I’ll pick something that involves no acting and is mechanically simple: Dustin Hoffman walks down the street and goes into the building. I call, “Cut!” and ask the camera operator, “Good for you?” He says, “Yes.” I call, “Print!” and move on to the next setup. Everyone on the crew now knows that Take 1 can wind up… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
One of the hardest things to teach makeup and hair people is that the final thing I want the actor to be thinking about is the scene… Some highlights have been hidden or truncated due to export limits.
I’m so aware of the actor’s concentration, I’ll sometimes call for “end sticks” instead. I don’t want that loud clap to disturb him at the beginning of the take. I find that slating it at the end of the take is useful for actors with little experience. The operator nods to me. I call, “Action!” Just like in the movies.
It’s been invariably true that the best camera operators will do their best take when the actor’s doing his best take.
His eye was so creative that when he made suggestions on the composition of a shot, it was always better than what I had in mind.
(Once I had an operator who, for whatever psychological reason, invariably screwed up the actor’s best take. The fourth time it happened, I replaced him.)
If William Holden is making love to Faye Dunaway, he doesn’t want to see some teamster sipping coffee behind her. He doesn’t want to see anybody other than Faye watching him, even if he has great concentration. Since most crews don’t understand this, “Clear the eyeline” becomes a never-ending refrain.
Sometimes if I feel the actor is struggling with a scene, I’ll call “Print” even
though I don’t intend to use the take. I do it as encouragement. When actors have heard “Print,” they know they have a good one in the can and they relax. This frees them for something more spontaneous.
I always call “Action” in the mood of the scene.
If it’s a gentle moment, I’ll say “Action” just loud enough for the actors to hear me. If it’s a scene that requires a lot of energy, I’ll bark out “Action” like a drill seargent. It’s like a conductor giving the upbeat.
It can take four or five hours to light a shot that goes 360 degrees, sometimes a full day.
Generally, the construction crew (four grips, two carpenters) go to lunch an hour earlier than we do. By the time we break, anywhere between 11:30 and 1:30, they’re already back and can make the changeover. They put wall C back and pull out wall A. It’s more complicated than it sounds.
Everything has to move—chairs, makeup tables, sound boom, camera dolly; the dressing (curtains, shelves, pictures, et cetera) comes down off wall A and has to be put back up on wall C. The paint, plaster,
or wallpaper on the walls gets damaged from constant movement and has to be repaired. If ceiling pieces are being moved, the old ones have to be removed and new ones put in. The floor becomes filthy during shooting and has to be swept. Dolly tracks have to be taken up. Every lamp has to be disconnected. The main power cable has to be rerouted to the opposite side of the set.
We’ve lit for perhaps an hour or an hour and a half, but we’ve shot for two and a half or three hours. That’s a good proportion. The actors warm up and, like a good fullback, get better as they work more. But that’s a lot of work, and they can use a breather.
In England, the camera apprentice brings a tray of tea for the cameraman and camera crew, for what is called “elevenses.”
I finish my “meal” in five minutes. And then I go to sleep for fifty-five. I’ll be asleep within minutes after lying down, a technique I learned in the army during World War II. Again, after all these years, I wake up about a minute before lunch hour is over and go back on set.
If the camera moves during the shot, we mark the camera positions with tape on the floor. Sometimes there are eight or ten camera moves in a shot, so that the moves have to be numbered on the floor. Camera height changes are also marked.
In addition, places, where the actors come to rest, are marked with tape, a different color of tape used for each actor. The stand-ins take over so Andrzej can start lighting, and the actors head back to their dressing rooms to get ready.
The afternoon passes quickly. The amount of work done in any day depends on so many factors. However, as long as the actors don’t have time to get bored, I consider it a good day.
If the actors can get another fifteen minutes’ sleep in the morning, I want them to have it.
By four-thirty or so, I’m careful not to start a sequence or shot that I won’t be able to finish by five-thirty, which is our quitting time.
I can always go into overtime, but I don’t unless it’s absolutely essential. To begin with, I’ve worked hard all day, and I’m tired. The actors are too. Crews are used to many hours of overtime, so they generally don’t start losing efficiency until they’ve put in twelve hours. I’ll try to end shooting for the day around five, but I’ll try to get the first setup before I release the actors.
If it’s a particularly difficult setup, the crew can stay a little later so they can get a good jump on the lighting for tomorrow morning. If walls have to be changed, the grips can stay late to do it.
in bed at nine-thirty. Mentally, I’ll review the day. Did I get what I wanted? Do I need any additional coverage? Is there anything I want to reshoot? I don’t go out at all during shooting. Sometimes my wife and I will have close friends in for dinner on a Friday night. Saturday, a day off, I still haven’t come down from the week’s work. It’s not too restful a day.
If all this sounds like very hard work, let me assure you that it is. And as far as shooting the movie goes, this has been the easy part of shooting.
We’ve been in the studio. We’ve had total control. There were no distractions. All of that goes out the window when we work on location.
I used three cameras. That meant I could get three shots on each setup. That reduced the number of setups to twenty-two plus one, still a formidable amount of work. We had daylight by 7:00 a.m. Of course, we’d begun work while it was still dark.
We had one great piece of luck. The day turned out to have a solid cloud cover. As long as it lasted, we’d have a gentle flat light. We could shoot in any direction, and the light would be the same. This was enormously helpful with three cameras. If we’d had a sunny day, we would have had to use “fill light” (for the reasons explained earlier). Also, whether I like it or not, the sun keeps moving. Light at eight o’clock is very different than it is at noon. Buildings throw different shadows and reflections. To “match” the light in different shots taken at different times with three different cameras would’ve been nearly impossible, and shots that aren’t matched can look like hell once they’re cut together.
On the next page is the call sheet for that day. Notice the amount of detail.
In section 3, the Xs beside the numbers indicate stunt people and the characters for whom they are doubling. The letter X without a number indicates the stunt coordinator, to whom the stunt people report.
Whenever stuntwork is done, an ambulance must stand by.
“Stunts: O/C” in section 5 means no stunts,
But all location work requires a huge crew. Even a small, low-budget picture like Running on Empty needed the following for one location day: one grip truck, one electric truck, one prop truck, one generator truck, one makeup and hair truck, and two campers. Campers are portable dressing rooms for the actors. Each contains three compartments, so three actors can share it. I get one of the compartments for my lunch-hour snooze. Every camper requires one union teamster to drive it, so you try to keep the campers to a minimum. Then add the three station wagons that brought the actors to the location. If extras are being used and the location’s outside the city, as Running on Empty was, a bus must transport them. Each bus has room for forty-nine extras. You must use up to one hundred twenty extras who are union members; if your crowd is larger, you can use local people. Then there’s the honey wagon, four portable toilets built into one truck. We’re now up to twelve trucks, which means not only twelve drivers but parking problems. So add a teamster captain and an assistant teamster captain. Add one or two additional ADs and three or four additional PAs. Add two station wagons to transport them. Add six security men, two per shift, three shifts if you’re on that location overnight. Add two to four local off-duty cops to control traffic if you’re using streets or need police barricades.
In addition, when on location, we also use a rigging crew. On a small picture, the rigging crew consists of two electricians and two grips. They work in advance of us, the shooting crew. Depending on how much lighting the location will need, they arrive one, two, sometimes three days ahead of us. They place all the major lamps in position. Every minute saved by prerigging means hours saved when the enormous shooting crew arrives.
The lunch hour doesn’t officially start until the last man in line on the crew has been served. If you take only a half-hour lunch break, the crew gets paid more. The caterer also keeps us supplied with a steady flow of hot coffee and soup in cold weather and iced drinks and watermelon in hot.
You can see how the numbers start adding up. On Running on Empty, a small picture, we wound up with about sixty people on location, not counting cast. On Prince of the City, about one hundred and twenty. A large action picture will easily double that crew size. And if many extras are involved, increasing makeup, hair, catering, and props, you can get up to hundreds in crew. On my pictures, all these organizational problems are addressed two to three weeks before shooting. I take the chiefs of all the departments—props, electrical, grip, scenic artist, AD, locations, stunts (if used), teamsters, rigging—on what we call the survey trip. We visit every location. We discuss where the trucks will park, what lamps are to be used, where they will be placed, what has to be redecorated or repainted for the look of the picture.
Night shooting is even more difficult. Everything will have to be lit artificially. The rigging crew is usually joined by the electricians of the shooting crew at least four hours before nightfall.
This is because cables have to be laid from the lights to the generators. Because the generators make a lot of noise, they’re usually placed fairly far from the set so they don’t interfere with the sound department. It’s a lot easier and safer to lay the cables in daylight, when you can still see. Many weeks of night shooting exhausts everyone, including the crew. You really can’t sleep during the day, or I can’t. But there’s a wonderful intensity about night shooting.
After eleven o’clock, the neighborhood goes to sleep. And here, in the midst of blackness, a group of people are “painting with light,” creating something.
It’s called “going to rushes” because the lab, in order for you to see the work as quickly as possible, does one-light printing.
Ossie Morris, the British cameraman, told me that even after having made hundreds of movies, he crosses his fingers each time the lights go down in the screening room as rushes begin.
For whatever reason, producers and studio executives sit in the last row. I’m convinced
it’s because they hate movies and want to be as far from the screen as possible. Maybe it’s because the phone is usually in the back, though nobody makes a call during rushes.
Some actors never come. They hate seeing themselves. (I told you the self-exposure was painful.) Henry Fonda never went to rushes in his whole career. In fact, he rarely saw the movie until it had been out for over a year.
Pacino always comes. He sits on the side, alone, and an icy calm comes over him. He’s very tough on himself. If he feels he blew it, he’ll ask you to reshoot, if possible; it invariably comes out better.
Almost everybody is concentrating on his own work. I’ve seen production designers near tears because a seam where two walls were rejoined was not perfectly repainted.
Sometimes, during the take, I’ve been thoroughly convinced it was perfect. And yet at rushes, that same take leaves the slightly sour taste of disappointment in my mouth. Sometimes, during another take, I may feel that perhaps I’ve settled for something less than I hoped for. And at rushes, it turns out to be wonderful. Sometimes I’ve thought on the set that Take 2 was better than Take 4, only to discover at rushes that the opposite is true.
I participate in the scene I’m watching. If my concentration breaks, something is wrong.
Sometimes a take has been printed because I want one tiny moment from it. But I’m the only one who knows that.
You’re tired and frustrated. So you take it out on yesterday’s work, which you’re watching now. Or perhaps you’ve overcome a major problem today, so in an exultant mood, you’re giving yesterday’s work too much credit.
We could see the source of the light, one of the basic no-no’s of lighting.
With time, most technical problems can be fixed.
I couldn’t fix it. I didn’t know what the problem was, so I couldn’t solve it. All I knew was that it was fake, it wasn’t going to work. And I was facing seven more weeks of shooting. And worst of all was the fact that I was the director. So I couldn’t tell anybody. If there was any hope of salvaging a movie out of the mess, everyone needed his confidence. I didn’t want to shatter it. There was nothing to do but bite my lip for the next seven weeks and try to make the movie look as professional as possible.
It doesn’t happen as often, because first-rate work doesn’t happen as often. But sometimes you feel that something wonderful is happening.
When this magic happens, the best thing you can do is get out of the way of the picture. Let it tell you how to do it from now on. I think it’s quite clear by now that my movies proceed with great control and preplanning.
if instinct told me to do the shot another way, I’d follow it, without doubts or fears. And the rushes would corroborate that the picture was taking on a new life. But that new life had better be there, or you may wind up straddling two stools, losing what you had in mind in the first place and not achieving the wonder you thought you saw at rushes. The rushes can, and sometimes do, deceive you.
In any creative effort, I think that’s absolutely necessary. Creative work is very hard, and some sort of self-deception is necessary
simply in order to begin. To start, you have to believe that it’s going to turn out well. And so often it doesn’t. I’ve talked to novelists, conductors, painters about this. Unfailingly, they all admitted that self-deception was important to them. Perhaps a better word is “belief.” But I tend to be a bit more cynical about it, so I use “self-deception.”
There are other rules in looking at rushes. The first is never to trust laughter. The fact that people are breaking up, hitting their heads on the seat in front of them because the shot’s so hilarious, means nothing. That shot will still have to be placed between two other shots, one before it and one after it. Also, the people attending rushes are insiders. Their reality has nothing to do with the reality of an audience watching a movie for the first time. Their laughter’s the equivalent of what nightclub comics call “band jokes”—jokes that break up the musicians working behind them but are often meaningless to the audience sitting in front of them. The second rule: Don’t let the difficulty of actually achieving a shot make you think that the shot is good. In the finished movie, no one in the audience will know that it took three days to light or ten people to move the camera, the walls, or whatever. The third rule is the reverse: Don’t let a technical failure destroy the shot for you. Obviously, any mechanical error endangers the reality of the movie. And those errors must be eliminated in the future. But you have to keep your eye on the dramatic impact of the shot. Is there life there? That’s what matters. And the fourth rule? When in doubt, look at it again a day or two later. Have the editor take the sticks off, so you don’t know whether it’s Take 2 or 3 or 11, because you might be carrying feelings over from when you actually made the shot.
How can you tell when it’s really good? I honestly don’t know.
I can be wrong. So what? That’s the risk. Critics never take it. Nor do audiences, except for the $8.00 they put down. I try to look at it the other way: What if I’m right? Then I might get another job. And that gives me a chance to be right or wrong again. And to go back to work at the best job in the world.
For many years, the cliché about editing was: “Pictures are made in the cutting room.” That’s nonsense. No movie editor ever put anything up on the screen that hadn’t been shot.
every scene had to be “covered.” This meant it was mandatory for a scene to be shot as follows: a wide “master shot,” usually with the camera static, of the entire scene; a medium shot of the same scene; over his shoulder to her (the whole scene); over her shoulder to him (the whole scene); a loose single shot of her; a loose single shot of him; a close-up of her; a close-up of him. In this way, any line of dialogue or any reaction could be eliminated. Ergo, “pictures are made in the cutting room.”
In addition to destroying any originality in the shooting of a picture, this system also put actors through hell, because of the endless repetition of the same scene and the seeming importance of taking a puff on the cigarette on the same line in each of the eight camera angles. And each of those angles would, of course, have numerous takes. If an actor “mismatched”—that is, puffed the cigarette on the wrong line—the script girl would write it in her script notes, which were subsequently sent to the cutting room.
There are four sprocket holes per frame, so we have to go up and back many times to find the right place to cut. But it can be done. A good place to make an audio cut is on a plosive, a p or a b. An s works well.
Most consonants will work as the point where you can splice two different audio tracks together.
Vowels are harder because they are rarely at the same vocal pitch and you might hear the difference at the splice or cut. Finally, as much as I resist it, I can always have the actor come in and redo the line in an audio studio.
We call this “dubbing” or “looping,” for reasons I’ll explain later.
“You’re running 2:02”—the running time of the movie. “I want the picture under two hours.” I didn’t have final cut in those days. I asked her, nicely, did she feel it was long in any particular place? “No!” she said. “It’s a fine picture and a good tight cut. But get two
minutes out, or I will.” And with that, she marched out.
Movies are full of battles you think you’ve won, only to have to fight them over and over again.
While it’s absurd to believe that pictures are “made” in the cutting room, they sure as hell can be ruined there.
I’ve read that a certain picture was “beautifully edited.” There’s no way they could know how well or poorly it was edited.
It might look badly edited, but because of how poorly it was shot, it may in fact be a miracle of editing that the story even makes sense. Conversely, the movie may look well edited, but who knows what was left on the cutting room floor. In my view, only three people know how good or bad the editing was: the editor, the director, and the cameraman.
melodramas and chase pictures are not hard to edit if the basic material has been provided. Our old definition of melodrama still stands: making the unbelievable believable. Therefore, as in everything else in the picture, story is the first priority. Edit it for story, but as part of the form of melodrama, edit it as surprisingly, as unexpectedly, as you can. Try to keep the audience off balance,though not to a point where story gets lost.
Most editors go about this by editing the picture in a very staccato rhythm, using cuts of four, five, or six feet (a little over two to four seconds). But I have seen great suspense created by maintaining a long, slow tracking shot that ends with the leading lady in close-up and a hand suddenly coming in to cover her mouth. If the director hadn’t made the long, slow tracking shot, it couldn’t have been created in the cutting room.
To me, there are two main elements to editing: juxtapositioning images and creating tempo. Sometimes an image is so meaningful or beautiful that it can capture or illuminate our original
question: What is this movie about?
The more cuts, the faster the tempo will seem.
That’s why melodramas and chase sequences use so many cuts. Just as in music, fast tempo usually means energy and excitement.
Similarly, if a picture is edited in the same tempo for its entire length, it will feel much longer.
If the same pace is maintained throughout, it will start to feel slower and slower. In other words, it’s the change in tempo that we feel, not the tempo itself.
The use of sustained shots, with no intercuts, is laid out very carefully at the beginning, before shooting begins. If it’s going to wind up a long uncut take in the final movie, chances are that I’ll want camera movement.
one of the joys of the cutting room is that sometimes the editing can help turn a scene that isn’t working into one that does.
I eventually realized that nothing was wrong with the scene. The problem lay in the way the first scene between them had been edited: the scene had emphasized him. As a result, the second scene provided no new revelation about him. It seemed redundant. After the first scene was recut to emphasize the sister’s pain, both scenes played much better.
I said earlier that there are no small decisions in moviemaking. Nowhere does this apply more than in editing.
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Only the editor and I attend these screenings. At this point, I don’t want any outside opinions. It’s too early.
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Knowing that most movies don’t deserve to run more than two hours, I rarely go more than fifteen reels (two and a half hours) in my first cut. The scenes are not cut loosely. I try to make each scene as tight as I can.
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I’ve never understood why directors bring in a three-hour first cut.
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Movies are very powerful. You’d better have a lot to say if you want to run over two hours.
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I didn’t feel that Schindler’s List was one moment too long. But Fried Green Tomatoes?
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A first cut that runs over three hours can really damage a picture. In the desperation to get rid of time, the actors’ pauses go, tracking shots are cut in half, everything that isn’t bare-bones plot goes flying out the window. Overlength is one of the things that most often results in the destruction of the movie in the cutting room.
I want to include every scene, every line of dialogue, and every shot on the first cut, even though I can already get a sense of what lines or even scenes may eventually go. I want to give everything its fair shot. But I want every scene running the shortest possible length I feel it can be at the moment.
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Among other problems, we were undecided about how to end it, so I had shot two different endings. I ran both on the first screening. As the lights came up, Merrick derisively called from the back, “Is that it?” I called back, “Ask me in that tone of voice again and I’ll smack you, you shit-heel.” Like all bullies, he hurried out of the room.
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“How did this feel?” “Is that clear?” “Were you bored?” “Were you moved?” This goes on for a long time. The truth is I can almost always “feel” what they thought of the picture as our eyes meet once the lights come up immediately after the screening.
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Have I spent six months, nine months, a year, pursuing something that means something to me?
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“It’ll play better when we add the music,” is true. Almost every picture is improved by a good musical score.
To start with, music is a quick way to reach people emotionally.
music tells them, sometimes even in advance. Generally, that would be the sign of a bad score, but even bad scores work.
When the score is predictable, when it duplicates in melody and arrangement the action up there on the screen, we call it “mickey-mousing.”
The only movie score I’ve heard that can stand on its own as a piece of music is Prokofiev’s “Battle on the Ice” from Alexander Nevsky.
As must be clear by now, I feel that the less an audience is aware of how we’re achieving an effect, the better the picture will be.
Some of those dialogue lines I didn’t like get cut out. Sometimes a whole scene gets removed. Sometimes four, five scenes, a whole reel, get deleted.
This performance is so good it doesn’t need that much time. That performance is so bad it mustn’t have that much time.
Very often, because of the nature of the work, composers develop their own set of musical clichés when they’ve done too many pictures. I thought his lack of movie experience would be a plus.
Talking about music is like talking about colors: the same color can mean different things to different people. But Quincy and I found that we were literally talking the same language in music.
the first obligation of Dog Day Afternoon was to tell the audience that this event really happened, how could you justify music weaving in and out? The Hill was also done in a naturalistic style, so no score was used. In Network, I was afraid that music might interfere with the jokes. As the picture went on, the speeches got longer and longer. It was clear at the first screening that any music would be fighting the enormous amount of dialogue. Again, no score.
Serpico shouldn’t have had a score, but I put in fourteen minutes’ worth to protect the picture and myself.
Danny Ciello was to be treated always as one instrument: saxophone. Over the body of the picture, his sound was to become more and more isolated, until finally three notes of the original theme, played on sax, was all that remained of the music.
What makes my work so endlessly interesting is that every picture requires its own specific approach.
Apocalypse Now, which has the most imaginative and dramatic use of sound effects of any movie I’ve seen. A close second is Schindler’s List. I’ve never done a movie that required such elaborate sound effects. This is partly because many of my pictures have a great deal of dialogue, which forces you to keep sound effects to a minimum.
On Prince of the City, we simply started with as much sound as possible, then kept reducing it as the picture went on.
On location interiors, there is always an exterior ambience that comes into the set.
We added exterior sounds to interior locations (pile drivers, buses, auto horns) at the beginning of the movie. Then we slowly kept reducing those sounds until we played the final interiors, with the least exterior sound possible.
When we got to the mix (the point at which we put all the sound tracks together), he was bursting with anticipation. For the first time, I heard what an incredible job he’d done. But I had also heard Richard Rodney Bennett’s magnificent music score for the same scene. I knew one would have to go. They couldn’t work together. I turned to Simon. He knew. I said, “Simon, it’s a great job. But, finally, we’ve heard a train leave the station. We’ve never heard a train leave the station in three-quarter time.” He walked out, and we never saw him again. I bring this up to show how delicate the balance is between effects and music. Generally, I like one or the other to do the job. Sometimes one augments the other. Sometimes, as here, not.
The Mix: The Only Dull Part of Moviemaking
The mix is where we put all the sound tracks together to make the final sound track of the movie. It’s a job that can be left to sound technicians, but that has its dangers. For example, I’ve seen mixers raise the audio level of a quiet scene or moment and lower the audio level of a loud scene or moment.
The tracks are broken down into three sections: dialogue, sound effects, music. We don’t usually put up the music tracks until everything else on the reel has been mixed. We start with the dialogue.
Even in the studio, tracks come out with very different sound qualities. Her side was shot in a part of the set that had a ceiling; his had none.
The two tracks will be markedly different and now have to be equalized in tonal quality, not in extraneous noise. This is done with those tiny little dials, which subtly add or subtract frequencies, from the very low to the very high. When tracks are beyond rescue or a word is unclear, we “loop” it. The actor comes into a recording studio. The scene or line is placed on a repeating film loop. The original sound is fed into an earphone. The actor then says the line in the quiet of the studio, trying to get exact lip synchronization. There is an editor in charge of looping called the ADR editor.
Generally, I try to avoid looping. Many actors can never recapture their performance, because the process is so mechanical. But some actors are brilliant at looping and can actually improve their performances. European actors are particularly good at it. In France and Italy, they usually shoot without synchronous sound and loop the whole performance in a sound studio later. I’m constantly amazed at how superbly actors can adjust to technical demands.
Every technical advance has brought added problems.
The one pleasure in a mix comes when the music is added. Suddenly, the tedious effort seems worth it. Mind you, sitting in that mixing room, we have run the movie, foot by foot, at least seventy-five times, often more. Everything about the movie has become incredibly boring.
Again, a darkened room. How many hours, how many days, have I spent in dark rooms, looking at this movie? Sitting next to me is the timer. He works for Technicolor. His job is to “grade” the final printing of the movie. I’ll explain the process a little later.
He will make his notes, reel by reel, using the counter: this shot is
too dark, that too light, this too yellow, that too red, too blue, too green, there’s too much contrast, too little contrast, it’s too muddy (a combination of wrong color and wrong density and/or contrast), and so on. Every scene, every shot, every foot of film is analyzed, reviewed.
His eye is extraordinary. He’ll see a subtle overall yellow that’s taking the photographic bite out of an entire scene. It’ll be the first time I’ve noticed it. But now that he’s pointed it out to me, I can’t see anything else. Everything starts looking yellow. The process of color printing is complicated. I’ll try to explain it as best I can. Basically, the color negative contains the three primary colors: red (called magenta in the lab), blue (called cyan),
and yellow. Except for a process called “preflashing,” which is rarely used (we mentioned it earlier speaking of The Deadly Affair), most of the time nothing is done to the negative delivered by the cameraman. The lab develops it to a standard set of formulas.
The original negative goes into a vault. It is extremely valuable. In fact, sometimes the original negative is the actual collateral for the bank loan that financed the picture.
I’m not “anti-studio.” As I said back at the beginning of the book, I’m grateful that someone gives me the millions of dollars it takes to make a movie. But for me, and I think for other directors, there is enormous tension in handing the movie over.
I don’t know what makes a hit. I don’t think anyone does. It’s not the stars.
unacceptable monopoly. By the end of the fifties and through the sixties, many studios were in a precarious situation. At one point, 20th Century—Fox had to cancel a picture I was about to begin because it was out of money. I was to start the movie in March, but its big Christmas release, Hello, Dolly!, had done poorly at the box office. That’s how tight its cash flow was. The canceled picture was The Confessions of Nat Turner based on Bill Styron’s book. Many of the studios fought television
They checked sound levels and made sure the projectors were in good shape. He tells me the projectionist liked the movie. I feel better. At this point, any support is welcome.
I wonder how many pictures have been hurt. How many movies went through changes dictated by “Audience Surveys” and lost whatever quality or individuality they might have had? We’ll never know.
I’ve never been able to solve the problems of a picture by making changes that were indicated by the previews. And in the quest for a hit, I made those changes after long talks with studio executives who had thoroughly analyzed the questionnaires and focus-group results. I tried it. It didn’t work. Maybe it was me. Perhaps nothing could have helped the movie. I don’t know.
Almost always, the changes everyone looks for occur around the ending.
But most of the time fixing the ending can’t do the job, because most pictures aren’t very good.
Commercial success has no relationship to a good or bad picture. Good pictures become hits. Good pictures become flops. Bad pictures make money, bad pictures lose money. The fact is that , not one really knows. If anyone did know, eh’d be able to write his own ticket. And there have been two that have. Trough some incredible talent, Walt Disney knew. Today (80’s) Steven Spielberg seems to.
all TV ads, posters, print ads, even the title of the movie are tested, all “audience surveyed” and, of course, broken down demographically. And yet with all this testing, why do most movies open poorly?
I should mention that another company makes its decision to green-light a picture strictly on the basis of script and budget. Then they get the best stars the can. Overall, they’re often more successful than the star-based studio.
If, at the beginning, their decision to go ahead with a movie depends on whether major stars want to do it, and if once the movie’s completed, all decisions about revising, distribution, and advertising the picture are deferred to research groups, what are these executives really responsible for? The most basic decisions have been made for them.
Moreover, as far as I know, no studio chief has ever died poor. But an awful lot of writers, actors, and directors have– including D.W. Griffith.
I’ve seen these fads before. With a little success, smaller companies tend to want to expand. That means the want to play their pictures in more theaters. And that means they want to go to the majors.
As they get bigger, their distribution expenses will also increase. And at that point, will they still be able tot take a chance on Farewell, My Concubine?
The need for more movies to feed increased cable TV need is supposedly promising more choice, more production, more room for new talent. But will it ever happen? I don’t think so.
The general quality of cable and free TV keeps sinking steadily like a foot in mud.
some of them are dreaming of becoming famous and making a fortune. But a few are dreaming of finding out what matters to them, of saying to themselves and anyone who will listen, “I care.” A few of them want to make good movies.