American Cinematographer - August 2020 - 59

of making a change to the independent field? What has the director of
photography to give the independent
picture? Does work in the independent field lead naturally to television?
Are there more problems for the
photographer in the independent
field than for the same photographer
in a major studio?
These questions are generating
in many photographers' minds today.
Independent production is burgeoning. So is television. Is it time for a
change?
Joseph La Shelle, ASC, who
spent 24 years at Fox, and has recently
been working in the independent
field (having just completed Storm
Fear with Cornel Wilde for the latter's
independent company), has had to
answer some of these questions for
himself.
The major lot director of
photography, La Shelle says, has a
definite and growing place in the
independent field, because he is
equipped by experience to save costs
and to aid a production considerably
in the pre-production planning. He
works more closely in this field with
the writer, the producer, and the
director; and story, cast, and ways of
lining up shots for the greatest economy in effort and money get his deliberate consideration. These matters, in
the majors, are too likely to be departmentalized and not reach his attention, or receive his direction, until the
day the picture goes before the
cameras.

t A Jan. 1949 ad placed by Bell & Howell
showcases Cooke Speed Panchro lenses.
q AC editor Herb A. Lightman interviewed
Master of Suspense Alfred Hitchcock for the
May 1967 issue.

no. I would do it in bright sunshine
with no place to hide, in open prairie
country. And what is the mood? A
sinister mood. There's not a sign of
where the menace can come from, but
eventually it turns up in the form of a
crop-duster airplane. Someone inside
the plane shoots at Cary Grant and he
has nowhere to hide.
***

in trying to get mood is the cliché, the
shadows in the room and what have
you. I spend half of my time avoiding
the cliché, in terms of scenes. In North
by Northwest, the girl sends Cary
Grant to a rendezvous where we
know an attempt will be made to kill
him. Now the cliché treatment would
be to show him standing on the
corner of the street in a pool of light.
The cobbles are washed by the recent
rains. Cut to a face peering out of a
window. Cut to a black cat slithering
along the bottom of a wall. Wait for a
black limousine to come along. I said

***
May 1967
From "Hitchcock Talks About
Lights, Camera, Action,"
an interview by
Herb A. Lightman
AC: What do you feel are the
most important elements to be
considered in the establishment of
mood on the screen?
Alfred Hitchcock: I think, to
sum it up in one way, the risk you run
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June 1968
From "Filming 2001: A Space
Odyssey," by Herb A.
Lightman
2001: A Space Odyssey abounds
in unusual settings, but perhaps the
most exotic of them all is the giant
centrifuge which serves as the main
compartment of the Discovery spacecraft and is, we are told, an accurate
representation of the type of device
that will be used to create artificial
gravity for overcoming weightlessness during future deep-space
voyages.
Costing $750,000, the spacegoing "ferris wheel" was built by the
Vickers-Armstrong
Engineering
Group. It was 38 feet in diameter and
about 10 feet in width at its widest
point. It rotated at a maximum speed
of three miles per hour and had built
into it desks, consoles, bunks for the
astronauts and tomb-like containers
for their hibernating companions.
All of the lighting units, as well
as the rear-projectors used to flash
readouts onto the console scopes, had
to be firmly fixed to the centrifuge
structure and be capable of functioning while moving in a 360° circle. The
magazine mechanisms of the SuperPanavision cameras had to be
specially modified by Panavision to
operate efficiently even when the
cameras were upside down.
"There were basically two types
August 2020

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American Cinematographer - August 2020

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