American Cinematographer - August 2020 - 64

Collected Wisdom

Classic ads from Sony (March 1974, touting the company's video cameras), Steadicam (Feb. 1978, featuring inventor and ASC associate Garrett Brown) and
Fujifilm (Feb. 1997, spotlighting its film stock and the legendary cool of ASC member Steven Shaw).

being produced in 12 days on a total
budget of $175,000. By the end of that
year the film had grossed $7 million.
It was the critical success and
profitability of this film that persuaded
Columbia to put up $6 million to
finance School Daze, which went into
production in early March, 1987.
With such an enormous jump in
film budget size even Lee admits that
many people at the time openly
wondered if he and his crew could
handle it. Eight weeks later, when
production ended on time, within
budget and with no reshooting, it was
clear they could.
Dickerson voiced a sense of
technical and creative satisfaction
from working with a larger budget
and longer time frame than he had for
his previous movies. "When I shot
Brother from Another Planet in 25 days
and Krush Groove in 24 days, it was a
case of getting it done as fast as possible in the best way I could. Having
eight weeks to shoot School Daze
meant I had the time to put a lot more
quality into each shoot," he said.
Dickerson feels that the rigorous
financial training of independent
filmmaking helped the School Daze
team create a "$6 million movie that
looks like $15 million."
August 2020

***

November 1992
Reservoir Dogs, shot by
Andrzej Sekula and directed
by Quentin Tarantino
From "From Rags to Reservoir
Dogs," by Stephen Pizzello
"I'm a stickler about framing, so
basically I controlled the framing and
Andrzej controlled the lighting,"
Tarantino adds. "I'll have a few ideas
about the lighting, but his ideas are
going to be far richer than mine; he
knows a lot more about it. Likewise,
he's going to have some ideas about
the framing that will always be taken
into account. While I was at
Sundance, Terry Gilliam said to me,
'You know, Quentin, it's funny, you
have very arch framing. I'm really
going to be curious to see what
happens when you work with a cinematographer and filter your ideas
through another person. I think it will
soften your ideas a bit and make them
just right.' And that's what Andrzej
did. The rough edges were showing
just a bit, and that one baby-step back
gave me what I wanted and kept the
shots from looking like wild filmmaking for its own sake."
"Conversations with the direcAmerican Cinematographer - 100 Years

tor are just vital," Sekula maintains.
"You can create a skeletal plan for a
shoot, but the real art of cinematography is in the improvisation. If you
keep the lines of communication
open, it usually leads to those sudden
inspirations that make a film special."
***

February 1997
From "George Lucas: Past,
Present and Future," an
interview by Ron Magid
AC: So you feel that the art of
cinematography won't be diminished just because the technology is
changing.
Lucas: I like to think of the cinematographer as an artist, not as a
technician. I am very much for the art
of cinematography, but I don't worry
about the technology, because the
technology changes all the time. I deal
with this in film schools. They say,
'Well, we need more 16mm cameras,
the kids want to work on 16.' And I
say, 'Why do you need film cameras
at all? Give 'em Hi-8 cameras and let
'em learn that it's not how you operate the camera that's important, it's
how you decide what the lighting is,
what the images and graphics are,

American Cinematographer - August 2020

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