American Cinematographer - November 1983 - 64

To get

the convincing look of the F-104 in

of all the art direc¬
Right Stuff reads like "The
Three Bears"; only the third one was
just right. Dick Lawrence (Something
Wicked This Way Comes) teamed
with Visual Consultant Geoffrey Kirk¬
land (War Games) to complete this
mosaic of period technology on time.
The

Lawrence related

one

of the chal¬

lenges; "We recreated nasa's Mission
Control plus a blockhouse in an old
skating rink. Phil Kaufman told us that
it was the largest and most intricate set
ever

built in San Francisco. We

even¬

tually got drawings from NASA after we
had already designed it from photos. I
don't know, maybe it was classified or
top secret!" To emulate nasa's oneof-a-kind mechanical readout board

"We really kept most of the
viewpoint of the film at human eye

Denault and first assistant Alan Disler.
Both Deschanel and Denault had
worked with Gordon Willis, and his

level. I learned from Gordon how

San

influence for

precise framing and at¬
were felt throughout
the production. They began with the
tention

to

detail

Moviecam but

soon

switched

to

the

Panavision

primes

as

package, using mostly
Caleb zooms only when he

feels he must. One of the first scenes in
The Right Stuff is the nightmare dream
of

a test pilot's wife. They begin a
long
dolly down the hallway to reach her at

the window and then
vision of her husband

the flames of

an

zoom

into the

satisfaction.
Denault

seen

through

port:

outdoor barbecue and

his fantasized death.

important point-of-view is. If you're
not going to do something with il
emotionally, then don't be there," De¬
schanel said. Most of the lensing was
normal, with the widest being a 17mm
when the capsule is first revealed to
the astronauts, to occasional use of a
300mm for some selective-focus inte¬
riors and a 500mm for many of the
flying sequences. They used a
1,ooomm in the air but with limited

spoke of camera sup¬
"In most of the film we weren't
cramped. There were pretty good-size
interiors, so we could use a full Fisher

that

In the wives' house

crew

had the Cricket

today looks like a computer, the
improvised with plastic and
lights.
For the infamous Pancho's Fly
Inn on the desert, Kirkland ".
chose
a location that had something there,
then totally gutted it and added on a
further 60% because I didn't really feel
that I had the time to do it totally
..

from scratch. There

were a

few

out¬

buildings that I could latch on to, and
there was already a little road into it. 1
had enough room inside. I'm not a
great designer of breakaway sets un¬
less you really don't have any option. 1
feel that photographically and
psychologically that to be within a set

flat sp

His crew, drawn mostly from
Francisco, included operator Craig

The story

tors on

a

at

Hamilton

we

dolly that you can dc
tight places and get
through doorways. We had some
cranes at Edwards, like the big shot (in
early continuity) at the desert funeral
for one of the pilots. We set up at
three a.m. to get ready for the jets
flyby at dawn. We started low, tilted
up, and at the end of the shot we were
up in the air with the jets in the
rises with in

clouds."

on film." However, the de¬
signs of the claustrophobic space cap¬
sules with "working" interiors proved

transmits it

to

be

a

Rubik Cube of

and took all the skill and

breakaway
ingenuity of

a

supervising construction coordinator
crew to put them to¬
gether again.
Director of Photography
Caleb Deschanel (Being There, The
Black Stallion) shared with the director
a strong, realistic approach to the ma¬
Cal Di Valerio's

terial that would communicate the
emotion of the

scenes as

well

as

vali¬

and backlit with
orange
Martin

gels. Left:
Rosenberg

date them. "I

John Fante follow

a

pendulum

really like to conceive of
style in which I'm going to shoot a

film and then within

that, have sub¬

for each of the scenes. There
elements that were out in the

contexts
were

public eye, and then there were others
that happened behind the scenes with
more stylized qualities. We tried to
imagine what it would be like to be
there ourselves."

62

Above left: Liquid
nitrogen plumbed
through the heatshie
end of the capsule «
blown back by fans

American

Cinematographer

an
a

swoop ovt

the X-1A. Above:

Model
Earl

shop supervis
Murphy sets a

rocket motor into thi

engine port of a
lightweight
polyurethane X-1 for
wire work.
American Cinematographer - November 1983

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