American Cinematographer - July 1984 - 86

and goes

thundering past. I loved
seeing that with an audience!
Without exception, they all
screamed with relief."
In the dream sequences
for Dreamscapes, Tufano used a
lot of smoke on the sets. "Using
smoke gives the shot a perspective,

atmosphere. You don't just fill
the set up with smoke. If you can
haze out the background and

an

child's dream, and it should have a
child's perspective. So the set was
built with very strange perspective
and I shot it with the new Zeiss
14mm lens, which made the per¬
spective totally unreal."
Tufano's personal shoot¬
ing philosophy is to set up shots
that are longer in duration than
normal cuts, shots that develop. "I
like my shots to flow. I don't like

dience so it really didn't matter."
The scene is one in which Dennis

Quaid's character is attacked by a
dog, then bitten by the Snakeman.
"The stuntman really did it for me,
because he set himself so that he
in screen-left, started flying

came

through the air and went screenright, then moved so that he ended
up again screen-left. He framed his
action perfectly for me. So you
now have Dennis bitten
by the
Snakeman and thrown about, you
see this body move and fly
through
the air, then cut back to Dennis
and he's crawling along the wall. I
was able to do that with
longer
shots than one might normally do,
which will convince the audience
it's one person throughout."
Tufano considers Fran¬
cois Truffaut his motion picture
idol. "When the French New
Wave

happened, the cinema had

become so classical, so stuck in
certain ways of doing things, cer¬
tain techniques. Suddenly these

people

new

made it

got hold of it and
alive! The film that

come

really did it for me was The 400
Blows. The pictures were telling
the story; the cameras were where
they should be! They were in the
streets, in apartments, out of the
studio. I like that

because all

pose,

realism, I
my

with the B.B.C.
mentaries."

graduate the smoke to bring it for¬
ward, it gives you a sense of per¬
spective you just don't get when
it's clear or by using filters on the
lenses."
For
in

Tufano, the difficulty

shooting the dream
give them each

was to

sequences

a

different

look. "The seven dream sequences
are the dreams of seven different

people, their individual inner real¬
ity. It was quite a tall order to give
a different look. For
instance, in the boy's dream, we

each dream
were to

go on

house. I could
with a lot of
were
man

location
that

to an

actual

fraught
difficulty since we
using smoke and the Snake(a recurring nightmare char¬
see

was

acter). I talked them into building
it

on a set.

At first it

was to

be very

realistic, but I suggested this

American

Cinematographer

was a

break up

the flow of the di¬
the action. 1 design my
shots to give everyone as much
freedom as possible, so that the
artists can get involved in the
to

alogue

or

and relate to each other's
character. Of course, when you're
scene

doing

a

lot of live-action special

effects-as

we

were

in Dream-

really can't do that.
Especially if you are going to say
that something extraordinary is
happening."

scapes-you

One of Tufano's favorite
sequences in Dreamscapes started
in the Bronson cave and ended in a

studio set. "I think the only prob¬
lem we had was that the director
was still involved with the geogra¬

phy of Bronson cave when we got
on set, though that geography had
never

July 1984

been

explained

to

the

au¬

To

sup¬

early work

was

in docu¬

Tufano, the difference

between New Wave and docu¬

that while maintain¬
atmosphere of reality, it
maintained the "heightened

mentary was

ing

an

also
realism" of
can't make

a
a

theatrical film. "You
feature like a docu¬

mentary. You've got to bring your
audience into the screen, not repel
them because it is wobbly and outof-focus with bad sound. You
have to get the audience in there
and not put any technical barriers
between them and the story. This
is what people like Truffaut were

doing,

as

I

saw

it."

Tufano has worked in
television as much as he has in mo¬
tion pictures. To Tufano, there is a
difference in shooting for televi¬
sion

as

opposed

to

theatrical film.

"With television, the viewer is
American Cinematographer - July 1984

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