American Cinematographer - February 1987 - 65

"We didn't take
at

all. Peter's

not

into

a

crane

cranes

and

Kodak film to look the same. You
could use an 85B and put 200 or

in a way, I'm not either now. He
has influenced me to that degree. I
find it very difficult to suddenly
zoom into the air and go 25 feet

degrees of warmth back into
negative, but we wanted the
grain and the feeling of not being

The first eight feet are interest¬
ing and the last eight feet are inter¬
esting, but the middle is boring to

Seale enhanced or re¬
directed the natural tendencies of
the Fuji film when he color timed
the film. "After Jeronimo was
blown up we took all the color out
of the picture. We went as cold as
we could go without losing
reality.
We wanted a bombed-out grey
and black. Down on the river the
colors came back in. We used a lot
of yellow. Fuji is, as I've said, a
warm stock and it shifts toward
the yellow. It looked good, I
think. When the family arrives at
the wharf, everything has that

up.

Often as not, the editor ends
cutting the middle bit out
'snip' - the scissors go in and you
me.

up

.

think 'What

an

.

.

awful cut!' Then

the end of the shot and
think, 'Oh; that's right! The
middle bit is boring."
"You can get carried
away with gadgets and once again
you see

you

the camera becomes obvious. I
don't like that. The performance is

bounding along and the
there and
comes

once

the

is

pace

camera

obvious, it's taking

be¬

away

from the performance," Seale
concluded.
Seale and Weir shot Mos¬
on Fuji film. "I used
high-speed Fuji all the way
through. I rated it at 500 ASA for
tungsten and 320 ASA for
daylight. I wanted to use one stock
all the way through because if you
use two the grain always shifts. It
was a bit terrifying when we were
on the beach. We were knocking

quito Coast

it back with the ND's so much.
We used 85 Ni2's and the like to

try and get it back. That was an¬
other documentary decision. I
tested Eastman, Agfa and Fuji. We
looked at them in Atlanta on our

of the jungle and the Fuji
made the greens look grubby.
Kodak is the high tech look with
its no-grain. It's so clean and sharp
compared to the other that it
way out

looks like video. We didn't want
that. It will suit another film I
call it horses for courses and the
horse we wanted to ride on was
-

Fuji. Now that I have timed the
film and seen the release print I
think it was an excellent decision
for this movie.

"Fuji doesn't give you
picture postcard colors. It's got a
muddiness in the greens

and the

300

the

perfect."

yellow tropical look. We looked
at the village where Allie tries to
take the ice as a normal coloring
but we shot it so that it shifted
towards the blues and we kept it

underexposed. Their village wasn't
pretty village. When we wanted
the look to be colorful we banged

a

the color in."
Seale had the full comple¬
ment of challenges on this
film
large and small. Among
other things, he had to deal with
dark skinned actors, special ef¬
fect storms and Harrison Ford's
-

-

glasses. "He wanted to wear
glasses and I would never, ever say
no," said Seale. "Harrison knows
they cause problems. You can see

the beach. With them is the
black Mr.
Haddy. The dynamics of the scene
come from Allie Fox's point of
up on

faithful and very

view and when Allie looks

Haddy, there

are

at

almost isn't there because the

backlight is so strong. "It worried
me," said Seale honestly. "There

every

Whereas, if you hit a lamp in the
curved lenses, it's usually so far
away it could be anything. It could
be a sky highlight. So when we put
diffusion in front of the

lamps, we
put jungle around it so that there
wasn't a square frame - an ob¬
vious reflection of a lamp. I tried
to keep the lamps out of the
glasses altogether and I think we
did well."
There

are some scenes

in

Agfa's the same. They're both very
warm negative stocks and Kodak

Mosquito Coast that documentary
cameramen will
sympathize with.

is very cool. That doesn't mean
that you can simply filter the

At

one

comes

point in the film, the family
out of the jungle and winds

February 1987

ice house in the

jungle.

Mr.

reflector in

light and

triumph for one
family member, an

times when he

the damn things. I didn't want to
use flat glasses because, to me, it's
a dead giveaway. Then when you
hit a lamp you lose the eyes totally.

every

A

times when the black actors
suffered a little bit. It is very diffi¬
cult to light black actors when
were

they

are

actress

sitting
like

[Mother]. If

next to a very fair
Helen Mirren

you pump

the light in

for Conrad Roberts [Mr. Haddy],
she's going to pick it up and start
to burn out. So using the negative
to its fullest, I bit my lip and went
for it. I basically tried to expose
and time the film so that there was
a balance with available light."
The storm sequences in
the film are sometimes so intense
the audience

starts

looking for

their umbrellas. Water cascades
down everything. At times the en-

American

Cinematographer

63
American Cinematographer - February 1987

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