American Cinematographer - February 1987 - 66

the

blows out the front.
hand-hold it because it

water

You

can

weighs

one

pound.

"We had

so
many trou¬
bles with that storm
.," sighed
Seale. "Larry Cavanaugh's effects
team was sensational. We wanted
lots of rain and they gave it to us.
We had so much water, we had
trouble waterproofing the cam¬
eras. For some reason we were get¬
.

.

ting a lot of water behind the lens.
The air blasters (we used three of
those) weren't angled correctly
and for a while it looked almost
like the shoot was going to end up
a disaster. We did do a lot of re¬
River Phoenix atop

tire picture in engulfed in a grey

shooting in Atlanta, Georgia.

his ice house.

mist. This is

"But when I think about
it now, I would do it all again. I
would just let it happen. I

typical
Hollywood storm. "That storm
gave me ulcers
for several rea¬
sons. First, we were shooting in
the tropics and the whole time it
was sunny. So the whole storm
not

.

was

it

shot in the

.

your

.

sun.

I died. We did

place called San Pedro in
Ambergris Key. It worried me the
on a

whole time

.

.

.

"We had

a

lot of close-

and they had to be scrimmed
very heavily - which is awkward
when you've got three giant Rit¬
ters, rain, and a 50' x 50' scrim
over the top.
It's disastrous.
You've got stands everywhere try¬
ing to hide things, and you've got
five cameras on it. But mainly that
was for closeups. All the wide
ups

shots were done at dusk where I at
least had a chance and the light
flattened everything out. 1

thought, 'This is the end
But it wasn't the end. In

such situations,

problems tend to
expand geometrically to fill the al¬
lotted space. Seale began with a bit
of history: "On The Last Wave we
couldn't afford one of those spin¬
ning discs to keep the water off the
camera, so for economy, a couple
of the boys and I developed an air
blaster to keep water off the lens.
It fits into the

matte

Panaflex and it's

a

box

poor

on

the

man's rain

deflector. It works well but the
camera

has

proof. The
blasts down
any water

to

way

be quite water¬
it works is the air
the

optical flat and
that gets on it is blown
on

immediately. It then builds
pressure in that matte box and

away
up

64

American

Cinematographer

wouldn't worry if I got water on
the lens. Sometimes the air blaster
doesn't clear immediately -

especially if there is

a

But the air blast

on

lot of
the

water.
water

blows up are in the shot, but
Dickie Green, the greensman, did
a fantastic job of
bushing them
out to hide them. And some of
them are 6o-foot towers! We had
five lamps on every tower. Reggie
had the boys in there for weeks
ahead of time laying the cable un¬

derground. He had to protect ev¬
erything." With Seale's system, it
didn't matter which way he was
shooting; there was always a tower
with a light to use as the
moon
the key - and the other
-

would become the fill.
one
and two
stop
gels for the lamps. I'd point out
one tower and
say 'That's the fill
and the other tower is the key.'
The boys would slip a gel in place
and we were ready to go. We did
towers

"We had

-

-

in one night. Reggie
5K out in the river with
battery banks so there was no
27 set-ups

even

had

a

noise. We used that to shoot the
boat when Harrison arrived in

makes the picture go all soft for an
instant before the water clears and
I love that. It takes the audience
there."
Seale has strong feelings

Jeronimo." Like Almendros, Seale
had the moon coming from every¬

of filmmaking, but
he tends to downplay his own role
in the process. He makes himself
out to be a manic-depressive
quavering mass - but his images
say otherwise. "I tried a lot of
things on Mosquito Coast. I tried
day-for-night and I hate it really.
The jungle gives you a better
chance because it's already
knocked down 90% of the light.
Shooting simulated moonlight is
terrifying. It's so hard to try and

water

on

every aspect

think of how to do it. I don't
know whether my moonlight
works. 1 feel it does. I feel there is
so much performance
going on in
those scenes that you must see the
faces. So for me it was Nestor Almendros on Days of Heaven all
over

again. Everybody is back-lit.

There're 16

moons

up

there!

"Reggie Garside, my
gaffer, and I work out a system of
towers

all around the location if

where. It

was a

Hollywood jungle

moon.

Waterways, like falling
moonlight, played an
important part in this film, and
Seale spoke proudly of the camera
barge and his grip. "To film the
Little Haddy on the river we built
a great
camera boat. Robbie
[Robin Knight, the key grip] and I
found the outrigger from a tri¬
maran and made a giant
barge out
of it. We put outboard motors on
and

it and had

an

anchoring system
out of speedrail.

that Robbie made

He put brackets on the corners of
the barge and put 20-foot speedrail posts [vertically] through
them. We'd get the camera where
we wanted it and he'd push those

posts into the mud till the camera
locked off. Robbie's amazing.
He can put cameras anywhere in
seconds. He's got speedrail perma¬

was

nently attached
He

even

the boat

to

used it for
so

his shoulder.
guardrail

on

people wouldn't fall

off.

doing night shooting,"

Seale likes innovative

Seale continued. "Often the tow¬
ers are in the shot. All the towers

ideas. He comes up with them all
the time. Some are good and some

around the

are

we

are

February 1987

village where Fat Boy

bad, but the most important
thing for him is being able to voice
American Cinematographer - February 1987

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