American Cinematographer - December 1987 - 55

you

ematographers tend to bring to

His

your second year shooting
a film." Richardson did two sec¬
ond year films. "I had nothing

their trade.
"Video is too clean,"

dow-like cleanliness

vited back

by

a

director,

spend

else to do, no other work," he
states. But the contacts he devel¬

oped at AFI won him work
shooting documentaries, which
no doubt
helped him to establish
of realism. Then fate in¬
tervened. Richardson met Oliver
Stone.
Richardson calls his
union with Stone a star-crossed
situation. "Oliver had gone
a sense

says Richardson. "It's a
different texture. Grain

important to

whole
seems

for some rea¬
that video will
point, and ad¬
good for indepen¬

me
son." He supposes
take over at some
mits that it's

dents. "A
shot

man

in San Francisco

independent film with
Ikegami, using only one tube,
red or blue, then blew it up to 35
an

an

millimeter. It cost
made for

an

a

fortune, but it

interesting visual."

experience with video's win¬

no doubt
fostered in Richardson the verite
look he's known for capturing.
It makes Richardson a
bit nervous to be tagged as a

"docu-type." Richardson tried to
break away from his typecast in
Platoon. "I tried to maintain real¬

ism, but at the

same

time alter it.

They're saying, 'yeah, he
exteriors. But

can

can do
he do inte¬

riors?'" Wall Street is all inte¬
riors. An indoor jungle, where
savage

and violent tactics

are

everyone there was,"
and when the two met, "it was a

through

meeting of instincts." At that
time, Richardson's credits

were

hardly impressive. He'd done
camera on such films as
Electric Bugaloo, Nightmare on
Elm Street, and Breakin' as well as
some re-shoots for Repro Man.
But Stone took a chance on him.
"He told me not to take any
other work, that the job was
mine." One film led to another.
Stone had no qualms about tak¬

second

Opposite Page:
Douglas and his
apprentice Charlie

ing Richardson from the jungle
to

Wall Street.
Wall Street,

Sheen in Wait Street
office.

formerly

titled Greed, is based

-

Top: Darryl

Hannah and Sheen.

en¬

Below: Sheen and

not sur¬

prisingly - on the sizzling
scandals perpetrated by insiders
of New York's high powered fi¬
nancial center. You could say it's
just another jungle for Richard¬
son. Brutality in a three-piece

James

Spader in

critical

scene.

suit.

Richardson, having shot

Crossfire,
on

a documentary filmed
location in El Salvador, was

ripe for the job of shooting
Stone's Salvador. He calls that
first project "a turning point, the

beginning of the cycle."
Salvador established
Richardson in the docu-film

genre. Other young visionaries,
who embarked on their careers
with a Sony in hand, stayed in
the tape domain, waiting for
high definition to push video to
the big screen. But his video ex¬
perience gave Richardson a keen
sense of visual
composition and
movement, that ability to cap¬
ture a particular aesthetic that
still photographers-turned-cin-

December 1987

American

Cinematographer

53
American Cinematographer - December 1987

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