American Cinematographer - October 1991 - 56

old Konica camera to help guide his

eye and think in terms of black &
white. "We'd be lighting these
scenes to such a
high key, with so
much hard light, that it was hard to

get a sense of what it was finally
going to look like when it was ex¬

posed normally on film." The stills
he took also came in handy during
pre-production, in determining the
values of the hues of the set.
Hardwicke and her set dresser
would bring in wallpaper, floor tile
and paint samples; Jur would take

snaps of them under the proper
conditions. In addition to prevent¬

ing costly slowdowns, the system
allowed Jur to consistently keep his

backgrounds down, tonally, from
the actors.
In the shows that featured

Jur exaggerated the
glamour look so intrinsic to the '30s
and AOs. "Catherine O'Hara plays

women,

a

Much of the

horses."

show's action is
worked out on

was a rear-screen

larger-thanusual sets like
those employed
in the old days
of studio

production. In
this scene,
Morton & Hayes
are

tormented by

accomplished
screwball
comedienne
Catherine
O'Hara.

Projected behind them
of a grassy hori¬

streaming away at a rate
somewhat indifferent to the speed
of the riders.

zon,

In general, the shows are
riddled with sight gags that play up
the artifice without becoming too
self-conscious. Not having a budget
for skies and clouds, Jur and
Hardwicke came up with a clever

and

cheap star-field effect. Jur
photographed a particular night
scene through a 70/30 silvered
mirror

on

which the stars

were

projected; the mirror was set up at
a
45-degree angle to the camera,
and the stars were made by firing
a IK through a piece of black card
pierced many times and mounted
perpendicular to the lens. For the
final touch, a Maglite on a hanger
was used to create a falling star.
While shooting, Jur had to be
careful to keep the actors from
"walking into the stars."

spaces for them. Almost everything
off the set," says Jur. "Nowa¬

was

days if you're in a small location
you have a soft light that's blowing
out everywhere. It's a lot harder to
control that and deal with the light
spraying everywhere."

Typical lighting setups
included a 5 or 1 OK placed high and
spotted in on the actors with a
topper to keep it off the walls. An
eyelight by camera and a relatively
heavy backlight, at key or a stop
higher to ensure separation, com¬
pleted the look. Occasionally the
gaffer was assigned, against all
modern convention, to create

multiple shadows for
fect. "There's

a

certain ef¬

old

joke among
gaffers and cameramen," says
Brownstein. "Producer says he
wants the shot right away. The
cameraman says,
'Okay, put a 10K
an

says. "Any time there was a closeup
of her, we would heavily diffuse
the shot. It was a joke referring to
how they used to diffuse the
women and not the men. We

maybe went a little farther, just to
make it more apparent for fun. So I
used Supra Frost filters for that in
addition to the black dot."
For eyelights Jur used an
Obie light mounted on camera, al¬

though he found that he was able
to get "quite a bit of that
sparkle
that looks so great on actors - in
their eyes - from a very steep
angle, depending on the shape of
their face or if they were wearing a
hat. And that, above everything,
was the look of those old films.

Especially for women. I find that in
contemporary films you're usually
lighting with huge soft lights very
close in, and it falls off. It's a dif¬
ferent look. But when you light
with hard light - as harsh as it

The oversized sets al¬
lowed him to pull his instruments

behind the camera and let's shoot.'

might sound - a perfectly placed
hard light on a face gives a very
beautiful look. It sculpts the face
very nicely, de-emphasizes the

Sometimes,

neck

back from the action, which is very

doing just that." He reports that
they were often able to keep light¬

eyes. And this is just with one light,
so I needed
very little else to help

ing setups to thirty minutes - ten
for closeups.

that."

important in a hard light show.
This helped by balancing out the
light levels in the playing areas. In
addition, Morton & Hayes could

54

around the set without get¬
ting snagged in a sea of nets and Cstands. "We had wonderful acting

move

dual role in one of the shows," he

American

Cinematographer

we

found ourselves

Jur relied heavily on his

October 1991

area

and

nose

and fills in the

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American Cinematographer - October 1991

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