American Cinematographer - September 1992 - 68

Now You
Can Leave
Home
Without It.

and managed to do it in two takes!"
Garcia notes proudly. "That was
due to the efforts of camera opera¬
tor Sean Doyle, who controlled the

hothead, and Derlin BrynfordJones, the arm operator of the

nighttime forest sequence had the
cinematographer tugging at his
beard with anxiety. The scene

Technocrane. Derlin had to tele¬

called for Laura and paramour

scope the thing in and out exactly
to the move, and he managed to
make all of these precise moves
without even looking at the moni¬

Bobby Briggs (Dana Ashbrook) to
stumble drunkenly into the forest
and await a drug-running hench¬
man of
Jacques Renault. It sounded
simple enough in the script, but
Garcia soon found himself at log¬
gerheads with his director.
"David doesn't like night¬
time exteriors to look like they're
lit," Garcia recounts with a sigh.
"He said, 'Where does the light
come from?' and I
replied, 'It comes
from the same place as the music,
David.' Well, he didn't go for that;

tor! Unfortunately, we didn't end
up using the move intact; David
wanted to cut back to Julee Cruise

time,

one more

like

so now

it looks

dolly shot. After that,
though, we used the Technocrane
again and again."
more

a

The Butcher
Gets His Look

he wanted the whole scene to be lit

Like most directors, David

Lynch has relied on his vari¬
ous cinematographers to cap¬
ture the compelling images
that spring from his imagina¬
tion. According to Ron
Garcia, however, Lynch has
begun to take matters into his
own

era

Arriflex

colloquial
term meaning 'Can I have
my turn?"' Garcia reveals.
"So at one point I said,
TouTe not only gonna get a
butcher's look, you're gonna
operate on this thing! He was
pretty thrilled; since then,
he's bought his own Mark II

Tyler mounts

Telephoto lenses
Innovision lenses
VIDEO

camera,

HI-8

and he

even

oper¬

job, too!"
Following that tri¬
umph, Garcia began tutoring
Lynch on the fine points of
the light meter, and reports

Gyrozoom
our

a

ated the second camera on
the Armani commercial we
did together. He did a great

Sony Betacams
Nightscope
Plus

come up to the cam¬
and ask for a 'butcher's

look,' which is

Uni lux Strobes
Power Pod head
Enluva II crane
1 50-600 zoom

Canon LI

hands from time to time.
"On the pilot, he'd

always

FILM

stage

with the

biggest

eye
in town.

that the director shot some of

Film/Video

his own inserts on the Twin
Peaks film. It's left to cinema¬

Equipment

tography buffs everywhere

Service Co.

to

try to spot the difference.
-

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303-778-8616
66

Garcia and Lynch also
made as much use as possible of
Seattle's natural resources, but one

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September 1992

SP

just by flashlights, which we'd
done on the pilot. He said, 'Ron,
you did it on the pilot and I know
you can do it again.' I was getting a
little angry at that point. I said,
'Yeah, but Dave, this is the big
screen, it's not going to be on tele¬
vision! The actors are going to have
to light themselves!' So he said,
'Well, let's try that.' I begged and
pleaded and got down on my
knees, and finally he let me put a
little bit of bounce in. I literally took
two 1200 Pars and bounced them

into the trees;
me

he wouldn't even let
put a white card in! We started

off in pure darkness, and then Dana
and Sheryl came in with these Xe¬

flashlights. I was able to have
point them at each other
and bounce the light off their
non

the actors

clothes, which

were

also dark, to

provide a little ambient fill. They
would point them at themselves
once in a while, because
they were
supposed to be drunk and playing
around. So I told them, 'Play with
the light a lot in your faces!' While
they were doing that, we would
pan the 1200s straight up at the
trees to provide some bounce light¬
ing; I'd have the lighting crew pan
them into the branches, following
the general action of the flashlights,
and then pan back out."
Garcia

was

worried

enough about the results to try
pushing the film a stop, but feared
American Cinematographer - September 1992

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