American Cinematographer - April 1997 - 86

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the film that we made between
8:30 and 9 at night!"

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rily
with

George B. was shot prima¬
location in Chico, CA,
day of work in Reno. The

on
a

filmmakers had a decent amount
of prep time to scout their loca¬
tions and perform film stock tests
with a still camera, but they did

FLETCHER

endure some arduous moments
after shooting began. "On the
first day, we had to do 8 % pages
of the script, in a public restroom,
in

100-degree weather," Lea re¬
a
grimace. "But the ac¬
tors were total pros, and once we
got started everything went very
smoothly."

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"Most of our crew was
made up of interns from Chico
State College, and at that point
most of

them didn't even know
what a C-stand was," Kennan says.
"One of them came up to me at the
end of this 12- or 13-hour day and

said, 'So,
guys

are

these the hours you

always work?' I just replied,

'Get used to it!' As it turned out,
the interns were all really enthusi¬
astic and tried very hard to do a
good job, which made up for their
lack of technical knowledge. They

basically learning as we went
along, but by the end of the shoot,
they were ready to go work on just
about any production."
The cinematographer says
that his toughest lighting challenge
was a scene in which
George and
Angela have an encounter within a
covered bridge. "There was no
place to hide lights in there, and I
was
using a really wide 24mm
lens," he says. "The scene was
staged a bit like a cat-and-mouse
game, with the actors moving back
and forth, and I wound up having
to re-position all of the
lights to
keep them out of the frame. I also
were

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didn't want to lose the great natu¬
ral look of the covered bridge, so I
had to be careful not to overlight or

underlight it."
All of the extra work

off, and the film

was

paid

well-received

at Sundance. Of his first

trip to the

event, Kennan says, "It's really
great that someone has put to¬
gether a festival where first-time
filmmakers can have their films
screened for

the

84

people who matter in

industry."
Summing up his own feel-
American Cinematographer - April 1997

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - April 1997
