American Cinematographer - January 1998 - 69

Another

interesting tool Kuras
shooting flat art was a
spring-wound Bolex 16mm camera.
She expounds, "I found myself try¬
ing to lengthen the duration of the
flash-frames by overcranking, up to
64 fps on the Bolex and 120 fps on
the Arri Highspeed, so the flashframes would bleed into the image.
I wanted to use that unique filmic
quality that a flash-frame produces
used while

for transitions."
Kuras also

employed

a

variety

of film stocks. "We shot 7250 reversal
film

with the

Bolex and

cross-

processed it as negative to add a
grainy, gritty feel. Cross-processing
reversal film enhances the grain and
lends

a more

saturated feel

to

the col¬

The

resulting negative doesn't
purity of true negative film;
cross-processed reversal film looks
more like a color Xerox. Spike likes to
ors.

have the

use

reversal stock; it's almost like

trademark of his." In Clockers

a

(AC

life in

a

Brooklyn housing project,

while in the Million Man March
drama Get
7239

on

the Bus,

(pushed

moments

overexposed
stop) signified

one

when

crisis forced the

a

bus passengers to

However, Kuras feels that edi¬

unite.
tor

"On most other
documentaries with
emotional material. I've

-

distance because of the
camera. On 4 Little Girls,
I was overwhelmed."
Ellen Kuras
a

-

Super 8 Kodachrome 40 stock
also used for

ments.

The

art

Super 8

Canon 1014 XLS

blown up

and B-roll seg¬

was

shot with

camera

a

and then

While the director and cine¬
a great

deal of

attention to their work with the

stills,

they handled the archival footage in a

5239 to convey

more

traditional

manner

were

scenes in which fire
turned on marchers -

Lee and Ellen
Kuras conduct
an

interview

with David

Vann, who

was

of
Birmingham at

mayor

the time of the

tragic incident.

impact to the film. "The
graphic quality of some of the
archival images was haunting," the
cinematographer says. "The news
photographers captured a certain
feeling of the events, and our editor
skillfully selected the most effective
footage."
The cinematographer chose to
emphasize certain hues in postpro¬
duction

during

to

enhance the emotional

tug of the archival material. "I want¬
ed

directly to 35mm.

matographer paid

particularly

On location in

Alabama, Spike

added

always been able to keep

was

Sam Pollard's selection of footage

hoses

Sept. '95) Lee used cross-processed

the gritty feel of daily

postproduction. "A lot of the footage
was in
pretty dicey shape to begin
with, so we didn't feel we would gain
much by shooting it off of monitors
or screens,"
says Kuras.

to

color,

separate the emotions with
I decided that all of the

so

images of violence - such as the
dogs, fire hoses and hangings

attack
-

would be blue-tinted,

trast

high-con-

black-and-white. I felt that the

American

Cinematographer 67
American Cinematographer - January 1998

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