American Cinematographer - July 1998 - 36

dark, grim, painful and comedic.
playing to the darkness

turns

Rather than

Gallo and Acord
a bright,

photographically,

decided to set their tale in

Ektachrome world. "The references for
the look of the film
comments Acord.

Films feature

Jets

versus

(When Gallo
him to

see

were

"One

very
was

kid, his father took

production,
high-contrast

reversal Video News Film, and the expe¬
rience made a deep impression on him.)

Additionally, the duo looked at
some old photographs, "the kind you
might find in a suitcase under a table at
the flea market," suggests Acord. "Some
were nudes of someone's girlfriend,
probably lit with Photofloods and shot on
Kodachrome. The girl was reclining on an
avocado couch, against a brown curtain
and a dull orange rug. There is a sincerity
and purity in the crudeness of the tech¬
nique that somehow makes work like
that very revealing and powerful. We
tried to bring some of that to the movie."
In lighting the picture, Acord
mainly deployed tungsten Photofloods,
as well as open-faced Mickeys and
Mighties. Because 5239 is balanced for
daylight, Acord generally applied 1/2 CTB
correction on his lamps. However, differ¬
ent and often contrasting colors were
always employed for key and ambient
lighting. When illuminating the actors,
the cameraman favored a golden light for
the key. Unbalanced fluorescents were
then generally used to provide ambience;
adding green to the shadows contributed
a

2/3 of

Acord then
a

kept skin tones about

stop over to create a more

bleached

golden hue. Christina Ricci
proved to be a particularly interesting
subject to light. "She was like filming a
lightbulb," marvels Acord. "She radiates
light. Her skin has a kind of translucent
reflective quality."
The filmmakers had
their

no

idea how

footage looked, though, because
they had no means of processing it until
a week into production. When he joined
the project, Acord contacted Bono Film
and Video, a lab in Arlington, Virginia. He
34

July 1998

few

more

use

weeks before the converted

ready.
Fortunately, an age-old technique
provided the cameraman with some
guidance on his exposures. After gradu¬
ating from the San Francisco Art
processor was

Institute, Acord had worked

as as

assis¬

photographer/filmmaker Bruce
Weber, and he put his knowledge of still
photography to work on Buffalo 66.
"When you shoot 'chrome and use the E6
process, you do film clip tests," he
explains. "On each roll of film, you clip
tant to

either the front
gauge

or

the end of the roll to

the exposure on the roll, and then
push- or pull-process to adjust

you can

for the exposure you want.
"For each scene in Buffalo 66, we
would do

a

clip test. We'd shoot about

40 feet of film

-

often with stand-ins

and then

log that with a scene
number and a clip number. In the script
notes we would identify which camera
roll corresponded to each clip test. As
soon as the lab got things going and
began processing film, they would run
the clip test for each scene, at which
point we would know whether we
wanted to push or pull the film to adjust
for exposure. They could then process
the rolls accordingly."

-

certain emotional heaviness to certain

scenes.

reversal stocks for

both of which still

duplicating films. The Pentagon also
uses reversal in some of their high-speed
test cameras.) However, it would take a

this NFL Films
on

Tim had been

simple,"

presentation of the 1969

which had been shot

son

modifying a 16mm reversal
processor to use with 35mm stock. (The
lab does a lot of 16mm processing for the
Library of Congress and the Pentagon,
on

the NFL

Colts championship game."
was a

knew Joe Bono and his

working

Acord, who served

as

both direc¬

tor of

aperture control. The sequence finds
Billy entering a strip joint, determined to
kill the club owner, a nemesis from his
past. In thinking about how to stage the
scene, Acord remembered a technique
utilized

by French commercial director
Gondry, which employed a circu¬
lar still-camera array that was simultane¬
ously triggered - "freezing" the subject
from multiple angles. The resulting
frames were then sequentially morphed
and animated to create a virtual pan and
Michel

3-D effect.
Acord

thought he could add to the
by simi¬
larly "freezing" his actors, but he used a
different method. "I discovered it by
mistake," he confesses with a laugh. "I
had previously worked on a project that
was to be composed of a series of stills,
with the exception of a few scenes that
shock of his murder sequence

we

would shoot with

However,

we

a

movie

used the movie

camera.

camera as

stills unit and just shifted the angle
slightly while all of the actors froze in
place. By moving the camera around the
completely motionless actors, we got the
same kind of unnerving 3-D effect that
Gondry had achieved [with the stillcamera array],
"A person can only hold so still,
however," he continues. "The thing that
made it possible was ramping from a
regular camera speed to a high speed.

a

The actor would freeze mid-scene, at
which point we would ramp up to 80 or
90 frames per

second, sometimes as
high as 120 fps, and then quickly shift the

camera

from

other."

Ramping the frame rate would

ensure

that whatever small movement

one

side of the actor to the

photography and operator, likes to
keep his lens fairly wide open whenever
possible. "If we had more light, I would
usually ND down to around a T2 or a
T2.8," he notes. "I like the feeling [you
get from] a loss of depth of field."
The production's camera package,
procured from Otto Nemenz in Los
Angeles, included a Moviecam Compact,

the actors made would be

Moviecam SL, an Arriflex 435ES and
Zeiss Superspeed lenses. The 435ES

of Gallo's head, it looked as if a bullet

a

brought in specifically for a scene in
a bar at the end of the picture, for which
Acord wanted to use the RCU speedwas

imperceptible.

To enhance the 3-D effect, and
create the impression that a split-second
in time had in fact been captured,
makeup artist Goochie Westman found
some blown-glass pieces, resembling
splashing red liquid, which had been
used for a cranberry juice commercial.

When these
were

blood

were

attached to the back

passing through his skull, with the
effectively "frozen" in the moment

of death.
While Buffalo 66s camerawork
American Cinematographer - July 1998

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