American Cinematographer - July 1998 - 99

Putnam did have to make

however, with

a

do,

walk

small donated light¬

have

ing package. "We had

a

Fresnels, and

a

two 2500

couple of nights,"
man.

"But for the

says

most

few HMIs,
4K Par for

the

a

camera¬

part we used

small tungsten

package, and we
always had to think of the simplest
way to shoot things."
Interesting camera blocking
came to bear
during a performance
by jazz veteran Jimmy Scott as he
a

crooned "Sometimes I Feel Like

the

across

it

street. We

decided

get through the sequence."

to

The

the

another

night scenes were also
tough because of the stock Putnam
was
using. "You don't have much
choice when you shoot in blackand-white," he says. "With Kodak,
you either have the 50 ASA or the

had

200

raining
got going."

start

sequence

once

Putnam

continues, "We had three
that

night

Crane,
so

one

cameras

one on a

-

on

a

Louma

Steadicam, and

on a
dolly or on sticks. We
much to do; it was summer,

the

night was short, and we knew
that if we had to keep switching the
camera to different
rigs, we'd never
so

ASA,

so

that

was

the hardest

thing. Shooting color negative on a
low-budget film, you're usually on
5298

or

96 at

an

ASA of 500, but we

a

Motherless Child."

Goldberg, a big
fan of Scott's, wrote the scene hoping
for the best, and was pleasantly
surprised when the septuagenarian
Scott agreed to come to L.A. He
agreed to sing the song twice, live, so
Putnam couldn't afford to make any

while

capturing the footage.
cinematographer explains, "We
turned the stage sideways, and then
added lights in the back to make the
setting more dramatic. We had two
cameras: we set up one as a station¬
ary 'safety' unit, covering the shot
with a wide-angle lens, and kept the
other camera moving on a dolly. We
errors

The

listened
pace

to

the music and tried

WRITE
your own
with little

*

DIRECT

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SHCCT

*

EDIT

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the tracking."
film's

The

SLMMER 19T8

elaborate

most

argument between
Jim and lisa, which occurs in the
sequence

is

an

pouring rain among the columns
Venice,
Avenue,

a

on

California's
Windward
location made famous in

Orson Welles' Touch

ofEvil. "We had
Highlight, which is a truck with two
12Ks on it," says Putnam. "In the
script, the scene takes- place in a heavy
downpour, which is one of things
that originally excited me. However,
the reality of having two actors in the
rain for eight hours trying to do this
a

emotional

scene

made

us

f cur* *#v & Until Week. Wcrkshcns at

rethink our

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approach. We decided to put them
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the sidewalk

to

give them some shelter."
Creating the mood-enhancing
rainfall

was

also

tight shots, it
because

we

had

problematic. "In the
was no
a

problem,

rain tower. In the

opening shot, though, the characters

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American Cinematographer - July 1998

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