American Cinematographer - November 1998 - 35

spent a lot of time

looking not only

the way these artists were depicted
in terms of costumes, makeup and
at

hair,

but

also

how they were
photographed in terms of lighting
and lenses. That was

really the kickoff
point for looking at a lot of films
from the period that were inspiring
to me while I was writing the script.
It was also helpful to Maryse, since
she could study the very different
camera

vernacular that existed in the

early Seventies. Nicolas Roeg's Perfor¬
mance was
probably the single most
influential film for

fresh and inventive
so

me.

It still feels

today, which says
was being done

much about what

and 25-250mm lenses

Panaflex

the

throughout the shoot),
Haynes and Alberti aimed to as
much as possible make the film look
as if it had
actually been made in the
1970s, with the narrative framing
sequences set in the 1980s presented
as a
projection of the future. The
director states, "We really tried to use
a lot of the [filmic]
language of the

Eighties as a very dry time
creatively and sexually," she explains.
"He decided to push that thought
further, eventually portraying the
Eighties as an almost fascist state. I
therefore decided to go with very
cool, greenish-blue, monochromatic
colors in those scenes. The Eighties
scenes
are
quite stark - the
costumes and the lighting have

Seventies, whether it be the

almost

Gold

on a

camera

camera

style,

or the use of dissolves and
voice-over
things that have gone
-

of fashion. I

really wanted to
bring those techniques back with a
vengeance in how we told the story
visually. I put the script together in
out

no

Stardust?" In
the midst of the

shoot, Haynes

ponders pop
history while
Alberti does

a

credible

impression of
Velvet

Underground
drummer Moe

color."

By contrast, the film's
Seventies concert

"Hmm, who

played lead
guitar on Ziggy

scenes

are

Tucker.

many
flam¬

boyant in their expressive, deeply
saturated colors. "I now fancy myself
an expert in the Lee book of filters!"
Alberti exclaims with

chuckle.

a

in film at that time."

Particulary inspiring
to
Haynes was the jarring use of zoom

Says
Haynes, "I like
Maryse's style

as a

person, so

working
relationship has
a great deal to
our

do with the fact
that we
communicate
very

well."

lenses in

Performance and other films
period, a technique now
generally considered to be dated and
passe. "Today, you have the constant
movement in and penetration of the
camera into
physical space, with
swooping tracks and pyrotechnics of
of the

all kinds," he describes. "The

camera

of the late Sixties and

early Seventies
seemed to really hold back - it
didn't physically enter space, it would
instead zoom, pan, or swish through
space. It would rack-focus suddenly,
identifying one part of the frame to
the other. The difference is that you

the

way that

glam rock was put
this great collage of

same

of surface, this
beautiful, almost caressing of the
surface of the screen. In Performance
or
early Robert Altman films, like

together,

McCabe and Mrs. Miller, the camera
searches for and finds the subject in a

with futuristic notions of the space

really got

a sense

fog of blurry haze and grain, then
finds focus on one thing and follows
it

somewhere

else.

It's

a

more

sources.

as
Glam rock drew from

of references

of

-

a

lot

old-fashioned ideas

Hollywood glamour mixed in

"This

was

the first movie I've done

where I used

many colored gels.
using them very early in
the film, during a prologue in which
a little boy in England finds an Oscar
Wilde pin and takes it back to his
so

We started

Musicians of the glam era kept
projecting these notions of a

bedroom. I used Lee's 119 Dark Blue

doomed future

that color

age.

-

that it

was

all

going to end and we'd be living in an
Orwellian [dystopia]. They really
thought that everything was going to
come crashing down, and to a large

gel for the

scene, and I tried to use
throughout the film as a
metaphor for the passing of the

creative torch."

voyeuristic way of seeing, because
you're not physically entering the
space - you're staying outside and
using the technology to scan the
surface and isolate certain parts of

degree they were right! There was a
big repressive aftermath to the drugs

she did

the screen."

and

began. "I looked at

By using zooms extensively to
voyeuristic visual style
(the cinematographer relied heavily

careful to

create a more

on

Panavision's 4:1 17.5-75 Primo

youth culture of the Seventies."
Given this strategy, Alberti was

clearly delineate the atmos¬

pheres of scenes set in the film's two
different

eras.

"Todd wanted

to

show

Alberti

Since

had

never

photographed a rock concert before,
the

some

Velvet

basic research before

Goldmine

production
footage of

some

Seventies concerts and found that

they were all quite simple in terms of
the

lighting effects and

camera

moves," Alberti recalls. "I consulted
American

Cinematographer 33
American Cinematographer - November 1998

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