American Cinematographer - November 1998 - 40

Glitter Gulch
the

singer's (and the glam era's)
impending fall from grace. To plan
for the sequence, Alberti and
Haynes first blocked the action out
scale-model

on a

had

set.

small video

a

made

"Todd and I

camera,

and

we

little 'man' out of card¬

a

board," Alberti describes. "Todd
would hold the little
down the

him

and walk

man

staircase

of the

miniature, and I would tape him
with

Hi-8

a

find the

camera so

I asked

moves.

that

we

right timing and

could

camera

Todd, 'What is the

Grand Ballroom?' And he told

me

that it

represented decay and the
end of an era. The scene [depicts] a
last little creative burst or spark. My
idea was to light the decaying ball¬
room as if it had just burned down,
so

I lit most of the

scene

from under¬

neath. The set, which

"You could be
my

main

man..." Slade
has his eye on
Curt Wild,
whose

outrageous
onstage antics
make

our

heart

in the

early Seventies: he was a
constantly
storing references. I tried to replicate
that [philosophy] in this film. That
scene in particular is a reference to

human Xerox machine,

Bowie's

hero's

management company,
Main Man, which once flew a hand¬

skip

ful of

a
beat.

journalists from America to
a Ziggy Stardust
They put the journalists up at

on

a

of 5Ks in the

rear.

Todd wanted

to

change the color of some part of the
set at

the bottom of the staircase,

used

a

so

I

couple of green gels there to
offset the red paint. Slade eventually
jumps onto a chandelier rising up

London to witness

from darkness. The chandelier is lit

show.

with

dined them. One afternoon, Bowie,

strings of Christmas lights, and
lights in there so that
once
again Slade would be lit from

his wife,

below."

the Dorchester Hotel and wined and

Angie, Iggy Pop and Lou
basically put on a show for
these journalists. Bowie changed his
clothes four times, and they drank
champagne and ate strawberries. It
was this decadent display: 'Let's put
on a show, let's make the journalists
really believe we are these people!' I
really didn't have to take the scene
that far from what really happened."

I hid little Dedo

Reed

In

another

In

scene

set

on

Slade meets his

future wife,
Alberti

Mandy, for the first time.
employed a four-point star

filter

another

-

of the

era

-

common

to

visual tool

lend the

scene

a

diffused, vaguely psychedelic feel.
"The star filter was very much an
aspect of the glam-rock look," she
points out. "I asked Todd if that scene
would be

the decadent "Grand Ballroom,"

was

a

flashback

a

New Year's Eve, 1969,

highly symbolic
sequence, Slade descends a winding
staircase as he performs a song in
metaphorical backdrop suggesting
38 November 1998

was

soundstage, was basically two huge,
flat panels that were painted quite
beautifully in perspective. I used a lot
of IKs and tweenies coming up
through the cracks of the staircase, so
Slade would be crossing through all
of these little 'flames.' I had a couple

to use

a

good place in the movie

it. Like the zooms, the star filter

used

that the

so

much in the Seventies

technique eventually became

tacky. But it
'Yeah,

well!' And

so

liberating to say,
great if they're used

was

zooms are

is the star filter. It took

reflection of light - from
Mylar-type curtains in the back¬
ground to someone's earring to a
every

reflection

on

someone's hair -and

broke it up into a four-point 'star.' For
that scene, I used a lot of 2Ks in a
half-circle with

just Vs CTO on the
lamps. When Slade moves toward
Mandy, and the romance starts, I
tried to create the feeling of time
stopping and people stopping
around them. We faded down the 2K

white

light and cross-faded up some
5Ks with the dark-blue Lee 119 gel
them. Once

again, those gels are
and the 5Ks allowed me to
get an exposure."
A surprisingly simple use of
gels and mirrors propels a later, very
impressionistic scene in which new
creative partners Slade and Wild ride
on

very thick
American Cinematographer - November 1998

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