American Cinematographer - February 1999 - 58

The War Within
ever

made. Were you able to do that
on The Thin Red Line?

kind of work

Toll: Because this is

Malick film,
that

a

Terrence

lot people will just

a

around

waiting
magic hour, but we simply didn't
have the luxury of doing that on this
picture. We had a 180-page script,
assume

we

sat

for

and after

we

shot all of that

Guadalcanal for 20

we

went

days of
unscripted improvisations. We shot
relentlessly every day, in every
conceivable lighting condition, from
seven in the morning until it got dark
at about six p.m. Yes, there are magichour shots in the film, but only
to

because

we

had

to

more

shoot until it got

dark!

[Laughs.]
It's amazing to me how often I
hear cinematographers say that they
think shooting good-looking day
exterior movies is all about sitting
around and waiting for the right light
to happen, and then just pointing
your camera at it and shooting

'pretty pictures.' Doing good work in
day exterior situations means that
you must be able to make great
images all day long, even when the
light isn't ideal for pretty pictures.

camera.

None of the traditional

methods of

of the shots. Sometimes, if

You must make choices that will

allow you to

take advantage of
light in existing conditions.
Even when the light is 'bad' it is possi¬
ble to do good work by making wise
choices.

shadow of

The

we were

hill. At other times,

a

we

would stay in the open and go with
the existing high contrast, exposing

predominant day exterior
lighting conditions on this film were
either sunny high-contrast or soft
contrast resulting from overcast
we were

as

doing extended dialogue and didn't
like the way the contrast was affect¬
ing the actors' faces, we would try to
create an artificial 'overcast' look by
staging scenes under trees or in the

natural

conditions. Because

light control, such

up silks, were possible,
because of the terrain and the nature

putting

the faces and

letting the contrast go.
days when we had
both overcast and high-contrast sun
happening simultaneously because
of low clouds moving quickly and
causing severe light changes. We had
some days when the light
changes
happened so quickly that we just shot
through them. It could be blistering
hot one moment, and completely
There

shoot¬

ing all day long and didn't have the
luxury of waiting for ideal light, we
had to decide how to make existing
light work for the scenes we were
schedule to do on a given day. It was
impossible to entirely control all of
the light in our shots because we
were using wider-angle anamorphic
lenses and constantly moving the

were

dark the
same

also

next

-

sometimes in the

shot. But that

represented the

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American Cinematographer - February 1999

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