American Cinematographer - November 1999 - 34

Urban Gothic
Director Martin

deeper blacks (see "Soup du jour,"

Scorsese checks

AC Nov.

stand-in work.
The filmmakers

'98). "Bob showed me his
upcoming film, Snow Falling on
Cedars, in which the skip-bleach
process was used effectively, and I

previously

said, 'Let's do it!"' Scorsese enthuses.

the frame while
Richardson
does some

collaborated on
the 1995 crime
film Casino, and
Scorsese felt
Richardson's
talents would
well-suited to
the

"My ideal of desaturated color is the
the Technicolor
[prints] of Moby Dick, a look that
was
designed by director John
Huston
and
cinematographer
control they got with

Oswald

hallucinatory

Morris

skip-bleaching gave
Bringing Out the Dead another flavor

world of

Bringing Out

and

the Dead.

that I also like."

tone

This
in

the colors with

Marty; I just put the
lights in there. Dante is brilliant. The
production designer works on the
film for months upon months, much
longer than the cinematographer.
Good work that people think is the
cinematographer's is often that of the
production designer. We light their
sets,

and when their work is beauti¬

fully accomplished
mean

well matched

the end result is

-

to

by which I
the story

-

vastly superior."

Ferretti confesses that he

the Dead. "Martin is from New York,
from

Italy, so I had to try to
get into his head," he admits.
Ferretti normally starts his
creative process by reviewing paint¬
ings. "When painters make a piece of
life on a canvas, they take out all the
am

Denver trauma unit and

lance

on

a

ambu¬

runs.

on

Ferretti also examined

photos
of underground tunnels where
homeless people lived, and even
visited several of them. "Those places
are
like another entire city," he
marvels. "They are unbelievable, and
they are like hell." Details from such
real-life visits are sprinkled through¬
out

was

initially at a loss in terms of finding
the key to the look of Bringing Out
and I

black-and-white stills taken in

the film. Ferretti elaborates,
are the most important

mono¬

photography books
about urban dwellers on the fringes
of society. One title that Scorsese cites
influential

photojournalist
Eugene Richard's 1995 book The

as

was

Knife and Gun Club: Scenes From

an

Emergency Room, which features

eventually
adopted. "Most of the photographs I

appar¬

warm

effect in
point

"Part of the

bleach-bypass

was to over¬

whelm the red and

yellow tones,
which tend to predominate from
signs in Manhattan at night," the
cinematographer says. "We were
trying to move the whole film to a
cooler black-and-white feel."

Bringing Out the Dead was
anamorphic (2.35:1)

that

the

Scorsese and Richardson

himself in still

of the

streets.

research contributed

"Seeing only the essentials helps me
focus when I'm trying to devise a
look for a new project."
In the case of gritty, urban
Bringing Out the Dead, however,
paintings did not seem to be the right
Ferretti immersed

shots of the

shot in the

to

especially

of the film's

the actors, Richardson tried to de-

thing to me in designing a film -
things like how homeless people
arrange their belongings, how the
trash looks on a tough New York
street at four in the morning, how
different types of graffiti appear in
one part of town and not another."
This
early photographic
chromatic, desaturated look that

so

some

emphasize the signs'

"Details

non-essential elements," he observes.

place to start,

tone is

driving
scenes. While
light motivated from
road signs was occasionally played

ent

32 November 1999

[BSC] in 1956.

However, the

format with Panavision's older Cand

E-series anamorphic lenses
(although Richardson did utilize
Panavision's Super High-Speed Tl.4
35mm anamorphic lens for many of

the

film's

ambulance-mounted

shots). Richardson debunks the idea
a

widescreen film shot

on

the

night might be better
accomplished in spherical Super 35.

street

at

"Unless

a zoom

looked at were in black-and-white, so

film," he

avows,

that is how I

difference between the speeds of
spherical and anamorphic prime
lenses, and I happen to like the look

began perceiving the
even though it was

look of the film,

be in color," Ferretti says.
Scorsese confirms, "I wanted
the film to be less colorful, and Bob

to

suggested
process

skip-bleaching."

involves

an

total elimination of the bleach step

to

the

a

of

anamorphic lens wide

an

T2;

open at

or

people may not. My first
assistant, Gregor Tavenner, is extra¬
ordinarily capable at maintaining

in

focus

at

used

no

This

either partial

lens is critical

"there isn't that great

printing, which results in the reten¬
tion of more silver in the image,
creating desaturated colors and

some

where

such apertures.
zooms,

As it

was, we

except for one shot

Marty wanted a snap pullout
from the front of the ambulance."
American Cinematographer - November 1999

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