American Cinematographer - September 2000 - 67

saved

a

us

lot of time

the

were

Mexican exteriors and the truck stop.
He created this huge crane which

had
the 'Lunar
Pontiff' on
calling Dick
'The Pontiff' during the first week of
photography, and it sort of stuck.
This rig would light an area of about
a quarter of a mile in every direction,
and it did a fantastic job of making
the rest of the lighting very easy and
quick.

this

thing

we called
it. We started

What Dick and I worked

out

[for the Mexican motel shoot-out]
that Dick was

going to make the
lighting as easy as possible so that we
could move from place to place. I was
then going to shoot things in as many
masters as possible, not in close-ups.
It was completely inspired by the

was

and

we

could

use a

second

camera to

pick up some gravy.
How

you able to main¬
tight continuity and
pacing during the shootouts?

tain

were

such

McQuarrie: We sweated

a

lot

about that. I'm not a fan of films that

rely heavily on camerawork and edit¬
ing trickery to imply action that just
isn't there or doesn't look interesting
by itself. I put myself in a corner
when I started making the movie and
decided that if I was going to stand
outside of the action, the action had

speak for itself. If I had shot this a
lot tighter or tried to do a lot of fancy,
crazy things with the camera, you
wouldn't be able to explain anything
that is going on. You have to step
back from it and be able to establish

the railroad track from Bad

the geography of where everybody is.

Day at Black Rock when Robert Ryan
and his cronies are discussing what
they're going to do with Spencer
Tracy. It was a rotating series of
masters, so there is never just one
person in a shot. When Dick saw the

Reflecting on your first
feature directorial outing, was it

scene on

completed film, he watched that
scene and just started laughing. I
said, 'What is it?' He said, 'If we had
tried

to light that scene and shoot it
the way you were supposed to,

getting angles on everybody, we'd still
shooting it.'
So you took advantage of

be there

multi-camera

setups?
McQuarrie: We tried to

two cameras as

There

were

explained to
to

be

an

much

times

me

as

possible.

when

Dick

that two were going

enormous

waste,

what you

and I

didn't listen - and he was

absolutely
right. [Laughs.] I shot more footage
in one day for the [Mexican motel]
card game than I did in three days
during the gunfight because I was
running two cameras on one person

PAN1
Revolutionary transport
system (patent pending)

expected?

McQuarrie: In the middle of

production and the middle of post I
reached a point where it was the
worst job in the world. When you
reach that point in production where
you can't see the edges of what you're
doing, you can't understand why
anyone would want to get up every
day and do this job. During all the
time you thought you wanted to
direct so you could have control, you
never

use

14.5(4.4m) platform crane

to

realized that the director is

at

the mercy

of every single person and
single act of God in the

every
universe. You have

no

control. Then

the assembly, and you want
to open your veins because you've
just shot two hours and 45 minutes
of the most incoherent garbage. But
once you get into the cutting room
and start to cut it together, you real¬
ize, 'This is great! I'm going to make a
you see

movie out of this.'

Please ask for
information video
of the Foxy crane!

■

for an 800-foot take six times! For the

though we were trying as
often as possible to discover an angle
that we hadn't anticipated. Because
of the preparation, we could afford to
most

part,

do that. We knew that the shots
were

getting

were

we

telling the story,

F'T

,

We0 Ts>e9'"

V&

A*

Panther GmbH

Grunwalder Weg 28c
82041 Oberhaching-Munich
Tel: 49-89-613900 01
Fax: 49-89-6131000

contact@panther-gmbh.de
www.panther-gmbh.de

Sr
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KANTHEK
American Cinematographer - September 2000

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