American Cinematographer - December 2000 - 61

fast, because with such

amazing
script and cast, you naturally want to
spend time doing it right. In terms of
the scheduling, we had to keep up
more of a television-movie
approach
than a theatrical approach."
Fortunately, Anderson has
gained considerable experience on
low-budget productions; in fact, he
often jokes that he's an alumnus of
"Roger Corman University." After
graduating from New York
University's film program and
moving to Los Angeles, he found
work

as

a

second-unit

(Cate Blanchett)
wanders
an

This page, top:

Hot-tempered
wife-beater
Donnie

Barksdale

(Keanu Reeves)
threatens Annie
with a voodoo
doll. Below:
After

cameraman

disappearing
without

Corman classic Piranha-Anderson

got his first big break thanks to
Kaplan, who hired him to shoot

his visual references for The

and the Hendersons and Dick
well

Tracy

photographing Joe
Dante's Hollywood Boulevard and the
as

as

Unlawful Entry in 1991.
The cinematographer says that
these early experiences taught him
some lessons that proved useful on
The Gift. "Having a game plan is the
best offense against tight schedules,"
he asserts. "When you're working
quickly, you really have to be
thoughtful about what you're going
to do at a particular location. The last
thing you want to do is to walk onto
the set and just start from scratch.
Being very clear with the director
during location scouts is a must, and
when you eventually hit that location
during production, you've got to
make sure that you [remember]
what you talked about before and
that you're running on all eight cylin¬
ders right off the bat. I can't say
enough about the importance of
anticipating problems beforehand -
you've got to visualize what can go
wrong and be ready for it. That's an

a

trace,

promiscuous

gaffer, Dave Morton, and the rigging
crew, Dave Dunbar and Greg Banta,
did a great job of making sure that as
much as possible was done on each
set before we got there. Otherwise,
the clock would have been running
us down daily."

-

through

eerie,

fogbound
landscape as she
experiences a
psychic vision.

Corman's

Night Call Nurses,
which was directed by Anderson's
NYU classmate Jonathan Kaplan.
After serving as an operator on films
such as Ferris Buellers Day Off, Harry
on

Opposite page:
Annie Wilson

an

Anderson reveals that

one

of

Gift was
photography of Walker
Evans. "This is a simple story that
takes place in a small town, and I
wanted it to be simply told through
the photography," he offers. "[Evans]
has always been a favorite of mine.
the still

Much of his work

was

done in the

South, [and many of the pieces are]
very simple
with really

That idea

portraits and landscapes
powerful compositions.
was the starting point for

how I

approached The Gift.
"Generally speaking, I start by
lighting the environment and then I
close in on the characters. I always try
to make [the lighting] as simple as
possible, but much of the time a large
part of your goal is to make [actors]
look good, so you have to sweeten the
lighting on them a bit. That invari¬
ably involves the use of soft keys and
hard edges."
For the majority of The Gift,

socialite Jessica

King (Katie
Holmes) makes
disturbing,
spectral
appearance in

Annie's bathtub.

Anderson stuck with Eastman Kodak
Vision 200T 5274 for both

day exteri¬
day and night interiors. He
occasionally used Vision 500T 5279
for nighttime exteriors when there
weren't enough resources to light to
the 200 ISO. "I really like 74," he
offers. "It has a wonderful quality that
ors

and

invaluable skill.
"On this

picture, there was no
could have survived without
rigging crew," he continues. "The

way we
a

American

a

Cinematographer 59
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