American Cinematographer - August 2002 - 16

ASA] 5247,"

Yeoman of the stock
replaced 5254 in 1974. "It's what I
started out using. It's a great stock with
an image structure that's more like what
we were looking for than anything we
can get with the stocks of today."
Once it was clear that the produc¬
says

that

use

50-

or

Vision 500T 5279 and take

To

approximate the style of light¬
in the Sixties,
lighting from the
sun and the tungsten lights than he
would generally employ. "Cinematogra¬
phers tended to use harder light back
ing that

was common
Yeoman used more hard

everything your tripod does but better.
It also works as a dolly and crane beside being
a car, bike, boat and helicopter mount.

then because the stocks

were so

he notes. "I did it to achieve the

Pocket

Dolly
Tracking Dolly in kit form. Add a board of any size,
a broom handle and PVC Pipe and you're
ready to shoot.

Video
This video demonstrates
how to make your fdms in
fewer setups.

The filmmakers

paid extremely
selling the notion that
Dragonfly is a real film. "We really tried
to be true to the spirit of filmmaking at
the time," says Yeoman.
All of Dragonflys rocketship and
moonscape setpieces were filmed on
soundstages in Luxembourg, which offers
attractive tax incentives to productions
that shoot on its soil. The tiny principality

a

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14

some

www.cinekinetic.com

Paris and Rome

beautiful

country," says
lot of great architec¬
ture there, so we could use it to represent
a

Yeoman. "There's

Cinesaddles - $290 to $325
Pocket Dolly - $435

same

close attention to

exteriors. "It's

CINESADDLE for professional film
and video cameras MINISADDLE for consumer DV
cameras and camcorders

slow,"

kind of look."

also doubled for

less time with

too

well," Yeoman recalls.

Coppola and Davies occa¬
sionally shared operating duties with him
on

those

scenes.

"Roman wanted the

liked."

a new

look closest to the older, slower stocks."

The Cinesaddle does

scenes

He adds that

would

film,

advantage of the greater speed. "The
older films were grainier, which is what
we wanted in this case," he says. "A lot
of Dragonfly would have gone through
optical processes of that day, which
would have built up grain and contrast
even more, so 5279 actually gave us a

light
baby can use it

those

going
100-speed stock, which
would have provided a crisper, less grainy
image than something like 5254, he

newer

Yeoman decided that rather than

with

a

done.) "Roman
constantly reminding me to not light
was

accidental. The charac¬
something about
lighting for film because he's a filmmaker,
but he's not a cinematographer. So we
tried to keep all of those scenes less
controlled than I might normally have

tion would have to shoot with

So small and

the show's lab work
was

a

lot of locations."
The sequences

comprising Paul's
inspired by
the 1968 underground film David Holzman's Diary, were designed to look as
stark and realistic as possible. Yeoman
photographed those sequences with a
period Eclair 16mm NPR and used East¬
home movies, which were

man

7222 Double-X black-and-white

stock. (The footage was later blown up to
35mm at CFI in Los Angeles, where all of

lighting to

appear

ter, Paul, would know

The

goal for the rest of the film

"was to make it look natural," Yeoman
continues. "We wanted the main story to
feel unlit and naturalistic, in contrast to the

theatrical look of

Dragonfly. The
portion of Paul's journey was lit
cooler and darker than the Rome portion,
which we represented with soft, warm
light." For the main story, Yeoman used
Kodak Vision 250D 5246 for day exteriors
more

Paris

and HMI-lit interiors and Vision 200T 5274
for most
stocks

tungsten-lit interiors. "Those
bit finer-grained than 79," he

are a

observes. "Because of that, I tried to use
them whenever I could." However, he did

employ 79

on big night exteriors in Rome
and Paris. "We were shooting huge areas
without a lot of light, and the extra speed

really helped."
CQ is actually the latest in

a series
of collaborations between Yeoman and

Coppola. The pair worked on The Rain¬
maker, on which Coppola directed second
unit for his father, Francis, and Yeoman
as the second-unit director of

served

photography. They later teamed

up on a
number of commercials. "Roman is fun to

work with, and on CQ he had a strong
sense of the visuals before we started,"
Yeoman says. "He prepared a book of
visual references that we used throughout

the shoot."

Although CQ is Coppola's first
feature, Yeoman says he always felt that
the show

was

in the hands of

who has

someone

filmmaking in his blood. "Roman
production his whole
life and has a real love of film history. He
was well prepared, but he also knows that
filmmaking is an organic process, and he
was completely open to new ideas." ■
has been around film
American Cinematographer - August 2002

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