American Cinematographer - August 2002 - 85

An Ode to Silent Film and
look

of

a

Performance Piece

early silent movies.
required viewing for every¬
involved," he says. "There are four or
some

"Sunrise was
one

a

him, those early films epitomize the

contacted

assumed

it

was

sent me." When

Though made for virtually no
money on a schedule that stretched over
years, the short film Claire is an uncom¬
promising work of art, a movie that
director Milford Thomas hates to show
without live

accompaniment by a cham¬
ber orchestra. Shot in black-and-white
a

Brothers

footage, but you could see Gary Oldman
and Winona Ryder," he recalls. "It just

by Stephanie Argy

with

Lumiere

he heard that the

shot using one of
Coppola's vintage cameras from the
1890s, he began thinking about making
his own movie using such a camera.
Three years before production
began on Claire, Thomas had directed a
music video photographed by cinematog¬
sequence

was

camera¬

recalls, "When we were shooting
the video, Milford mentioned the idea of
man

five title cards in the whole movie, and
the rest is just visual." He adds that for

wide-eyed wonderment he felt while first
experimenting with Super 8 movies in
high school.
Another important influence for
Thomas was the faux archival footage of
London that appeared in Francis Ford
Coppola's Dracula. "When I saw it, I
Claire of the Moon

rapher Jonathan Mellinger. The

in

silent film and asked if I'd be interested

shooting it. About two
me

years
about Claire."

later, he

In Thomas' version of the folk tale,

the

elderly couple who find the moonchild are two men living in the rural South
during the 1920s. Thomas initially envi¬
sioned a very short film - less than two
minutes long - set to Claude Debussy's
"Prelude to The Afternoon of a Faun." But
he found that the music didn't have the

flow that he

sought, so he spoke with a
friend, Anne Richardson, who
agreed to create a score for the film. As
the two worked together, the film devel¬
oped and expanded, ultimately reaching
a final length of 57 minutes.
Mellinger and Thomas researched
silent-era cameras and finally chose an
antique, hand-cranked 35mm Mitchell
Standard with three lenses (25mm,
composer

Director Milford
Thomas based
his short film
Claire on

"Kaguyahime,"
Japanese

the

folk tale of

a

childless couple
who raise a tiny
moon-child as
their own. But
the enchanting
waif eventually
returns to the
moon

(below).

Thomas and his
director of

photography,
Jonathan

Mellinger,

were

influenced by the
look of the early
silents as well
as

the faux

archival

footage

in Francis Ford

Coppola's epic
Bram Stokers
Dracula.

hand-cranked camera, the film is

also the director's tribute to
of the silent

fantasy films

era.

While

working in Japan as a
Fuji TV, Thomas became
familiar with local folk tales, including
"Kaguyahime," the story of a childless
couple who discover a tiny moon-child
inside a stalk of bamboo. They raise her
coordinator for

TMhiooclfmuarrfdste.sy
Phot s

as

their own, and she enchants and

inspires ever/one around her until she is
finally called back to the moon.
Thomas envisioned

a

film version

of the story as a stylized fairy tale, remi¬
niscent of the Victorian storybooks that

always had
ground. He

a

smiling moon in the back¬
also influenced by the

was

American

Cinematographer 81
American Cinematographer - August 2002

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