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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