American Cinematographer - October 2006 - 32

The Lafayette
Escadrille'stop
ace, Cassidy
(Martin

Henderson), is
chased away
a German

from

zeppelin by
Fokker DR1

triplanes in the
film Flyboys,
shot by Henry
Braham, BSC.

when Michel wants

me

to work on

something, he calls me and says, 'We
start shooting in four days!' But he
understood how complicated this kind
of shot

can

be and made

sure

I had time

to do it

properly."
Although Bompoint and Gondry
have the same opinion of digital color
timing - they're against it - The
Science of Sleep was finished with a
digital intermediate (Dl). "The produc¬
tion imposed it," says Bompoint. "But
we had the great fortune to be able to
do the work at Eclair Laboratories;

Michel and I have known the

[people
company] for decades and
we know their methods of working. So
although we were prisoners of technol¬
ogy, we had people who understood
how we felt. Throughout the [Dl]
process, we tried to stay as faithful as
we could to the original intention and
who

run

the

feel of 35mm film. We

the

28 October 2006

digital

never

wanted to

do something
we couldn't have done [photochemically]."
In the many years Bompoint and
Gondry have been collaborators, they
have had their share of loud disagree¬
ments, and Bompoint notes that
"people who are not French might
misunderstand if they saw us working
together." One such misunderstanding
occurred when they were working on a
commercial for Fox Sports. "We were in
a port in California on top of a tower 20
feet tall, filming seagulls flying around
the port," recalls Bompoint. "I'm a little
afraid of heights, so I was nervous, but I
did it anyway. Suddenly, Michel saw a
fishing boat 180 degrees in the opposite
direction and said, 'Stop everything and
shoot the boat!' I was all set up to shoot
the seagulls, so tempers started to get
hot, and finally I turned everything
around and got the shot he wanted, but
use

process to

World War I

Flying Aces
by Robert S. Birchard
It's been 40 years

movies had

since the

go at World War I aerial
combat in The Blue Max, and about 80
a

since films like Wings, Hell's
Angels and The Dawn Patrol presented
a cycle of pictures about the aces of the
air who piloted their canvas-covered
years

wood-frame crates

over no

man's land in

the "war to end all wars." For the MTV

generation. World War I is as remote as
and Hollywood

the age of innocence,
has
steered clear

of

air-borne

fact. And

pilot did have his wings shot
managed to get back to earth
without getting killed. Despite these
facts, we didn't want to get into a
history lesson."
a

off and

Once it

was

determined that

Flyboys would be shot in the United
Kingdom, Henry Braham, BSC (Nanny
McPhee, Bright Young Things) was
brought aboard as cinematographer.
"Tony and [producer] Dean Devlin liked
my work, especially on the TV movie
Shackleton[2002]," says Braham. "They
also liked the fact that I had

a

lot of

experience as an aerial photographer,
gained assisting Peter Allwork.
But mostly what cinched the deal was
what always makes these things come
together; we got on." Bill adds, "I'd
seen some of Henry's work, but the truth

"dogfights" unless they were trans¬
ported into the future a la Star Wars.
Flyboys resurrects this longdormant genre, and it should come as no
surprise that the film was an indepen¬
dent production. In fact, the $60 million
dollar picture was financed and
completed without any distribution deal
in place. It was picked up for U.S.
theatrical release by MGM, which

which I

released the film last month.

the filmmakers

Flyboys is about a group of young
American adventurers who become

audiences. "On many

is I met him and fell in love with him. It
was
me

the

personal connection that made
of trust in his

hire him, my sense

ability."
In their search for
were

a

visual

keen to

style,
keep their

there

was a

we

pilots with the Lafayette Esquadrille in
1915, two years before the United

period tale accessible for contemporary
period films, cine¬
matographers and directors tend to
create a veil and forget that it's hard for

came

down from the tower, some of the

States entered the First World War.

an

people from the agency were freaking
out, thinking we'd had a terrible fight
and the entire project was a catastro¬
phe.' But then our producer, Julie Fong,
explained, There is no catastrophe.
They're just French.'"

"Whether you consider the film fact or
fiction is a matter of how you look at it,"

[that way],"

heated battle. When

film's director, Tony Bill. "A lot
that went on with these flyers
during World War I were so preposter¬
ous you'd think we made it up. For exam¬
ple, the pilots had a pet lion - two, in
says the
of things

audience to connect with the actors

conscious of

Braham. "We were
creating an image that

says

would be accessible for the audience,
and we thought it would be interesting
to use

today's technology to help tell the

story.
"World War I

was

probably the

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American Cinematographer - October 2006

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