Authors: Gregory Earls
So this is my last chance to get it right. My advantage now is that I don’t give a damn anymore. This isn’t my shoot, I’m just the gaffer. My name’s not going on this stupid project. For the first time this year, I’m going to DP and not worry about anything but the light. I’m free.
I quickly re-read the scene so I can figure out how to attack this thing. The short is a modern re-telling of
The Return of the Prodigal Son
, about a young man who takes his inheritance before his father’s death and wastes it on vice and materialism. This could be half of my friends back in Shaker Heights. Whatever.
The shot I have to light is the moment the son returns home. To his surprise, his father greets him with open arms and celebrates, while his brother, who’s always been by his pop’s side, looks on jealously. The reunion takes place in a spacious family room, with a gorgeous view of the swimming pool through a massive patio glass door.
I decide that the exterior should represent the riches of the son’s temptation. It should be cold and opulent, as if diamonds were falling from the sky. It’s a crystal clear night and the lights from the Hollywood Hills sparkle on the horizon like fireworks frozen in time. It’s the perfect backdrop. The owner of the house has a box of white Christmas lights stored in the garage, which I use to blanket the shrubs around the pool. I then aim a powerful HMI light directly into the pool. The water’s crystal blue surface pops alive like diamond facets and bathes the yard with shimmering reflections.
The outside set now looks like a million dollars.
“Hey,” I get the Assistant Director’s attention. “Can we light that up?” I ask pointing to the fireplace.
I like to start lighting by killing all illumination, beginning in complete blackness. Then I turn on the first light, the key light, which in this case is motivated by the fireplace, aimed at the father, who sits alone on his over-stuffed couch.
Normally, I would set the key light at a low angle, giving the illusion that the fireplace is actually lighting the set. However, lighting the old man harshly from below makes him look too damn evil. So I take poetic license and raise the light off the ground a couple of feet, just below eye level of his seated position.
The jealous son, who is luckily quite tall, will stand behind the couch and closer to the fireplace. The light and composition will still play him evil. I purposely let his eye sockets go dark, so his jealous eyes are seething behind a black veil.
I cover the key light with full CTO gel, which bathes the room in a warm ambient light that cascades throughout the room. The interior now represents the warmth the young son had abandoned. In contrast to the exterior, the family room is inviting and loving.
Sparkling cool blue outside. Wealth.
Comforting warm sepia inside. Family.
Sweet.
“There’s my little pyromaniac!”
Goddamn it. Edgerton is here.
Edge has been visiting sets all year, making sure we don’t do anything stupid (i.e. illegal Power Box tie-ins). I turn around and find him leaning on the camera, dressed as if he’s going to visit Hef at the Playboy mansion, fifty years ago.
“Tell me son, just what the hell are you wearing?” he asks, referring to my
Flaming Carrot
t-shirt.
“The Flaming Carrot? He fights crime while wearing this giant carrot mask with a huge flame shooting out the top of his head.”
“Why you little pervert. I know you little Neanderthals won’t wear ties on set anymore, but do you have to advertise your sick little desires on a t-shirt? This is
the
AFI! Leave the latent cock imagery for the hippies at NYU. What the hell did you do with that twenty I gave you?”
“You expected me to buy—”
“Would it kill you to wear a pair of chinos and a nice oxford?” he interrupts. “It could be a
pink
oxford if that turns you on.”
“I’m not gay.”
“Not my business and that’s the whole point, isn’t it? Where the hell is Graham?” he asks.
“He had to go pick up the equipment van.”
“Goodnight, Irene! He rented the vehicle in his name, didn’t he?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Kid’s as dumb as a box of hammers. Why he’d climb a glass wall to see what’s on the other side. Is this his lighting set-up?” he asks looking out at the pool.
“Um, no. I did this.”
“Is that right?”
He steps away from me and looks over the set. It’s the longest I’ve seen him so quiet.
“You’re shooting wide open?” he asks me.
“I was, but I wanted to get the shrubs in focus, so I boosted my gain and closed down.”
“Dug out some depth of field for yourself, did you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Whatcha got in the yard?” he asks.
“2K HMI with a quarter CTB blue gel,” I respond.
For the first time this year, he actually talks to me as if he’s talking to a colleague. We’re talking shop and it makes me giddy.
“Oh! This is that
Prodigal Son
script,” he exclaims.
Whoa…did this guy recognize the script just from hearing my tech details?
“This is the scene when the son comes home, leaves behind temptation and enters back into the love of his father,” he concludes.
“How did you know—”
“Congratulations, son. You just composed your first sentence with light. Atta boy, Tisse,” he says as he lights his cigar. “Atta boy.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t get cocky. Even a blind pig finds an acorn every once in a while. Be sure to tell Graham I stopped by. I’m sorry to have missed him.”
He slips me another twenty. “Now. Do a good deed and throw a haberdasher some business. They’ve got to put food on the table, too, you know.”
He saunters out of the house, leaving a trail of cigar smoke in his wake.
The director walks into the room in awe, gazing upon the lighting.
“We’re lit.” I say.
“Goddamn, right. You lit it the hell up, son.”
***
Every month, a member of the American Society of Cinematographers, or ASC as it’s generally called, is invited to the school to screen one of his films for the Cinematography Fellows. We view the film with the sound turned down way low, so that we can drill the poor guy with questions. The best guests are the old school cameramen because they have the best war stories. This one guy, whose first job was loading film magazines on
The Ten Commandments
, had the quote of the year.
“De Mille was an asshole.”
Seriously. How is that not gold?
I stop by AFI’s main office to check my mail, hoping to find the new calendar, listing the ASC guest for the month. I find Edge there, sitting on the desk and chatting it up with Beth, the school secretary.
“Oh, she loved me! Addicted to me like I was cocaine, I tell ya. It was in her contract that only I could light her films. She said I was the only one that knew how to make her look beautiful. They called her the
Whoo Girl
, you know? When you got a load of those curves, WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
I try to ignore Edgerton as I flip through my mail. Cool. The new calendar his here. ASC Guest for this month will be…
“Collin Oak!” I blurt aloud. “I can’t believe he’s going to be here!”
“Of course he’s going to be here,” says Edge. “He’s here every year, and every year he screens the same goddamn film.”
I scan the calendar for the name of the film.
“
Details of Montana
! I love that flick. What’s the problem?” I ask.
“The problem is that
he
loves it, too. It’s the only film he’ll allow us to screen. Ten damn years of
Details of Montana
! It’s so faded that it makes the theater glow red like a Tupelo whorehouse,” says Edgerton.
“But the poor guy hasn’t shot a new film in decades,” I say in Oak’s defense.
“Sixteen years, to be exact,” responds Edge.
Collin Oak is one of the great Hollywood mysteries. He was a wunderkind cinematographer in his early twenties cranking out three masterpieces back-to-back, but he then fell off the face of the Earth. There were rumors of drug abuse, drinking and disease.
“So, where’s he been?” I ask.
“None of your business, Tisse. And you better not ask him that question either,” he says before storming out of the room.
I look to Beth for an answer.
“I heard the mob was after him and he had to go into hiding. Joined the William-Morris Agency. Never heard from again”.
Hilarious. Everybody’s a Borscht Belt comedian at this joint.
When ASC Guest Day finally arrives, I get to the theater first, so I can get the perfect seat, second row from the back, center. Edgerton and the ASC guest usually sit right behind my seat. I’ll be able to hear every word they say.
To prepare for Collin Oak, I watched
Details Of Montana
again on DVD just so I could come up with some cool-ass questions. Asking impressive questions that you already know the answers to is part of the bullshit game in film school. I learned this lesson the hard way on the very first day here. The original class syllabus started out slow, assuming the students didn’t know shit about cinematography. This was cool for me because I really didn’t know shit.
But then these wise-asses started asking questions about shit like lighting-contrast ratios, digital intermediates and depth of field charts. Edgerton was so impressed that he tore out the first two weeks of the syllabus and jumped right into the hard shit. Ten minutes into the year and I was instantly placed 14 days behind the rest of the class.
Jerks.
The question I have for Collin is perfect because it has to do with lighting black people.
Here’s the thing, Hollywood is so liberal that to even suggest that black people need to be lit
differently
than white people, although a valid fact, smacks of being a bit too un-PC at first blush. So the saps in my class will hesitate to ask the question, but I have carte blanche. It’s like me being able to say
nigga
. One of the few perks brothas have over white people in this country.
So we got that going for us.
The scene is coming up next! My heart begins to jump as I realize that in a few seconds my voice is going to break the silence of this acoustically perfect theater. The shot finally appears on the screen. It’s composed of five dark-skinned black men wearing white coveralls and working in a pristine white antiseptic clean room. Cinematographers wake up in a cold sweat after dreaming of such a sight.
I have to bite my lip and try not to ask the question too quickly ‘cause that’ll give me away. Timing is the key. It’s all in the timing. I’ll allow the scene to play for five solid seconds.
Wait for it. Wait for it. Wait—
“How did you handle exposing for the black skin without over-exposing the white wardrobe and walls,” says a female voice in the theater.
What the hell!
Who the hell said that? What arrogant white jerk thinks she has the right to steal my question?
I lean forward to see whose ass I need to kick. Five rows ahead of me...
Goddamn it.
“That’s a great question. What’s your name?” asks Collin.
“Missy Jenkins, Production Design.”
Missy Jenkins.
She’s that black chick from Detroit.
Didn’t see that coming.
Funny, I want to kill somebody now.
“Production Design! Perfect. You’ll get a kick out of this solution. So here’s the problem. If I expose for the black skin, the white walls and clothes will be
overexposed
and look like hell. However, if I expose for the white walls, the black actors will be
underexposed
and you won’t be able to see their faces. So I had the Production Designer paint the walls, and die the cover-alls, ten percent grey—”
“Oh!” Missy interrupts. “So that when you exposed for the black skin, the walls would overexpose to a perfect white. Which is what you wanted in the first place.” she exclaims.
Bitch, you know goddamn well you knew that shit already.
“Exactly,” says Collin. “We got perfect one hundred percent whites, and the black faces exposed perfectly.”
The Fellows then all throw kudos at Collin.
“Wow!”
“That’s great work, Collin. Really.”
“Awesome!”
Missy sits back in her seat with a big fat grin on her face. All I can think about is punching her in the back of her head.
Still...
Seeing her lit by the light bouncing off the silver screen—her full lips and huge brown eyes—it was dames like her that put that Motown on the map.