Masters of Light. Dennis Schaefer

You know I was scared that I would make a mistake and waste people’s money. But the nice thing about Roger was that he didn’t focus on it. He saw the dailies. I expected something like, “This is not right and that is not right,” and all that. He looked at them and said, “Okay, John. Very good. Thank you.” So I said, “Okay, if that’s the attitude, I’ll just keep on doing what I’m doing.”

      I suppose if you had a more insecure director, it could be very easy to blame things on you.

      Or a new director who needed a lot of help. I would not have been able to give him as much help, at that point. It was a good experience for me. As I say, it was something that I could handle, at that time. The technology that I knew was just enough to handle that picture. Of course, you had damn good actors who were in control. And I did a lot of hand-held in it because I was an expert and was very secure at that. Roger loved it. He never really worked with anybody who did a good hand-held job; so I did it, again violating the rules of the union because the operator that I had couldn’t do it as well as I could do it.

      As you advanced in budgets with each picture, did it present any problems to you in the sense that you’re working on a $600,000 picture and the next picture is suddenly S1½ million? Or were they all at increments that you could handle?

      Let me tell you this. I’ve never been aware of the budget from the point of view that I say, “Well, I’ve got enough money, I can do this.” I try to do everything as economically as possible. Because I know that appeals first to the production manager and producer. They love it. The cameraman says, “Well, forget the 10Ks, we can do it with two 5Ks, it’s cheaper.” Well, I never have to get into that point with them because I’m always very cost-conscious. If I have the money and it does not have a bearing as to what equipment I’m going to use, I tell them what I need, you know. Then they tell me, “You can’t afford it.” Then I say, “Okay, we’ll go in this direction.” On Black Sunday I had to have 35 arcs and they said, “John!?!” But I said, “There is no other way of doing it.” I said, “Check me out, check out the technology. You know there’s no other way of doing it.” And they said, “Okay.” So there’s no problem. And because of that attitude, I think that’s one of the reasons I probably get along well with production people. With Norma Rae I did not take a generator. I took four electricians and four grips. It’s a 5-million-dollar picture; I could have taken more. I could have taken more lights to cover myself and to make sure that if I needed something I had it. But I knew that I didn’t need it, you see. I always make sure the production manager, the director and the producer are aware of that because as long as they know that about me, they know that I’m not bullshitting them when I suddenly say to them I need $55,000 today for lighting. They’ll say, “Okay, you’ve got it.” There’s never a question about that. And my crew has been taught to do the same thing. Never over-order. Don’t do what they call “protect the cameraman” bullshit. Just order what you think is necessary. Because one of these days you’re going to run into a nice young Francis Ford Coppola who’s got a little movie he wants to make and wants to make it for a nickel and, if you don’t know how to do it, you know, you’re just fooling yourself. You’re going back in reverse. I’ve seen Billy Fraker shoot very tiny, cheap movies and very big movies and so have I, and the budgets have always been a point. The only thing I’ll fight for in a budget is the crew’s salary. Because I work with such small crews, I want them to be paid for it.

      This may not be a fair question, but is the cameraman who shot Vanishing Point the same cameraman who shot Norma Rae?

      I think so. I know a lot more now. I know a hell of a lot more now. I wish I knew as much when I shot Vanishing Point. It would have been a lot better. Whenever you have a quality that is good, you try to maintain that good quality all the time; sometimes it means cutting into yourself a little bit, cutting into your own ego. To knock your ego down, to go back to your roots to what you were really good at. The bravery of hand-holding the camera not because you want to show you can do it but because that’s the way to do it at that moment; not doing it because I’m Mr. Big and I have to show off. The guts to say, “I’m sorry, Marty, it’s going to take five hours for the shot.” In Vanishing Point, I was able to say that because I didn’t know any better, but now I know not to say that to certain people because it will scare the shit out of them. But the bravery, the guts to say, “That’s it; no more or no less, that’s the best shot and that’s what we should do.” The guts to say to Marty, “It’s 2:00 in the afternoon, the light is totally wrong.” When I did Vanishing Point I didn’t know any better and I thought you could say that but I found out later that you couldn’t do that; you could get into a lot of trouble by saying that to a director or producer. With Marty, because of our relationship, I’m able to do that because we were going for quality. But the no-generator idea took a lot of guts. To do a major picture like Norma Rae with very little light and no generator was not a grandstand move on my part, it was just an impulse I had. I knew it could be done and it disciplined me to do the lighting in a certain way. I wouldn’t have the convenience of big lights. I thought that would give a picture quality no one else has done recently.

      How did the advances in lenses and film speeds change the way you do things? I mean, over the past ten years, they just keep getting better and better.

      Oh, dramatically. When Panavision designed the so-called PSR camera, which was much lighter than the Mitchell, right away they designed a smaller dolly and it wasn’t necessary to have the giant dolly. They came out with speed lenses and it was a big rage for a while to shoot with them. And then almost immediately came the Panaflex, the little tiny camera, and the speed lenses. The laboratories, TVC in New York and Deluxe and Technicolor here in Los Angeles, all were into experimenting and have accomplished a great deal in development of film, to the point where you can force a picture two stops. The Cheap Detective was forced two stops all the time. Black Sunday was forced one stop all the time and sometimes two. On Norma Rae, all the interiors were at a process of 600 ASA and done by Deluxe. Instead of doing it by time and temperature, they do it chemically, similar to the TVC process but much better quality. It’s terrific quality. Now in the beginning, when all these advances came up, faster film, faster lenses, we would go out and shoot available light at f1.1 or f1.2, and we’d say, “Oh, it’s terrific.” Of course, a lot of things were out of focus because there was no depth of field. Now I’ve been working more on pictures where I don’t necessarily use less light. I keep the same amount of light but I stop the lens down more. I mean, you see it in The Cheap Detective and it’s a very subtle thing. But because I forced it two stops, most of my average shooting in interiors was f4.5-f5.6, which gave the anamorphic lenses more depth of field than people are used to seeing. Things were in focus.

      If you shot it normally, you’d have so much light in there to get a f5.6 that you’d burn up the actors. If you forced it, it was grainy. And also the Panaflex in Chinatown proved to be invaluable. You can put the Panaflex in a bathroom without taking the walls out and shoot scenes in there. I mean, it’s not only a dramatic advantage to the director but it’s also a physical advantage for the cameraman. So in the last ten years there have been radical changes.

      All of this is challenging the filmmakers. Fortunately for us, the filmmakers are new people, like Francis Ford Coppola, people that are up with that technology. It’s very difficult for directors that come from the old school to get used to it. Marty Ritt, with whom I’ve done six pictures, has kept up with the times. I mean, he loved it. Norma Rae we shot 99% hand-held. There’s maybe four shots that are not hand-held in that picture. Now there’s a director from the so-called old school who has got the guts to do it. I’m not saying that others are not around, they just haven’t had the opportunity. Maybe they haven’t had any of us to work with.

      What has been your experience with the new higher-speed Kodak film stock 5293?

      I shot all of Scarface with 5293; all of Crosscreek was with 5293. I’ve had very good experience with it. The interesting experience with 5293 was doing Crosscreek; we were shooting in mostly daylight situations and using a high-speed film outdoors. Normally you don’t need high-speed film for that. But we were able to use it very effectively in the swamps under the trees where it’s very dark. The 5247 stock would not have been enough in that situation unless we had a lot of light. Shooting in the swamps,