A CONVERSATION WITH
THOMAS E. ACKERMAN, ASC

Thomas E. Ackerman, ASC was born and raised in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where his father was a projectionist at a local theatre. He took some film classes in filmmaking while earning a degree in theater art at the University of Iowa. He served a stint in the United States Air Force during the Vietnam War, documenting combat and creating films. After completing his military service obligation, Ackerman spent several years in Washington, D.C., working as a cameraman with Charles Guggenheim on political documentaries and commercials. He migrated to Los Angeles in 1978, and set up a television commercial business. Ackerman also shot many music videos at the dawn of the MTV age. After qualifying for Guild membership, Ackerman chose to spend a number of years as a camera operator, working with some of the industry’s seminal cinematographers, including Vittorio Storaro, ASC, AIC and Joe Biroc, ASC. He earned his first mainstream narrative credit in 1984 for Frankenweenie. Ackerman has subsequently compiled some 25 credits, including Beetlejuice, True Identity, Dennis the Menace, Jumanji, George of the Jungle, My Favorite Martian, The Muse, The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, Rat Race, Snow Dogs, the upcoming Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star, and the recent Project Greenlight film, The Battle of Shaker Heights. Ackerman is currently working on Anchor Man: The Legend of Ron Burgundy.

Following are excerpts of a conversation:

ICG: Where were you born and raised?

ACKERMAN: I was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. My dad was among other things, a projectionist at the local theater. He was also an avid railroad model builder. He built a business of constructing and selling car kits to enthusiasts via mail order across the country. There’s no doubt that my experiences hanging out at the theater and spending a lot of time in the projection booth inevitably had a lot to do with how I felt about movies. That was my view of the world. I probably saw every movie that came to town. My mom would take me down the theater when I was a little kid. I would sit in the manager’s office, which was right next door to the projection booth. It had a large bay window that opened up to the theater. I could sit at his desk and look at the films on the screen. That was my childhood growing up in a medium-sized, demographically very average Midwestern town. I didn’t have any sense of how films were made. All I could see was that they came on reels encased in these massive metal-shipping containers. The ritual was that the new film would come, and the old containers would be stacked outside the theater ready to be picked up. One of the employees would get up on a tall stepladder and change the marquee with large plastic letters. It had to be done manually and reset every time a new show came to town. I guess because I saw the reels of film being threaded and spliced, the projectors being fired up, and the sound of the film chattering through them, I was more aware than most people that these weren’t just some sort of magical image streams that came out of nowhere. Somebody had to be making them.

ICG: Were you a photography or home movie fan?

ACKERMAN: I made a lot of movies as a kid. I was fortunate to have a good friend, Mike Collins, whose dad had a 16 mm Bolex Camera. I remember a trip we took to Florida. They had a boat that they kept at a marina. It was a rainy day when there wasn’t much to do, so we decided to make a movie with the Bolex. I think we had two rolls of film. We had a stuffed toy alligator from a souvenir shop, and used it to make a horror film during the course of an afternoon. It wasn’t very good, but it led to all kinds of other filmmaking experiences, if you want to be so charitable as to call them that. We also made bogus commercials. We got the neighborhood kids together every summer and usually made a film or two, either in 16 or 8 mm film. Everybody would pool their money to buy the film. We’d drag some wardrobe items out of the closet. I recall one World War II epic that we shot. The story revolved around a small group of GIs who were deep behind enemy lines and had to fight their way out. We nominated one of our friends to play the part of a Japanese soldier who was unfortunate enough to be in a pillbox that takes a direct hit. He comes out aflame. We wrapped his torso in aluminum foil, added a couple layers of T-shirts, which were soaked in lighter fluid. He also wore a uniform, which was also soaked in lighter fluid. We rolled camera and torched him. He was a human fireball. We got the shot and rolled him on the grass to put out the flames. It was a horrifying spectacle for the parents who were in the audience at the premiere, but nobody said, what were you thinking? That was so dangerous. It was just a more trusting time.    

ICG: Where did you go to school?

ACKERMAN: I went to the University of Iowa. We didn’t have a film school, but there were motion picture and television production courses, which were part of the department of speech and dramatic arts. I got a liberal arts education with a major in theater. Our facilities were fairly well equipped for that time. We had a little soundstage, an ARRI S camera and a blimp. We even had a little stage crane. It was probably the only one in the state at that time. We had halfway decent lighting equipment and a wonderful film laboratory on the campus. It was there primarily to service the university, which had a motion picture production unit shooting sports and educational movies for the school. There was a great old guy who ran the lab. He was an ex-high school chemistry teacher who didn’t know anything about movies. His name was Gene Jones. He inspired a lot of us, because this was our first chance to come to grips with the consequences of what we were doing. He’d say, ‘You guys can run around with the cameras and lights, but here’s the reality. You’ve got a strip of film, and it’s either well exposed or poorly exposed. Here’s a densitometer. Let’s see what you’ve done. If you want a decent looking print, you’ve got to learn the craft.’

ICG: That sounds like a pretty important experience.

ACKERMAN: I credit the Iowa experience with planting an awful lot of seeds that took root later in my life. If I hadn’t had the opportunity to take those courses, I’m not sure what my alternatives would have been. At the same time, it wasn’t really industry oriented like the film schools at USC or UCLA. We didn’t have guest speakers or visiting professors but it was still a great opportunity. I went on to a staff job with the motion picture unit at the university for a year. I’m eternally grateful for that experience at Iowa University.

ICG: Where did you go from Iowa University?

ACKERMAN: It was a state university and every male freshman had to take either a year of Air Force or Army ROTC. When I finished at Iowa, I went into the Air Force as an officer specializing in motion picture production. I reported for duty to the 1365th Photographic Squadron in Orlando, Florida, where I spent a couple of years working on training films. I was assigned to the 600th Photo Squadron at Tan Son Nhut Air Force Base in Saigon during the war in Viet Nam, and later I was reassigned as a detachment commander at Takhli Royal Thai Air Base in Thailand, where we operated a unit that had a number of missions including combat documentation. We had a motion picture lab and a still photo lab in support of the 355th Tactical Fighter Wing. I spent the last six months of my time in the service at Norton Air Force Base in California, which was set up as a motion picture production studio. At the end of my tour, I really had a lot of useful experience and met a lot of people who I would ultimately cross paths with again.

ICG: What happened after you were discharged?

ACKERMAN: After I got out, I worked for Charles Guggenheim, the great documentary filmmaker in Washington, D.C. for three years. Afterwards, Mike Robe, who I met in the Air Force, and I got together and formed a little company in Los Angeles. Our first projects were supermarket commercials for various ad agencies in the Midwest. We also shot numerous documentaries for the USIA, worked on after-school specials, and just about anything else we could get. During the mid- to late 1970s, Hollywood was a closed shop. It was very difficult to get into the unions, so work for the studios and TV networks was pretty well locked up. Commercial production was also mainly controlled by just a handful of large companies, which did the lion’s share of the work. If you were a couple of guys from the Midwest without any inside contacts, it was a somewhat daunting scene.

ICG: I want to take a step back. How did you hook up with Charles Guggenheim?

ACKERMAN: Charles Guggenheim was also a graduate of the University of Iowa. I think he graduated in 1947 or ’48. He was perhaps one of the most respected American documentary filmmakers ever. He was nominated for several Academy Awards, and I believe he walked off with the Oscar at least three times. I got to work with Charles because of an Air Force friend who had hired on as his production manager. When I got out of the Air Force I was hired as a production assistant. I started working with Charles in early 1970. It was a rude awakening in a way because I was a college graduate, and I had just been discharged from the Air Force as a captain. Suddenly, I was maybe a half-a-step above the guy they sent for coffee. I did virtually everything. I carried film to and from the lab and to the airport. They were located in this horrendous old building at the corner of 17^th and H streets. I spent a lot of time in the basement packing equipment for the various location shoots that Guggenheim did. After the first few months, I started shooting film for Charles, and quickly became his principal cinematographer. I also did a lot of film editing. Charles was doing political commercials for a lot of interesting candidates, including Ted Kennedy and Walter Mondale. My last work for him was on the McGovern campaign.

ICG:    What are some of your memories of that time?

ACKERMAN: It’s a pretty long list. Charles was a great believer in cinema verite. He felt the best material would be that which was the most truthful and the most honestly obtained. I have vivid memories of spending 10 to 12 hours a day with an Éclair NPR camera glued to my shoulder with magazine after magazine passing through it. I think my record was shooting 12,000 feet in a single day. I remember that the motor was getting hot. I suppose it’s a little misleading to say that the style was cinema verite, because obviously in the editorial process you are recreating the moment to the point where the text becomes the message. But I must say that in contrast to some of his counterparts doing political media at the time, Charles was pretty much of a purist. He also refused to shoot films for any candidate in whom he didn’t personally believe. I probably learned as much editing for Charles as I did shooting.

Often, cinematographers are so enamored of what we see through the lens that we neglect thinking about what it means. Not that every picture has to have a meaning, but certainly if filmmaking is a language of images, then you need some grasp on how the images go together. Charles Guggenheim could be very tough. He was relentless in his pursuit of something that made sense and that conveyed what he believed to be the truth. He was very quick to detect gratuitous cutting just for cutting’s sake.

ICG: Why did you decide it was time to move to Los Angeles?

ACKERMAN: I think I became kind of disillusioned with the lack of control in that that type of documentary shooting. It seemed that every time you prepared a shot with an eye toward the quality of the image, the interesting thing we had to shoot would happen on the opposite side of the room in a dark, dingy corner. I wanted to make films where we had the resources and the time to create interesting photography…having said that, I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything. Shooting documentaries is hugely instructive. If nothing else, it exposes you to the real world. I think that’s enormously important for any cinematographer. Secondly, it takes you through a range of experiences that you probably wouldn’t have had any other opportunity to obtain. It takes you through a range of emotions that are harder to find, on a sound stage, because they’re real. We all hope to make films that will in some small way impact other people’s lives—at least that’s the dream. It also made me just enormously grateful when finally I could work with some real equipment instead of just three little 1K open-face quartz lights. I must say though, sometimes I wonder if we don’t have too many toys and distractions today. Sometimes, I find myself wanting to get back to the basics now, much more now than I ever did before.

ICG: Tell us more about the business you set up in Los Angeles.

ACKERMAN: We set up our company in what used to be called the Animation Center. It’s where the Post Group is now on Homewood Avenue. We literally went to Abby Rents and got a sofa, a couple of chairs, a table and two desks. We were so incredibly naïve. If you can believe this, we made cold calls. ‘Hi, we’re a new production company, and we’d like to tell you about ourselves.’ Remarkably enough, things began to happen. It was sheer luck in many ways. We had this base of supermarket commercials that provided a little bit of cash flow. Through serendipity, we achieved momentum. We were in business for seven years, and we steadily grew. We wound up having a small staff and never missed a payroll. We were successful creatively, as well. I think a lot of it had to do with picking the right partner. And good luck.

The first year was probably the scariest, because in-between jobs it got very quiet. The phone was not ringing off the hook. It wasn’t until 1978 during the so-called open season when people like myself, who had not apprenticed in the studio system, were given an opportunity to document our work and get on what was called the industry experience roster. It was an enormous breakthrough. Looking back now, I think many of us just didn’t know how the deck was stacked. It was just as well that we didn’t know the odds because if had we been aware that the chances of statistically surviving were pathetically low, I’m not sure that we would have taken the first step.

ICG: Didn’t you also get into music videos?

ACKERMAN: Music videos were an important part of what helped me turn the corner. MTV was just getting started, and it provided one of the first viable options for producing material for network television. It was one of the first really receptive, in fact demanding venues for new talent directing and cinematography. By then, I was shooting mainstream commercials, but everything was locked into a soft and beautiful Norman Rockwell ‘ain’t life grand’ look. MTV demanded an edgier look because the artists that were being put on film demanded that—their work personified that. It was a riskier kind of cinematography and there wasn’t money to do it properly. You were invariably confronted with doing two or three days work in one brutally long 18 to 24 hour day. It was like a war zone. At some point, after 20 or 22 hours of shooting, you’re functioning on adrenaline and grasping at straws to try to complete the work before everybody falls over. You are still trying to fulfill your initial high aspirations. There was a lot of, ‘we can’t do it with five lights. We’ve got to do it with one. We can’t do the last 10 shots in six hours. We’ve got to do them in one hour.’ We did whatever we had to do. But there’s no doubt that for myself and for so many others, music videos were an essential part of our growth. They took us to new places, and taught us new ways of seeing things… sometimes by accident.

ICG: Give us an example of a happy accident.

ACKERMAN: I did a lot of work with the likes of Stevie Nicks, Heart, Pat Benatar and Linda Ronstadt. It got me on a certain path of doing videos for female artists. Probably because of the way I approached lighting their performances. After a while, the budgets had grown and we had the resources to go out with a decent lighting package and crew size. The hours were long but at the end of the day, you had enough tools to make it happen. The real innovations tended to happen with lesser name groups. I remember one huge night shoot with multiple location moves. There was really no way to do it, so I just said, ‘Put a 10K on the insert car. We’ll move the camera and you drive the light around to wherever we need it.’ We just had that one big light, but at least we could quickly maneuver it to wherever we needed it. We just sort of played a game of tag. The camera would move, the light on the insert car would move a couple of blocks to the next place, and we’d shoot that. That taught one light is enough if you put it in the right place, and two lights would probably be too many. That helped me see the need for simplicity.

ICG: How many videos did you actually shoot?

ACKERMAN: Probably a 100 or more, sometimes, two or three in one shoot.

ICG: How do you think the experiences of documentaries, commercials and music videos influenced you later on as a narrative filmmaker?

ACKERMAN: It’s interesting to think of how my documentary work, when combined with the music videos, might have caused me to pursue shooting movies in a different way. Certainly, as I said earlier, working in documentaries, rightly or wrongly, puts your sensibilities in a different place. What you’re trying to do in a documentary is explain or advance a concept. Music videos are purely experiential. Obviously, they’re marketing tools; otherwise no record company would ever pay for them. But the aim is to create a film experience which grows out of the music, which, frankly, is what I found so compelling. There was just the music and the artists, and that led to some pretty fuzzy logic. I remember director Marty Callner, who was a quintessential rock ‘n’ roll guy. We’d have pre-production brainstorming sessions, and he’d discuss four or five different looks, and four or five different levels of shooting in any given video. He would offer up some random idea. He might say, ‘one idea is fire, a dark room and a shot with the girl in the car.’ There were all these sort of riddles. Ultimately, in the shoot, I would work to make each of his ideas distinct and separate visions. We explored a lot of really great imagery together, but at the end of the day, it was all about the experience for the audience. Ideas we though of were actually just feelings and intuitions. Marty had a huge visual appetite and it was great fun shooting for him. I think if there’s one big difference between documentary shooting and music videos, it would have to be this great gap. The great thing about music videos was they liberated us from the need to express a clear concept.

ICG: We noticed that you did some operating after you got into the Guild.

ACKERMAN: When I first got into the Guild, I had enough days on the industry roster as a cameraman. However, it was clear to me that I really had to work at the studios for a while as a camera operator before I felt comfortable as a director of photography. I decided to re-rate to camera operator. I think I was an operator for about four or five years before I did my first project as a cinematographer. My last operating gig was One From the Heart for Vittorio Storaro (ASC, AIC). He was a tremendous friend and mentor, and an inspiration to me throughout the years. He’s an incredible person. I also operated for Jerry Finnerman (ASC), and I did a little work with Joe Biroc (ASC) and Emil Oster (ASC). I also operated for John McPherson (ASC), who was very influential. He was shooting Kojak, and I went in a lot as a B camera guy.

I had worked with a lot of the “old timers,” and he was the first cameraman that I had operated for who had a more naturalistic approach. In fact, I remember standing outside the equipment truck, one day hearing the grips and electricians grumbling about how he was just going to use the practical lamp in the ceiling of this little store that we were using as a location. He was doing all these things that were anathema like using bounce card and foam core. I also worked with Frank Thackery (ASC). I think the first set that I reported to, as a camera operator, was his. I guess I was a little nervous. I didn’t know really what the protocols were, but Frank made me feel very welcome. I will always be grateful for that. Frank Stanley (ASC) was also a wonderful man and really fine cinematographer. I also worked with Benny Coleman (ASC). I handled the B camera for him on The Fall Guy. Operating was a vital part of my education. I learned really a great deal about the flow of things on a major set. There’s a rhythm to it. Along with all the other things, you learn that protocol is important. It helped to prepare me to conduct myself on my own set.

ICG: What was your first credit as a cinematographer?

ACKERMAN: It was New Year’s Evil, a freakishly bad horror movie for Cannon Films (1981). My first studio credit was Frankenweenie (1984) for Disney, followed by Back to School and Beetlejuice.

ICG: Thinking back, what was that like, finally getting to shoot your own films in Hollywood? What were the biggest differences on practical and emotional levels?

ACKERMAN: There are many differences, but the biggest one is that you’re not in Kansas anymore. It’s somebody else’s dollar, but it’s your vision. The big question is how do you keep your vision fresh and intact. The level of enthusiasm has got to the same as it was the day you picked up a camera for the first time. I remember in college the thrill of waking up on a Saturday morning with a stack of equipment in the corner of my apartment, then going out with a small crew and shooting a student film. The total cost was the piece of a bag of cheeseburgers that I bought for everybody at lunch and maybe a six-pack at the end of the day. Now, you find yourself charged with the responsibility for filming x number of pages every day. You are obviously working under much greater pressure, but you still have to somehow be a poet and a field marshal at the same time. Some people aren’t comfortable with that. In fact, I don’t think I’m always

very comfortable with that, but I’ve learned that’s the way it has to be. One thing that doesn’t change is that you are still doing it for the love of it. You still have to make the best use of your resources, so that at the end of the day you feel that is the best you could have done. You are responsible for keeping the production company happy, treating your crew fairly, and helping the director get his vision onto film.

ICG: Beeteljuice was your first big movie. Are there any memories to share?

ACKERMAN: Beetlejuice was a great opportunity. It was a very quirky, bent world, and I had a chance to work with a brilliant visual director, Tim Burton. We’d collaborated earlier on Frankenweenie. “Bo” Welch was the production designer. Tim is provocative. He sort of seduces you into his view of things, and that’s a good place to be for a cinematographer.

ICG: What about Dennis the Menace?

ACKERMAN: Dennis the Menace was one of the most pleasant undertakings of my career. We were gathered in Chicago in a beautiful North Shore neighborhood during probably the greatest summer weather that they had ever had, to render this innocent little story. To me, it was just a very pure movie. It was an opportunity to put on film, the kind of neighborhood that I grew up in. There was dappled sunlight, and nights where you’d go outside to play kick-the-can, hide-and-seek and other games. Although they were dark, the neighborhoods were reassuring, safe places where kids could be out late at night without anybody calling 911. I loved the experience of shooting for Nick Castle, the director. Walter Matthau and Joan Plowright were in the cast, and the kids were great. It doesn’t get much better than that.

ICG: How about Jumanji?

ACKERMAN: Like Beetlejuice, it was a chance to help fashion a very strange world. It was a huge pleasure to shoot for Joe Johnson, because he is a gifted visual director. He had been an art director, and so he created his own storyboards, which gave us all a very clear course to follow—not slavishly, but the intent of each shot that he planned was clear, so we used our time creatively instead of trying to ferret out what it was he was after.

ICG: You also shot another fantasy film, George of the Jungle…

ACKERMAN: What I most enjoyed was the fact that almost everybody who saw the film was surprised to hear that we shot 90 percent of it on a stage. It was an opportunity to fashion an elaborately staged jungle world without ever leaving the Hughes Aircraft plant in Playa Del Rey. It was also the first film that I had shot with Sam Weisman as director, and that was a huge pleasure.

ICG: You did something totally different with The Muse.

ACKERMAN: The Muse was obviously at the other end of the production spectrum from Jumanji or George of the Jungle in terms of its aspirations and the approach that we took to filming. The Muse is a movie. It was a brilliant script, written and performed by Albert Brooks, who was also the director. I think the only visual effects were a couple of dissolves. It was fun to be liberated from all the visual effects paraphernalia, blue and green screens and wire rigs, and so on, which were so much a part of my other studio films.

ICG: But, you did go back to a fantasy theme with The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle. What can you tell us about that film?

ACKERMAN: Rocky and Bullwinkle was a chance to shoot for Des McAnuff, who is an enormously talented stage director, for whom the challenge of mounting this very complex, multi-layered, and ultimately very complicated rendering of a cartoon series was no huge deal. He was used to staging musicals on Broadway that required this complex layering of elements. From the very get-go, he was not put off by the meticulous planning and all the other departmental involvements and crafts that had to be brought to bear. He really took to the process, very naturally and gave us all a clear idea and directions to follow. It’s probably a discipline that comes from working on the stage where you do everything possible to mold the show in your vision, but on opening night you basically have to sit in the audience and watch the curtain go up. I think it’s a different sensibility. There’s no fixing it in postproduction.

ICG: You have a couple of pictures coming. One of them is Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star. Can we talk about the genesis of that project?

ACKERMAN: Sam Weisman called me from Boston on Dickie Roberts before he made his deal to do the picture. He was simply exploring my interest in it, and I was immediately intrigued. It’s the story of a former child star who had been hugely successful in a 1970s kid show Glimmer Gang. He is now in his mid-30s and can’t get arrested. He’s hopelessly out of date, out of the loop, and just scavenging for any opportunity he might have to regain his earlier stardom. It’s an original script co-written by Fred Wolf and David Spade, who plays Dickie. There are an awful lot of former child actors around who can probably empathize with this story.

ICG: How much was this first call in advance of production?

ACKERMAN: Sam called me probably about three-and-a-half to four months before we started shooting. The deal was made perhaps two months after we had first talked about it.

ICG: Did you and Sam discuss and visual references?

ACKERMAN: Actually, the answer is no. For one thing, we were going to be shooting in Hollywood rather than making some remote location look like Hollywood. There are people walking the streets who came to Hollywood with a dream, and it may have never happened for them, or happened briefly and then they fell out, but they never gave up. I guess for me the visual approach was sort of intuitive, because I had wanted to photograph Hollywood as Hollywood for quite some time.

ICG: Are the visuals based on reality or fantasy?

ACKERMAN: I think Sam’s idea from the outset was to make it reality-based. In other words, the core of the story is something extremely credible, because we have all seen the revolving door for performing artists. We know there are people like Dickie Roberts. This is commonplace, not fantasy, but in some ways the story is elaborated in a way that could be construed as a departure from reality.

ICG: We are presuming that the landmarks in Los Angeles play a part?

ACKERMAN: I think a main reason for shooting in Los Angeles was the availability and authenticity of locations. Unlike other films that have gone elsewhere, Sam’s intention was to really render Hollywood as Hollywood. I wasn’t privy to any of the initial conversations about where the film would be shot, but my sense is there was a real commitment to doing it in Hollywood from the start, primarily for the sense of authenticity and keeping it reality based. There may have been other considerations, including David’s television work that kept him in Los Angeles.

ICG: Why is it important to shoot at authentic locations?

ACKERMAN: I’ve been a party to shooting films overseas that purported to be U.S.-based locations, so I can speak on this point. For example, we shot Jumanji in Vancouver, with some additional scenes in New England. When all was said and done, there were no houses in Vancouver that even remotely resembled the kind of Georgian look we needed for authenticity, so an enormous facade had to be created for the exteriors, and, of course, a sizable interior set as well.

ICG: How much of Dickie Roberts was filmed at practical locations?

ACKERMAN: It equally shot on location and on stages at Paramount. We shot in some of those great little low-rent neighborhood with little bungalows and cottages that are north and south of Hollywood Boulevard. Dickie’s apartment is right on Hollywood Boulevard. It had been an office. The production designer wanted to create an apartment with as much direct connection to the town as possible, so we chose an office with really huge windows on the third story. During a key scene, which is a poker game between Dickie and his former child star buddies, we wanted to have as much of the boulevard in the background as possible. We were also on location in Pasadena a good part of the time. The neighborhood was a contrast to the hopeless seedy qualities of his Hollywood environment, after he found a supposedly ideal family to live with in Pasadena. We filmed a lot of the residential interiors of the house in Pasadena on the stage. For example, there are a number of scenes that play in the foyer of this house. The exterior of the real house had all the right aesthetic values, but it also had a relatively small foyer. We would never have been able to fit three, four, or five actors and a dog into that area and do what I needed to do with the camera. Shooting scenes like that on a stage enabled us to move the camera and light with some elegance and control. We also created color schemes, shaped and texture that were right for the moment.

ICG: Was your relationship with the production designer was a key?

ACKERMAN: I always consider the production designer and the costume designer as two key collaborators. In this case the production designer was Dina Lipton. We had worked together on The Muse and already had a great relationship. She’s intent on getting it right for the camera. In other words, she doesn’t live in a hypothetical world where you operate independent of the lighting or what is needed to serve the story. She is a team player.

ICG: What types of things did you suggest?

ACKERMAN: Let’s put it this way, I’m really opinionated on everything. But, I try to restrict those opinions to a couple of main avenues, which affect how I light scenes and the tonalities of the sets, both colors and densities. I work with the designer to get wall treatments, textures, colors and densities, so that we don’t have to go crazy trying to keep light off of the walls, which is frequently a problem on sets. The decisions we make in pre-production, about the design, configuration, color and furnishing on sets, the window treatments, all affect things that we’re going to be living with for weeks or months. It was all about cooperation and collaboration. For example, before I came onboard there was a plan to build the house set on risers four feet high. There was a concern that when shooting past a window—there were many windows on that set—we would see the backings or the translights at the point where they joined to the floor. On Dennis the Menace, we had an amazing set like that surrounded by a fully detailed front yard and back yard, but this film had a more restricted budget. We basically had a few greens to move around, but there was no money to recreate much of an exterior world on this film. They built the house on risers, so you don’t see where the translight hits the stage floor. When I looked at the miniatures with my viewfinder, I explored some alternatives with Dina. It became clear that by putting a hedge row at a certain place and designing window based on a realistic understanding of where the lens was likely to be in a given shot, we could make it work without adding expenses to production design or crimping the visual style. They took out the risers, which made the set a lot easier to work on.

ICG: What about the color schemes? How important were they?

ACKERMAN: The color schemes were very important. Hollywood locations are tawdry. Pasadena locations, when Dickie finds the “ideal” family to live with and regain his childhood, are painted in a very warm and inviting palette of colors. There are a lot of earth tones, a sort of dusty red and a bit of green. It is very restrained. We’re not talking about really intense colors in high chroma. Dickie grew up in a dysfunctional family with a stage mom who was horrendous. She ultimately abandoned him. He never had a proper childhood. Now, he is searching for the ideal family to live with. He interviews a lot of totally inappropriate families, and finally finds his ideal family who lives in this Norman Rockwell-ish, lovingly rendered Pasadena house.

ICG: Can you explain what is going on in his life at that point?

ACKERMAN: Dickie is very short on any kind of realistic hopes or opportunities at this point in his non-existent career. Things are just not happening for him. He catches wind of a film that is going to be directed by Rob Reiner, who plays himself. Rob tells him that he’s an enormous fan. He loved his kid show, The Glimmer Gang, but with all due respect, this role is going to take some acting and life experience. He frankly tells Dickie that he hasn’t had much of a life. He had no childhood, because he was always working. Rob tells Dickie, ‘I’m not really going to be casting seriously for a couple of months. If you can go out there and gain some experience, maybe there’ll be a chance for you.’ Dickie has just received a small advance fee on a tell-all autobiography. He places an ad in the paper, ex-child star looking for family to regain his childhood.

ICG: Do you flashback to his childhood?

ACKERMAN: There are momentary flashbacks to Glimmer Gang days. We used really appallingly flat 1970’s TV lighting that kind of glued an artificial look on those scenes.

ICG: What was your relationship with the costume designer?

ACKERMAN: Lisa Jensen and I had a close collaboration, especially during prep. Dickie’s taste in clothing ended at about 1979 or 1980. Like a lot of people, he saw himself in the image of a happier time in his life. Lisa designed a wardrobe that was essentially a time warp. David had a lot of input to his wardrobe. There are a lot of synthetic fabrics that were appropriate for the character. We tried to make sure they didn’t come into conflict with the set dressing, especially colors, so Lisa, Dina and I had to be on the same page. I don’t know how you possibly could plan to film a movie without being in really close contact with the costume and production designers. There are other key collaborators on every film, including the art director and assistant director, and sometimes the effects supervisor. All these people ultimately have a direct impact on my work.

ICG: How was a decision made about the format used for production?

ACKERMAN: Sam Weisman and I discussed the format during the first hour of the first day. Interestingly enough, we both of us had been thinking about shooting in anamorphic. Sam hadn’t done an anamorphic movie, but he was drawn to it based on films that he had seen. He liked the dynamics, but he was candid about needing to know more about how it was going to work on a day-to-day basis. He asked, ‘how would scenes be blocked differently and what about composition?’ I started bringing a viewfinder location scouts, and I’d show him glimpses of that geography in an anamorphic frame. We had casual discussions about the blockings of scenes. I also took photographs of the sets or renderings of the sets and of locations. We put a 2.35:1 matte over them so that he could see it composed in anamorphic format. All the storyboards were done in that format. By the time we were shooting, he was delighted with the wide-screen format.

ICG: That was an interesting decision. Dickie Roberts doesn’t sound like the type of film that would normally play out in anamorphic. It doesn’t sound like there were big vistas or action sequences. What was the aesthetic rationale?

ACKERMAN: We filmed Dickie Roberts in 40 days on a modest budget. Shooting in anamorphic gave us the chance to film scenes with less coverage. We put the characters in environments, and showed the audience how they reacted to each other. It is very subjective camerawork with not too many close-ups. I’m not sure I can say anything to convince anyone to shoot in anamorphic unless they instinctively feel it works for their movie. We could have easily shot this in 1:8:5, but ultimately it comes down to taste. One of the advantages is that you are using the entire 35 mm frame, so you aren’t wasting any of the resolving power of the film. At the same time, you don’t have the range of lenses available in spherical. On some projects that could be a problem, but we were shooting a lot of dialogue and not too much action. We had some walking and talking, and used A and B camera a lot, but there weren’t gigantic, multiple camera sequences, day after day where we were worried about matching lenses.

ICG: Did you do any testing with the actors before production?

ACKERMAN: Unlike most of my other films, we had very little opportunity to do tests with the actors prior to shooting. It was a compressed pre-production schedule, and the actors weren’t available most of that time. The character that David created is a fascinating blend of quirkiness and accessibility. I was really impressed with what he and Sam did with the character. He’s definitely eccentric, but he’s also very appealing, attractive and very engaging. On the printed page, you wonder how the audience will respond to this very edgy character, and how to make him likable. If they don’t empathize with him, there’s not much of a story. He could be an off-putting, self-indulgent personality, but David absolutely comes through and wins over the audience.

ICG: How did your camerawork support that?

ACKERMAN: It all begins with the performance. It was inspiring. The camera can’t help but support what the actor is investing in the character. I wanted to be sure that the audience sees Dickie Roberts as a sympathetic character, so I was careful not to let any element of satire creep into the photography. I made sure that the coverage of David made him feel really accessible to the audience. He looks good. There are just a few exceptions, including a celebrity boxing sequence at the opening of the movie where he’s knocked out and totally humiliated. Our mission in that scene was to diminish his character, but mainly we wanted to create as much empathy as possible with decisions made about lighting and composition. Every minute of every day on every film, you are making those decisions. I tried to choose the lighting and composition that best created a likable and credible Dickie Roberts, rather than a stereotypical character.

ICG: Is it possible to explain your rationale about lighting him?

ACKERMAN: Now we get into some difficult turf, because lighting is perhaps the ultimate subjective process. It’s virtually impossible to really communicate why a given lighting decision might be made. Sometimes people have posed that question on the set. ‘Why did you do it that way?’ I might be able to occasionally come up with a rationale that sounds halfway logical, like, ‘it’s dark because it’s meant to feel foreboding,’ or ‘I wanted that hot shaft of light coming through the window and just grazing the actor’s face a certain way, because it felt right.’ It’s ultimately very subjective, which usually requires a great deal of planning and marshalling of resources. It is a combination of poetry and combat, and I’ll admit that I’m highly opinionated on this point. If you ask why did I choose to light David Spade as Dickie Roberts the way I did, the answer is that in every scene, I lit him in a way that felt right to me, and how much more subjective can you get than that?

ICG: How about composition?

ACKERMAN: There are many ensemble scenes, but a lot of the story takes place with Dickie and his younger foster brother and sister. One of the great opportunities in anamorphic is that you can render large proscenium shots, but it also provides an opportunity for intimacy with the characters because you can use negative space to give more dynamics to the frame. You can use the frame to make a character more prominent. I think that just on the performance end of the scale, there are some real advantages to composing a frame that has negative space.

ICG: What was your basic camera package?

ACKERMAN: I used Panavision equipment, including a Platinum camera, and a set of Primo Prime anamorphic lenses in basic focal lengths up to 180 mm. I also carried a set of C-series primes, which were of course smaller and lighter weight. We tended to use those with the Steadicam. On occasions, when we did some handheld work in the boxing ring, for instance, I sometimes used C-series lens instead of the bulkier Primos. I used both the short zoom and the 11:1 zoom generally for exterior scenes. We had probably the best 11:1 that I’ve ever shot with. All of the Panavision lenses tend to be very high performance optics, but this particular 11:1 was so sweet, we got the serial number of that one, and I’ve got it locked in the safe. It’s a terrific lens.

ICG: Is there a particular style of movement?

ACKERMAN: Sam didn’t want to let the scenes become static. We were in a domestic environment with a tremendous amount of coverage in the family home. In this situation, you are really confronted with challenges in terms of keeping the camera moving and maintaining the energy. Sam didn’t want the camera to be a passive observer. We did a lot of Steadicam shots, and not just walking and talking, but also negotiating through and around the set dressing, where we couldn’t build a dance floor and had to get from point A to point B without tracks. Fortunately, I had a really great Steadicam operator, Julian Chojnacki, SOCwho was also handheld A camera. With Julian I felt like we could devise virtually do any move, and it would work. Sam Weisman has had a great deal of stage experience as an actor and director. He understands the art of choreographing scenes, and why the camera, as a participant, needs to move. We used the Technocrane and Super Technocrane as well as the Steadicam.

ICG: How about your choice of films?

ACKERMAN: We so often go out with three, four, or even five different camera films, and that can make life difficult for the assistants and loader, who are constantly shuffling back and forth between emulsions. On this movie, I decided to try to reduce the inventory of raw stock. I tested the Vision 250D, daylight-balanced Vision stock, which I loved. It’s a subjective choice. It’s a very handsome-looking film with a really tight grain structure and it handles mixed lighting, where you have some daylight and you have some tungstens working some parts of the set. It really looked terrific, and I could use it all day long. During the early day, I had some heavy, neutral density filters on the lenses in the brightest light. I could continue shooting right up until twilight, through the magic hour, without having to make that panic call back to the truck to send out a faster film stock. The other negative, was the Kodak Vision Expression 500T film in darker interiors and night.

ICG: Cinematographers certainly have a lot more tools today.

ACKERMAN: We have far greater access to a much wider inventory of tools than we ever had before. I remember when an issue of the ASC manual was published in the mid or early 1980s, and there were several pages dedicated to describing the basic lighting instruments that were commonly used at the time, 10Ks, 5Ks, 2Ks, Maxi-and Mini-Brutes, arcs, and so on. Mole-Richardson supplied most of the gear. I think it’s safe to say there are hundreds of different lighting instruments today, and many different vendors. Not to mention all the ancillary diffusion equipment, dimming systems and special items like Lightning Strikes, and that’s just lighting. Today, you have infinite grip and camera mounting capabilities where once it was basically the Chapman Crane head. Now it’s there are seemingly endless numbers of ways to mount and fly cameras. The same is true of cameras, lenses, film stocks, post-production techniques including digital intermediate image manipulation that stretches far beyond any dreams of even 10 years ago. Today, when you begin to prep even a modestly sized feature, and I’m sure this is true in television as well, you are confronted with a vast array of tools and resources. This is great, but I think arguably it also leads to an element of overload. The range of tools that you have on a typical set also raises the question of how best to use them. I think one has to be really careful that the cart doesn’t lead the horse. I remember using a Technocrane on True Identity for Disney many years ago. It was the first time I’d used it, and it was one of the first times it was used in the United States. It was the perfect application. We were chasing a character up a flight of stairs at ankle height, and then turning a sharp corner. The extension ability of the crane, in essence, allowed us to dolly up the stairs, and that was invaluable. It was a great shot. I began ordering Technocranes on commercials and other movies. Having said that, I find myself wanting to find way to use less ‘stuff,’ and get back to my roots in the music video days, when the only lighting choices had to be cheap and fast. Having said that, there are many times when you need every bell and whistle.

ICG: Cinematographers make a lot of decisions, don’t they?

ACKERMAN: You can’t over-simplify what we do. At any given moment on the set, there is a nucleus of activity where the shot is being made. There is the camera crew, actors and director. There’s the video village, where other people are watching. The grips and electricians are working or preparing for the next take or set-up. There is a craft service. All of these people are dedicated to making that one moment happen. It’s pretty staggering. There are the guys in the executive offices overseeing the budget and how to market the film, and the writers. Filmmaking isn’t rocket science or brain surgery, but it is a high-stakes undertaking where a lot of people are counting on you. You have to do it one day at a time with a clear vision and an unfettered way of looking at things. I’m always trying to keep photography fresh as though there is none of that infrastructure surrounding us, and that requires preparation. You have to get into the director’s mind, so you know what he or she wants to achieve. There are endless conversations with the production designer and everyone else on the visual side of making a film. You need the cooperation of the first AD to make the day happen. Then, you need to make the shots.

ICG: You mentioned that Dickie’s apartment was a practical location.

ACKERMAN: It was a practical location, which was converted from an office to his bachelor pad. We had to remove a couple of walls and take out parts of the ceiling, so we had enough room to hang a few lights. The lighting was relatively simple inside the apartment. I basically had a China ball hanging over a poker table, with some material stretched over portions of it, so I could mold the light a little bit more. There were some practicals and a little ambience that I created with bounce light. We used a few white cards for bouncing light into close-ups at the table. I had a Bebee light outside positioned to accent a few architectural elements along the boulevard, as well as a couple of 20Ks with half-CTO gel on the top of the building that housed the apartment.

We opened with a shot from a SuperTechnocrane mounted on a Chapman Super Nova, so we had a two-arm crane move to steer us from the establishing look on the boulevard, and coming to a window where we can see a poker game underway inside. The image of the poker game seen from outside the window was inspired by one of Edward Hopper’s paintings, Night Hawks. When we went into the close-ups, I would sneak in a little white card onto the table surface to liven up the eyes of the actors. We couldn’t do that on a wide shot, because the B camera would see the card necessary to make the A camera’s close-up work. At one point a few years back, I would have considered two cameras at once to be absolutely anathema, like it just so violated what I thought. You know, you do one shot at a time, one lighting set-up at a time. Now, I’m sort of greedy. I see the second camera as a chance to get another shot that you couldn’t otherwise get.

We also used a Hopper painting as a reference for a diner scene seen from outside on a dark night. We had two lonely looking people inside, a waitress and a guy sitting at the lunch counter. There’s just something poignant about surrounding people with their environment. You can learn so much about who they are by seeing where they are.

ICG: Did the director work from a video village or the camera?

ACKERMAN: In those instances where a video village just couldn’t be accommodated in the immediate shooting zone, we would bring in small monitors, so Sam could remain physically close to the actors. That was very important to him. I think it’s helpful for the cinematographer. I think you’ve got to be on the set most of the time to really sense what’s going on with the actors. Don’t get me wrong. The video monitor is a very useful tool. I personally consider it invaluable. But it is also very important to have physical contact with your actors and your crew.

ICG: What was the lab relationship on Dickie Roberts?

ACKERMAN: Deluxe was the lab. We had film dailies, which we looked at together every night after we wrapped. Typically, it was Sam and Fred Wolf, the co-writer, one of the producers, the editor and his assistant. I always look forward to dailies and seeing the pictures. Film dailies are enormously helpful. It’s not so much a matter of finding problems. Over the course of shooting a film, there are going to be a few bumps here and there. Maybe focus went south on a shot, but that very rarely happens with Steve Hiller, who was my A camera focus puller until he moved up to operator on The Battle of Shaker Heights. There might be the occasional anamorphic flare or a hiccup of one sort or another. But the fact is, once you’re off and running and you have the vision for the film and you have a consensus on what this film is to be, the dailies are more of a confirmation of the story.

ICG: What were the biggest lighting challenges on exteriors?

ACKERMAN: The biggest exterior was Hollywood Boulevard, but I think the most interesting situations were the Pasadena locations that were central to the story. We wanted the perfect house in the perfect neighborhood with the perfect front and back yards, and the appropriate connections to the neighbors’ yards. It was very contrast-y. We had a lot of huge trees surrounding the house, and we were shooting those scenes in late July and early August. We had to be careful not to stage those scenes at high noon under harsh glaring light, where half would be in deep shade and the rest in brutal sunlight. We had a furling silk system in the back yard, and in the front yard, I used a 30x40 silk with a double net flown from a construction crane, so that we could keep the best part of the sunlight, dappling through the background, while keeping the immediate playing area under control with a nice soft ambience, while creating additional contrast with 18K HMIs.

ICG: It sounds like your lead actor, David Spade, must be in almost every scene if not every shot. How do you help an actor in that situation?

ACKERMAN: Yes, David is on screen a lot. It is hard on an actor to be physically involved in so much of the script, but David is a trooper. He is an enormously gifted performer who is also extremely disciplined. The entire crew looked for ways to make his job a little easier. From my standpoint, nothing’s more important than preparation. In other words, I tried to think through the problems, so when we say ‘it’s ready,’ we are truly ready to roll. I may run in from time to time to tweak a light or a flag. In fact, David ribbed me about it now and then. But, there was a bond of trust established. In the beginning, I don’t think an actor knows whether you’re a dilettante, megalomaniac or somebody who’s just sincerely trying to make the most beautiful pictures possible in the service of their story and their character. That kind of bond doesn’t take shape instantly, but we did have that kind of a bond. I tried to help David by using the B camera whenever we could. If it was a stunt or something that would have been messy or unpleasant or gratuitously difficult to stage a second time for take two. We all tried to help David by keeping the mood and the atmosphere on the set conducive to good work. I’m proud of my crew. They are people who love what they do and are extremely disciplined. We don’t have any screamers or prima donnas, and at the end of the day I think it’s a pretty nice climate for everyone, most importantly for the actors.

ICG: For the younger filmmakers reading this, how do you feel about all the hype about the role of cinematographers being reduced by auteur filmmaking? Are you concerned that future directors are just going to shoot their own films with digital cameras?

ACKERMAN: I think the twilight of cinematography as we know it is greatly exaggerated. As Mark Twain once said, ‘the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.’ The stories about cinematography being eclipsed are simply unfounded. Of course things are going to change. They are always changing. We’re not shooting films the same way we did 20 years ago, and I’m not just talking about having better film stocks and sharper lenses. I’m talking about fundamental styles and techniques, and the way we look at things. Feature films, 20 to 30 years ago certainly, were largely shot by people whose life experiences were kind of yeoman-apprentice processes that was created by the motion picture studios. Many of those people had never photographed anything off the stage or off the lot. Now, you have people like myself, who were trained shooting documentaries, music videos and commercials. It’s not better or worse. It’s just different. I really appreciate and admire those finely crafted looks that we associate with movies from the ‘Golden Age,’ but that isn’t the way we shoot today, because we have different experiences and we look at things differently.

Our culture has changed. It’s interesting how the argument about cinematography and its future has been focused almost exclusively on whether it’s to be digital or analog, which I think is absurd. It’s an absurd conceit to imagine that this is really the battlefield. That’s not the battlefield. That’s not the pivotal issue. The pivotal issue is the degree to which cinematographers will retain their authority and their vision. This has nothing to do with the camera, the format of origination or whether it’s a chip or a piece of film in the gate. There was a big hue and cry, a lot of concerns when the Kodak and Panavision Preview system came into being and was being widely used on sets a few years ago. It was feared that somehow this would erode the cinematographer’s authority. If an AD walked up and saw you looking at a print from the Preview camera, and if it looked halfway decent to him, that he could legitimately say, ‘oh, looks good to me, you must be ready.’ The truth is that any director of photography who has no legitimate comeback for that deserves to lose the argument. If you don’t have any more cachet or any more credibility than to acquiesce – in other words, if you can’t just say, ‘I’m not ready yet, and by the way, you know, this picture is just one small increment in the process here.’ Obviously, you have to work in a timely fashion. Talk to any of our most highly esteemed cinematographers, and you’ll find the reason they work a lot is not only because they gifted; it’s also because they know how to get the job done on time and on budget.

ICG: We know that you recently completed a Project Greenlight Film, The Battle of Shaker Heights, with a couple of first-time directors. We are not going to ask a lot about that experience, because there is an article in ICG magazine and on the website. But in general, from the perspective of your experience, what advice do you have for students and other young filmmakers?

ACKERMAN: My advice in the near term is to do the best work you can every chance you get. This sounds really simplistic, but I think that if you want to be a cinematographer, you should shoot film every chance you get. If you want to direct, you should direct every chance you get. If you want to write, you should write. I think if you are looking to some hypothetical future in which strategically you should do this or that, like work at a talent agency on the periphery of the business hoping to make contacts, is a bogus notion. I think you must be relentlessly focused and true to your vision. Volunteer for every project that you can that’s reasonably well-conceived. It’s really important to network with your peers because generally those peer relationships are going to wind up someday as working relationships. You need the stamina it takes to keep focused on your dreams. The chances of you landing the perfect job immediately out of film school are remote. You’ve got to be prepared for the long haul. When I came to Hollywood, it was essentially a closed shop. I know lots of people today working in different disciplines who are doing exactly what they set out to do. They were the ones who stayed. The ones who got discouraged after half a year of working at a fast food restaurant buckled and disappeared. It also takes a certain amount of luck. I have never had any employment that was not directly involved with what I wanted to do in this business. I’m really grateful for that.