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Burum
and De Palma Team up Again on This article originally appeared in 1998 in Film & Video Director Brian De Palma and cinematographer Stephen H. Burum, ASC continue their collaboration with Snake Eyes, a murder mystery produced and released by Paramount Pictures. This is their seventh collaboration. The others are Body Double, The Untouchables, Casualties of War, Raising Cain, Carilto’s Way and Mission Impossible. Snake Eyes is set in an Atlantic City casino and boxing arena, where a top government official is assassinated during a championship-boxing match. Detective Rick Santoro (Nicolas Cage) searches for both the truth, the killer and also for a missing part of his own soul. The ensemble cast features Gary Sinise, Kevin Dunn, Carla Gugino, John Heard, Alex Nobles and Stan Shaw, along with thousands of extras. Burum studied theater arts at the University of California, Los Angeles, while the legendary cinematographers Charles G. Clarke, ASC and James Wong Howe, ASC were teaching classes in the art of filmmaking. They made a deep impression. After graduation, Burum shot nature films for the Disney My Family is a Menagerie series. His big break came when a fellow UCLA grad Francis Ford Coppola tabbed Burum to shoot second unit for Apocalypse Now with Vittorio Storaro, AIC, ASC. He also shot second unit for The Black Stallion with Caleb Deschanel, ASC. Burum’s first mainstream credit as a cinematographer was The Escape Artist, which was directed by Deschanel. His other credits include Rumblefish and The Outsiders, two lyrically stylized films directed by Coppola. Burum’s peers have nominated him for ASC Outstanding Achievement Awards for The Untouchables, The War of the Roses and Hoffa. To put that in proper perspective, only a handful of other cinematographers have earned that distinction. Burum won for Hoffa, which also received an Oscar nomination. Following are excerpts of a conversation with Burum: QUESTION: What do you think motivated De Palma to make this film? BURUM: This is basically a story about a crooked cop who chooses to do the right thing. You’ll find that type of moral thread running through all of his films. This murder occurs during a championship-boxing match. A cop (Detective Rick Santoro played by Cage) questions a lot of people and each one of them has their own version of reality. We peel away the layers until the audience discovers the truth. QUESTION: Are the characters superficial or are they developed in depth? BURUM: During the first 15 or 16 minutes, the audience gets to know all the characters and that sets the stage for the murder. By then, you understand everything about everyone, and that’s important as you follow what happens to them. QUESTION: Is there a reason why it was Atlantic City instead of Las Vegas? BURUM: It had to be Atlantic City because there is a hurricane which causes a tidal wave to roll over the boardwalk. It floods a walkway that leads into and out of the arena. That’s an important story point and an exciting scene. QUESTION: How do you create a tidal wave? BURUM: We shot most of that sequence in a parking lot at a high school in Atlantic City, which we flooded with water from dump trucks. We couldn’t use the actual boardwalk for that part of the scene, because the water we dumped would have washed away the sand dunes on the beach. QUESTION: How much was real and what part was CGI? BURUM: We shot all of the elements, including the boardwalk and the flood where we dumped the water. The walkway gets filled with debris, so it has to look real. ILM composited and enhanced the pieces we created and they added a matte painting to the top of the building. QUESTION: Why was Snake Eyes shot it in Montreal? BURUM: Most of the story is staged in an arena. We had to find a big enough arena that we could occupy for months. The Forum in Montreal was perfect. It is an old hockey arena that was shut down. We also shot in a casino, on the boardwalk and at a schoolyard in Atlantic City, and we had some sets in a warehouse in Montreal. QUESTION: Is Brian De Palma a particularly visually astute director? BURUM: He’s very good at staging, figuring out how to move his actors in the frame. But the main thing about Brian is that he’s a great actor’s director. He really is good with dialog and getting the actors to deliver great performances. In this picture, he develops the characters, plays them off one another, and he very skillfully reveals more and more of the puzzle until you get the picture. QUESTION: How did you handle the logistics of shooting in two countries? BURUM: It was like shooting two movies. I kept my camera crew intact in both countries, but there were different grips, electricians, props and even separate art departments in Atlantic City and Montreal. Anne Pritchard (production designer) did a great job in maintaining continuity. QUESTION: How did you select a film format for framing this story? BURUM: You always have to see what the director wants to do with the story. Based on Brian’s vision, the anamorphic (2.4:1) format was the obvious choice. QUESTION: Why? It sounds like this story mainly happens in confined interiors. BURUM: You have more flexibility in 2.4:1 (aspect ratio) because you can shoot two-shots as close-ups and show the actors in their environment. Brian wanted to show the audience how people reacted to dialog, and he wanted to put them in the setting. We used the whole frame, edge to edge. QUESTION: Why did you choose anamorphic rather than Super 35 since they’re the same (2.4:1) aspect ratio? BURUM: Super 35 has 60 percent less picture area, so it’s not as sharp and the colors aren’t as saturated. There is also a difference in the focal lengths of lenses. If you want the same width as a 25 mm lens in anamorphic, you use a 50 mm lens. That gives you more of a feeling of compression. It’s a very subtle thing, but if you’re doing a picture where you want to control the relationship of the sizes of people in the frame to indicate who is more powerful, you’re better off shooting in anamorphic format. Snake Eyes has a good script with good actors and a talented director who wanted them to play long scenes with two-shots and movement. The size of the characters in the frame are big enough so we don’t have to cut-away to close-ups to see reactions to dialog. Brian wanted every shot to add something to the story. His plan had a reason for every shot. QUESTION: How specifically does he storyboard? BURUM: He storyboards scenes where you have to know what all the pieces are to make it work. Also, if you have an effects sequence, it has to be precise so all the elements work together. If it’s an ordinary dialog scene, it’s usually not storyboarded. QUESTION: How specific is De Palma with you at the beginning of a project about the look he wants and the feelings he wants to evoke from characters and scenes? BURUM: He’s very specific. He wanted a very fast pace and dark images. QUESTION: What does fast pace mean? It can be interpreted in different ways. BURUM: It means that once we got going, we weren’t going to stop for anything. There is a lot of energy that comes across in the way the actors deliver dialog and relate with one another. We were shooting four to five pages a day, which is unusual for a feature. The delivery of dialog is very quick, sharp and precise. QUESTION: What does very dark mean to you? BURUM: It means there are of lot of very black shadows. It had to do with the mood Brian wanted to establish. There are a lot of details hidden in the shadows that we can either reveal or leave to the audience’s imagination. There are bright and dark areas in the arena. We didn’t put seats and people in the black areas. It just kind of falls off and you assume that there are people there. I think it’s a kind of interesting look. QUESTION: Can you describe the mood that goes with that look? BURUM: It’s the opposite of what we did on Mission Impossible, where all the corridors and hallways were brightly lit with no place to hide. In Snake Eyes there is an assassin lurking in the shadowy tunnels that surround the arena. You feel the assassin and his cohort’s presence. Darkness becomes part of the story. QUESTION: Is he responsive to suggestions that vary from the plan? BURUM: If you see something that makes his vision better, he’ll listen and take advantage of it. That applies to everyone, including the actors and the editor. QUESTION: Did you shoot with one or multiple cameras? BURUM: Most of Snake Eyes was shot with one camera. For the assassination scene and the boxing shots we usually used two cameras. Basically, we used multiple cameras for more coverage on scenes that would have taken a long time to re-stage. QUESTION: Does he use video-assist? BURUM: We usually look at the video tap of the rehearsal and the first take, and after that we don’t pay much attention to it. Some inexperienced film directors forget the images are going to be on a screen that is 60 feet wide. They look at the monitor and think they need another close-up, but in a normal two-shot in anamorphic format the actors’ faces are huge. Directors who look at monitors all the time tend to want more coverage, because they can’t see all the subtleties in the images. Brian stands by the camera, where he can see the nuances, and he trusts what his eyes tell him is on the film. QUESTION: Does the audience see this film as spectators or participants? BURUM: It’s a little of both. Brian is a master of using subjective and objective shots. Sometimes you see the story from a character’s point of view. If the character’s viewpoint is obstructed, that’s part of the story. Sometimes he’ll go from an objective shot to a subjective shot. Other times, he’ll do it all with subjective shots. That is probably the key to his technique. He has a great sense of how to manipulate what the audience sees and from what perspective. QUESTION: Did you shoot in an actual Atlantic City casino and if so, how did was it arranged? BURUM: We shot in the casino from 10 p.m. until 10 a.m., which is their slowest time. We never took over totally, but they gave us a section, where we staged our shots with extras and actors who blended with the customers. I would guess there were hundreds of people in some of those scenes. Casinos are usually pretty bright, but of course there is no natural light. When we were shooting, there were about 20 footcandles coming from above and from the slot machines and the lights in the pits. QUESTION: How did you augment the existing light? BURUM: You reinforce what they have at the location and try to make it look the way it looks to your eye on film A casino is supposed to feel kind of warm and bright. It’s supposed to be a place where people are having a good time. We re-directed lights, put in some more powerful bulbs in fixtures and put some gels on them to add color. There were places, like in the elevator, where there wasn’t enough light, so we put some fluorescent tubes with a gold gel on them on the ceiling. We added light in areas where we were shooting long scenes and augmented places they walked through. QUESTION: How did you use camera movement? BURUM: Around 65 percent of the film was shot with a Steadicam. I’ll give you an example. In the beginning, Nicolas Cage’s character is in his element. It’s a big fight night and everybody is out having a good time. He’s meeting and greeting people. It’s like he’s a bumblebee and the crowd is the flowers. We wanted to capture that organic energy, so we were following him with a Steadicam. The other 35 percent of the time we were in either fixed camera positions or tracking on a dolly. It depended on the scenes. QUESTION: How about your choice of lenses? BURUM: I used the older Type C lenses, because I wanted to come in very tight in some shots and make the characters big in the foreground. In some scenes, the camera is within two feet of the actors. These lenses aren’t as sharp or contrasty as the Primos, but they are smaller and they focus closer and they’re a little kinder to the actors because the images are a little softer. QUESTION: How about lighting the arena? BURUM: In the arena we were shooting pretty high light level, 80 footcandles. QUESTION: How does that jibe with this being a dark movie? BURUM: Today’s Kodak Vision camera films have a very broad range of exposure latitude. A simple way to explain that for non-technical people is that you can record a very broad range of contrast between the brightest and darkest elements of a scene. If you really want deep black areas in a scene, you also want really bright highlights for the contrast. So, part of the set was in relatively bright light, but there are also areas with very little light that will go totally black. QUESTION: So, you aren’t just talking about using ‘fast’ film to shoot in dim light to record a feeling of darkness? BURUM: It’s an out-moded idea that you use a fast film when you don’t want to use a lot of light. Fast film allows you a more normal depth of focus, like the human eye at a reasonable light level. QUESTION: How much of the fight is in the film? BURUM: I think there is about two minutes worth of boxing. We covered it as though it were a regular Pay Per View event with two tape cameras stationed high in the booth and two hand held at ring side. The murder is committed during the fight, so the tapes are replayed on the monitors when people tell their stories. There are also images from security cameras from around the hotel. The point of view is accurate, and we made no attempt to match the image quality from camera to camera. The colors and brightness don’t match. QUESTION: So, you were very precise in creating looks? BURUM: We even shot some scenes that are described by different witnesses so the action matches the point of view exactly right. If a person is 5 feet 3 inches tall, the lens is set at the height of that person’s eyes. QUESTION: How did you light the arena so it looks natural? BURUM: There’s kind of a scoreboard over the top on the ring that motivates lighting the boxers and it spills light into the first three rows. There are footlights lining the aisles that go up to the exits and a red light at the exits. Those were built into the set. They gave us a very nice graphic pattern and symbolically they kind of point to the tunnels where the assassin could be hiding. The seats are blue, the little footlights are white and blue, and the exit signs are red. That basically provides the color motif that Ann Pritchard chose — red, white, blue and silver — because there’s kind of a patriotic celebration atmosphere. Instead of backlighting the crowd, as I would have normally done. There were pools of light where you see people and dark areas. If we backlit, the audience would recognize the empty spots. It’s kind of a leopard spot pattern. We used the 500-speed [Kodak] Vision film for everything but one exterior scene where I used [Eastman EXR] 5293 film. QUESTION: What do you do to get a feeling for a new film? BURUM: I did a lot of testing and experimenting during prep. I’d push it a little to see what happens if you under- or overexpose it in different situations. We used Deluxe Labs, in Toronto, so we were seeing film dailies the next day. QUESTION: How does this new technology affect how you work? BURUM: It provokes your imagination. Anytime you get a new tool, you hope it’s going to help you get what’s in your head on the screen. QUESTION: How many people did you actually have in the arena? BURUM: We had a core of about 1,500 people, except for one day when we had between 5,000 and 7,000. The core people were in costumes and makeup and they sat in the same seats everyday. They provided the atmosphere. There was never a single problem during the five to six weeks we shot in the arena. They were always there on time. QUESTION: Every picture you’ve done with De Palma has at least one signature 360 degree shot. How about Snake Eyes? BURUM: There are one or two shots around the ring, but we never show the audience the entire crowd. They are just background. QUESTION: How did De Palma use camera movement subjectively? BURUM: We would follow one person, who led us to another person, and then to someone else. An actor calls out and the camera moves to the voice. There is a long, moving shot of Cage early in the film that changes between objective and subjective several times. His character is in a confrontation with a drug dealer. They are walking and talking and he picks up a girl. He and the girl walk into the arena together. They are talking and he’s hitting on her when his cell phone rings. It’s his wife. He tells her he’s busy. He keeps walking around the edges of the ring, looking at and talking to people he sees, including his best buddy, a Major, played by Gary Sinise. They walk and talk together. All of this is one long shot. QUESTION: How do you figure out how to light the actors? BURUM: Generally I watch them during rehearsals. We also shot some makeup tests. That’s when you get to know them. You really need to understand the story and how they are being presented to the audience. You don’t want to make someone look glamorous if they are supposed to be hung over and have dark circles under their bloodshot eyes. That’s a disservice to the actor, to the story and to the character. I think the most important thing is that you have to provide an environment that is comfortable for the actors to perform. In effect, you are part of their audience. You have to figure out some way to give some sort of a feedback. I always have my camera operators make a comment at the end of the take. If it’s good and everything worked well, they say so right there. If there’s difficult staging or a complex camera move and they get it right, we say you did that exactly right. We need to tell them they’ve got that part taken care of, so they can concentrate on other things. I do the same thing with dailies. If I see something that is particularly good, I tell the actors. It makes everybody feel good. QUESTION: Is there any signature lighting on any of the characters? BURUM: Nicolas Cage’s character evolves from bad cop to good cop, so there was a transition in how we lit him. After the assassination, Gary Sinise’s character is feeling guilty. That changed his lighting. We make him look more vulnerable. QUESTION: Did anything change over the course of shooting this movie, the look, the style, the way it was shot, the way characters were depicted? BURUM: You always get better as you go along because you learn about the people and get better at lighting them. You can start to play the nuances in people’s faces.
# (Kodak, Eastman, EXR, Vision and 5293 are trademarks.)
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