Empire of the Sun an Exotic Journey

With Empire of the Sun, Allen Daviau, ASC has set a handful of firsts and one third. It is the first production he has been involved with to span three countries and two continents, (four if you count an added sequence shot near Bakersfield), the first to use an entirely British crew, and the first by a major studio in China. The aforementioned third involves Daviau's ongoing collaboration with director Steven Spielberg. Empire of the Sun marks their third feature film together. It is, as Daviau said, "a record of sorts."

Based on J.G. Ballard's autobiographical novel, Empire of the Sun depicts the life of Jim (played by Christian Bale), a young English boy in Shanghai before and during the World War II Japanese takeover. It is a grim portrait of the horrors of war and the survival of the human spirit. Filming began on March 1st of this year, but preparations were required long before that.

"I'd say the major thing for anybody going to China is: you can bring in what you want, but the wheels have to start running very early," Allen Daviau said. "The thing of getting people and equipment in and out of China is something that takes months of advance planning. You understood in November (1986) you weren't going to shoot until March, but the decision on what equipment would go to China had to be made right then, because equipment going by sea took over two months' travel to get around the world.

"The Chinese really want to encourage co-production; you can feel it from the first time you talk to them," Daviau added. "I personally talked a lot with a man named Yuan Miaojun at the Shanghai Film Studios Film Co-Production Department. His English was superb and his knowledge and love of film extraordinary. But the Chinese were not used to having things move with the speed that we are. They were not used to changes being made and accommodated. I'd say this is not just China but many other countries. We - the British and Americans - are very impatient people and we wanted to have the option to change things right up to the last minute."

Fortunately for the production designer, Norman Reynolds, there were some portions of Shanghai that required few changes at all to pass for the prewar era. The major thing that had to be changed was all of the signs," Daviau said. "After the war the characters in Chinese writing were greatly simplified so every sign we photographed needed to be changed back to the more complex characters."

From the beginning it was understood that China would only be used when it was absolutely necessary - scenes of the city and where thousands of Chinese extras were needed. The Sunningdale area in England was substituted for the English settlement in Shanghai, and Spain was chosen for the prison camp outside Shanghai where young Jim is eventually taken. Although economic considerations and the desire to use English actors resulted in a variety of locations, each had to pass for China and intercut together. Obviously one cinematographer was needed throughout and, in order for Daviau to be that cinematographer, special permission had to be obtained.

"When Steven became interested in doing the project, it wasn't known whether I could be involved, because permission would have to be obtained from British immigration for me to be able to work that time in England," Daviau explained. "Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall, our producers, made application to British immigration and to the film producer's association over there for permission for me to come into England for those three weeks that we shot there."

Many on the crew were not strangers to Daviau or Spielberg. Norman Reynolds and special effects supervisor Kit West had both worked on the Indiana Jones films. Daviau had met second unit director of photography Jimmy Devis while both were shooting in Mexico city, the former on The Falcon and the Snowman, the latter on Dune.

"Mike Roberts was the A camera operator," Daviau continues. "His reputation is so solid and his demeanor so cheerful and confident that any cameraman would be very fortunate to have him. The key grip or camera grip as they call it in England is a guy named Colin Manning and he had worked for Steven and Doug Slocombe on Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. In fact, Colin was the man who ran the dolly around the stage at Elstree during the mini-car chase sequence. I had visited that set and had been very impressed by Colin and his virtuosity with that dolly.

"When I met Mike I said, 'I want you to pick the B camera operator and focus pullers that you know.' Our B camera operator was Barry Brown who had, I gather, only a few years in features. He delivered magnificently. He handled B camera on the first unit and along with John Muskall and Mike Fitt, joined Jimmy Devis on director Frank Marshall's second unit. That unit produced some of the most compelling images in the film.

"What's so fascinating is that these crews do so much international work," Daviau emphasized. "They've been everywhere, and because so many British pictures are international productions, our key suppliers such as Samuelsons and Lee Lighting are used to sending off equipment around the world. They know all the shipping procedures that have to be done so if you need something in a hurry you get it in a hurry."

The logistics of a production such as Empire of the Sun are staggering. Not only were the moves between countries planned to the last detail, but even within locations in England and Soain, men and materials had to be carefully coordinated. "All our production representatives - Chris Kenny, Janet Yang, Paul Tivers, and Ted Morley - had to keep track of so many little details about that we had to have. We had some tricky stuff with equipment coming in. In England we were backing out of the country shooting. 'Can the zooms go today? Can the long tele's go tomorrow?' Shipping stuff out was complicated, because you don't want to send it out too soon and then need it, but maybe you know you'll need it one day in Spain…

"Our chief focus puller, Eamonn O'Keefe, was a master of logistics and kept a staggering amount of camera gear ready for use."

In addition to keeping track of equipment going into China, there was the problem of what to do with the film coming out. Daviau had considered early in pre-production whether to use labs in Asia for developing and processing dailies. The reputation of Shaw Brothers in Hong Kong and Far East Labs in Tokyo was excellent. There was just one question mark: communication.

"I talked to others who shot there, and generally the answer was that technically the labs in Asia are wonderful, but with the vagaries of language…you might not be able to communicate the subtleties of certain things and have them come back correctly the first time. It isn't just a matter of translation, but of understanding.

"So we judged airline schedules and figured that it could be done sending everything back to Technicolor London just as efficiently as anywhere else. Every night, if we cut off at a certain point in the afternoon, we could make an evening flight from Shanghai to Hong Kong and get it on the Cathay Pacific flight in Hong Kong which would get the film through to London the next morning. That would put, say Monday's footage in London Tuesday morning and in the bath in London Tuesday night. I would get a report out of London Wednesday morning (London time) which would be for me in Shanghai late Wednesday afternoon."

Unfortunately for Daviau, the ease of shipping film from Shanghai to London could not be reversed. "Upon checking with customs brokers and agents it was determined that it would be asking for a lot of difficulties to try and return dailies to Shanghai so that we could see them," He explained. "So we made the decision that makes every cinematographer shudder, which is to fly it blind - so I would not see any dailies for the three-plus weeks in Shanghai."

For Daviau, this prospect was not comforting considering that the film's largest crowd scenes would be shot in China, many with pyrotechnics and smoke. "Smoke is extremely subjective as to exactly how obscured a scene should be at a given moment. That is why you simply must learn to trust what you see when you're standing by the camera. I don't think Freddie Young saw any dailies out in the desert on Lawrence of Arabia. He had his telexes from the lab every day and that's how they did it and we did the same thing. Except I also had the advantage of excellent telephonic communications from Shanghai. With satellites today the quality of the fidelity over a distance from Shanghai to London or Los Angeles was very good and it was virtually direct dial."

The eight-hour time difference between Shanghai and London was a convenient one. Evening in Shanghai was morning in London and after each day's filming, Daviau could contact Bob Crowdy at Technicolor for a report on the latest dailies. In addition, he received daily telexes that listed printing lights, reinforcing the judgments he had made during film. "When you're out there you feel awfully alone if you don't have somebody seeing the film for you," he explained. "Particularly when you have literally 5,000 people show up as extras on the first day.

"The communication would be with Bob Crowdy and with Michael Kahn, our editor," Daviau said. "We would come in at six o'clock at night, I would call Technicolor London and it would be ten in the morning there. Both Steven and I could talk with these people and find out what their thought was. We had Bob for technical evaluation and Michael Kahn for story judgment and that's the way we shot China."

The overcast skies of Shanghai in March were considered desirable by Daviau. Not only would the dark clouds intercut well with those of England in the spring, but from an artistic standpoint, they conveyed the sense of impending doom that pervaded pre-war Shanghai. "For the look o f the film, we wanted to have the lushness of his home and the kind of lifestyle he led, the mass chaos that was Shanghai, and a total feeling of apprehension. We establish that Jim is a very protected, spoiled boy."

This sheltered lifestyle is brought to an abrupt end with the sudden attack by the Japanese. Amid the chaos of the panic stricken city, Jim is separated from his parents and forced to survive on his own. For this sequence, streets and intersections in Shanghai were closed to traffic and filled instead with thousands of Chinese extras.

Like The Color Purple, Empire of the Sun was shot in 1:85:1 format with a 1:66:1 hard matte. As with all of Daviau's films, Panavision cameras were used, and Empire was one of the first features to utilize the fast, high quality Primo lenses made by the Leitz Company of Canada for Panavision. In addition to a full complement of Primo lenses, two older Ultra Speed lenses, a 24mm and 29mm, were taken. "The 29 is one of my favorite focal lengths and I just couldn't see doing the film without it," Daviau said.

In addition, a handful of zooms were picked up, along with the two Golden PanaFlex cameras, from Samuelson's in London, among them a 25-250 and a 20-100 Cooke. "Neither Steven or I like to zoom. Occasionally in a parallel tracking move we will hide a zoom or sometimes you're sending out a camera to shop for shots in the big spectacle scenes and the rule is that it is used as a variable prime. We don't want to see the zoom on the screen," Daviau said. He added with a grin, "although occasionally we try one of his infamous dolly/zoom combination shots."

One of the more complicated shots in the crowd sequence involved a seemingly impossible view looking straight down into a Shanghai intersection. "Steven had talked about this one very big shot that, while modified, still came out to be a very spectacular view," Daviau explained. "It involved getting a crane on top of an office building in the center of Shanghai at our key intersection to look straight down into the melee when the Japanese troops are marching in."

The task of installing track across an intersection ten stories high was alleviated, however, by the use of a new crane privately built by a British grip. "Colin (Manning) showed me a brand new setup called a Multicrane," Daviau explained. "When we first approached it, it looked just like a standard camera car with an arm, but this arm would come off the camera car and go onto a standard pipe track dolly. So you could use the arm and the operator and focus puller could ride the crane. You could also put an extension on it and have it go up higher with just the remote control Hot Head. The fact is that you could work it in one scene as a camera car arm and then in the next scene remove it from the chassis of the camera car and go right onto track on the ground.

"It was particularly used with the Hot Head as a remote controlled camera and the most flexible use of this was that the arm itself didn't weigh that much. Colin only took two hours to get the track and the camera crane up to the top of the office building, mount the Hot Head, and put it on so we could do a shot that starts with the camera many feet off the side of the building with the arm projecting out. Of course one of the joys of the Hot Head is that it points absolutely straight down.

"So you are looking down seeing the bottom floors of all four buildings at the corners of the intersection. You're seeing thousands of people running, milling around in the intersection and then as the crane pulls back you're looking down over the backs of the Kuomintang rebels firing down into the crowd. So…where the hell's the camera? Later there is a repeat of that shot and you see that the rebels have been killed and the Japanese soldiers are dragging them away. It's just a phenomenal shot due to the flexibility of that little crane and the Hot Head.

With the Hot Head camera mount, remote controls were used for focusing and - something new to Daviau's technical arsenal - iris control. "The Haden stop changer, which is made in Sweden, is not like any form of f-stop control I have ever used. It allows you to change a stop during a take no matter what lens you're on. The Haden allowed our focus puller, Eamonn (O'Keefe), to change lenses and give me the stop changer very rapidly. You have a control that lets you change the stop from a distance, compared to putting your hand in and trying to turn the stop ring on the lens and getting in the focus puller's way.

"This lets you look at the f-stops on the lens itself and change them while you're walking along, or if the camera is going to be way up in the air and out of sight, they have one of those remote video cameras that is looking at the f-stop ring. You find that this is a tool for massive or for subtle use. It let me do thins that not only would have taken a lot of time to light but would not have been as good. Sometimes being able to follow the actors and slowly open the lens as they go to a darker area is far superior to leaving the stop alone and putting light there.

"We did some bleach-ins where the screen would start completely white. We knew we could do this in an optical, but we decided to go for this on the film so that we could see it. So often you say, 'We'll do this as an optical,' and it never gets done because nobody sees it at the time. Besides, by doing it this way we stay first generation and I think one of the goals of every cinematographer is to keep as much of the film first generation as possible so that you don't have the quality change when an optical pops in."

Daviau noted that each camera had video taps, and that Spielberg utilized them even more than on The Color Purple. "Steven really got into using video assist basically because we used the Hot Head remote control camera so much that he got used to the monitor being there. When it becomes a useful tool it is not so much for playback, but while the shot is running, as an extension of the viewfinder for communication between the director and camera crew."

Shanghai was also the location of almost the only studio work on the film. The set, a cabin interior inhabited by Basie (the protector/exploiter who takes Jim under his wing), was built in case of foul weather. "We didn't need to use it as an emergency stage," Daviau said, "(but we) shot it in Shanghai because the set was built there. I think we had a total of two and a half days on real motion picture stages in the whole picture. The rest was all location. Basie's ship's cabin was shot at Shanghai Film Studios, also the interior of the hotel room when the war starts was at Elstree, and I think we did a poor man's process shot there of Basie's truck at night. We have some blue screen scenes that were done not on a sound stage, but in a warehouse in Trebujena, Spain that we converted to a stage."

With the three weeks of shooting in China completed, the production moved to the relative familiarity of London. Daviau noted that in accordance with Spielberg's philosophy concerning location moves, there was very little down time. "In the case of China to England I think there was a total interruption of five days. We shot Tuesday, and Wednesday through Sunday was travel and back to work Monday. And it's not just a matter of money, it's a matter of momentum - all these departments; camera, grip, electric, special effects, everything - in both China and England. We were backing out the door shooting in order to get equipment and all these people around the world.

"The joy of shooting in England was that I could go to the lab every morning and see my previous day's footage before going out to the location. When we went on to Spain we set up a screening room and Samuelsons sent us a wonderful projectionist and two portable projectors. Seeing film on a daily basis allows the cinematographer to apply the subtle touches that give a film its look."

In England, scenes of Jim's pre-war childhood were filmed in Sunningdale, a London suburb. In addition, an abandoned gasworks building (not far from the one Stanley Kubrick demolished for Full Metal Jacket) was used for the Japanese detention center, the place where, as Daviau described it, the healthy prisoners are sent on to interment camps and the sick are left to die. It is there that Jim finds his determination to survive.

The gigantic interior space was pre-rigged with speed and flexibility in mind. "What I always like to do," Daviau said, "is to be able to light something for the biggest, widest shot possible and then move right in and shoot closer coverage with a minimum amount of modification and then jump out wide again if we see something else. To make this possible, my gaffer, Peter Bloor and his electrical rigging crew installed the most complex lighting setup of the film."

The entire ceiling was rigged with units called space lights. Each fixture contains six quartz lamps that can be controlled in sets of three. "You can have them on half, or on full," Daviau explained. "The beauty of these things is that you put black skirts of cloth on all of them and, even from an enormous height, they tend to be quite specific in the area to which they give a top ambience. We worked with full blue gel on them. The only tungsten lamps in the detention center interior were the practical fixtures that you see. Otherwise we assumed that all the light coming through would have been window light.

"We had 55 space lights individually controlled. In other words, where they plugged in up top they had a man the whole time, and I could say, 'Give me the row farthest away, and then give us a cluster of four central ones here,' and he could switch them individually. I think we had them all on only for one shot and the rest of the time they were used to accent specific areas.

"Providing back light to the scene were intense beams of 'sunlight' shooting from the building's high window openings down through the smoky interior. For this, a total of eight brutes were mounted on crane platforms and directed through the opposite windows. We used the new Eastman 5297 high speed daylight stock in there and were able to achieve some very haunting images contrasting the sickly blue daylight with the violent orange of the cooking fires."

On such a complex lighting setup, the differences between working with British crews and American crews became evident. While the process of filmmaking is essentially the same, Daviau was surprised and often pleased with the variations in philosophy. Several differences were in the organization of the crew. "The camera grip and his assistants are members of the camera crew," Daviau explained, "and the grips only attend to, and are only responsible for, the placement and movement of the camera, be it on a dolly, crane, camera car, Titan, up on rostrums or special rigs off sides of buildings. Anything to do with the placement and movement of the camera is the grip's province. Unlike in the U.S., the grips have nothing to do with lighting control.

"All lighting control - things such as silks, scrims, flags - that is all handled through the electrical department of the gaffer and the sparks. For the first week or so I kept turning to Colin and saying, "Well, if we put a 12 by 12…" and he would say, 'Not me, Gov, him.' Once I got used to it, it was a really good arrangement. Colin could concentrate on getting that camera where we wanted it, and on a Spielberg film that is a plenty big enough job."

For Daviau a more subtle difference was found in the accustomed British methods of lighting and given scene. "You may end up with the exact same look," Daviau said, "but how it's done is different in philosophy. The British do not normally use metal diffusion in their lamps - singles and doubles. Of course, American cameramen do. A single reduces half a stop, a double takes a full stop. We do this all the time. Peter Bloor, who has worked with American cameramen as well as British, says the American system is that light control is calibrated - we want things in terms of half a stop, or a full stop. The whole challenge for a British cameraman is to light a scene putting the proper lamp in the proper place achieving the proper spread and intensity and doing as little to it as possible - whereas the American philosophy is to get a big enough lamp up there with enough intensity and then we'll do something with it.

"Peter and I would kid each other about which is the more elegant solution," Daviau grinned. "I had a joke with him: The British cameraman wants the proper lamp in the proper place at the proper intensity. The American cameraman likes the same thing except with a double in it."

This was the first film in which Daviau had the opportunity to utilize three different negative stocks. Most day exteriors and many day interiors were done with Eastman 5247, but some very dark days in Shanghai called for the added speed of the new 5297 daylight balance stock.

"I had tested it in England on a fairly average rainy day and found it to have a finer grain structure than 5294 with the 85 filter," Daviau noted. "I wound up rating it at ASA 160 to achieve the high 30s, low 40s printing lights I want to have with the high speed stocks. When we got to China, most of the overcast days were equivalent to England and 5247 was sufficient. One morning, though, we were shooting the very large movie theater intersection that the family passes through on their way to the masquerade party. The day started dark and got darker. At 11 in the morning with the ball of the meter pointed straight up at the sky, the reading was T/2.5 at ASA 160!"

On several other occasions the new stock was used to get some extra shots after the light was "gone" for the 47. These intercut very well, but Daviau emphasizes that such mixing of stocks inside a scene should be for emergency use only.

The 97 was also used for many day interiors inside the abandoned family home. The 5294 was used for night interiors and for the night exteriors, particularly the large scale night bombing raid and the scenes at the hospital that follow.

"Again, the new high speed stocks continue to give us greater flexibility in dealing with a wide range of situations where, in the past, shooting would have stopped or very elaborate lighting would have been required," Daviau said.

From England, the production shifted to Jerez, in southern Spain. It was here that Norman Reynolds turned what amounted to a gigantic vacant lot into a prison camp in the countryside near Shanghai, complete with a nearby working airfield and hangars. "Norman gave this place a whole history," Daviau explained, "because obviously it wasn't built as a prison camp. He described it as a railroad freight turntable to turn the railway engines around and there was an agent's office and storage area. This is what it was before the war and the Japanese took it over."

It was here that some of Empire's most dynamic scenes were filmed, including an attack on the airfield by American Mustang fighter planes. Young Jim, infatuated with airplanes and flying, is mystified by a Kamikaze ceremony he witnesses on the nearby airfield. After the pilots bid farewell to their comrades, the enter their aircraft and proceed to take off. Shortly after leaving the airstrip, however, one suddenly explodes, marking the beginning of the Mustang attack.

The attack was shot in just three days. Daviau credits the efficiency of the sequence to Spielberg's solid pre-planning, with assistant director David Tomblin, the aerial flight coordinators, and Kit West and his special effects crew. "One of our planes would come through firing out a whole range of machinegun fire, and these explosions are coming from this guy moving the striker down the striker board. He never missed once, never got ahead or behind. As (the pilots) stopped firing the machine guns and lifted up to go over the hangars, they'd drop a plastic bomb. You see the plastic bomb bounce into the door of the hangar and then - baroom - up would go the gasoline charge planted under the hangar. "It's as close as I ever want to come to war."

What Daviau remembers more, however, are the simpler, more dramatic scenes involving Jim's emotional trauma. "The film may not be what people would think of as a traditional spectacle picture," Daviau insisted, "and I think they're going to be thinking of it as that. Not that there aren't scenes of spectacle in it, but you have a definite story of a boy coming of age in incredible circumstances.

"I think my favorite scene in the film is where Jim returns to the European dormitory where he had lived with an English couple, Mr. And Mrs. Victor. He comes in and Mrs. Victor sees him and allows him to come back, gives him back his bed, and unpacks his possessions. He is so overcome by her unexpected tenderness that he breaks down and cries. It's an amazing, very affecting scene and my favorite example of the emotional changes Jim goes through."

Daviau feels that the timing or grading of the final print at the lab is one of the cinematographer's finest creative opportunities, particularly where different film stocks have been used. "Timing gives you the chance to give each scene in the film its appropriate 'character' through manipulation of color and density," Daviau emphasized. "In the case of some of 5297 footage, our color timer at Technicolor, (Los Angeles), Bob Raring, was able to remove some of the warmth that seems to be characteristic in the shadow areas of that stock and give those scenes a more somber quality. At other times, neutral scenes were warmed up and still others matched exactly to the dailies. Sometimes a shot that may be been printed 'incorrectly' in dailies may provide inspiration for the timing of the rest of the scene. I feel that if I am not present for the final timing of a film at the lab I am really missing out on one of the most fulfilling aspects of cinematography."

Perhaps more than any other, Daviau holds a unique perspective on the growth in Steven Spielberg's work. Their relationship spans 20 years, beginning with Amblin, the short film which led to Spielberg's first contact with Universal. Two decades, three features, various short films and "odds and ends" later, Daviau sees the collaboration as part of a cinema tradition. "I think this is something that has happened historically throughout film," he said, regarding repeat collaborations between director and cinematographer. "It really helps, because you speak to each other in shorthand. You know what the other is looking for. You have to be careful and not cannibalize your own work, yet there are certain things that a certain kind of shot and a certain kind of light say. They convey what is in the mind of the filmmaker.

"It is very easy for me to know that if Steven wants to look at something in a certain kind of 24mm or 29mm close up, I can sense what the background is going to be and what kind of background action he'll want staged. I will say that in Empire of the Sun he said from the beginning that he was not going to shoot as much coverage on this as he would normally, and he did not."