Allen Daviau Explores the Nether
World of Fearless

A new relationship between a cinematographer and director is like a budding romance. Is it true love, or just a temporary infatuation? With that question in mind…We asked Allen Daviau, ASC about working with Peter Weir on Fearless. How can you tell if the chemistry with a director is right?

Answer: You just know. You feel it immediately.

"We never had a conversation before this film," says Daviau. "But I knew him like an old friend through his films. When I heard he wanted to talk about a script, I didn't ask what it was about. I just said I wanted to shoot it."

Besides, it's very un-Daviau for him to be that impulsive when it comes to emotionally committing to a film. But let's put that into proper perspective. It wasn't always that way. Daviau grew up in Los Angeles, and got interested in photography in high school. There are legendary tales about him talking his way past studio gate guards so he could watch cinematographers ply their art. Believe them.

Daviau worked in a photo store, starting in his early twenties, in part because the manager allowed him to buy a 16 mm beaulieu camera at a special manufacturer's discount. In 1968, he shot Amblin for a Long Beach State film student named Steven Spielberg. It became Spielberg's calling card to Hollywood. In subsequent years, Daviau sharpened his craft shooting documentaries, commercials, industrials and educational films.

He reached a plateau in 1979, filming the first of four TV movies, including Jerrold Freedman's The Boy Who Drank Too Much. A few years later, Daviau shot a low-budget feature, William Graham's Harry Tracy. Then in 1981, Spielberg gave him an opportunity to shoot a mainstream feature, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, and Daviau made the most of it, earning his first Oscar nomination in the process. It put his career into orbit.

During the following 10 years, there were more Oscar nominations for Avalon, The Color Purple, The Empire of the Sun and Bugsy. He also won the ASC Outstanding Achievement Award in the Features category twice, for The Empire of the Sun and Bugsy. Daviau also won the BAFTA Award, the English equivalent of an Oscar, for The Empire of the Sun.

It was quite a dozen years. During that period, Daviau worked with some of the top visually oriented directors, including Spielberg, Barry Levinson, John Schlessinger and George Miller. So he was pre-inclined to make a film with Weir. It was like asking a dolphin if it likes to swim. Weir's credits include The Year of Living Dangerously, Gallipoli, Witness, Mosquito Coast and Dead Poets Society.

Like his other films, they are all stories about the human condition with graphic and unforgettable visual depictions. Fearless fits right into that mold. The movie is based on a book authored by Rafael Yglesias, who also wrote the script. It's a meditation that provides nourishment for the soul.

Daviau notes that Fearless is a cerebral film in the sense that it brings audience members face to face with their own mortality and values. It sticks with them long after the lights come on and everyone goes home.

Fearless is set in contemporary times. It opens in the aftermath of a deadly plane crash when Max (Jeff Bridges) and Carla (Rosie Perez) first cross paths. Both are survivors. Max is an upscale architect with a beautiful wife (Isabella Rossellini) and an 11-year-old son. Carla is married to a handyman. They live on the outer fringes of the lower middle class. Their lives become inextricably intertwined.

The film was produced by Spring Creek Productions for distribution by Warner Bros. Its genesis can be traced to producers Paula Weinstein and her husband Mark Rosenberg, who used the story as a lure to attract Weir. Sadly, Rosenberg died before the project was completed.

The pairing of Weir and Daviau was a significant departure for the director, who has previously elected to work with John Seale, ACS, and other cinematographers from his native Australia. "I was very excited about working with Peter," Daviau recalls, "but I also got caught up in the story. There have been plenty of dull movies about people contemplating the essence of their being after a near-death experience. This one is different. It moves as quick as lightning." Daviau zoomed in on what attracted him to Weir.

"His work is intensely cinematic. I can recall images from every film he has made. His characters are always well-drawn. He uses the camera to introduce them to the audience, and also to reveal the texture of the environment. You can never forget his characters in their surroundings."

One of the joys for Daviau in preparation for Fearless was immersing himself in Weir's body of work. Images from many of those films were buried in the recesses of his visual memory. But he watched them again, seeking insights into the director's unique way of thinking. Daviau was particularly intrigued by films from the 1970s, including The Last Wave, Picnic and Hanging Rock, and he marveled at how well the characters suited the landscapes. Daviau and Weir screened a number of other films together, including Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Adventura.

"I wanted Peter to see it on a big screen, because we talked a lot about placing actors in proper environments," Daviau says. "This is a very good example of a film that builds its strength with an accumulation of details over a period of time. Antonioni put his main characters into a remarkable variety of backgrounds, which helps the audience understand the deterioration of their relationship which occur."

Did the reality of working with Weir live up to Daviau's expectations? "It was better," he says. "Peter knew what he wanted, but he was always open to ideas. He loves to share the joy of creation with everyone."

Here's an example: Early in their discussions, Weir and Daviau spoke about Max seeing the world in a different way after the crash.

"There are sequences where the audience sees the story from his point of view, where we wanted the images to jump off the screen," he explains.

Like every film Daviau has shot since E.T., Fearless is contained within the frame of the Academy standard 1:85:1 aspect ratio with a hard matte used to protect the image for the 1.66:1 format typically used in Europe.

"We discussed my preference for shooting this way, and Peter agreed," he says. "I know there are excellent cinematographers who don't feel the same way, and I concede that you can record crisp pictures with today's anamorphic lenses. But I still have serious doubts about the sharpness of the projected anamorphic images in many theatres."

In simple terms, he wants the audience to see the movie the way it is captured on film. Daviau and Weir discussed the pros and cons of shooting certain sequences seen through Max's eyes on 65 mm film. The idea was that those images would be discernibly clearer and sharper. "We shot some tests with the new Panaflex 65 camera," Daviau says. "Panavision was very cooperative. We used a mask which allowed us to use the standard 65 mm frame height. But we cropped the edges from the sides to give us a perfect 1.66:1 aspect ratio. It matched the aspect ratio of the 35 mm film, with much more image area."

Daviau shot three side-by side tests of an extreme close-up using a 100 mm lens on each camera. There was a bellows factor with the lens on the 65 mm camera, resulting in the film being slightly under-exposed every time. But that wasn't the biggest problem. He also shot an exterior test with both the Eastman EXR 5293 and 5248 films. When 35 mm reductions were made from the larger format, they didn't match the image size of the 35 mm negative footage the way Daviau had envisioned. Furthermore, because of the optical intermediate steps taken, there wasn't a sufficient difference in image quality to make a visual impact.

"We agreed that it didn't justify the cost and trouble," he says. But the point is that Weir was willing to experiment in unconventional ways.

How did Daviau get the desired visual impact in this situation? "It came down to lighting objects to give them more texture, shooting in more extreme crosslight so that image contrast heightened the impact," he answers.

Their first discussions about the script occurred during the Spring of 1992. "We agreed that image clarity was the critical issue," Daviau says. "I like images that are open, and speak very clearly, photographically. This film is often a study of faces and eyes. Peter is very respectful of the power of close-ups. He speaks about that topic very eloquently, stating that even painters can't equal the power of the motion picture close-up. We often came in a lot tighter than you normally see on close-ups. We used Jeff's eyes to pull the audience into scenes."

About his use of the word clarity: "Don't confuse it with mere sharpness," Daviau cautions. "By clarity, I mean the audience can read the pictures immediately, and we draw their eyes exactly to where we want them to look. The longer I shoot, the more I understand the possibilities in the range of subtleties you can build into close-ups. You can make the actors attractive or compelling. There are so many techniques. Put an eye highlight a certain spot, and you pull the audience right to that spot on the screen.

"I borrowed something from every film I ever shot on this project. I used a lot of hard light on Bugsy, particularly for shading parts of faces. For the most part, we worked with softer sources on this film, but my gaffer, Larry Wallace, any my key grip Michael Kenner controlled light in ways that allowed us to do some very subtle shadowing on faces." Daviau notes that Weir is the first feature film director he has worked with who likes using the zoom lens.

"He sees it as a legitimate tool," says Daviau. "Sometimes we disguised it. Other times it's blatant."

How did he differentiate?

"It depended on what felt right. Maybe we'd do a little subtle movement with dolly grip Jim Shelton, and then we would blend a zoom into it at the end. I noticed that Peter used that technique on The Last Wave and other films. But I was never conscious of it until we did it ourselves."

Daviau points out that there was a period in film history when zooms were commonly used very effectively. He cites John Alcott's work on Barry Lyndon. "But it often was over-used in television, and people backed off," he says. "If a zoom is used tastefully, it can be a powerful emotional tool."

They didn't start shooting until September 1992, and completed production in early December. Initially, New York was going to be the venue, but Weir decided the settings weren't right, and shifted production to San Francisco

. "I scouted locations with John Stoddart (production designer,) Rafeal, Peter and Wendy (Weir's wife who served as a visual consultant)," Daviau says. "Peter made it clear that he wanted to avoid visual cliches typical of "postcard" photography of the city. There aren't any cable cars or scenes shot from the bottoms of steep hills. He wanted to shoot in the highest parts of the city, looking down. The landscape is obviously San Francisco, but we showed it in a different way. Peter wanted the aura of a Mediterranean seaside community."

They shot in San Francisco for six weeks, almost entirely at practical locations, including restaurants, office buildings, and recognizable landscapes, including a ferry. Even with the emphasis on close-ups, Daviau points out that the use of environments to help establish characters is a patented visual signature for Weir.

The basic imaging tools used by Daviau were non-exotic. He did most of his filming with a Panaflex Platinum camera, often with the new 11:1 24-275 mm Primo zoom lens, a Tiffin Promist filter, and an occasional net to soften the image. Almost all exteriors were recorded on the EXR 250T film 5293, and interiors with the EXR 500T film 5296. To differentiate, he filmed the crash site with the 5248 stock. Clarity was the main visual blueprint.

Daviau shot a series of film tests, which is his normal practice. His preference for using the EXR 5293 for most exteriors had more to with the rich saturation of colors than relative speed (compared to the 100-speed 5248 film). "I felt it was right for the San Francisco exterior look, and after viewing the tests, Peter agreed."

Conversely, he opted for the 5296 film for interiors, mainly because he wanted a little less saturation in those scenes, in addition to the extra stop. Occasionally, he used the 93 stock on interiors and pushed a little more light into the scene, specifically because he wanted the colors to pop.

"It comes down to a matter of taste," he says. "You can use any part of the whole palette. In the scene where Max is in a restaurant with his former high school girlfriend, the bright red strawberries begin a recurring visual motif. I wanted them to be bright red. It was supposed to be mid-afternoon. The shadows were very much on the brown side, and the skin tones were a touch too warm. Technically, the colors seemed to be too warm, and John Bickford, our Technicolor lab contact, asked if we wanted to correct it. I had even shot a gray scale test, which showed we that were accurate. What we were seeing was the reflection of ambient brown and red from the wood and decor. It suited the mood perfectly, so I didn't change a thing."

Basically, the look in San Francisco was more saturated than the crash scene, filmed in Bakersfield, or some sequences shot in Los Angeles.

"Actually, there wasn't much exterior Los Angeles footage," he says, "and it included some night exteriors which were actually set in San Francisco."

Weir had a video tap on the camera, but he didn't use playback as a tool except in the most complex scenes.

"He's not the type to remove himself from the main action, and direct by watching a monitor," says Daviau. "You can generally find him around the camera looking at the actors. He likes to be physically close so he can communicate directly. We kept a small monitor on the camera, positioned so he could glance at it and check set ups.

"Our operator, Paul Babin, worked carefully to keep camera movement organic with that of the cast, whether he was working with dollies, cranes or the remote head. He was a constant source of ideas that kept the images fresh and compelling."

The film opens during the aftermath of the crash. The visual inspiration came from the stark TV news coverage of a real-life plane crash in an Iowa cornfield several years ago. It made a vivid and indelible impression on millions of viewers. The movie begins with a similar dream-like setting. People are wandering through a cornfield. Think of it as a character. Tall cornstalks are waving gently in the wind. Smoke is drifting lazily.

"It's a magnificent location around an actual farm road," says Daviau. "John Stoddart, the designer, had a greensman plant and raise the corn, so it was exactly what we envisioned. He also "decorated" the site with actual sections of wrecked planes. With the smoke, flames, dust and debris and sirens, we all felt we were present at an actual crash."

The audience sees this scene through the eyes of a dispassionate spectator wandering effortlessly through the cornfield. He comes to a highway, where there's a jagged and twisted piece of an airplane's tail sitting on the road. There's a cut-away to a helicopter shot, reminiscent of actual news footage.

A ground camera discovers Max wandering out of the wreckage, carrying an infant with a dazed young boy following in his wake. Rescuers converge. He leaves the boy with them, and goes on looking for the child's mother. Carla is first seen being carried out of the ruins. She screams for her missing baby. A violent explosion pierces the dispassionate mood, and the plane section is quickly consumed by flames. Larry McConkey's steadicam captures telling details of inanimate objects hurles from the wreckage.

Cut-back to Max who still looks neat and seemingly untouched. It verges on being surrealistic. The camera work is straightforward, never intruding on the performances of the actors. Max is guided to a woman looking for her baby. You expect it to be Carla, but it isn't. Afterwards, he taxis to a hotel, where he showers and dresses like it's an ordinary day-until you see him peering into a mirror, studying his face, like he is searching for answers. If you look close enough, you can see it in his eyes: He is beginning to ask why he survived.

It is a point of departure for a journey into the souls of Max and Carla and the nexus of the story. Through a series of events, it becomes evident that their previous lives have become kind of a nether world, where their former values have no meaning. Max isn't the person he used to be. Does that make him crazy? Both of them see the world differently, and the only way to understand that is to literally get inside their skins.

Weir and Daviau achieve that in various ways. Vivid memories intrude on the actors' lives as flashbacks. They are short and intense to the point of being tactile. In one scene, Max is crossing a road in heavy traffic. There is a flashback of an instant on the plane when the sun reflected off a glass held by a passenger. The glare blinds him, as he staggers through the traffic. There are blaring horns and screeching brakes. The audience gasps and holds its collective breath. But Max never falters in his blind strides across the road. Call him fearless.

"We are never too explicit about the physicality of the crash," says Daviau. "It's more often impressionistic." Example: Before the crash, the plane starts to vibrate. Objects are falling out of overhead compartments. You can feel the onset of the crash.

It's an intensely voyeuristic experience for the audience, which walks in Max's shoes most of the time. There are only brief scenes where the picture is seen from the point of view of Carla or Max's wife, Laura.

"There's only one scene where the two women, Carla played by Rosie Perez, and Laura, played by Isabella Rosalini, meet and talk about their love for Max," Daviau recalls. "And they find that they love him in different ways. There is a fair amount of dialogue in the film, but the ultimate clues to the meaning of the story are visual, and you see most of this through Max's eyes."

How does a visually oriented director like Weir communicate concepts like that? "He is very articulate," says Daviau. "He makes comparisons to other films and to art. He uses similes. 'You know how it looks when sunlight bounces off water? That's the light I want. A strange, reflected light.' Peter is very experimental. He'll open new channels of thought and explore them with you. He is also very decisive. If you show him something he likes, he says yes immediately, and that's it. There's no angst; no second thoughts."

Here's one more example: Before color timing the film, Daviau sat in on a music scoring session with Peter Weir and Maurice Jarre. Music was a pivotal element in establishing the mood. It gave Daviau an idea. "I want to gradually bleach the image out by printing it incredibly bright as max crosses the street and then bring it back to normal as he reaches the other side. It will all happen within 15 seconds," he thought.

Weir never flinched. "Let's try it.'"

There is an intense night scene where Max and Carla are in a car. She breaks down and cries out that she has been lying, and feels responsible for her son's death. It's visually punctuated with another flashback. She's seated next to her son, and can't get his seat belt buckled. The stewardess says that's okay. Just hold him. But she can't hold on to him during the crash. Max re-enacts the crash in a most terrifying, death-defying way. In the process, he begins to free Carla from her feelings of guilt.

In another flashback, the plane is making a chilling, grinding noise. Max leaves his business partner to comfort the boy who later follows him off the plane. Is that why his partner died and he survived? Editor William Anderson pieced together a classic montage of images of Max comforting the boy and getting him positioned to survive the crash, blended with visions of the plane crumpling, burning and falling apart on impact.

To shoot that scene, the airplane set was on special effects supervisor Ken Pepio's gimboled rig 20 feet above the stage floor. "The crash happens between 10 and 11 a.m., when the sun is high in the sky," Daviau recounts. "I checked it out on flights between Los Angeles and San Francisco at that time of day. Purist that I am, I wanted virtually all of the light to come through the small windows. Banks of nine lights above, below and straight into the windows gave us that realistic source, and a moody, contrasty look. Also, subtle use of streams of liquid nitrogin propelled past the windows by air movers mottled the light source adding to the feeling of movement."

The main camera is on a Chapman Lenny arm or on Key Grip Michael Kenner's overhead dolly rig which allowed the floor to be kept clean. Operator Babin also shot a lot of handheld P.O.V. footage, using camera movement to provide additional vibration to the falling plane.

A key was anticipating how Anderson was going to piece all the parts together. In addition to the master shot in the narrow set, there were the many point-of-view cut-aways made with the handheld camera. Daviau made some use of the Introvision projection process for those P.O.V. shots looking out of the windows. As the plane comes down, it's like you are watching the cornfield flying by, seeing smoke and flames here and there. He also used painted backings, and in some cases Daviau just showed the audience the burned out sky through the windows, depending upon the angle of the plane. All of this serves to create an illusion of movement. You can feel the plane diving, even though it is on a stationary rig.

The Introvision process, supervised by Bill Mesa, was used for several other shots that were elements of the crash, and for a remarkable scene where Max appears to be walking around the ledge of a 12-story building. "In this case, Introvision cost less than blue screen, and Bill Mesa could show use what we were shooting through the viewfinder," Daviau says. "Bill Mesa makes special effects magic seem so simple."

There is also a brief digital cinematography sequence, which could be a harbinger of the future of filmmaking. Call it digital cinematography. Max is dreaming. We see the rapid eye movements behind his clenched lids. The camera moves in for an incredibly tight shot isolated on just one ear. It's choreographed with sounds of the plane struggling to survive. In that instant, the audience can see inside of Max's dream. How do you do that? Maybe Max's soul lives behind his eyes ... but his eyes were shut.

His ear photographed noticeably more orange than the skin tones in the rest of the scene. In the past, this defect would have been in the finished film.

"It would have been a nightmare to fix that optically," he says. "But it was quick and easy to fix it digitally, because you can be selective in correcting just part of the image without affecting other colors in the same frame."

He used a digital postproduction technique originally intended to serve the needs of visual effects practitioners. The specific frames, where the ear was discernibly orange, were scanned and converted to digital picture files at the Cinesite digital film center, in Burbank.

Cinesite is a Kodak company, established as a test site for the high-resolution Cineon digital film system. It opened only weeks after Fearless started shooting. Daviau was among the first visitors. He saw a way to fix the shot. A Cineon scanner was used to transfer the analog images on film to digital picture files. Each frame was translated into 40 megabytes of binary information. The digital pictures were displayed on a high-resolution color monitor used with the Cineon workstations.

Daviau explained exactly how he wanted to alter the color of the actor's ear. The operator made some subtle adjustments. He was able to show the altered images to Daviau on a monitor balanced to match the eventual screening room result accurately.

Daviau approved, and the processed digital pictures were recorded on Eastman EXR color intermediate film 5244. It was just a few frames, but it intercut seamlessly with the live-action footage of the rest of the scene.

"When you create a digital film with this system, it's not like doing it optically," Daviau explains. "There is no increase in grain and no build-up of contrast. You can fix the subtlest, or the most severe, image problems, and when you cut it with the original film, there are no apparent differences. There is nothing to jar the audience, even subliminally, drawing their attention to the shot."

If you think you heard that thought before, chances are you did. It's reminiscent of Ansel Adams, comparing photography to composing music, and making prints to conducting the orchestra. "It creates endless possibilities, because you can alter contrast and color saturation to some extent, without building up grain, and what you see on the monitor is what you get on the intermediate film," Daviau says.

There is a very important sequence where Max is looking at the skyline at sunset. It was shot on a section of freeway severely damaged by the San Francisco earthquake several years ago. The section of freeway was still standing when Fearless was photographed. The production got permission to stage the scene with Bridges walking over the barrier on the damaged freeway and watching the sunset.

There's a sign that reads, "Danger Do Not Enter," but Max ignores it. "If you don't know the history, it could be any unfinished freeway," Daviau says. "There is something very eerie about the environment. It isolates him. He's alone in the middle of a very large city. The second Peter saw it, he knew it was the right background, or landscape, for the mood of the film.

On differences between hard and soft light: "With hard light, you put smaller highlights in people's eyes, and a more defined shadow structure on their faces," Daviau says. "I tend to favor soft light, because you can create more complex highlights which are a truer reflection of the source. It can also be more descriptive of the texture of the skin, and the contours of the face."

Daviau notes that soft light doesn't have to be either flat or too bright, and you can use big sources and still control them. He says today's faster films are a factor, because you can work at lower intensities without blinding the actors, or creating an uncomfortably hot environment. "It's not as easy as creating breaks and shadows with hard light, but it can be done," he says. "I light a lot of close-ups with a 4 by 4-foot grid cloth, or something like that. You can't use a small flag like you do with hard light. We used cutters almost as big as the source itself."

Many times, Daviau introduced close-ups with a wide shot, and a large source back and off to the side. This established where the light was coming from before he came in for a close-up. "When you come in tighter, the light source has to be brought in closer to the face," he says. "You use cutters and flags to create shadows which emphasize certain planes of the face, usually the eyes and the mouth.

"There is a lot more flexibility with soft light. You can even float a flag by hand on close-ups, and give the actor a little more freedom to move around. You have to be flexible enough to adapt to the actors' performances. Sometimes it's just a matter of a position changing. Other times, an actor will take a scene further than you anticipated in terms of its intensity, and this will affect the way you light for mood as well as exposure. You have to be flexible enough to make quick changes between takes, and that's asking a lot of your crew. They have to be ready."

Daviau attributes two major dividends to the use of controlled soft light. First, the softness of the light is flattering. It's kinder to the texture of the skin. It also allows him to put a bigger highlight in the eyes, which is more descriptive of where the actor is looking.

Daviau adds, "I don't think in footcandles anymore. We were generally working somewhere between stops T-2.8 and 3.5. My general thought process is to decide how much depth-of-field a scene requires, and to light accordingly. Sometimes, you want the eyes to be extremely sharp, and less depth-of-field can help you emphasize that. Other times, you want more depth. If you are bouncing a lamp through a big grid cloth, you can build up the light by using a more powerful lamp without having to move your flags or cutters."

Daviau points out that there is also a lot more flexibility in the use of diffusion materials today. He made extensive use of grid cloth, but also shot light through tracing paper on occasion. Sometimes, he used a very thin material (Hampshire Frost), which barely took the lamp away from being a hard light.

"It's almost a net without the texture," he says. "We used a dulling spray on portions of this material, to soften the light on parts of the set. Once you acquire the knack for placing the light where you want it for faces, these things don't take a lot of time. One of the more important factors in lighting close-ups is having very good stand-ins, so everything is set up right."

But it always comes down to a combination of preparation and gut instincts. Max and his wife live in a bright, white-walled, comfortable and spacious setting. In contrast, Carla and her family are in a little apartment in the Mission district crammed with other family members sharing the space. The colors are more saturated with most walls yellow, and her bedroom is pink. It gives the audience an insight into Carla's personality before the crash.

A key scene was filmed in Carla's bedroom, when Max comes to visit her. Carla has become almost totally reclusive. She only leaves her bed to go to church.

"It was the smallest interior we used," says Daviau. "We had to bring light through a window. Larry Wallace and his crew had to do some complex rigging. At one point, I noticed the sun was poking between two buildings, coming into the window at a high angle, and bouncing off the carpet. That was the look I wanted for lighting Max and Carla."

The problem that it was only lit that way naturally for around 15 minutes a day. Daviau had an 18 K HMI light rigged outside, pointing straight down through the bedroom window, hitting the carpet in exactly the right spot. The scene opens in a darkened room. Carla is tossing and turning in bed, having a nightmare. There's a little shrine, with a picture of her son, candles and religious objects, lit by candlelight. Her husband opens the door, and a beam of light from the hall hits her. Then (he) pulls the window shade up, letting the light in, and he tells Carla its time to get out of bed and face reality. She pleads for the isolation of darkness.

Later, Max comes into her room.

"The bounce off the carpet was the main source of light for their faces," says Daviau, "except for a little ambient fill, which we modified for close-ups, when we moved off the master shot. John Stoddart had the walls of her room painted pink. It seems like a strange choice for a dramatic scene like this, but it worked beautifully with the candlelit shrine. The 96 film pulled the details we wanted out of the shadows, and it gave us a wide range of tonality."

Probably the largest interior was a church. There was a wedding rehearsal going on when Max and Carla entered. "It gave Peter an opportunity to use the sounds of the rehearsal," Daviau says. "There were a lot of practicals in the church, but for dramatic purposes, I wanted them off. I wanted the feeling of sunlight coming from up high. Larry Wallace and his best boy, Kevin Arnold, mounted some 4 K HMIPARS in the belfry, so our main key seemed to be coming from a skylight high above. The altar seemed to be lit by the sun, with the pews falling into shadows, forming a natural frame."

But, it always came down to faces. The main dialogue in this scene occurs in a side altar. Carla is talking to Max, about her love for her son. They are lit by flickering red candlelight, and in the background the wedding rehearsal is progressing, with happy people getting ready to begin a new life.

As their friendship progresses, the expectation is that it will turn into a romantic involvement, but it never does. Once Max brings Carla home late at night. They are sitting in the car, in the rain, talking. It's very low-key, with the main source seeming to come from a cool mercury vapor street light down the block. Their faces are clearly rimmed with crosslight. Their shadow-side falls to a lush black. It's like you are sitting in the car with them, listening to them talk.

The camera operator was Paul Babin, who had operated B camera on BUGSY. There were only a few two-camera scenes, but Daviau credits the B camera operator, Tom Connole, with "some beautiful second unit work. These are mainly P.O.V. shots seen from Max's and Carla's perspectives on a trip to Oakland, and establishing scenes in San Francisco which are sprinkled throughout the film.

The lighting strategy for Bridges featured two decidedly different looks, based on the mood of the scene. When he's cheerful, the light is softer. When he's sad, the key light is placed a little higher, to emphasize the shadows under his eyes, and the lack of joy in his demeanor. Perez is always in near half-light with the key just barely reaching the eye on the other side of her face. The film was collaborative in the truest sense, according to Daviau. You frequently hear of conflicts between writers and re-writers who reshape other people's scripts, and between directors and writers, directors and studios. But it never happened on Fearless, and Daviau believes it's because of the openness of the environment established by Weir.

"He encouraged everyone to become involved," he says. "Raphael was a real presence on the set. Paula Weinstein and her production team, Robin Forman and Bill Beasley, provided us with constant support.

While the focal point of the collaborative process is with the director, Daviau notes that rapport and good communications with the cast are nearly as important. "You have to understand their concerns and what they are up against," he says. "Basically, they are there by themselves. It's the loneliest job. They have to trust you to make them look good, especially with the large close-ups we used. You have to understand where the light has to hit them, and give them as much freedom as possible to move around and respond to the scene without nailing their shoes to the floor. You generally develop lighting motifs for each actor, as you get to know them. Sometimes, that's the most important thing you can do. Other times, the mood of the scene is more important, but even then you have to make it work for the actors."

Which raises another question. In a film like Fearless, which is resplendent with close-ups, does he communicate with the cast any differently? In general, Daviau says, he believes it is important to let the cast know what you are doing and why. He finds most actors automatically pace themselves during scenes with intimate close-ups. "Most of them love close-ups, and they tend to save their energy for those opportunities," he says.

The film comes in just a touch under two hours, and there isn't a wasted moment. "Having worked with him, I now understand why Peter's films have such incredible energy," Daviau says. "He distills the essence of the story. He creates a very open atmosphere where everyone is enthused about participating. In the end, it all came down to helping Peter tell a very intense and emotional story. I think it will leave the audience limp. With all the sadness, Carla and Max do share with us their sense of joy at being alive."

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