A Conversation with Fred Elmes, ASC
By Bob Fisher

Frederick Elmes, ASC was born and raised in Mountain Lakes, New Jersey. He began taking still pictures of abstract objects before he was in high school. Elmes enrolled at the Rochester Institute of Technology, intending to pursue a career in that field. After his interest shifted to motion images, he earned graduate degrees from New York University and the American Film Institute, where he met directors David Lynch and John Cassavetes. Elmes began working with Lynch on Eraserhead, while they were both still students. They have subsequently collaborated on such films as Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart, which earned the Independent Spirit Award for cinematography in 1990. Elmes is compiling an eclectic body of work, including many television commercials and music videos, e.g. Moonwalker, and some 30 narrative films such as Rivers Edge, Night on Earth, The Ice Storm, Hulk, Coffee and Cigarettes, and Kinsey, which is slated for release in the fall.

ICG: Fred, where were you born and raised?

ELMES: I grew up in Mountain Lakes, New Jersey. My dad was an avid amateur photographer, though he only took pictures of the kids in our family. He let me use his Leica camera, and I started taking pictures of almost everything. We set up a darkroom, so I was processing my film and making prints way before high school. I was seriously into photography pretty early.

ICG: What did you take pictures of?

ELMES: I took pictures of the neighborhood and my friends. I loved taking pictures of clouds and other abstract things.

ICG: Were you a movie fan?

ELMES: I wasn’t really a movie fan.

ICG: What did you think you were going to do with your life?

ELMES: I had no idea. I didn’t really have any sense of a big picture. I fell in love with photography and had a lot of fun doing it. I eventually learned there was a school called the Rochester Institute of Technology, where you could study still photography, and that appealed to me. I did my undergraduate work at RIT. At the time, their photography program was divided into different categories, including photo science for the people who wanted to be film and optic engineers. That was way too technical for me. There was a program for people who aspired to set up a photo studio and take portraits but you still had to take math and science courses. Then there was a more artistic program and I liked that idea better. Our typical assignments were to illustrate a poem or a piece of music with photographs. We took courses in art history and the history of still photography. Minor White and Aaron Siskin came to lecture. We also studied design and drawing. It was completely non-technical, which really appealed to me. Our teachers had all worked as still photographers and they had years of experience. Every year, we got a new teacher and a whole new background to draw from.

ICG: At what point did your interest shift in to motion pictures?

ELMES: I started making movies before I left Mountain Lakes, New Jersey. We had a summer program; I think in order to keep the kids off the streets. The drama teacher from high school would write a script, and a bunch of us would get together, find some actors in the high school and make a little film. I ended up being the cinematographer, the editor and often the projectionist. I think it was by default because I had the camera.

ICG: Was that an 8 mm or a 16 mm?

ELMES: It was a 16 mm Bell & Howell camera that my dad owned. We even came up with a very intricate system for recording sync sound.

ICG: Did you continue shooting motion when you were at RIT?

ELMES: There weren’t a lot of film courses, but I managed to make some short films. Eventually, I realized I was more interested in filmmaking, specifically cinematography.

ICG: Do you remember why?

ELMES: As I learned more about still photography, I realized that most of the people I talked to weren’t employed. We visited alumni in New York City, and the ones who were successful were photographing packages of Van Heusen shirts in a very small studio in somebody’s garage. I decided I was going to try to make it in movies, though I had no idea what that meant.

ICG: What was your next step?

ELMES: I looked for a graduate course where I could learn about dramatic feature filmmaking. I applied to different schools and ended up at NYU. I stuck with New York City, because I’d never been to the West Coast and didn’t know anybody there.

ICG: What was NYU like?

ELMES: NYU was great. The graduate film school was its own building away from the undergraduate department. It was in the East Village. I think there were about 25 students during the two years. The funny thing was that when I arrived for the interview, the teacher, a Czech cinematographer named Beda Batka, pulled me aside, and said, “I need you to be my teaching assistant.” I had no idea what was required. It turned out that because I had gone to school in Rochester, New York, he thought I must know all about Kodak and film and would be the perfect teaching assistant. I was his teaching assistant for a couple years and learned a great deal from him.

ICG: Did you get to shoot a lot of student films?

ELMES: We shot lots of student films. It was great being a freewheeling student in New York City kind of living below all the radar on no money at all.

ICG: What did you do after completing that program?

ELMES: I went to school again. I was trying to find an entrée to Los Angeles, because that’s where most of the dramatic films were being made. My cinematography teacher told me that if I wanted to make feature films, I had to go to Los Angeles and meet people there. He recommended the American Film Institute, which was in its infancy at that time. I applied for a fellowship and they flew me out for an interview. By some miracle, I got in. The AFI was very small then, and I met a lot of talented filmmakers at the seminars and they made me think about films in a new way.

ICG: Who were your mentors?

ELMES: Frank Daniel, a Czech writer was head of the school and was a great influence. Tony Valani was also very kind and helpful to me. The school was just starting, and it was really focused on directors and writers. I was one of three cinematography students in my class, and oddly enough there was hardly anything for us to do. The directors, who were a little older than us, all used their friends as cinematographers. It was a tough beginning, though eventually I got to shoot some films.

ICG: Who did you work with then who became a future director?

ELMES: I met David Lynch at AFI. Our first film together was Eraserhead. Another cinematographer started it, but when it became clear that it was going to take a long time, I came onto that project. It stretched from a couple months of shooting to three or four years. It was a great education, because it was in black in white, and David Lynch cared very much about the look and the lighting. He was aware of how light and darkness can affect the moods of scenes. I leaned a great deal from him. He came from a painting background and was very concerned about how every frame looked. The cinematography was as much a part of the film for him as writing and the acting.

ICG: This was during the early 1970s. What else were you doing at that time?

ELMES: I was shooting short films for students, and a lot of industrial and educational films. It was pretty much all 16 mm. One of the wonderful things about Eraserhead was that it was 35 mm and black and white. David is still concerned about the look of the film and now there is a really handsome DVD that we re-mastered.

ICG: What was the 16 mm film you were shooting in those days, was it Ektachrome or negative?

ELMES: It was either black-and-white negative or Ektachrome. I feel lucky to have shot all that film, so I can say with a certain authority what Ektachrome and what Kodachrome looked like. When I am imitating that look, I know what I’m talking about.

ICG: Why did you decide to stay in Los Angeles after completing AFI?

ELMES: I decided that it was a pretty comfortable life. There was no snow or cold weather, and I could live cheaply. When I was a student at AFI, I supported myself by working as a projectionist there. I got to see lots of great movies.

ICG: Were there filmmakers whose work influenced you?

ELMES: When I was a student at RIT, I used to project European films for an art house. That’s how I saw all of Bergman’s early films, and all of Fellini’s and Antonioni’s films. They just stuck in my head. It opened my eyes and taught me that there are other worlds out there. Sven Nykvist, ASC was a major influence. The things he could do with light really stayed with me. All of the European films of that era really made a big impression.

ICG: After graduating from AFI, did you begin to realize that you were just beginning a long journey? How did you get started?

ELMES: I think if someone had sat me down and said, “Look, 8 years from now you might have an opportunity to shoot an independent film, and in 10 years maybe some sort of a TV show, and in maybe 15 years you’ll get a larger feature,” I would have just packed up and headed home. I just always believed that there would be some place for me, and that I could make it work. It was a very good experience working on Eraserhead with David Lynch, because he is a talented director who was driven to get it done even if he never made another film. He made a deep impression on me. He made it so much more appealing to work on a film that was original and visually interesting than to work on a more traditional Hollywood style film.

ICG: Were you able to connect with other directors of his ilk early on?

ELMES: Luckily, I did. Kind of simultaneous with my experience on Eraserhead, I met John Cassavetes, who was a filmmaker in residence at the AFI for a couple of years. He started to make a film called A Woman Under The Influence using the facilities and some of the students as crew. Caleb Deschanel (ASC) started shooting it, and I came on as a camera assistant. Caleb was a year ahead of me at AFI. John Cassavetes loved finding young people who didn’t know all the rules and who might stumble into inventing something new. He disliked anything traditional. Caleb and John had a falling out, and I left the production pretty early on. But Cassavetes was editing the film right there at the AFI for a couple of years. I would stop by the editing room. One day, about a year later, John asked me if I’d like to work on The Killing of a Chinese Bookie starring Ben Gazarra.

ICG: What was it like working with Cassavetes?

ELMES: It was a great, eye-opening experience and a whole new level of filmmaking for me. We had enough equipment; a serious, well-written script and the actors were very professional. It was a whole different attitude. The film was budgeted at about a million dollars and we shot it for 10 or 12 weeks, which could have been forever. I learned a great deal from John. He taught me about where to put the camera, so it reveals what the actors are doing emotionally. He had special sensibilities that were brilliant.

ICG: It must have been amazing working with both David Lynch and John Cassavetes that early in your career.

ELMES: It was actually simultaneously, because David ran out of money and we stopped working on Eraserhead for six to eight months. I took a break and worked on John’s film. Afterwards David got more money and we finished Eraserhead. After that, John asked me to work on Opening Night with Gena Rowlands.

ICG: Were you able to make a living working on low budget films?

ELMES: Yes, but I had to keep shooting educational films to help pay the rent. I tried like crazy to break into commercials and music videos, but there were no open doors. Music videos were just beginning to be popular and commercials were a closed shop. I also shot a few documentaries. I like shooting documentaries, because you have to think on your feet and be tuned in to what’s happening around you, not unlike a feature film really.

ICG: You did some interesting films during the early to mid-1980s, including Valley Girl and River’s Edge, but the one I want to ask about is Blue Velvet. Can you share some memories about the making of that film?

ELMES: Blue Velvet was a great experience. David (Lynch) had spoken with me about the story years before. It was about the underside of life in a small town. He told me that it was going to be produced through the Dino De Laurentiis Company, which had a studio in North Carolina, so our setting was the town of Wilmington.

I shot River’s Edge that same year (1986) with Tim Hunter directing. It was kind of a slice of reality about high school students. I really like that film a lot because it has such a strong story. Tim wanted to approach it in a very naturalistic way. I always questioned him about how to photograph the nude body of the dead girl in the story and he said we shouldn’t do anything to cover it up, treat it like an Edward Weston figure study. It was interesting working with different, young directors who had new ideas. Around the same time, I shot Conspiracy: The Trial of the Chicago 8, a TV movie that Jeremy Kagan directed. I knew Jeremy from both NYU and the AFI. The story takes place in a courtroom. It was based on transcripts of the trial with very interesting characters in a politically charged situation.

Instead of cutting away to news footage of the events that the trail was about, Jeremy wanted to find a way to integrate them into the courtroom drama. He designed the set with sections of walls that were actually blue screens. We could pan past someone’s face and go into images of newsreel footage behind them. It was a different way of integrating reality into the courtroom drama. We shot with three or four cameras simultaneously on tape, but Jeremy insisted on doing it in a film style. We always lit the courtroom to shoot in one direction at a time, with the cameras shooting parallel to each other. Then, later in the day, we re-lit from the opposite direction and shot all the reaction shots.

ICG: What was it like trying to get into the camera Guild in those days?

ELMES: It was nearly impossible for me to get in. Finally, there was an ‘open door’ period when contract services allowed crew members with enough qualifying work experience to be put on the work experience roster, and then, eventually apply for union membership. This was a long process. My films with John Cassavetes gave me enough days as a camera operator and eventually I was admitted. I worked as an operator on Modern Romance. Eric Saarinen was the cinematographer. It was a comedy directed by Albert Brooks. Later I became a union director of photography doing second unit work for Rick Waite (ASC) and John Milius on Red Dawn. Around that time (1986), I also did second unit and visual effects work on Dune for Freddie Francis (BSC) and David Lynch.

ICG: Didn’t you eventually get into shooting music videos?

ELMES: I managed to get into music videos by working with some student directors who went on to do that work. Basically, they would convince somebody in a band to shell out a couple thousand dollars to make a video. You’d do a little one and then you’d get a slightly larger video. Eventually, you got to do one that a record company spent some money on. I got to do some fun ones, including Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker, which was a compilation of several songs. I remember another one with Janet Jackson that Julian Temple directed. He was very innovative with the Steadicam. We had a set on a stage at Fox studios. It was a whole city street with some interiors of buildings. We carefully choreographed her song and dance routine by walking through the set with her and the dancers. The next two days, we pre-lit the set and walked through a rehearsal with the Steadicam. Julian and I worked out where we could hide the cuts between the five camera takes that it took to photograph the dance number. He understood what you could do with the Steadicam. Sometimes it would walk up a ramp then jump on a crane or shoot 360 degrees in the middle of the dancers. You had to be ready for anything. It was a good experience. I learned a lot.

ICG: How many music videos have you shot?

ELMES: I’d guess about 75 or 80.

ICG: What about commercials? When did you get a break there?

ELMES: Commercials were even harder to get into. There was no easy entrée. I tried and tried. Luckily one-day another cinematographer wasn’t available for a shoot and the director took a chance on me for a Nestle’s chocolate chip cookie commercial. It was a great opportunity, and it snowballed after that. It was a very lucky break.

Commercials did a lot of things for me. They gave me a chance to be selective about the features I chose to shoot and they gave me an opportunity to do different types of photography. When I do a feature, I know from the outset that we’re going to spend three or four months chewing on this material, and finding all the ins and outs and the ways to make it work. Commercials are much more like a one line script. It’s a different discipline. It’s the same lights, cameras, lenses and films, but it can be more spontaneous, and you usually have a day or two to tell a 30-second story.

ICG: When and how did you get your first agent?

ELMES: Having an agent is something that I resisted for a long time. I don’t known why I waited so long. I’m a very bad negotiator when it comes to money. I should have gotten an agent much earlier, but it seemed distasteful in a way. It was putting a price tag on what I saw as a much more lofty goal of shooting feature films. I eventually did get an agent, and it has been a very good for me.

ICG: How did you choose an agent?

ELMES: I asked other cinematographers whom they liked, and then I talked to them.

ICG: Do agents get you jobs or do they negotiate for you?

ELMES: They do both. They find you jobs because they are in contact with producers and studios and people I may not know, and they are good at taking care of the negotiating and details. It also helps in commercials and videos where I need to connect with new directors.

ICG: You did an interesting film called Wild at Heart with David Lynch. You won the Independent Feature Project/ West Independent Spirit Award for cinematography for that film in 1990.

ELMES: David and I got together again on Wild at Heart. It was a story and script that really appealed to me. I’d had a good experience working with him on Blue Velvet and we remained friends. Wild at Heart takes place on the road. The audience takes a kind of a road trip with the characters. They go to a small Texas town, New Orleans and other places, where the atmosphere and moods are totally different. It gave me a chance to play around with different looks that appealed to me.

ICG: How about Night on Earth which you shot in 1991?

ELMES: Night on Earth was really fun, because I’d been a big fan of Jim Jarmusch’s films. I had never met him before he contacted me. He called and said, “ I have this film. It’s very simple. It’s a feature film made up of five short stories that all take place in taxicabs with different characters around the world at the same time. It’s the same night with different people and stories. Shooting in a taxicab will be like having the actors in a very small set where we have lots of control. He had never shot in cars before, so it was a new experience for him to direct a film with a lot of dialogue in moving cars. But I enjoyed visiting different cities and figuring out how to make these stories work. I think there were six of us on the crew traveling to these foreign cities, including Rome, Paris and Helsinki. It was a different cultural experience with each city we visited.

ICG: You have occasionally also done television movies.

ELMES: I enjoy doing different things. It’s like flexing different muscles.

ICG: When did you hook up with Ang Lee and how did that happen?

ELMES: Ang had done Sense and Sensibility in England, and it had just been released. It was riding the crest of a great deal of success. He had a new script called The Ice Storm set in New Canaan, Connecticut. He called and asked if I wanted meet. Three or four days after we met, he hired me. It was a very good script set in the 1970s, and the era appealed to me as well. I liked the experience with Ang, because he was so sensitive with the actors. It was a real joy watching him get the performances he needed out of the actors in each scene. Ang felt this film needed a photo-realistic style. We did a lot of research. We went to galleries and looked at paintings and books to find the right sense of lighting and feeling for the film.

ICG: How do you pick a script? What is it that you look for?

ELMES: Choosing the right script is difficult for me. I look for a story that’s interesting to me, and I look for a director who I think can bring something fresh to it. That has a lot to do with what they’ve done in the past… the kind of work they’ve done and how they treated the subjects they chose. You always have a choice whether or not to do a film and you have to rely on your instinct.

ICG: You have a film called Coffee and Cigarettes coming out in May.

ELMES: Coffee and Cigarettes is a Jim Jarmusch project. It’s a series of short films that we worked on together over the years. Jim has strung them together into a feature film. Each is a separate story, usually with two or three people. They each take place in a little cafe or restaurant. They’re all very simple conversations between characters who don’t necessarily belong together. Photographically, they are very—as Jim would say—rudimentary. The coverage is always the same. It’s a wide shot and then a medium shot, two close-ups and an over the table shot. It’s very simple. They’re all shot in black and white.

ICG: You shot in black and white rather than desaturating color images in postproduction?

ELMES: Jim and I love black-and-white film and felt the look would be a little different than taking the color out of color stock. What interested me most was the characters that Jim chose. They were not necessarily actors were always great combinations of people. One story was a conversation between Tom Waits and Iggy Pop playing themselves in a little café. We had Cate Blanchett, the movie star, playing opposite herself as her own wayward cousin using a split screen. We had the Wu Tang Clan sitting and drinking tea in a restaurant with Bill Murray as the waiter. There are 11 stories strung together. Ellen Kuras (ASC), Robbie Muller and Tom DiCillo each did one and I filmed the rest.

ICG: What did you mean when you say rudimentary cinematography?

ELMES: We repeated the same basic camera set-ups for each story. We wanted the style to be simple. The mood of each scene varies with the lighting we chose, but it never calls attention to itself.

ICG: Why did he want to shoot it in black and white?

ELMES: Jim always saw these stories in black and white and I enjoy shooting it because it makes me think differently about the light. Technically, I learned a great deal, because these films were shot in different gages in different years with different budgets and using different laboratories around the world. We had 16mm, super 16, and 35 mm negatives. We scanned them all at DuArt in New York, corrected the contrast and black levels digitally and made black and white digital intermediates. Then we made very beautiful pristine black and white prints, which looked great in the lab in New York. Jim took a print on the road to the Berlin Film Festival for a premiere screening with thousands of people but unfortunately, parts of the film played out of focus, because the arc lights in modern projectors are very hot and black and white film absorbs most of the heat because of the silver in it. The film kept popping in the gate and changing focus even though the same print looked great in smaller theaters where the lamp wasn’t as hot. This forced us to go back to the digital master, change the contrast to accommodate color intermediates, and make color release prints. The contrast is not as good as black and white release stock and there will always be a little color in the image. I think it’s time for a new black and white technology that combines the magical look of silver based stocks with the projectability of modern color stocks.

ICG: Coffee and Cigarettes is a great contrast to Hulk, which was released last year. I’d guess you couldn’t make two more different films.

ELMES: Hulk was a completely different experience. It was wonderful working with Ang again. He’s very thorough and involved as a director in all the decisions. That’s important to me because I need the director to be aware of everything I’m doing. Hulk also had lots of visual effects, so it was an opportunity to learn new things.

ICG: How do you feel about effects films?

ELMES: I like them when it's magical and the effects are seamless.

ICG: There is a marketing-driven perception that digital technology has made cinematography so simple that any director can now shoot their own movie, and, if necessary, fix anything in post. Have you run into that?

ELMES: Not yet, but I have learned you can’t actually fix everything in post. Maybe you can help it a bit, but it’s usually not as easy as it sounds.

ICG: How do you establish rapport with a new director?

ELMES: The more time I can spend with a new director in prep, the more I learn about their taste and their personality. How do they see themselves as directors? What support do they need to make their vision of the story work? It’s my job to ask all the right questions. You continue to learn about each other all through the prep and the production. And this understanding and common vision helps you during the film timing in the laboratory as well as the telecine.

ICG: When you are shooting commercials do you get involved in telecine?

ELMES: I do when I can. It’s important to see projects through to the end and be sure the look is the way you intended. I recently did a black and white spot in a film noire style. It was a copy of a Hollywood mystery movie. The directors wanted to shoot in black and white, and I was able to use older lenses. We studied lighting from that period, and decided to use hard light and a distinct eye light. A couple of weeks after we shot, I oversaw the telecine session in New York, and was able to get the values and contrast right.

ICG: Why did they want to produce it with black and white film rather than desaturating the images in telecine?

ELMES: I think you get a little different look and feeling. The contrast is a little different. It’s true that you can digitize a color negative and make it look pretty close to black and white negative, but not quite exactly the same.

ICG: I know that spot. How come they use a trained duck rather than an animated character?

ELMES: The duck was as professional as any actor on the set. I laughed when they said we were using a trained duck But on set they asked, “Okay, where do you want the duck to walk?” I said, “Somewhere in this neighborhood.” They said, “No, just show us where.” They made a little mark and let the duck go. When the duck hit the mark, they clicked a clicker. The duck looked around and quacked. They clicked the thing again, and the duck walked off. They did it five times in a row and there was no problem. That duck was a complete pro. But they also do a fair bit of animating with the duck in post. We filmed the duck in one shot where they replaced the top half of his body with a puppet so he could quickly turn his head and look at something on cue.

ICG: Do you think technology is going to change the role of cinematographer?

ELMES: It already is changing our role and our relationship with the director and the production. As we learn what the latest technology has to offer, we more fully become the director’s eyes.

ICG: It’s taking some cinematographers months to time film during digital intermediate sessions, and they’re often not paid for their time.

ELMES: That’s a growing issue. I’m in postproduction on Kinsey now and we’re finishing some complex opticals that are very time consuming. Cinematographers are facing difficult decisions. If we spend months timing a film digitally, it means we may be less available for other projects. . My feeling is that the process will become easier and faster. On Hulk, for instance, I could download trial composite shots from the ILM website and make many decisions without being in San Raphael.

ICG: You can tell enough from looking at computer images?

ELMES: Yes, in terms of the broad strokes, but not the more subtle things.

ICG: Do you believe the subtle things can be important?

ELMES: I think they are. Audiences are very sophisticated. I think much more than we often give them credit for.

ICG: Do you ever teach?

ELMES: I do all sorts of teaching. It’s fun. I’ve been lucky. Schools keep calling me. AFI, NYU, and RIT all call, and I recently taught a workshop for cinematographers in Thailand that was sponsored by Kodak.

ICG: What do you tell your students?

ELMES: I try to be encouraging, but I also let them know that it’s very competitive. I’ve seen many talented young directors and cinematographers making short films in school programs. It’s really important to keep their enthusiasm alive.

ICG: What are the most common questions you get asked by young people?

ELMES: There is a broad spectrum of things; such as how do you make relationships with directors work? That’s always a big one.

ICG: How have you been affected by run-away production?

ELMES: I think every film worker in the United States has. I’m fortunate because the production can often take a cinematographer but not a crew. It means that I’m away from home more often. I’d certainly much rather see films made in this country, particularly films with stories that happen in this country.

ICG: Would you recommend that young filmmakers follow the path you chose, or should they consider working their way up through the crew system as operators and assistant cameramen?

ELMES: I think you have to find the right answers for yourself. It’s different for everyone. I think working as an assistant and an operator is a valid educational experience. You learn a lot by being on the set and watching how other cinematographers work. You also get to meet many more people and those contacts may be the keys to future jobs. But, if you really want to be a cinematographer, you can only be an operator or an assistant for so long. Then you have to commit to moving forward and taking on the responsibility and challenge of being a cinematographer.