Town
and Country:
How Lighting a Simple Scene Set the Tone This article originally appeared in American Cinematographer PROLOGUE: Peter Chelsom, who directed Town and Country, remembers the day he first noticed Bill Fraker’s camerawork. Chelsom was 13-years-old when his father took him to see Bullitt at a cinema in London. Afterwards, his father was effusive about the stunning cinematography. When a New Line Cinema executive suggested talking to Fraker about Town and Country, Chelsom checked the cinematographer’s credits. The list included about a half dozen of his all-time favorite films including Bullitt. “I couldn’t believe my good luck,” he recalls.
Fraker explained, “If you want true black, you have to expose the film to some light; so if we wanted a corner of the bar to go black, we used one to two footcandles in that area. Then we had the lab print for the keylight. We got rich, black tones in the corners of the bars because the film had some exposure. If you don’t do that, the areas you want black will start to go a little milky.” The result was that no one had to tell the audience that Keaton’s character was putting herself in mortal danger. You saw it in her face and felt it in the darkness. Just a little more than a quarter of a century later, Fraker has shot another film featuring Keaton. This time she shares the marquee with Warren Beatty, Goldie Hawn, Andie McDowell, Garry Shandling and Jenna Elfman. Town and Country is a romantic comedy directed by Peter Chelsom, who began his career in England as an actor. Chelsom segued into writing and directing with Funny Bones and Hear My Song during the early 1990s. This was his second outing on what he dubs a “U.S. film.” Town and Country is based on an original story crafted by Michael Laughlin and polished by Buck Henry. Chelsom was in the early stages of preparation when a New Line Cinema executive suggested a meeting with Fraker. He jumped at the suggestion. “Anytime you have a character-driven film, it is important to have a cinematographer like Bill by your side,” says Chelsom. “He’s great with actors. They trust him and rightly so, because his images of them are like portraits. He gets beneath the surface and shows the audience the truth behind their eyes. Simply put, I’ve never agreed with a cinematographer more and never had a better time working on a film.” The themes are friendship and love, and the way that happily married people can turn bliss into anguish. Rollicking humor is a vehicle for driving those points home. Keaton plays Ellie Stoddard, and Beatty is her husband Porter Stoddard, a celebrated New York architect. Hawn (Mona) and Shandling (Griffin) are the other couple. The couples are old friends who share a belated mid-life crisis that sends them on a journey with many unexpected twists and turns at locations ranging from a Paris café to a Halloween costume party at a resort in Sun Valley, Idaho.
“This scene is crucial because it is the first impression and it provides insights into the different characters,” says Fraker. “We wanted to make the audience participants in hearing their stories. We established the setting but the scene is mainly close-ups.” There are human factors that go into lighting a scene like this. Beatty, Keaton and Hawn are also directors, and all of them had opinions that were bolstered by personal make-up artists and hairdressers. All of the actors wanted to look good. That suited Chelsom as long as the look was consistent with the story and true to the characters. “We gave each star their own key-light,” Fraker explains matter-of-factly. “We wanted them to look and feel good about themselves but we also had to make sure that the light was balanced so they look like they are in the same place.” Fraker says that the film’s stars were willing to take what he and Chelsom had to offer but there was a certain amount of competition between them. “Warren had the strongest opinions but the others knew where they want to go and how they wanted to get there,” Fraker says. “We shot hair and makeup tests with Diane and Goldie and a smaller test with Warren. You don’t shoot tests to find out what you can do. Testing tells you what you shouldn’t do. Once an actor or actress gets beyond the age of 20 or 30, you generally have to light them differently.” He explains that the angle and quality of light can emphasize or cover up flaws that come with age. That’s hardly a new concept. When Fraker shot Heaven Can Wait with Beatty and Julie Christie, he kept the actor in hard light and the actress in soft light. Fraker double-keyed the lighting set ups for different positions so the soft light could be dimmed and the hard light brought up, depending upon the actors’ relative positions. The Paris café scene was filmed on a stage at the Lowry Center in Highland Park in Los Angeles. Because the camera was going to cover 360 degrees, there was no way to hide lighting stands on the ground. All of the keylight came from lamps on an overhead stanchion that could be lowered and raised. They actually shot the Paris café scene twice. Chelsom and Fraker agree that nothing was technically wrong the first time around but when serendipity gave them a second chance—because of a slight change in the script—they made the most of it. The first time they shot the scene, it looked a little too bright and didn’t quite capture the emotional energy they had envisioned, Fraker explained. The table was round and they circled it with one camera, and shot additional coverage with a second crew. The second time they shot, Fraker suggested using a square table, which forced the camera to move more deliberately. He also relied solely on the moving camera, which made the lighting more precise. It is turned out to be a much more compelling shot. “Warren didn’t want the light too high or the camera angle too low,” Fraker says. “Diane told me, ‘You know what I look like and this is where I'm going to turn.’ Goldie was very easy to light. I had also worked with her on Protocol, so I already knew her face. We had two actors on each side of the table, boy-girl-boy-girl, facing each other. They are talking, laughing and having a marvelous time. The camera was moving and we were shooting tight close-ups with their faces sometimes nearly filling the screen.” The grips built a platform that went around the table at ground level. The camera was on a freewheeling crab dolly that was pushed by a grip. Production designer Caroline Hanania provided a cheery and romantic set that transported the audience to Paris. The primary colors were yellow and brown with a hot, orange wall in one background. Fraker gave it subtle sheen with an orange gel on the tungsten lamps aimed at the wall. There was a bar with rows of sparkling glasses that was lit so the reflections seem to be motivated by light coming from different places. “Every light had a purpose,” he says, “and we didn’t allow it to spill onto anything else. I was lucky that I was working with a visual director who gave me the time to set up and light shots like this because he believed it was important for the story.” Fraker says there is no formula for lighting backgrounds in this type of setting. He did it by eye, and by understanding how the negative reacts to colors, light and lenses. He shot Town and Country with spherical lenses masked for the 1.66:1 aspect ratio that is standard in Europe. The choice of format was in Chelsom’s contract. “I love this format,” says Chelsom. “It allows you to come in a little closer on close-ups with longer lenses, and you are shooting full aperture.” In the Paris café, Fraker used a Panaflex Primo 75 mm prime lens with no filtration. “I’ve never been more aware of how delicate the choice of lens length is, and how it can affect the audience,” Chelsom says. “It made the close-ups of characters a little sharper and the backgrounds a little softer. It’s not something that is necessarily evident to the audience but it feels more romanticized.” Fraker adds, “Peter is a romantic and he appreciates that there is drama in comedy and comedy in drama. It fits the characters as they are presented in the script.” Fraker used the Kodak Vision 320T (5277) film throughout production. It was relatively new at the time. He chose that stock because its dynamic range gave him the freedom to move from brightly lit to darker areas without losing details in either highlights or shadows. The images are also markedly less contrasty. He says it comes close to the way the eye sees things. There’s no intrusive grain or moody contrast, and it records bright and dark images without losing details. All of the lights in the café were pre-set and controlled with a dimmer board. The direction, angle and intensity of light were choreographed with the movement of the camera and the performances of the actors. There were warm gels on all of the lamps, and Fraker also used various combinations of silk diffusion and scrims. “There’s a window in one background,” Fraker continues. “You don't see what's outside but you see colors bouncing into the window with the occasional suggestion of bright headlights moving by. There are some musicians playing in the café. We used a little nice, warm cross light on them. The music was terrific. It helped define the mood.” The dimmer board gave Chelsom and Fraker the flexibility they needed to key-light the actors separately. Fraker says he used almost the same key-light on Shandling and Beatty. The light on Beatty was a little lower and more over the camera. With Shandling, the direction of keylight sometimes came from a slightly more oblique angle. “One of the nice things about shooting on sets is that you have more freedom to place the lamps than you do at locations,” he says. “We shot another important scene in an old house. It was magnificent, but the ceiling was only eight feet high. We had to soften the light by bouncing it off of white cards and then through one or two silks.” Fraker observes that there is a fine line between reality and fantasy. He believes that when audiences pay to see a movie projected on a big screen they expect to be taken on a journey with bigger than life and glamorous movie stars. At the same time, they want it to feel like the story is based in reality. For instance, he believes it was important for the audience to believe the opening scene really happened in a Paris café. Fraker says the art is in finding and crafting the balance so the transitions from character to character are seamless. “It's done by eye and by experience,” he says. “I don't worry about exposure meters. I knew where the lamps had to be, how much diffusion we needed, and how hot or cold the light should be as we moved through the shot.” Fraker points out that he was working with experienced actors who always hit their marks. They knew how to find the light he designed for them and appreciated why it was important, even if it was only a slight tilt in the angle of their heads. Keep in mind that Fraker’s father and uncle were famous stills photographers in Hollywood, and as a youth he planned to follow in their footsteps. “I’m not a fanatic about motivating light,” he says, “especially when we got into the close-ups and I knew a face was going to fill most of a big screen in a dark theatre. It doesn't make a bit of difference where the light is coming from once you move in close.” Fraker lauded Ron Scott, the dailies timer at CFI Labs, who he says deserves credit for helping him to maintain consistency in colors and contrast. He is reluctant to list the lights, gels, silk and scrim diffusion he used as though they are ingredients of a recipe for lighting a film like Town and Country. He says it is unlikely that anyone else would shoot the Paris café scene exactly the same way. Fraker believes that if you shot the same scene with the same cast and director on the same stage with 10 different cinematographers, each of them would do it differently. EPILOGUE: “I’ve been teaching a cinematography class at USC, where I’ve been cautioning students not to believe the hype about new digital cameras eliminating the need for lighting,” he says. “I shot my first film, Games, on a 15-day schedule (in 1967). The stars were Simone Signoret, Jimmy Caan and Katherine Ross. My first close-ups of Simone were absolutely atrocious. I saw the dailies before I went home that night, and prayed that she didn’t see them. At about 8 p.m. I got a call from Simone. She said, ‘Billy, how are you? Is everything fine?’ Then she asked me if I had seen the dailies. I said, ‘Yes.’ She asked what I thought of them. Thank goodness, I was honest. She thanked me and asked if I wanted to re-shoot those scenes. I spent a lot more time lighting her close-ups the next day and I have to tell you, they came out absolutely sensational. That taught me a great lesson. You have to meet the schedule but you still have to light the actors.” |
When
you ask cinematographers about their most interesting lighting challenges,
many of them talk about large scenes with big units and elaborate sets.
Not William A. Fraker, ASC. In an interview after he lensed Looking
for Mr. Goodbar in 1977, Fraker explained how he used dabs of light
to make the audience feel the darkness at seminal moments. Diane Keaton
was a schoolteacher who played the dangerous game of picking up men
in dark bars. Fraker typically keyed on her with six to eight footcandles
in those darkened settings and he selectively brushed bits of fill light
into the background.
The
café scene introduces the main characters to the audience. The four
friends are seated around a table. Their dialogue is cheerful. The characters
are animated. They turn their heads and shift their bodies, but never
get up from their chairs. There are people at other tables and a waiter
pours wine and makes a few comments. The ambience exudes Paris. The
only other movement comes from the camera tracking around the perimeter
and pulling the audience into deep and intimate close-ups of each of
the main characters. The scene lasts between two and three minutes.