Michael Goi Focuses on
Who Killed Atlanta’s Children
By Bob Fisher

This article was originally published on www.cinematographer.com in 2000

Twenty-seven black children were murdered in Atlanta, Georgia, between October 1979 and May 1981. On May 22, 1981, Wayne Williams, a black man, was seen dumping something into the Chattahoochee River. A week later an adult’s body was found in the river, and fiber evidence in Williams’ car and home linked him to that crime. Williams was subsequently tried and convicted of the murders of two adults. He is serving is two life sentences. Though police never linked him to any of the 27 murders of Atlanta’s children, they closed those cases when Williams was jailed.

Who Killed Atlanta’s Children? is a fictionalized accounting of the experiences of two journalists from Spin Magazine, Pat Laughlin, played by James Belushi, and Ron Larson, portrayed by Gregory Hines, who probed the investigation of the murders.

The telefilm was produced for Showtime by Victor and Grais Productions and South Side Films. It was written and directed by Charles Robert Carner and photographed by Michael Goi. Mark Victor and Michael Grais were the executive producers, and Rudy Langlais was the line producer. Carney and Goi previously collaborated on The Fixer, a telefilm that earned an American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) Outstanding Achievement Award nomination in 1998.

Following are excerpts of a conversation with GOI:

QUESTION: How do you prepare to shoot a reality-based film like this?

GOI: It starts with the script, and I also looked at television reports of the crimes and photography books which gave me a sense of Atlanta during that period. Much of the story involves the recollections of different characters. Sometimes it is more speculation than an actual memory. We decided not to use traditional flashback techniques like blurring images. We just wanted to slam into the flashbacks and get out quickly to keep the pace of the film flowing smoothly. We also needed to differentiate the recollections of the various characters. Very early in pre-production, we decided we would create different looks that are associated with different character’s flashbacks or memories.

QUESTION: How did you come to that decision?

GOI: Charlie (Carner), Marc Leif (editor), and I watched different movies and tossed around ideas about what we thought would work dramatically. JFK was a strong influence, because they dealt with so many people's point of views and kept them straight. It was an impressive achievement by (cinematographer) Robert Richardson (ASC), but we had to create those different looks on a TV movie budget, so the idea of using a lot of different film stocks and formats wouldn’t have worked for us.

QUESTION: What did you do?

GOI: I wanted to use reversal film and cross-processing techniques, but we were shooting in Toronto, and the labs couldn't do it. Flying that much film to Los Angeles for cross processing wasn’t an option because of costs. I remembered an independent film I shot where the lab had inadvertently destroyed some of the cut negative. Luckily, they had a work print, so we duped the sections of the negative that were lost and cut them into the movie. Those shots stood out because the levels of contrast and saturation increased dramatically. I decided to experiment with that technique.

QUESTION: How sure were you that it would work?

GOI: It was a leap of faith that we could get the right look in post. The truth is that I normally don't like to rely too much on getting a look in postproduction, because half the time budgets or schedules are tight and it doesn't get done. I didn’t want to leave this to chance, because it was an important element of our story telling. I contacted Beverly Wood at Deluxe Labs, in Hollywood. She’s their director of technology, including special processes. She found 4,000 feet of 5272, a color reversal intermediate film that Kodak had recently discontinued. We used that for a test and got a big gain in color saturation and contrast with no increase in grain. It was perfect for certain flashbacks. We duped some 3,600 feet of negative onto that color reversal film. We just had a few hundred feet left at the end. I can’t over-estimate the importance of the cooperation of the lab. They understood what we needed to do and helped us get it.

QUESTION: Did you get to spend any time in Atlanta during prep?

GOI: Charlie and I wanted to go to Atlanta, but it wasn't in the budget and there wasn’t time. We relied on research to get a sense of the place and time where these events happened. Officially, I had two weeks of prep, but unofficially Charlie, Mark and I discussed how we were going to shoot this film for about a month and a half. Most of that time was spent talking about the script and what was going on at any given moment in the story. We spoke about how we felt it should be treated visually to stay in tune with the drama. I translated those ideas into different visual treatments. My notes on just the visual treatment of the movie were thicker than the L.A. phone book. It was very complex, because there were frequent changes in the script, and we had to keep everything straight. Sometimes we had a scene where part of the look was normal, part was one character's recollection, and part was another person's recollection. Then, we’d cut to a scene in a courtroom that was partially someone describing somebody else's memory of an event. Each of those elements had a distinctive look. Some of it came from duping onto 5272. Some came from a bleach by-pass process. I also push-processed the (Kodak Vision) 5289 (film) three stops. It’s officially an 800-speed film (exposure index at 3200 degrees Kelvin), but I rated it as a 6400-speed film in those situations.

QUESTION: How did you decide on a three-stop push?

GOI: I wanted a really distressed feeling with huge grain. Kodak has improved negative so much, it is hard to get that kind of grain. I think I could have pushed it a little further than 6400.

QUESTION: Was this shot on locations or stages or both?

GOI: We primarily shot at locations in Toronto and on one set that we built in a warehouse. The set was a rundown motel room that the journalists used in Atlanta.

QUESTION: How did you establish an Atlanta setting in Toronto?

GOI: The skyline in Toronto is very generic. If you don't get close in, there are no distinctively identifiable buildings. The story takes place in the summer, when it was very hot in Atlanta, so we wanted locations with vegetation that suited that look. Partially, we got that look with filtration and partially with exposure. If we wanted a scene to look particularly hot, we would blow out windows. In some sequences, I warmed up the images to make it feel hotter. The weather is constantly shifting in Toronto, so we needed a bunch of different scenarios. We decided that rain was appropriate for amplifying the drama in one sequence, so we erected rain towers.

QUESTION: Does the audience experience this film as participants or spectators?

GOI: The story is about how these two people got into the investigation and the things they uncovered. It raises questions about how the original investigation was conducted by the Atlanta police department and FBI and reveals that evidence of possible Ku Klux Klan involvement was covered up and destroyed. The audience discovers these things as though they are there with Gregory Hines and Jim Belushi. We try to give the audience a sense of the continuing frustration these guys felt as they uncovered clues and then couldn't open up the next door. They think they’ve learned something important and then they get conflicting stories. Some people backtracked on things they said to them originally. That’s why the different looks are important when people are recollecting things. It helps the audience keep track of whose recollections they’re seeing.

QUESTION: You actually got to do a film finish, and the movie was screened for critics and people in the cast and crew and others in the industry. How does that work?

GOI: The way I understand it, Showtime gives every producer a window of opportunity to find a theatrical distributor. I think that gives them a lot of clout with filmmakers. It also gave us an opportunity to go through a negative cut, and we went through the process of making an interpositive, an internegative and release prints.

QUESTION: Did you think of it as a feature film or a TV movie?

GOI: I never think of any film as just a television movie. I always try to make it look like something that hasn’t been seen on television before. You can find a lot of different ways to push that edge visually, but it’s always about telling the story.

QUESTION: Is this film framed for the cinema or television?

GOI: We filmed the movie in 1.85 widescreen. I was protecting the frame for 16:9. We cut the negative, and I supervised making separate transfers for 16:9 high def television and 4:3 at Encore Film and Video on Los Angeles.

QUESTION: How were you protecting for 16:9?

GOI: The camera operator had the regular markings for 1.85:1 and TV in his viewfinder. Sixteen by nine is close enough to 1.85:1, so that wasn’t an issue. All we had to do was make sure there were no microphone booms or anything else that didn’t belong in the picture. I supervised the timing of the film print and also the 4:3 and 16:9 transfers with color timer Michael Katcher. That was really important to me. I am always involved in color timing and telecine transfers.

QUESTION: How much time did you have for original photography?

GOI: The shooting schedule was 24 days with around a half a day for inserts. We were lucky. We had a great A.D., David McAree, who had the integrity of the movie close to his heart. He understood there was a dramatic purpose for why some things took a little longer to shoot. We were constantly making little adjustments and still staying on schedule. We’d look at the call sheet and it would indicate we had nine or 10 locations scheduled. At one location, there was a separate shot in a little room that was probably only going to be on the screen for five seconds, but it required time to set up props and lighting. He asked me if it was important, and I thought it was, so we made time to do it right.

QUESTION: So, you need to collaborate with the A.D. as well as the director?

GOI: Absolutely. I’d tell him, we really need to get this shot at magic hour and another one at sunrise, and then, there were exterior shots we wanted to make at mid-day. He’d figure out how to make it work, because he knew it was important. He never summarily dismissed any suggestion, and I really appreciated that.

QUESTION: How did you establish the period?

GOI: It was a combination of automobiles, wardrobe, selecting locations that are right for the period when the story took place. We also had to get the color palette right. It’s not a pretty movie, but it has a hard edge of realism.

QUESTION: What about the color palette?

GOI: A lot of the settings were very drab. A lot of the story takes place in the moldy hotel rooms. These guys stayed in dinky places. They were visiting the poor sides of town. There are lots of old brownstone buildings without a lot of colors or contrast. The challenge was finding ways to make them visually interesting and dramatic.

QUESTION: Did you take locations as you found them, or were they sometimes painted and altered in other ways to make them drabber?

GOI: We painted the motel room set the same drab green we found in photos of motels from that period. I felt a main challenge at some of the locations in Toronto was finding ways to shoot them a little differently. Sometimes it was just a different angle that people haven’t already seen a million times. I saw three movies one weekend, and I recognized the same locations in Toronto in all of them. Even if it’s not apparent on a conscious level, it still looks familiar to the audience. We were determined to make the audience believe they were seeing a story that happened in Atlanta 20 years ago.

QUESTION: This story is about the darkest of all subjects, the murders of children. Does the story visually carry a dark theme?

GOI: It varies a lot. Some elements are very dark. Jim Belushi has a sequence where he has a nightmare involving some of the murdered children entering his room in the middle of the night. His little brother, whom he had accidentally killed years ago, is also in that dream. The purpose was to show how much the investigation meant to him on a personal level. It affected his state of mind. Scenes like that were very dark. I called Dante Spinotti (ASC, AIC) when I was prepping that scene. I wanted the eyes of the children to glow and there wasn't a budget to do it in post. I remembered Dante had done that in Manhunter. Just as I had suspected, he used a beam splitter and reflected a shiny material into the eyes of the kids. I used that technique. It was very simple and effective.

QUESTION: How did the colors recorded on film translate to television when they were converted to video?

GOI: I want the TV audience to see this film just as though they are seeing it in a theater with the same degree of color saturation and pastel quality. When you are in telecine, you have to begin with an understanding that it is an entirely different medium. You have to find the look of the movie that comes closest to approximating the feelings expressed in the film print. I was particularly happy with the high definition transfer. I think we captured a lot of the feeling of the projected print, but ultimately the broadcast audience sees what the networks and cablecasters send down the pipeline. Sometimes they’ll brighten the images and the blacks aren't as deep. You can’t control that.

QUESTION: Did you shoot this film with one or multiple cameras?

GOI: It was essentially one camera. We had a second camera for several scenes where there was a lot of action and bunches of extras. Those were scenes that couldn’t easily be repeated. We just didn't have the time. Charlie and I discussed this at length. I’ve shot some low budget movies in California in nine or 10 days with 60 to 70 setups a day. That’s the kind of pace we needed to shoot this film, but realistically we knew we couldn’t do that in Toronto. We knew we’d be lucky to get 18 to 20 setups a day. We adjusted our thinking to that and figured out what the coverage was that we absolutely needed to make this movie work. Marc Leif (editor) worked with the setups we shot and made it look like we had four times more because of his skill in putting the material together.

QUESTION: That’s interesting. Can you give us an example?

GOI: There’s a chase sequence at night with two cars. Normally, you’d shoot 60 to 70 setups to make that sequence work. We shot it in one night with 18 setups. It’s breathtaking when you see what he was able to do with those 18 shots. This was the sequence that I thought would work better in the rain. We could only afford to erect about 150 feet of rain towers on this road in the middle of the countryside. We had to continually drive the cars down this 150 feet of road, stop the car, and then set up and shoot the next shot. That’s also a very dark part of the film.

QUESTION: How did you shoot that scene?

GOI: That’s a sequence where we used two cameras. One camera was mounted on the side of the chase car. We also had a camera on the back seat of the other car shooting from different angles. The camera is looking forward when Gregory Hines turns around. We also have a shot from his point of view looking out the back window.

QUESTION: How did you light that scene?

GOI: We lit the inside with a car kit and MiniFlos. Other than that, we had all of the cars we brought to the location, surrounding the scene, and everyone turned on their bright headlights. The rain we created helped to soften and spread the light. We were using the 800-speed film, which gave us a lot of latitude. The blacks feel really dark, and you can see details in highlights and shadows and feel the texture of the night.

QUESTION: Were you working with storyboards or shooting intuitively?

GOI: Every scene was storyboarded, but we often deviated from the plan. We basically followed the plan on that night scene right down to angles to be sure that we gave Marc what he needed to cut the scene.

QUESTION: How did you put a crew together in Toronto?

GOI: I called Jim Chressanthis, Shane Hurlbut and other people I knew who had worked in Canada recently, and got names of the people they liked. You can fall into a big hole if you hire blindly in Toronto. There is so much production going on that there are a lot of inexperienced people working. The infrastructure isn’t nearly as deep as it is in the U.S.

QUESTION: How about your camera and lighting packages?

GOI: We had to get everything we needed in Toronto. We got our camera and lens package from Panavision. The lenses were mainly wide angles and telephotos. The front-end lab work was done there by Deluxe, in Toronto.

QUESTION: Do you recall how you go interested in filmmaking?

GOI: I loved movies. I must have seen The Graduate more than 50 times. There was a theater down the block from where I lived growing up that was very inexpensive. They bought prints for $50 each and showed some weird double bills. I remember seeing Phyllis Diller in What Do You Say to a Traveling Saleslady? and Charleton Heston's Will Penny on the same day. They also showed documentaries and foreign films. I saw all of the Italian neo-realist films. I became so fascinated with movies that I talked my parents into buying me an 8 mm camera. I shot a lot of film. When I was 14, I bought a Bolex camera with money I had saved. I was shooting 16 mm commercials for a local Hispanic television station on weekends while I was still in high school. I directed and shot three synch sound films before I enrolled in college.

QUESTION: Where did you study filmmaking?

GOI: At Columbia College, in Chicago. It probably has the biggest film department of any college in the country. Most people don’t realize that.

QUESTION: Why did you decide to focus on cinematography?

GOI: That’s an interesting question. At one time, I thought about becoming an editor, but decided that was too solitary. I remember seeing Days of Heaven and being awed by Nestor Almendros’ work. I think that was a big influence.

QUESTION: What did you do after graduation?

GOI: I taught at Columbia College for about three years after I graduated. That was in-between shooting documentaries. I was shooting feature length films for PBS. I liked teaching, but had to give it up when I began shooting commercials. The ad agencies I was working for also needed still photos, so I also became a fashion photographer and opened a studio, which I ran for about seven or eight years. I learned a lot from that experience, but running the studio became too much like a full-time job. It wasn’t fun any more. I had already shot seven or eight independent features and TV films when I decided to move to Los Angeles and concentrate on cinematography.

QUESTION: Are you still a movie fan?

GOI: I love movies. I love making them and I love watching them. I have a laser disc collection of almost 6,000 films. My friends still call to ask questions about old films. Who was the star and who was the director? Things like that.

QUESTION: All of those things must influence your thinking as a cinematographer. I was wondering how your documentary experience influenced the way you shot Who Killed Atlanta’s Children?

GOI: It helps even if you aren’t shooting a film with a semi-documentary feeling like this one. Shooting documentaries teaches you to think on your feet. It throws you into situations where you have limited control. That teaches you to think about what's the best way to present this particular part of the story. What's the best angle to shoot it from? How do I control this light? What are the elements I have to work with? It was great training because I got thrown into all kinds of situations. Some were very tense. I’ve shot films with striking mine workers and in public housing projects infested by gangs (Goi earned an Emmy for Fired Up: The Story of Public Housing in Chicago.) That gave me a sense of how my work could affect other people. I still shoot documentaries whenever I can because it is good for your perspective and it keeps your thinking fresh.

QUESTION: What are your most recent documentaries?

GOI: Within the last several years, I shot a documentary about the rise and fall of Death Row records, and another in Washington state about the relationship between a man dying of Aids and his son. We spent three weeks literally living with them.

QUESTION: I have one final question. Are the cable networks like Showtime and HBO becoming an important venue for independent filmmaking?

GOI: In some ways the answer is yes, but it's not totally accurate to think of them as the new independent filmmaking marketplace, because to some degree they exercise controls you expect to see when you are shooting a studio or TV network film. However, they are willing to tell stories that may not be commercial enough for theatrical release, and that’s very appealing to serious filmmakers like Charlie Carner. Also, I know when I shoot a film like Who Killed Atlanta’s Children? for Showtime, the chances are pretty good that millions of people are going to see it.