Jack Green had just finished shooting Like Father, Like Son, a Dudley Moore comedy that deals with a topic that isn't usually funny in real life. The inability of father and son to communicate should be listed as a communicable disease.

Otherwise, how can you explain its rampant spread? Like Father, Like Son suggests an implausible remedy: show the son the world through the eyes of the father and vice versa. If you can bottle that prescription, you could pay the national debt from petty cash.

Green still was basking in the warm afterglow of the just-ended production. Like Father, Like Son is only his second feature film as director of photography. The first was Heartbreak Ridge. It's quite a stretch from Clint Eastwood to Dudley Moore. For a cinematographer determined not to be typed, it isn't a bad way to start a body of work.                                 

Like Father, Like Son is a Tri-Star Production directed by Rod Daniel. It stars Kirk Cameron (TV's Growing Pains) and Shawn Astin, along with Moore.

The story: Moore is a surgeon striving to become head of the hospital. He's cold, calculating and ambitious. Cameron is his teenage son, who's more interested in rock concerts, track meets and foxy girls than a career path following in his father's footsteps. In other words, they don't see eye-to-eye, and father and son are doing more talking to themselves than to each other.

Now comes the twist. Through a freak metaphysical accident, Moore's mind and personality ends up in his son's body and vice versa. Not only do they get to see each other's lives through their own eyes; they get to live them.

The time is now. The place is any metropolitan area. Jack Hammond (Moore) and his son live together in a white sterile house devoid of warmth. Unsaid, but implied, is the fact that Mrs. Hammond has died recently, leaving them to live and cope with each other.

The production was shot mainly in the Los Angeles area, with the exception of key scenes at the new U.S. Naval Hospital in San Diego. Other main practical locations included three schools, a house in Studio City and the Long Beach Sports Arena (where a rock concert was staged).

"It could be any city," said Green. "Nothing identifies it as Los Angeles. We were very careful about that."

The only sound stage work was done in a warehouse in the west end of the San Fernando Valley, where sets for the hospital boardroom and a hallway were built. "We lit it more like a practical location than a stage," said Green.

Moore gets into Cameron's head and vice versa when an experiment goes awry. An Indian medicine man is supposed to use an experimental herb to help a patient concentrate on healing rather than the fear and pain of surgery. Only he accidentally flip flops the wrong psyches.

"For the concept to work, the audience must accept and like the characters," said Green. And that had a lot to do with shaping the film's look – which is much more contrasty and moody than a typical comedy. In fact, that's how Green happened to get tapped for Like Father, Like Son.

"The producer is David Valdez, who works a lot with Clint Eastwood," Green explained. Valdez knew Green's work from Heartbreak Ridge. Green also operated for Bruce Surtees, ASC on about a half a dozen pictures, including Tightrope and several other Eastwood films. Valdez recommended Green to Daniel.

Green had something of a character test right from day one of shooting. Both Valdez and Daniel told him how much they liked the look of Heartbreak Ridge: a lot of contrast, a high key-to-fill ratio, and texture. "They envisioned a comedy something like the black-and-white films that Gordon Willis, ASC crafted for Woody Allen – lots of texture and tone instead of the light, bright look which characterizes so many comedies."

So, there's Green thinking he's about to get an opportunity to "strut his best stuff" and work on the edges of light and darkness when reality hit home. "On the first day of shooting, I used very little front light," he said. "I was mostly using cross and back cross lighting."

Green could see that Moore was getting a little edgy. He heard him tell Daniel, "You should see the eyes in a comedy." Then, came the dailies the next day, and Valdez asked, "Jack, this will print up, won't it? We'll see the faces?"

Green assured Valdez and Daniel that the image was on the negative. In the background, he saw Moore walking out the door, looking him in the eye, and mouthing a silent message, "Jack, help!"

"I lightened up a bit, and overexposed a little, but still kept the texture," he said. "Shooting a film is a collaborative art. You develop a lighting scheme which suits a picture, not your style."

Part of the challenge was the new economics of moviemaking. "We had a release date (mid-September) before we had a start date," said Green. Like Father, Like Son started shooting barely six months before the scheduled release. If you can work that way, you aren't paying excessive interest on the money spent to finance production, and the return on investment comes a lot quicker.

But, it gave Green barely two weeks of prep time. "We were constantly running, being surprised and having to make do," he said. Green worked mainly with two Panaflex Gold cameras and a broad selection of lenses, from 14 mm to 800 mm.  There was considerable Panaglide work, and he also used an Arriflex III camera for slow motion.

Green did his own Panaglide work, 12 days in all, 10 of them in the doctor's house. The Panaglide was used during the earliest scenes in the doctor's house. Daniel wanted an objective point of view which was akin to an alien entity floating around the house. This was before the film was established as a comedy. At that point, it could have been a science fiction or horror movie.

After leading the audience down this false path, there's a visual joke. And after that, the point of view changes. Green also used the Panaglide as a dolly in some tight situations in the house.

"There's one long continuous shot with Moore walking in a doorway, and we wanted to pull back and lead him into the kitchen. There's no way to do that on a dolly without showing tracks," he said.

Green used a mix of three color negatives. Eastman medium speed 5247 emulsion was used for most daylight exteriors and a few interiors. Eastman 5294 film was used for night exteriors and interiors. The new 5297 daylight balanced film was used for almost all day interiors, and for many special situations where exceptional depth of field or latitude was required.

Call it faith in Kodak, or nerve, but Green never had a chance to test the daylight film before using it. "The closest that I came to a test was loading some in a 35 mm SLR camera, and exposing it at the naval hospital to see how it handled practical lighting," he said.                             

The 5297 film is rated for an exposure index of 250 in daylight. It also handles mixed lighting sources very well and balances them with daylight, said Green.

The film is sharper and finer grained than 5294, and faster than 5247. "It comes very close to having the latitude of 5247, and it is just about a perfect match in look; maybe it's a little bluer, but that's easy to fix in the lab," he said. "It's a tremendous advantage to have those extra two stops on interiors where you might otherwise have used 5247."

For example, there were daylight interior shots in the doctor's house. "The high speed daylight film gave me the latitude to work at stop T-5.6," he said. I could carry the splits and provide the deep focuses that the story demanded. In one scene, there was an argument in the kitchen between the father and son. If I was shooting with 5247, I'd have used less foreground or split the diopter. The extra stops let me carry Dudley big in the foreground. There was just a soft buzz in the foreground, but we carried the scene, and you could see all of the features."

How did he handle all of the white walls?

"They wanted a pure white, sterile look, giving the house a kind of 'unlived in' feeling," he said. "White is white, so you can't worry about that. If an actor got too close to a white wall, I built the light level up. There wasn't time to tech the walls down, so at every opportunity I put shadows on the walls. What I did do is try to make the light that fell on the walls interesting."

Green created diffusion for the window light in various ways. For example, he used tree branches to dapple the source light. He put them on C stands in front of the lights. Other times he used more conventional diffusion, or cutters. Green even had the grips hold sticks in front of the source light to create interesting angles of shadows on the walls.

"That gave us some dimension," he said. "I didn't want flat shadows. The walls might have been overexposed, but they were interesting to look at."

Green used heavy neutral density filtration on the windows. "I was two to three stops overexposed on the walls all of the time, but the daylight film handles two stops, and you can still see details at three over."

He also built tents outside of all of the windows. This took the sun off of the windows. It allowed the camera to see out, and it helped to keep the shadows from changing.

"The measure of a cinematographer, I believe, is not how well you put light into a scene, but how effectively you subtract it," Green said. "Every practical location has some natural characteristics, including available light. One school of thought says, 'Use that light and round it out. Don't mess with the natural look.' I believe that if the natural light distracts from the story, or if it makes a bigger statement than it should, you must alter it. Light, or lack of light, must work for the story."

Green said that the daylight 5297 and 5247 emulsions mix well. There were several staged track meets at a local high school. In one scene, someone gets punched in the face. Daniel wanted slow motion coverage of the punch. The meet was lit with HMI lights. However, for the speed shot, Green was concerned about flicker.

"HMI light is okay at multiples of 24 frames per second if you're shooting with a crystal synchronized motor," he said. "We were shooting at 96, 128 and at various odd frame rates. So, we lit this set up with tungsten 3200 K light, and used the 5247 emulsion. The lab (Technicolor) did a little balancing, and the two negatives intercut perfectly. You can't tell where one starts and the other ends."

The track meets were shot head-on with two cameras. "We wanted to get it in one take," said Green. "The director didn't want Kirk to have to run 440 yards five or six times."

An Arriflex III was used for speed, 96 frames per second. That was loaded with the daylight emulsion with a lens opening at stop T-22. "That gave the assistant a chance to focus," said Green. It was a tight shot filmed with an 800 mm lens. The other camera, a Panaflex Gold, was positioned in the same place, only it was a wider shot, and it was loaded with the 5247 emulsion. Here he was working at T-11, which was sufficient to carry depth of field.

The concert shot at the Long Beach Sports Arena featured the rock group Autograph. "There would have been too many limitations and it would have cost too much to shoot an actual concert," he said. "So, we contacted a local radio station, which pulled people into the arena while we were shooting."

Production ran over five hours with audience. There were never more than 1,500 people, so one of the things Green had to do was make the crowd seem to be 10 times larger. He set lights up around the periphery of the audience, and shot them directly toward the cameras. You can't see what's beyond the lights, he explained.

The group itself was primarily lit with computer controlled stage lights. Everything was pre-set. There was directional light, panning, automatic color changes. "We went with their normal lighting schematic," said Green.

For the most part. The stage lighting used by rock groups tends to be very frontal. There are normally five troopers (spots), one covering each of the main performers. Green cut back to one trooper. Then, he hung trees of lights on the sides, and let them swing, providing ambient light for the faces.

"I didn't mind if they came in and out of the shadows," he said, "or if we had some edge light on faces. In fact, that's what I wanted."

He used a Panaglide on the stage. The point-of-view was Dr. Hammond's, who is there in his son's body on a date with a foxy girl.

"He's supposed to be very disoriented and annoyed," said Green, "so we skewed the camera a bit so the angle of the frame line would change. In this case, we made subjective use of the Panaglide camera."

Green had two Panaflex Gold cameras in the audience, sometimes on a crane, other times on various dolly tracks or handheld. When the footage was intercut, you'd swear there were 12 cameras.

He shot this scene with the high speed 5294 emulsion, about one-half to three quarters of a stop overexposed (a tip from Technicolor's Rob Hummel), working at 170 degrees shutter rather than 200 degrees shutter.

"I used this technique throughout production, whenever I used the 5294 emulsion," he said. "It gave me richer blacks and sharper focus."

Green explained the half- to three-quarters of a stop overexposure gave him a printing light of 39 to 40 because he had a fuller, or richer, negative. He exposed the 5247 and 5297 emulsions as recommended by Kodak with printing lights in the mid-30s.

The 170 degree shutter gave less time for exposure, but there was also less time for the image to move on the frame, and therefore, an apparently sharper image was recorded, he explained.

Every actor and actress has his or her own best light. For example, one of our actors has deepset eye sockets. "There's no angle that you can light from over the eyebrows without shadowing his eyes," Green said. "So, you drop down to eye level on anything closer in than a waist shot and put a white card under his eyes."                                    

The hospital was a find because the Navy hadn't moved in yet, and it has a modern slick look which matched the demeanor of the other settings. Nurses' stations in the facility are set up like the hubs of wheels, with hallways feeding off like spokes. The ceilings are 22 feet high, with mercury vapor lamps, and there are many windows.

Tom Stern (gaffer) hung maybe 50 to 70 fluorescent globes, disguised as decorative lights, only inches from the ceiling. Filtration was used to balance for the sodium vapor lights. The window light, used as a source, was balanced with gels to match the mix of color temperatures.     

Except for some front fill on dolly shots, there were few opportunities to put lights on the floor. Daniel wanted a lot of camera movement. Many scenes had 360 degree coverage.

"He told me that's what he wanted from the start," said Green. That left Green with few opportunities to hide lights, and in the hospital, he had to deal with those high ceilings.

So, Green worked these scenes with the high speed daylight film, usually with around 20 footcandles of key, and using a 6:1 zoom as a variable focus much of the time. The zoom saved a lot of time, particularly with all of the camera movement. Green used the zoom to change frame sizes on dolly shots with the action disguising the movement of the lens.

"One of the things that I learned from working with Bruce (Surtees) and Clint Eastwood is that when you save time in making these kinds of setups, you can help affect the whole pacing of the film," said Green. "It keeps the flow going. The cast doesn't drift off. They stay close to the action and the director. Once you hit a pace, maintain it. If something slows you down, and you lose momentum, you usually lose it for the entire day."

There were times when he used the new Panavision Z hard lenses, simply because he was in a tight spot and that allowed him to remove 16 inches from the front of the camera. "They (directors in general) always want the camera where the wall is," he said, and Like Father, Like Son had no "wild" walls.

Perhaps as much as 80 percent of the shots involved camera movement. Even when the performers were sitting, the camera would move around them. "It added an element of visual excitement," Green said, "but, we had to innovate, overcome and adapt (a line borrowed from Sgt. Tom Highway, Heartbreak Ridge.)

Green is quick to credit his crew for their contributions, especially gaffer Tom Stern and key grip Bill Young. "They were tremendously innovative."      

There's a scene shot on the warehouse set, working with 5294, where Dudley Moore is standing in a doorway listening to his son tell the board of directors why he should be made head of the hospital. The crew punched a hole in the wall (which was off-camera) facing Moore, so they could put a soft light t on his face. Then, Green dollied in for a closeup.

"Everyone tries to justify their light sources," Green said. "That's the smart thing to do. But, sometimes you have to improve on natural light, and do what's right for the scene. Maybe you're using the same room a lot, and you want to change the look for time of day or mood. You never want to call attention to the camera. But, you don't want to bore the audience either."

The 5297 emulsion gave him a useful new tool which expanded his options. There's a scene in surgery at the start of the movie. All Green did was change the overhead fixtures to daylight balanced lamps, and shoot with the high speed daylight film.

On the other hand, he took a totally different approach to shooting the boardroom on the warehouse set with the 5294 emulsion. He covered the top of the set with bleached muslin. On the ground, he used juniors and seniors and bounced light off the muslin. Green used an SP light, handheld, with spun over it, to fill in the eyes.

"I didn't want a studio look," he explained. "I wanted it to look like a practical location."

Shooting at a practical location in a school hallway, Green had to cope with a 30-foot-high ceiling with overhead tungsten lights. He mixed in some HMI light, not to overwhelm, but to balance a little. The daylight film worked well in this situation.

However at night, around a campfire, where an uncle had a remedy for putting things back to normal, Green exposed by firelight, using the 5294 emulsion. "It photographed beautifully," he said. "If people got close to the fire, they got hot and bright. If they moved away, they got dark and dim. It was all very natural."

In the background, he had some big arcs representing moonlight, which allowed him to record some of the feeling of expansive depth in the desert. "This wasn't used to augment the firelight," he emphasized. "Moonlight isn't that perceptible."

In all, some 60 percent of the movie is recorded on the daylight footage, around 30 percent on 5247, and 10 percent on 5294.

Choice of emulsion, lens, composition, lighting – or more accurately, control of light – are among the many tools that an individual cinematographer can use to execute his or her art. This is partly experience and partly instinct. There are things that you do because they feel right. You are born with that ability. It's a gift. There are other things you do because somewhere along the way you've absorbed an understanding of what happens when light strikes an emulsion in a particular way.

His experience: Green was born in San Francisco, the fourth generation of his family to live in that city.  He remembers taking pictures with a camera that his father bought for him. "I was only nine or 10 years old," he said.  "From that point on, I was never without a camera.  I always took pictures".

His father was more than a barber. He was also a vaudeville performer. "He always told me that you had to have a second career, something to fall back on," Green said. "He had this home-made wooden contact printer, which he used to make pictures for his scrapbook. I remember how fascinating it was to see how pictures were made."

At age 18, Green was managing one of his father's barber shops, but he had business cards that said, "Jack Green/Photographer." "I had visions of taking pictures on weekends and making it big," he said.

One of his regular customers was Joe Dieves, a one-time combat cameraman, who was doing industrial and commercial 16 mm film work. "One day I asked him point blank if I could go on a job with him," said Green.

"I don't see why not," said Dieves.

But it took awhile until Green got a permit to work for Dieves as a camera assistant.  Finally, on a Monday (when the shop was closed), no one on the roster was available. The first job was shooting footage through an open door of a Coast Guard prop jet of the first DC-8 on the West Coast.

"I watched the tachometer and hauled cases, but I was hooked," he said. "I loved it."

After that, it was just a matter of time before occasional work for Dieves – "He taught me everything," said Green – turned into a full-time career as an assistant cameraman.  Around five years later, in 1969, Green was offered a job in Los Angeles with John Lowry Productions, which operated a gyro-stabilized helicopter camera. Within three days, he had moved his family.

He went from there to Tyler Camera, doing maintenance work for a year until he worked up to a Group One slot on the IATSE 659 roster. After that, he worked with Don Morgan, ASC as an assistant. He moved up to operator on Fighting Mad in 1975.

"At that point, I wanted to work for different people to glean as much as I could," Green said. He worked with Bill Fraker, ASC; Harry Stradling, Jr., ASC; Ric Waite and Davy Walsh, as well as with Bruce Surtees; some for a few days and others for several pictures.

Green remembers the time that he and Surtees visited Bruce's mother, wife of all-time great cinematographer Robert Surtees, ASC.

"She took us into the den, which she had decorated with the 19 Academy Award nominations and three Oscars that her husband had won. I was just staring at them in awe, and she told me to go ahead and pick one up."

On the mantel, he saw an Oscar for Ben Hur. "It's wonderful, isn't it?" she asked Green. "You win one for yourself someday."

Green picked the Oscar off the mantel, and it felt like it weighed 1,000 pounds. "I got goose bumps," he said. "I still get goose bumps thinking about it."

Awhile later, Green was driving to work with Surtees. They were working on Beverly Hills Cop. "I asked him, what's going to happen to our friendship when they move me up, Bruce?"             

Don't worry, Surtees answered. Everyone moves up. Awhile later, Green heard that Surtees asked Eastwood when he was going to move his operator (Green) up. Green shot Heartbreak Ridge soon afterwards, which led to Like Father, Like Son.

Green was thinking back to when he was starting out with Dieves. "I remember asking him once, how I could ever thank him for the chance he gave me and for everything he taught me." "Pass it on," Dieves told Green.

Dieves died a couple of years ago, but Green hasn't forgotten. "I feel like I'm the luckiest person in the world to have this opportunity," he said. I want more than a career. I want to stretch myself and excel. But, I also know that I have a debt to pay back to Joe Dieves and the other people who helped me on the way up. I'm never going to forget that."