A Conversation with Fred Koenekamp, ASC
By Bob Fisher

Fred Koenekamp, ASC was born and raised in Los Angeles, where his father, was in the first generation of Hollywood cinematographers and Guild members. Hans Koenekamp, ASC became a cameraman for Mack Sennett in 1913. Later, he directed second units and produced special effects shots for Warner Bros. Koenekamp served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. His first industry job was as a camera loader at RKO Studios in 1945. He stepped up to first assistant on Harry Wild’s camera crew initially specializing in underwater shots. Koenekamp earned his first credit as a camera operator in 1958 on The Brothers Karamazov on a crew assembled by John Alton, ASC.

He garnered his first cinematography credit in 1964 for the pilot of the television series, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Koenekamp shot more than 100 episodes of that classic series, stretching over four seasons. He earned Emmy nominations for shooting the series in black and white in 1965 and in color in 1966. Koenekamp compiled more than 90 cinematography credits. He earned Academy Award nominations for Islands in the Stream and Patton and shared a 1975 Oscar® with Joe Biroc, ASC for their collaboration on The Towering Inferno. Other memorable films in his formidable body of work include The Great Bank Robbery, Billy Jack, Kansas City Bomber, The Amityville Horror, Papillion and Fun With Dick and Jane.

Koenekamp will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Cinematographers on February 20, 2005 in recognition of his many contributions to advancing the art and craft of cinematography.

Following are excerpts of a conversation:

ICG: We understand that you grew up in the film industry.

KOENEKAMP: My dad (Hans Koenekamp, ASC) became a cameraman for Mack Sennett (in 1913). He shot films with Charlie Chaplin, Mabel Norman, Gloria Swanson and the Keystone Kops. Later, he directed second units and produced special effects. When I was a boy, sometimes I would spend entire Saturdays at Warner Bros. watching him work, particularly if they were filming scenes with miniature trains.

ICG: Were you a movie fan when you were growing up?

KOENEKAMP: Our family went to the movies together every Saturday night.

ICG: Did you plan to follow in you dad’s footsteps when you grew up?

KOENEKAMP: No. I was an aviation buff as a kid. I wanted to fly. The war came along, and I went in the service for the duration. By the time I got out of the Navy my desire to get into aviation had diminished. I had planned to go to the University of Southern California, where I had begun classes before I went in the service, but a job opportunity came up as a camera loader at RKO Studios. I was 23 years old, and decided I had better not spend another two or three years at school. I took the job and fell in love with the movie industry. There was a marvelous bunch of people working at RKO. Linwood Dunn (ASC) headed the visual effects department. It was right next to the camera department. I would watch him work and find opportunities to ask him questions. He always found time to talk with me.

ICG: Did you plan to become a cinematographer?

KOENEKAMP: There were no young cameramen in Hollywood in those days. They were all older men, and from the stories I heard, no one had been promoted to first cameraman in ages. There were five or six cameramen on salary at RKO, including Bob De Grasse and Roy Hunt. After a couple of years, there was a lot of excitement because Joe Biroc (ASC) was promoted to first cameraman. It was tough being a younger crewmember, because the work wasn’t steady. You would get laid off in-between films. It was kind of hard in the beginning, but I got used to it after a couple of years.

ICG: How did you take the next step?

KOENEKAMP: I got a job as a camera loader at Technicolor for about a year, and then RKO called me back as an assistant cameraman. I did a picture with a cameraman named Harry Wild. It was called Under Water. I was taught how to do underwater camera work, including scuba diving. The timing couldn’t have been better because MGM was just getting started with a series of films featuring Esther Williams. A lot of scenes were filmed in and under water. They needed an assistant cameraman who could do underwater work. I went to MGM anticipating a month’s work, and ended up staying there for 14 years. It was a wonderful place to work. I did many pictures as an assistant cameraman. I worked with Joe Ruttenberg (ASC), and other great cameramen. They eventually moved me up to operator on The Brothers Karamazov (in 1958). John Alton (ASC) was the cinematographer, and Richard Brooks was the director. Richard was a real tough guy who ran the set with an iron fist, yet he was willing to give a new kid a chance. I’ll be honest. I was scared, but it worked out and he treated me just like a gentleman during the whole picture. I eventually shot Wrong is Right (1982) with him.

ICG: When and how did you move up to director of photography?

KOENEKAMP: What happened was that feature work had slowed down, so I took a job as an operator on Gunsmoke. The cinematographer was Frank Phillips (ASC). One day (in 1963) I got a phone call from the MGM camera department. They asked me to come over and meet Norman Felton, a producer who might be interested in making me a first cameraman on a television series called The Lieutenant. It turned out that he had a new show coming up called The Man From U.N.C.L.E (in 1964). I worked on that show for about four seasons. It might have been the best break in my life. That series was fun to shoot, and it gave me a chance to experiment with lighting and other things.

ICG: Was that a black-and-white show?

KOENEKAMP: The first year was black and white, and then the network switched to color. Color film speeds were real slow compared to today, so we used a lot more light. In those days, the feature film cameramen kind of looked down their noses at you if you were doing a TV show. Thank goodness that has changed, because they are doing some marvelous things on television. It never bothered me shooting TV shows.

ICG: You shot a memorable film, The Great Bank Robbery, in 1969.

KOENEKAMP: Kim Novak and Zero Mostel played the leading roles. I’ve always been kind of a train buff. We shot scenes near Humboldt (California), where they had trains and a track they could run on. There were also shots in a hot air balloon that were interesting. Kim was both a big star and a nice person. I liked her a lot.

ICG: Did she and other stars have ideas about how they liked to be shot?

KOENEKAMP: I can’t remember any man saying, ‘This is my best side, light me from this direction, use high or low keylight,’ or anything like that. I did work with two or three women stars who told me how they wanted to be lit, and how they wanted to look. I remember one day before Kim and I got to be good friends, we had lined up a shot. She walked on the set, looked around and called me over to her. Kim pointed to a light and asked, is that my key light? She pointed to another light and asked, is that what you call fill light over there? I don’t recall her exact words, but she asked me to explain what job each light did. We never had that conversation again.

ICG: How about Patton, an all-time favorite for many?

KOENEKAMP: Patton is my favorite picture of all time. It’s the highlight of my career. I was working on The Great Bank Robbery when I got the call to meet with and interview Frank Schaffner, the director. We were working nights, so it gave me a chance to meet with him during the day. I hadn’t read the script yet, but I took an immediate liking to Frank. About a week later, my agent called and said, you’re going to do Patton. I finished shooting The Great Bank Robbery and flew to Spain, where we shot the film. I read the script on the plane. I don’t think it really sunk in at that time that I was on the verge of working on a great picture that was much more than another war/action film. We spent the first four weeks just looking at sets, having meetings and scouting locations. Frank and I talked a lot. It’s so important, when a cameraman and the director can really talk with one another. The more you talk with him, the more you know what he has in his mind and what he expects from you. Up until that time, all I knew about Patton was the publicity he got during World War II. We also had a retired general on the set who made sure everything was realistic. He knew about all the battles, and he would tell little stories about what Patton did and didn’t do. I think it’s terribly important for a cameraman to really become part of the story. The script dictates how you are going to light, whether you going to use more than one camera, and how you are going to cover scenes, along with what the director has in mind. The first day we were shooting, there was a scene where Patton was having his portrait painted in a castle. Something just hit me inside. I thought, this guy (Scott) is terrific. As the picture went on, I started thinking of George as Patton. Frank (Schaffner) was so easy to work with that he made it fun. He was one of the greatest directors I’ve worked with. I love that man like a father.

ICG: Did you study Patton by looking at newsreels and stills of him?

KOENEKAMP: They had a few newsreel shots in black and white, but our schedule was fairly hectic. We did a lot of moving around and traveling, so there wasn’t much time to do research. My routine was that I had two scripts. I kept one on the set and one at home. I’m a big believer in being prepared. Every night, I’d re-read the next day’s script and then in the morning my key grip would have my chair set up with my script. I’d get a cup of coffee, sit down and read that day’s work again.

ICG: Did you know that you were making a classic film?

KOENEKAMP: Like I said, it took me a little while to realize what a great picture this was going to be, but by the time we finished I went home feeling pretty excited.

ICG: Billy Jack (1971) was a totally different type of film.

KOENEKAMP: The director was Tom Laughton, and he also played Billy Jack. It was the first time I’ve had to work with a director who also played a leading role. I tried to help him as much as I could. It was a classic Western that we shot on location in Santa Fe Springs (New Mexico). It didn’t have a big budget, but it was a phenomenally big hit.

ICG: Were you ever under contract to a studio?

KOENEKAMP: When I first went to work at both RKO and MGM, both studios had about a half a dozen cameramen on salary who were there all the time. They usually worked with the same directors and actors, and they had regular crews who were with them for years. By the time I was a cameraman those days were over.

ICG: Let me ask you about another type of picture, Kansas City Bomber.

KOENEKAMP: It was the director’s (Jerrold Freedman) first picture, and I think he did a great job. Raquel Welch was a big star, and she was a beautiful lady with a really wonderful figure. We shot most of that film in Portland, Oregon, in a roller rink. It was a very demanding job lighting and covering the action, skating scenes. Someone suggested putting a go-cart on the roller rink track with a mount we built for the Panavision PSR camera. We obviously couldn’t use it for everything, but we sure got some nice close-ups of Raquel skating. It was great working with her. There was no baloney about how she should be lit or what her best side was. She’s so darn pretty that you could hardly miss. She did her own skating, and broke her wrist towards the end of production.

ICG: That brings us to another of my favorite films, Papillon.

KOENEKAMP: Next to Patton, it’s my favorite picture. It’s a story about a petty criminal in France who was wrongfully convicted of murder. They called him Papillon, which means butterfly. He is sentenced to spend the rest of his life on Devil’s Island, a penal colony off the coast of South America. He makes various attempts to escape and is caught and punished. We were shooting in Jamaica with Panavision PSR cameras. (Panavision founder) Robert Gottschalk promised me that we’d get the new Panaflex camera as soon as it was built. I remember the day, we were working in a bamboo forest, and my assistant arrived carrying the first Panaflex camera used on a picture. Unfortunately, there was a little thing that went wrong, and we had to send it back.

ICG: How did you get to know Bob Gottschalk?

KOENEKAMP: I worked as an assistant cameraman on Raintree County (1956), the first Panavision 65 mm film. The cinematographer was Robert Surtees (ASC). It was a big improvement over the old Mitchell 65 mm cameras and lenses. That’s how I met Bob Gottschalk. Years later, whenever I was preparing a picture, I’d spend a couple of days at Panavision talking with him and some of the other guys at Panavision, finding out what was new. They had a good projection room, so you could shoot tests and see the results. I think his secret was that he really liked cameramen. I think he did more for Hollywood probably than any single individual as far as advancing technology.

ICG: Let’s get back to Papillon.

KOENEKAMP: Papillon was a story about the endurance of the human spirit set in an exotic environment. Frank Schaffner brought out the best in everyone. The first sequence was shot in Spain. That’s the scene where they are marching through town on the way to the boat. People were cheering and yelling. They lined up on the pier listening to an indoctrination speech about what to expect. Then, they marched onto the boat. That’s all we did in Spain. We flew to Jamaica where the rest of the picture was shot, except for a blue screen shot when he jumps off the cliff. There wasn’t a high enough cliff on Devil’s Island. We tried to fake it with a little cliff, but when Frank (Schaffner) saw dailies, he said, it’s not dramatic enough. It’s not selling me. If you remember the film, Papillon timed the waves and jumped when he knew the water was deep enough. For that one sequence, we went to Maui where there were beautiful cliffs that feel realistic.

ICG: I get a lump in my throat just thinking about that scene.

KOENEKAMP: I think you’ve got to really believe in the story for a film to truly move people. It has to sink into your brain and body so you can relate to what the character is doing or to what is happening to him. I think that is probably the most important thing. If that happens, then the cinematography, art direction and actors fall into place. I believe that the more time you spend with the director, the better you understand what he’s talking about. When I was working with Frank, we would take one day in preproduction and sit in the office going through the script page by page, and talk about how each scene should play. Was it night or day, dawn or magic hour? Should we use a boom or multiple cameras? Did we want any special lenses? Film students call and write me letters asking for advice. I tell them to get to know the people they are working with and study the script with them. It’s the backbone of the picture.

ICG: You shared an Oscar® with Joe Biroc (ASC) for The Towering Inferno. How did the two of you happen to work on that film together?

KOENEKAMP: I had heard about the picture and oddly enough, I was always fascinated by fire trucks. I was under contract to shoot another film for Universal Studios, but when that picture was delayed my agent said Irwin Allen wanted to meet me. Irwin told me in our first meeting that he wanted me to shoot the dramatic scenes for The Towering Inferno. He said Joe Biroc (ASC) was going to work with him on a second unit that was going to film explosions and other action sequences. Universal agreed to release me from my contract, so I could work on The Towering Inferno. I was amazed by the preparation that had been done. They had miniatures of every major set down to the smallest details and sketches of every scene. Joe and I talked a lot and shot some tests together. We became friends. Fire can be interesting, because it can be so many different colors. It can be orange, bright red, smoky black, and it can have white smoke in it. There is no end of the different looks depending on what’s burning. Joe experimented with using red and orange filters on lights to determine what looked best, for instance, if a wall was burning. We discussed lighting and camera positions, what we liked and spoke with Irwin to see how he felt. The special effects crew gave me a little, handheld smoke machine, and sometimes at the last minute before the cameras rolled, I would pump some smoke wherever I felt we needed it. It was a tough picture, because there were so many visual effects and some of the actors did some of their own stunt work. Paul Newman was climbing ladders and, of course, Steve McQueen just loved that stuff.

ICG: That raises an interesting point. How do you know how much is just enough smoke in the right place at the right time? Is that instinctive?

KOENEKAMP: It’s something you learn to do by eye. It’s easy to go overboard and pump in so much smoke that you block something that you want the audience to see. In this film, fire and smoke were story points. The flames that they used on the set didn’t put out smoke, because they were natural gas, so we had to create our own smoke. I went on to do three more pictures with Irwin Allen (The Swarm, When Time Ran Out and Alice in Wonderland). We really hit it off.

ICG: You were talking about lighting earlier. I don’t want to over-simplify, but there seems to be a lot of confusion about why cinematographers light.

KOENEKAMP: There are two main reasons. One is that you need enough light to expose the images properly, whether it’s a film or video camera. The other thing is you’re lighting for the mood. Lighting is really a big thing. It’s one of the first things you have got to learn. During the time when I was working, when we went from requiring 200 foot candles down to 20, and I still got a good exposure with a good stop on the lens. Today’s films are much faster, but you still have to light.

ICG: How about a different type of picture, Fun with Dick and Jane.

KOENEKAMP: I had worked with the actor (George Segal) before, so I knew he was a good guy. I had also met Jane Fonda before. The director (Ted Kotcheff) was very demanding and knew what he wanted. I saw it on television recently, and it brought back a lot of memories. We shot it in Los Angeles, including a big house on top of a hill that wasn’t quite finished. There was some funny dialog.

ICG: Did you approach a comedy differently than an action picture?

KOENEKAMP: Years ago somebody told me, if you are going to do a comedy it should be brightly lit and have an upbeat look. I thought that made sense, but then I went on to find out it didn’t make sense at all. I treated comedy pretty much the same way I did any other picture. I believe that the audience wants to see people’s faces, even if it’s only a half face or a half tone. The best way to describe it is that I lit the picture honestly.

ICG: You also filmed a really scary movie called The Swarm.

KOENEKAMP: That was another Irwin Allen film. Last year, a film crew from England was doing a documentary. They took me to a meeting with the same beekeeper that we had on The Swarm, and he had me put on one of those outfits including the mask. It was kind of interesting looking back after all those years. We all wore those uniforms when we were around the bees, but there were shots where Olivia de Haviland had to have them on her face. We had 10 or maybe 12 women working with the bees in a very cold room. They would pick up one bee at a time and take their stinger off. By the time we shot the scene, we probably had about 1,000 bees without stingers, so they could put them on the actors’ faces and arms without any danger that anyone would be stung.

ICG: Today, they would probably use digital bees.

KOENEKAMP: Right, but you know it would feel different. We also had fake bees made out of some kind of breakfast flakes that were long, brownish and kind of oblong in shape. We found that if we used a fan and blew a mass of those flakes through the air, they looked just like a swarm of bees. Working outside with the real bees was the most difficult problem because they weren’t controllable. We never knew where they were going to go or who they are going to go after.

ICG: How about Islands in the Stream?

KOENEKAMP: It was one of my favorite pictures. It was also directed by Frank Shaffner. We shot it in Hawaii with George Scott in the leading role. He plays a painter and sculptor who seeks refuge from the horrors of World War II on a tropical island, where he is visited by his three sons. The story was written by Ernest Hemingway. It’s a story about his loneliness as depicted by this character.

I was really comfortable with George (Scott), and knew him well from other pictures. We had a lot of fun filming on boats. If you talk to cameramen who have done boat work, they’ll tell you that it can be very tough. You have to deal with getting your crew, lights, camera and actors on the boat or boats and not get in each other’s way. Our main boat was only 36 feet long. I remembered that during World War II they used these big steel rafts to make landings on beaches. I thought if we could find some of those in Hawaii left over from the war, we could make them into a floating platform to work on in the water and tie the boat to it. Frank went for it. The construction coordinator found three or four of these barges and put them together. We also had a mother ship, a little coastal freighter. We put a Titan boom and generator on the big ship and ran wires back to the raft to power the lights. There’s not a process shot in the entire picture. I’ve always been kind of proud of that, because it worked. We had a camera mounted on a crane in front of the boat. George Scott and another actor were on the bridge, and we originally planned to shoot back towards them. I knew that you’ve got to keep the bow turned into the waves, but unfortunately whoever was at the helm apparently didn’t know that. One of the waves hit us sideways, and we rolled over. It scared the hell out of everyone. George got so upset that he called the director that night and said, Fred damn near killed me. I went to his dressing room and explained I was scared, too. He was fine after that.

ICG: How about your relationship with your crew, your operators and your assistants? How did you know how to choose the right people?

KOENEKAMP: I was probably was one of the luckiest cameramen in Hollywood when it came to choosing crews. People on your crew have to get along with each other and they also understand what you’re thinking and how you work. Three of my assistant cameramen became first cameramen, Chuck Arnold, Eddie Morey (III) and Mike Benson. I think that’s a pretty good sign that they were good people.

ICG: How did you communicate with them?

KOENEKAMP: After you work on a number of shows together it’s amazing how little conversation you need. If you have the right people on your crew, you don’t need to tell them what to do. They know how you think and what you like. The biggest thing I’ve missed since retiring is that camaraderie. I’d love to call my old crew and say we’re starting a picture tomorrow.

ICG: How important was your own experience working on crews?

KOENEKAMP: My early years in this business were like going to school. When you’re on the set, and you’re working around a famous cameraman, you watch and study everything he does. You watch his lighting and how he deals with people. I was the kind of guy who asked questions. If I didn’t understand something, I wanted to know why. I watched the cinematographer, and then I’d ask his gaffer, why is he using that particular light on someone’s face? Most of them would explain. It was a terrific opportunity having the chance to work with some of the really great cameramen. I learned a lot by working on their crews. I think being a camera operator is a tough job, because you are the director’s and cameraman’s eyes. An inch can make a difference in composition.

ICG: Did you ever tell a director a shot wasn’t working?

KOENEKAMP: That’s part of your job. I remember telling Irwin Allen I didn’t think a shot was right for an actor. The actor heard me, and argued. He didn’t want to do it again. Irwin asked me if I was sure. I said, I can’t fool you because you’ll see it on the print. I turned out to be right. You have to speak up when something isn’t right.

ICG: How did you learn about lighting?

KOENEKAMP: I would watch famous cameramen at work to get some idea how they were lighting and why. I’ll be honest. My first day as a cameraman, I walked onto the set, and all of a sudden it was like my mind went blank. Everything looked wrong. I remember asking myself, where do I start? The longer you do it, the more comfortable and the better you get at it. I remember Frank Phillips (ASC) telling me that the last light you light you use, is the one you don’t need. Over the years that proved to be right. You can over light without realizing you’re doing it. I’ve had people ask, what is the mood of the picture? As far as I’m concerned, each scene has its own mood.

ICG: Did you ever work on a Technicolor movie?

KOENEKAMP: I worked as an assistant cameraman with Bob Surtees (ASC). We weren’t allowed to touch the camera. Technicolor had their own technicians. I remember we needed 1,000 foot candles of key light. It was really hot. By the end of my career, we were typically only using 20 foot candles. On my television shows, we were always trying to figure out how we could get the lighting and electricity down. I remember once we lit a lot of a TV show with practical quartz lights. They did the job, except there was no control on the lights. They didn’t have barn doors, shutters or anywhere you could put filters on them.

ICG: This is a terribly unfair question, but what do you think you might have done with your life if you were born and raised before there were movies?

KOENEKAMP: That is a tough question. I was terribly interested in flying, but there wouldn’t have been airplanes either. My dad was born on a farm in Iowa before he came to Hollywood. I think I probably would have wanted to be on a farm. My wife comes from a little town in Kansas. Her dad was a wheat grain elevator operator. I visited there at least half a dozen times with her after we first got married. My brother-in-law let me drive his tractor in tall fields, and I really got a kick out of it. It was a tiny town with one street, and everybody knew everybody else. Her sister had a dairy farm outside of town, and her brothers worked the wheat fields. I was fascinated by farming. I thought this was a nice life, but its a hard life. They work a lot of long hours, and unfortunately, these good people never get rich. Most of them live day to day.

ICG: Did you ever shoot a film that turned out to be a pleasant surprise?

KOENEKAMP: There was a picture with a new director and a modest budget called White Line Fever. I thought it was going to be an everyday kind of film. It turned out to be a little love story built around people who drove trucks for a living. The actors did a great job, there were exciting chase scenes with trucks. That picture really took off.

ICG: How about The Amityville Horror?

KOENEKAMP: I liked the script. We shot in an old house in New Jersey that suited the story. The director was Stu Rosenberg, and he did a nice job. The cast included Rod Steiger, James Brolin and Margot Kidder, and I thought they were good. But, for some reason, it just didn’t seem to click. I’ve watched it on TV two or three times, but have never been able to figure out why.

ICG: You did around 40 television movies from the mid-1980s through the early 1990s. How was that different than doing bigger budget features?

KOENEKAMP: I grew up with television, and got my first break there. I enjoyed doing movies of the week. It kept me busy when there weren’t interesting features, and it also let me keep my crew together and working. I had a wonderful crew. I loved working and being with them. I think I shot 11 Sunday Night Movies, all on tight schedules.

ICG: Your last big feature was Flight of the Intruder (1991).

KOENEKAMP: I was real glad to get that film. It had all kinds of visual effects, including process shots and miniatures, and I’d only done a little bit of that type of work. We shot for five weeks in Hawaii and we spent two weeks aboard a real aircraft carrier.

ICG: How about commercials?

KOENEKAMP: I worked on a couple of commercials as a director of photography, and remember shooting one for Knottsberry Farm when they were opening a new ride. I also did a commercial with Stan Freberg that was fun. It was a soup commercial and Ann Miller, the dancer, was in it. There were water spouts shooting up in the air and bubbles at different heights with Ann Miller dancing in front, behind and around them.

ICG: What advice, if any, do you have for young cinematographers?

KOENEKAMP: I’m a firm believer that you don’t start at the top. You can learn so much by being an assistant and operator even if it’s only for a short time. One of the things you learn is to appreciate is how much your crew can help you. You also have to learn how to talk with directors about scripts and their ideas, and how to work with the production and costume designers and everyone else. No one makes great movies alone.