Donald
M. Morgan, ASC Originally
appeared in American Cinematographer Magazine Donald M. Morgan, ASC and director Joseph Sargent made their first picture together in 1979. It was called Amber Waves. "Joe hired me on the strength of a movie for television that I had done called Serpico," says Morgan. "I tried to make the TV version look like the feature film that Arthur Ornitz (ASC) shot. I was getting a lot of flak -- 'It's too dark, it's too this or that.' Then I got a phone call from Haskell Wexler (ASC) saying it was the best looking film he had seen on TV. Suddenly I felt I was on the right track." That was the beginning of many collaborative efforts between Morgan and Sargent leading to more than a few ASC Outstanding Achievement Award and Emmy nominations. Their collaboration, For Love or Country: The Arturo Sandoval Story, was among the finalists in the most recent ASC competition. It features Andy Garcia as the Cuban jazz trumpeter who helped create Latin jazz in the anti-American atmosphere of Castro's Cuba. The picture was photographed in Miami and San Juan, Puerto Rico. Morgan says that HBO gave the production team all the time and support they needed to get the pantomimed music performance scenes just right. Sandoval himself was there to help ensure the historical integrity of the story and the performances, which were often covered with three cameras and repeated until they were right, Morgan says. "They could have said 'the hell with it, we'll cut away when it's bad,' but the opinion was, we don't have to restrict ourselves," he says. "We want to cut to another angle when it's right to cut, not because something's wrong. We used wide lenses, long lenses, and Steadicam shots to get a variety of angles. We had miles of cut-away options." The result was that Morgan and the crew exposed large amounts of film. "The editor, Mike Brown, had to cut this stuff to the music," says Morgan. "It was pretty intense making it all match and giving it a flow." Sargent had laid out very specific ground rules for cameras on every take. Within that framework, however, operators were instructed to find interesting shots and follow the action naturally and spontaneously. There was a monitor for each camera, and a communications system kept Sargent in verbal touch with each operator. "Operators were able to grab different things as they saw them," says Morgan. "We wanted a little bit of a spontaneous feeling also. Joe can play the piano and the conga drums himself, so he was probably the best director on the face of the earth for this movie. The guy is a never-ending source of amazement to me. He keeps pushing and getting the good stuff. His energy is amazing." Morgan says he wanted the film to look terrific, but not always "to-the-letter real." "I think sometimes I get a little bored with 'We want to make it look like it really was,'" he says. Morgan altered the look slightly with polarizing filters for some exteriors where Puerto Rico stood in for Cuba. "Most of the time, I also put a black Pro-Mist on the lens," he says. "For some of that material, I wanted to go a little cooler, and for some of the downtown streets, I didn't want it looking so beautiful and clean. The 5246 (Kodak Vision 250D) stock is already corrected for outside, so for a little extra coolness, sometimes I would use the 5277 (Kodak Vision 320T) without an 85 filter, or even sometimes the 5279 (Kodak Vision 500T) later in the day. I left the diffusion off for the night scenes." Morgan used Kodak Vision 500 film for most of his interior musical performance scenes. He used Kodak Vision 320T 5277 for more contrast in certain situations. In other daylight situations he used Kodak Vision 250D 5246. "I love the 5277 for the real heavy contrast stuff, where there's deep black shadows," Morgan says. "Where there's a range of 5,6,7,8 stops of difference, it bites in so good into the dark areas and that's pretty much my film for that kind of a situation." Morgan says that for the final details of the look, he waited until he was in each situation to commit. "What I liked about this movie was that it was a project where everybody did a lot of planning and figuring out," he says. "But I didn't do that with the look. I would wait to see rehearsals. I didn't want to make a statement at the beginning of the production on how Puerto Rico was going to look, when I was still in Miami, for instance. I wanted the opportunity to watch Joe and the actors work. We've been working together for so long that I can have the freedom to react right on the spot. "Joe has always told me, 'Just make it interesting,'" says Morgan. "I don’t spend a lot of time reading things into the photography. It's really whatever I feel. I've always had a lot of freedom with Joe Sargent. He always says 'Anybody can do wedding photography.' I like to go home and wonder if I've gone too far. I've spent a lot of nights thinking, 'I think I went a little too far this time.' So far, I haven't." (Kodak and Vision are trademarks.) |
