OUT OF THE ASHES – A STORY TO REMEMBER, RENDERED BY DONALD M. MORGAN, ASC
By Bob Fisher

Originally appeared on www.theasc.com
in 2003

Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee -- John Donne

Out of the Ashes chronicles some 30 years of the life of Gisella Perl. The story begins in Hungary in 1916 when Gisella announces at a family dinner that she wants to be a doctor when she grows up. Her father is aggravated. The patriarch insists that she belongs at home raising her own traditional Jewish family. Perl persists and becomes an obstetrician. In 1939, her dream turns into a nightmare when the Nazis march into Hungary. Her prosperous family procrastinates. They don’t believe this could be happening to them until the Nazis knock down their door. First, they confine Perl and her family in a grim ghetto. Then, they ship her to the infamous concentration camp at Auschwitz.

Perl is ordered to run a minimal clinic where she patches up sick and injured prisoners so they can work as slave laborers. If they are too sick or too hurt, the Nazis send them to the gas chamber. Perl also conducts abortions out of sight of the Nazis. In one heartbreaking scene, she delivers a baby, takes it outside and gently smothers it.

“She was saving the mother’s life,” explains cinematographer Donald M. Morgan, ASC. “The Nazis routinely murdered pregnant women and their babies.”

Out of the Ashes is based on Perl’s autobiography, “I Was a Doctor in Auschwitz.” It was produced by Showtime Networks, Inc. for airing on the cable network. The film marks Morgan’s eighth collaboration with director Joe Sargent, beginning with Amber Wave in 1980. Their other ventures were Bojangles, For Love or Country: The Arturo Sandoval Story, A Lesson Before Dying, The Wall, Freedom and Miss Evers’ Boys.

Morgan is a second-generation filmmaker. He was born and raised in Los Angeles, where his father was an animation cameraman for Disney and other studios. Morgan initially followed in his father’s footsteps working at labs and animation studios, until he moved behind the camera as an assistant to Nelson Tyler, who specialized in aerial filming.

He shot his first narrative film in 1973, and has subsequently compiled around 60 credits, including such diverse features as the groundbreaking sci-fi film Starman and the eerie thriller Christine. Morgan has earned four Outstanding Achievement Awards in the annual American Society of Cinema competition. He took top honors for Ruby Ridge: An American Tragedy (1996), Geronimo (1993), Dillinger (1991) and Murder in Mississippi (1990). To put that into perspective only two other cinematographers have earned as many as four ASC Outstanding Achievement Awards, Conrad Hall, ASC and Tom Del Ruth, ASC. Morgan also earned an Emmy Awards for Miss Evers’ Boys (1997), Murder in Mississippi and Geronimo.

“I always get excited when it is a Joe Sargent picture, because I know it’s going to be interesting,” he says. “This one came up pretty fast, so there wasn’t a lot of time for research. Joe called and told me about the story. He said there are a lot of dark and moody scenes where he wanted a gritty look. I had memories of images from World War II, and I’d seen Schindler’s List and other films from that time and place.

“Joe and I have a language that we speak without words, “ Morgan says. “He said he wanted different looks in different parts of the film, and I told him my ideas. He’s very trusting and really collaborative in the way he approaches making movies. I think that kind of teamwork results in better films than one-man shows.”

Out of the Ashes opens with Perl arriving in New York on a ship carrying refugees from Europe in 1945-46. Immigration officials have questions about her role at Auschwitz. There are approximately 100 optical effects, mainly transitions between conversations in the interrogation room and flashbacks. Each of the periods in her life has its own subtle visual signature which audiences are more likely to feel than see.

“In early scenes in Hungary, which are happier, more pleasant times, there is an orange-goldish overtone, mainly created with colored gels,” Morgan explains. “There is a transition from that warm, friendly look to colder, starker and greenish images in Auschwitz. The look gets a little warmer when she arrives in New York, but we wanted the interrogation room where they are questioning Gisella about her activities in the concentration camp, to be a little less friendly.”

Out of the Ashes was primarily produced at Lithuanian Film Studios and other locations in and around Vilnius, including a museum and an exterior location that looked time was frozen in a 1939 ghetto. Local people cast as extras looked right for their parts. The interrogation and a few other screens were filmed in Toronto.

“I had worked with Jeff Ginn, the production designer, before on a war movie called The Wall that Joe Sargent directed,” he says. “We spoke a lot on the phone while Jeff was building the Auschwitz camp on the backlot and sometimes Joe would join us. The sets for Gisella Perl’s home in Hungary were actually part of the museum. I was in Lithuania about five weeks with about two weeks of prep time. What made it work was that Showtime let me bring key crewmembers, including Gabriele DiChiara (gaffer) and key grip Mark Silver. I’ve worked with both on three other movies. Mark’s father had been in Auschwitz, and Joe was constantly asking him questions about Jewish tradition. He was our unofficial technical advisor.”

Morgan also brought his camera (Kit Whitmore) and Steadicam (Sean Foss Jensen) operators, and two assistants (Yvonne Collins and Beth Nobes) to Lithuania.

The studio provided the production company with a list of available lighting equipment. There weren’t any 12Ks. Mainly, the studio lighting inventory consisted of some 6Ks, 4Ks and very old, arc lights. But, nobody told Morgan there would be two production companies vying for the same limited gear.

Morgan brought his camera package from Panavision in Toronto, including two Panaflex Golds, and a lightweight Panaflex for Steadicam shots, along with a full set of Primo primes and 4:1 and 11:1 zooms lenses. He explains that he chose the Primos because they are sharper with less flaring than the older Panavision lenses.

The cinematographer limited his film palette to the 320-speed Kodak Vision 5277 and 500-speed Kodak Vision 5279 negatives. He says the 320-speed film has “uncanny” latitude and he mainly used it for scenes that were too contrasty. There are sequences where exposure ranges from T-2.8 inside to T-16 outside a window, where he wanted details in both shadow and highlight areas. Morgan used 5279 at night, and in scenes in the ghetto and Auschwitz where he wanted a contrastier look.

He went to Lithuania with some preconceived ideas. For instance, Morgan thought about using Xenon lamps to simulate searchlights sweeping through the concentration camp at night but there were no Xenon lights were available. His gaffer DiChiara suggested using 10Ks instead. Morgan explains that the 10Ks were very warm and everything else was cold and green and bluish. It ended up being a good suggestion.

The first time Morgan met Christine Lahti, who portrays Gisella Perl, was the day she arrived on the set. He had only one day to shoot wardrobe and makeup tests with her in the concentration camp barracks. Morgan used top light, which gave her big, deep circles under her eyes. “In those scenes, there was absolutely no eye light or front light on her,” he says. “Later, she told me that someone showed her a still photo. She ripped it up, but Christine knew that it was impossible for her to look glamorous in that situation. On the other hand, she looks beautiful in her wedding sequence, and in the scene where she is taking the oath as a doctor. In all of the scenes, before the war, she’s very pretty.”

For scenes in New York, Morgan subtly warmed the light on Lahti, and used a little more diffusion on the camera lens, usually a Pro-Mist Black filter, though sometimes he made it a little stronger. “Sometimes you want the light to make a statement at the right time and place in a film,” he says. “We used green colors at Auschwitz because it felt uncomfortable and unfriendly. If you look real closely you see that light bouncing off green walls on buildings in the camp creates kind of a sickly ambient fill light.”

The scene where Perl smothers a newborn baby was a night shot. He filmed it in greenish top light with a warmer beam from a searchlight sweeping by.

“My gaffer practically lit the (exterior) camp (set) by himself,” he says. “I sat in a chair with a walkie talkie and talked him through every light. He had guys running cable, but he had to run up to the top of buildings and focus lights himself. One light was moving back and forth. He tried to lock it off, but there were no locks. We were just hoping that the wind didn’t blow too hard while we were shooting. The local crew knew how to focus lights, but a lot of them didn’t speak English.”

The opening scene where the audience meets Gisella on the deck of a ship filled with refugees was filmed at the studio in Lithuania in front a huge green screen that covered the side of an entire building. “I didn’t have enough equipment to light the green screen evenly,” Morgan says. “They got me a few more 6Ks, and I also waited until the sun went behind the building. Then, I lit the screen with 6Ks and 4Ks, and we had a few 10Ks that weren’t daylight-balanced, so I put blue gels on them, and we got it done.”

After the Nazis occupy Hungary, and Perl is sent to the ghetto, the images gradually get darker and moodier with less color. Morgan says that affect was mainly created with a combination of wardrobe and art direction. There were no warm gels on the lights, and instead of an 85 color correction filter on the lens for daylight scenes, he used an 81EF or no filter and let it go blue. He instructed the colorist not let it get too warm.

The cinematographer drew on his experience and ingenuity to film a scene where Gisella and others from the ghetto are brought to the train station and loaded on boxcars for a journey to hell. In one dramatic scene Gisella, her husband and family are on the jammed boxcar trying to peer through spaces separating the slats making up one wall. Bright beams of hot sunlight slice through the spaces between the slats and penetrate the darkness.

“They showed me the real train, but it looked like a shoebox with no place for lights,” he says. “I told them I needed to build a boxcar and Joe (Sargent) supported me. I used a trick I learned on Starman. I had them build two long panels of slats that were cut on a 45-degree angle that made the light pouring through the spaces more interesting. They came down like sunlight. It also keeps the audience from seeing the lamps on the other side of the wall. We built the set so we could take the roof off and shoot. The angle helped us make it look more crowded.”

They built that set on a stage, where Morgan had total control of the light. They just show the audience the inside of the boxcar but never look outside. For moving shots showing the audience what Gisella would have seen peering through the spaces, they used a flat bed truck with the same panel of slats. The truck was driving on the backlot with the camera peering through the slats. From that perspective, the audience sees a young girl running after the train yelling “Gisella.” A soldier knocks her down.

“We used the same technique to show the audience Auschwitz as Gisella sees it from the train,” he says. “I told Joe (Sargent) that I wanted a lot of green in the camp and he agreed. The art director (Galius Klicius) and I spoke about painting the buildings in the background kind of a flat green. It’s an annoying color that reflected some ambient green light. I used a few green gels on lights in the background, especially at night stuff.”

Sargent used composition to keep Lahti a strong presence in most scenes. Morgan describes a shot where Gisella is walking to the clinic in the concentration camp, where she is going to operate on a gypsy woman. “They are walking down a dark hallway, and she turns around,” he says. “There is a little half light. We come in on her, and never go back to the other person. You hear what he says, but Joe kept the camera on Christine so her reactions dominate the scene. We never discussed it, but I’m pretty sure Joe wants the audience to feel like they are there in Auschwitz with Gisella.

“Maybe we can’t relate to being of a prisoner in a concentration camp, but I think he brings you into that environment,” Morgan continues. “I once asked him how he learned to stage shots, and he said it came from directing stage plays. He doesn’t always do total reverses on everybody. Sometimes we’ll be shooting a close-up profile shot, the way it was rehearsed. Joe will ask for a second camera, which will be a profile rather than a typical straight backshot. Some directors wouldn’t do that. I think that’s part of why it feels so real. It’s a slight edge of imperfection, just like reality.”

Morgan says every day began with Sargent orchestrating rehearsals. The director let the actors “feel out” their parts while he watched and decided what worked. Morgan says that if Sargent wasn’t happy, he just tried something different, or he let the actors lead him someplace else. Morgan waited for the last rehearsal to set his lights.

“The call sheet said 8 a.m. with an 8:30 shoot, but sometimes it was 10 or 11 a.m. by the time we were rolling,” Morgan says. “But, once he started shooting, it went real fast. In one dramatic scene, Christine was beating her fists on the wall, saying, ‘I’m not going to be gassed.’ We shot that on our last night on location. Joe wasn’t getting what he wanted, so we did it again and again. The production guys kept coming in saying we need to move. Joe stuck by his guns until he finally got the performance he wanted. Other times, we only did two takes. He knows when he has what he wants.”

The cinematographer covered scenes with two cameras most of the time; especially when there was a lot of emotional content that was difficult for the actors to keep repeating. Sargent never insisted on using the second camera if Morgan said the lighting didn’t work. “We’d get a looser and a tighter shot at the same time,” he says.

“We used the Steadicam a lot when we had moving shots in those barracks in the concentration camp,” Morgan continues. “There was no room to dolly until we got a PeeWee from Chapman in Germany. We also used the Steadicam when we needed a more energetic sense of motion. I don’t think we made a conscious decision about how to move the camera in different times and places. It was more or less Joe saying, ‘I don’t think there’s much camera movement in this scene, like when the family is seated around the dinner table and everybody is relaxed.”

Morgan also had use of a Phoenix crane. He and Sargent used it sparingly. There is a big crane shot in the camp that goes up a muddy street, and pans past piles of shoes and clothing. The camera peeks through window into a room where German officers are inspecting and cutting the hair off some 35 nude women who were just brought into the camp. “It is a sad and horrific scene that doesn’t require words,” Morgan says.

“There are probably only five or six crane shots, because too many would have taken the audience out of the story. Joe (Sargent) doesn’t rely on talking heads, so you typically don’t see a lot of tight close-ups, but when you do, they really make an impact. It was never something we spoke about ahead of time. It was always something that happened while we are shooting, and he’d say, ‘Let’s go in for a real tight close-up. I really felt like I was in her (Gisella’s) head in those moments.”

There is another memorable close-up on the bored face of a Nazi officer who is giving hand signals to indicate who goes to the gas chamber as the prisoners are coming off the train in Auschwitz. “There is a German in strong backlight when the prisoners get off the train,” Morgan says. “You can’t see his face, just the silhouette. We put the camera at an angle where the backlight seems to blossom around him. When he moves his head, you see those little cracks of light coming around the edges of his head.

“I had some concerns about x-rays at airports, because we carried the film from Canada and sent it back (to Deluxe Labs) for processing, but we never had a problem. I sent instructions with the negative for both the lab and telecine house (Jan Saywell). Joe watched video dailies for performances. I chose not to watch them, because I didn’t want to be influenced by the picture quality.”

Morgan completed the job during final timing sessions in Los Angeles. Film timing was done at Deluxe Labs, and Kevin O’Connor timed the digital video for airing on Showtime Networks. The cinematographer explains that the dissolves that transitioned between different times were made optically on 35 mm film. The editor cut the negative and made an internegative copy used for the telecine transfer.

He notes that 50 or 100 years from now it should be possible to pull Out of the Ashes from the archives, and it will be there for future generations to experience. That’s is important to him, because it conveys an important story that should endure.