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from the Heart: Originally published in ICG Magazine in June 2004 Donald M. Morgan, ASC has collaborated with director Joe Sargent on a string of high-quality, award-winning movies for cable television during the past decade. Morgan and Sargent are at the crest of a wave of character-driven stories with complex, challenging content that are seen by huge audiences. Their collaborations include Amber Waves, Miss Evers’ Boys, The Wall, A Lesson Before Dying, For Love or Country: The Arturo Sandoval Story, Bojangles, and Out of the Ashes. Morgan has earned four ASC Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography. He also earned Emmy Awards for Out of the Ashes, Miss Evers’ Boys, Murder in Mississippi and Geronimo. “Joe and I have a language that we speak without words,” says Morgan. “He’s very trusting and extremely collaborative in the way he approaches making movies. I think that kind of teamwork results in better films than one-man shows.” Morgan says Sargent first called him in about 1980 upon seeing a television project Morgan had done called Serpico. “Joe said to me, ‘Films are a series of risks and I’ve been guilty of not taking enough. I want you to tell me what light you want to shoot these things in. I’ll direct it, you shoot it and we’ll have a good movie,’” Morgan says. “That’s the courage of Joe Sargent.” Something the Lord Made is their most recent collaboration. It was produced for Home Box Office (HBO). The cast features Alan Rickman, Mos Def, Mary Stuart Masterson, and Kyra Sedgwick. The film is a dramatization of the relationship between heart surgery pioneers Alfred Blalock and Vivien Thomas, whose collaboration yielded tremendous advancements in surgical techniques and tools and saved countless lives. One of Blalock and Thomas’ best-known breakthroughs involves a condition known as “blue baby syndrome.” They developed an arterial shunt and the surgical procedure that together alleviate the condition. Their careers and relationship were complicated by the fact that Thomas was an African-American, at a time when respect and career advancement were denied to blacks as a matter of course. During their association, which began in the 1940s, Blalock and Thomas worked at Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore. Morgan, Sargent and their team of filmmakers made telling the story truthfully a high priority. They worked partly from Thomas’ autobiography, and consulted with doctors to ensure accuracy. Doctors were present during the filming of any surgery or procedure. Verisimilitude also required that the 31-day shoot take place mostly on locations in Baltimore and Sykesville, Maryland. “Baltimore was an absolute perfect place to work,” says Morgan. “We had neighborhoods that looked the same as they did in the 1940s. We filmed people walking in and out of the same buildings and doorways that Blalock and Thomas used. That helps create a feeling of authenticity.” Much of the shooting involved three proverbial filmmaking subjects to avoid: children, animals and old equipment. Scenes involving surgery often employed plastic mannequins designed as practice models for students who are learning surgery. The looks Morgan designed for various aspects of the story evolve over the course of the film. As Blalock’s career advances and he becomes a famous pioneer, the lighting and camera choices change accordingly. Thomas, on the other hand, starts off in a small, happy home in Nashville. Upon moving to Baltimore, Thomas lives in a near-ghetto. “The home that Blalock lives in is more expensive, lush and colorful in the lighting,” says Morgan. “Thomas’ apartment, by contrast, communicates that he isn’t living the same life of luxury.” Early on, Sargent decided that tight close-ups would be especially important, in part because faces would often be covered with surgical masks. Morgan notes that television’s more frequent use of close-ups has seeped into feature films. Coverage is important as well. “It’s so important for the editor to be able to cut scenes down,” he says. “On feature films, sometimes, I’ve been able to get away with doing one nice master and walking away from it, whereas in television movies, or anything to do with television, they want a lot more coverage. “Joe likes to have two cameras as much as possible,” Morgan says. “On this picture we had a two-camera setup, but he never makes me use it if I say it will hurt the lighting. The big complaint cinematographers have about two cameras is that you have to light them flat. But unless I can light them the way I think they should be lit, Joe never makes me run that second camera. He might ask me to grab an insert while we’re doing that, so a lot of times even though we’re not doing anything that looks all that important, we’re still grabbing a shot that they can use later. For example, in these operating situations, we might have a long lens shot where you could see some people’s hands in there doing operating, so we get a lot of usable pieces, and we’re still taking advantage of having the two cameras, without compromising the lighting too much.” The two cameras were usually mounted on dollies for versatility. A handful of shots required a jib arm. Jerry Lane was Steadicam and B-camera operator. Morgan and Sargent called for the Steadicam in walk-and-talk shots through the hallways and outdoors. But Morgan says that generally in this project movement was more limited than in his other recent work. “Like everyone, I like to move the camera,” he says. “I think it puts energy into scenes, but this material had its own energy that seemed to come out through the various cuts. Looking at what they were operating on, looking at the faces and different doctors and people watching, there was a lot of that kind of cutting back and forth so you really didn’t need to keep moving all the time. We would sometimes add a pan to maintain momentum.” Sargent’s approach emphasizes interaction on the set. “Joe does not make a shot list,” says Morgan. “His magic is the spontaneous spark he can get out of the acting. He watches the actors, and he’ll rehearse a scene and run it through. We have to watch and see where it’s going. Joe likes to make sure that actors are comfortable with the scene, and he sometimes incorporates their suggestions. When I arrive in the morning, I do the general lighting, the windows and the hallways and all that. Then after I see what he’s doing, we light what’s going on at the center of the scene—around the operating table, for instance. Joe processes the input of all the contributors and then makes his decision. That’s when we spring into action, and that process can be difficult and wonderful all at the same time. You’re never pre-lit a hundred percent because Joe lets people settle in and works it until it’s magic, and I think that’s the secret to his success.” Days were short in Baltimore during the shoot. Scenes taking place in a lab room were shot in an old psychiatric hospital in the Baltimore area. The direction of the sunlight varied, so Morgan’s crew added 18Ks and controlled sunlight in order to match time of day. Old wooden blinds were sometimes closed and blasted with light from the outside to render a glow, allowing Morgan to match light well into the night. Built sets included hospital hallways, a nurse’s station and an operating room with stadium seating. Morgan points out that in the time period of the film, things weren’t as sterile as today. That left him some room to create visual interest. “I looked at the hallway as it was built, and it was bland,” he says. “I wanted to tear the ceiling out, so I took a finder, and, not knowing how Joe would approach the scene, set it to the widest focal length and determined where we could safely take out the ceiling, the part we wouldn’t see. “Larry Kaster, my gaffer, has been with me for about 25 movies, and he’s a brilliant lighting guy,” continues Morgan. “He said he had an idea he thought I’d like. He got way up high with a light—I believe it was a 5K—and shot it down through all the two-by-fours. We put a couple crosses in there, and we had detail on the walls, and it gave it a real nice look.” Morgan says that Kaster keeps a range of pre-rigged grids on hand for such occasions. “We also used Leko lights, which have different slides, to put a pattern on a wall to break things up,” says Morgan. “It still left the room cool and gray and somewhat sterile looking, but it adds some definition to the walls.” One spectacular shot done in the operating theater set worked with the room’s stadium seating. With the use of a Technocrane, the shot started high and craned down through the crowd, following the incline of the seats into a close-up of Thomas, who then stands up and walks to the podium to receive his honor. Another of Morgan’s concerns throughout the shoot was Mos Def’s darker skin tone, especially with the white lab coats and other white garments worn by Thomas and other characters throughout the film. Morgan and his crew kept some extra light on Mos Def’s face by using a light on a pole, sometimes a small Chimera, sometimes an old-fashioned Smith Victor with diffusion. Outdoors, a grip might walk backwards with a 1200 HMI on a cart or handheld, to bring the exposure level up on the actor’s face. The camera package, rented out of Panavision New York, included two Panaflex Gs and a lightweight Panavision camera for the Steadicam. Morgan often depended on the Panavision 4:1 and 11:1 Primo zoom lenses, which he generally used as variable primes. “The quality difference is practically unnoticeable between primes and the zoom,” he says. “I used a little less diffusion on this project than I normally do. I used mainly a half black ProMist or a quarter black ProMist on almost all of the shots, just to take the edge off.” Morgan shot with a variety of film stocks including Kodak Vision 250D 5246, Kodak Vision 500T 5279, Kodak Vision 320T 5277 and Kodak Vision 200T 5274. “The 250 daylight stock sometimes made it easier to plan, which was important with the days being so short,” he says. “I’d rather use one stock if possible. If it’s mid-day and I know we’re going to go late, I knew I could ND down the 250 to where I’m shooting at 4.5 or a 5.6, and then I could start taking the ND out and still be using the same film. That was handy.” Dave Insley was A-camera operator, and Boots Shelton was first assistant. Dave Nobel served as key grip. The front-end lab was Technicolor in New York. The final timing and transfer was done at Fotokem with Bob Fredrickson, another longtime collaborator of Morgan’s. Morgan saw his dailies in miniDV format. “I was able to work with the dailies timer, knowing that these images were not destined to tape. They weren’t going to be re-used. The great thing about HBO is that they cut their negative and make show prints, so we go through a process just like a feature film. We made an interpositive, and then at Global Entertainment Partners (GEP) with colorist Kevin O’Connor, we went to the telecine. So we were able to keep the dailies rich and good-looking, and that makes for a happy set. Joe hates washed out dailies.” Morgan notes that Thomas’ conflicted relationship with Blalock makes for interesting material. “In the end, Thomas becomes a professor at Johns Hopkins and teaches surgery,” says Morgan. “His portrait hangs there with the rest of the greats, and they give him an honorary doctorate. That’s the lovely part. At the same, this film teaches us all lessons about humanity. The way Thomas was treated was shameful, and it really wasn’t all that long ago.”
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