By Bob Fisher

Daniel Pearl was 23 years old when he filmed The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in 1974. The film was produced for $80,000. It earned rave reviews at Cannes. One critic called it a near perfect terror film that gave movie fans a new type of experience. He praised Pearl’s cinema verite style of cinematography that made the terror feel real. That wasn’t a bad way to begin a career. Pearl shot his first music video at the beginning of the MTV revolution in 1982. The following year, he won the first MTV cinematography award for "Every Breath You Take" and Fortune Magazine identified him as a major force in the music industry. Pearl has compiled 18 narrative credits, along with some 400 music videos, concert films and more than 250 commercials. Following are excerpts of a conversation:

QUESTION: Daniel, where are you from?

PEARL: I was born in the Bronx, one of the boroughs of New York City, and was raised in Northern Bergen County, New Jersey in a little town called Upper Saddle River. I went to public school and then attended a Catholic high school in Montvale, New Jersey. After high school, I earned undergraduate and masters degrees from the University of Texas in Austin.

QUESTION: When did you become interested in photography or movies?

PEARL: I remember my mother dropping myself and my brother — Tom Pearl, he is six years older—and I off at the cinema once a week while she was shopping. Whatever film was showing, we went to see it. When I was growing up there was a TV show called "The Million Dollar Movie." They would show classic films like Gunga Din and Invaders From Mars four or five times a day for a week. We had harsh winters, so I watched television a lot. Thinking back that was quite important because they were always great at films. It was a chance to really study them, even though at the time I didn't realize I was studying them.

QUESTION: Did you own a camera or take pictures?

PEARL: Once my career got going and I started to get a bit of fame, my mother sent me some pictures I had taken when I was about nine years old with a box camera. I had set up a little army of toy soldiers and tanks and took pictures with an old Kodak box camera. When I was 13 years old, the skateboard and it was the rage in the town where I grew up. It was in a very hilly area and they had just repaved all the roads. We had these silky-smooth, perfect roads, and my friends and I basically lived on our skateboards. My father brought the New York Daily News home every day. I was flipping through the pages and I found an ad for an 8 mm camera. It was actually 16 mm film. You’d run the film through the camera on one side then you'd flip it over and run it through again. The lab would process and slit it. I bought the camera and used it to make films of my friends skateboarding. I’d also shoot while I was on the skateboard. I did that for a few months then bought an editing machine, cut and showed the footage to my friends. I did that for a few months and then lost interest.

QUESTION: Why did a boy from New Jersey enroll at the University of Texas?

PEARL: My father had gone to the University of Texas during the late '30s. He was very fond of the years he spent in Texas. He thought there was energy there that he hadn't experienced anywhere else in his travels. He encouraged both my brother and I to go there. At the time, the University of Texas charged $200 a semester for non-residents, and $50 a semester for residents. The other schools I had applied to were charging $3,000 and $5,000 a semester. Both my brother and I decided to go to Texas. It turned out to be a fortunate decision.

QUESTION: Can you explain why?

PEARL: There was a club called the Vulcan Gas Company in Austin. They had a light show. I was fascinated and became friends with the people who ran the light show. I thought some moving images cut into the middle of the light show would be great. When I went home for Christmas, I found my skateboarding films, my 8mm camera, and I began shooting images that became part of the light show. I would just go out and shoot things like the sun through a prism. I used any wacky colored gels I could find and just shot things. I’d stick people in front of the headlights of a car at night and take their pictures. If I could get the needle on the camera to say that there was enough light, I would shoot.

QUESTION: So, that’s how you started shooting in college?

PEARL: I spent all my free time shooting images that we would use to make another layer in this very visually complex light show. During my freshman year in college, my brother was in his last year of law school. My parents had sort of encouraged me to become a doctor. I had this notion, I didn't even know what it meant, that I would somehow be involved in computerized medicine. It was a very complicated time. The war was going on in Vietnam. There were many groups trying to raise money for different causes. It was pretty common for these groups to arrange screenings of classic films. Many of the films were from Europe, but I also remember seeing some of John Ford's movies. There was a screening every night and sometimes two or three films. It was Bergmann, Fellini, Godard and Truffaut. I found myself going to these films every night. It was incredible. Film became my passion. I did this with a friend named Ted Nicolaou. We weren't interested in what our parents sent us to school to learn. We just had this fantastic love of the cinema.

QUESTION: So, you became a film fan and then?

PEARL: I wasn’t interested in my classes. I was spending all my time shooting film elements for the light show at the Vulcan Gas Company and going to see films. At the end of my first year, I had a collection of Cs and Ds and the Vietnam War was raging. I had one more semester to get my grades up or I would lose my student deferment. So, I was sitting in my friend’s apartment and worrying. I was flipping through the catalog trying to figure out what I was going to study the next year. I got to the very last section and it was the Department of Radio, Television & Film.

QUESTION: What happened?

PEARL: I enrolled in the school of communications, basically advertising, journalism, radio, television and film. There were 20 or 22 students in my first class, and the first day the instructor told us we were not going to find jobs in the industry. He said, if you love the cinema, you will get a degree, go on to get a master’s degree, and eventually teach filmmaking. If you're lucky and good, you'll get grants and make films on the weekends and summer break. About half of the class got up and walked out. It didn't seem so bad to me. I was thinking I could become a film teacher and that would be fantastic.

QUESTION: What happened next?

PEARL: The instructor said, "Okay. Now that we've weeded out the people who don't really want to be here, you guys are going to make a film and everybody's going to have a job. Somebody will write the screenplay, somebody will direct, somebody will edit and somebody will shoot. We need a cameraman." He asked if anybody had experience with a camera? That’s how I got to shoot my first student film. I went out and shot this film with a Bolex camera on Plus X film. It was a Western that we shot in this beautiful field of tall grass that had browned for the winter. I got the exposures right and these incredibly dramatic puffy clouds. I immediately become the staff cinematographer for the film school. Everyone wanted me to shoot his or her films. Then it was time to do my own film. My friend Ted, who I mentioned before, was a singer in a band. He had been a singer in a rock 'n' roll band all the way through high school. He and some friends formed a band that was a parody of the '50s music. The whole thing was just a joke. They would sing these syrupy songs basically as a goof. I came up with this idea for a film called "So You Want To Be A Rock 'n' Roll Star." I took this black and white film and printed it five times with a three or four frame offset. So if the guitar player strummed the guitar, when his hand moved fast, there were four or five trailing images. When the music stopped the trailing images would catch up. I printed each one of these images with a different color gel in the printer. I took my footage to a lab in Austin and ran that section of the film through the printer with a three or four-frame offset and a different colored gel five times. It was interesting because all the different colors added up to almost neutral, but when it moved, each trail had a different color like a rainbow.

QUESTION: Where did that idea come from, Daniel?

PEARL: I don't remember how I came up with that idea. I was watching a lot of independent and underground films, but I think I'm just a person who's interested in images. I just imagined that if I offset these things, I could make these trailing images. It was an experiment to try with color. I remember thinking this is a very important moment in my life because it was my first solo film project. My film had a mag-stripe soundtrack of the Byrds' "So You Want To Be A Rock 'n' Roll Star." I ran the film, and everyone was completely quiet. After it ended, the teacher put his arm around me and walked me out of the classroom into his office. He said, "I want you to be my assistant. I want you to work with me". I was shocked and embarrassed. Basically this man, Richard Kooris, was a shooter. He's still working today in Austin. One of the graduate school professors, who I didn't get to meet for a couple of years, a guy named Rodney Whitaker, was quite a genius. I thought I was destined to become a professor like them. Richard Kooris was teaching beginning filmmaking. He also shot everyone’s weekend films. I was his assistant, gaffer and grip. I remember pushing a dolly that he was on with one hand, pulling focus for him with the other hand, and in between takes putting scrims in the lights.

QUESTION: That must have been a great experience.

PEARL: It was a great education. I was also starting to shoot some undergraduate films at the same time. It was very interesting. Rod Whitaker, who I mentioned, had been involved in the French film industry. Later, he wrote The Eiger Sanction under the pen name Trevanyan. He was quite an amazing man. We were at a party one night. We were outside and this bright light was in my eyes. I couldn't see his face. All I could see was this back-lit rim on his head. I remember this like it was yesterday. He began to talk to me about my career as a cinematographer and said it depended on what Richard Kooris decided to do. If he decided to direct, then I’d blossom. It was a mind-blowing revelation. He was affirming that if things broke the right way, I could succeed.

QUESTION: What happened to your short film?

PEARL: It was a four-minute short. Someone on the faculty sold it to PBS for use as a filler. I was18 years old and I'd made my first solo film. PBS contacted me and asked what it cost to produce? My out of pocket costs were $275. They offered me $275 for the right to show it. There was one hang-up. It was cut to the song, "So You Want To Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star." I had to get the rights for the song. Somehow I tracked down the leader of the Byrds to ask for permission to use their song. I told him what was going on. He asked for $3,000. I contacted PBS and they were going to call the deal off. I told them there were a bunch of musicians in the film. Maybe they’ll make a track. They wrote a song called "Rock 'n' Roll Nose." It's the exact same tempo as "So You Want To Be A Rock 'n' Roll Star," because I couldn’t afford to re-edit the film. I had a four-track recorder, borrowed from someplace. We brought it to my apartment and my friends recorded this song, one track at a time. We needed a lead guitar player, so were friends with this guy, Jimmy Vaughn. We called him and he agreed to lay down the lead guitar. He brought his 12-year-old brother, a kid named Stevie Ray. He said he could play guitar too but we told him to wait outside. Jimmy Vaughn, who is now pretty well known for The Fabulous Thunderbirds, played guitar and laid down the tracks. Well, meanwhile, Stevie Ray Vaughn was outside, which is a shame because he later became a big star. PBS and the Z channel, one of the first cable networks, ran the short for years.

QUESTION: So that was your first music video?

PEARL: A little over two years ago, I was briefly directing music videos and my name got on an Internet database. A producer I was working with told me an online music video group was having a big debate over whether I was a director or a cinematographer. She said, "You really should log on and help them out." I started answering their questions. The guy who ran the site asked me for a resume so he could see how accurate his information on me was. I sent him 18 or 19 pages of credits and awards. Two days later I got an e-mail mentioning "Rock 'n' Roll Nose," the music video that you did when you were a student." I sent him an e-mail asking how he found it? He said there was an article on the Internet written in German by a student from the University of Berlin.

QUESTION: So, you knew pretty early that you wanted to be a cinematographer?

PEARL: Right away. I was immediately in love with it. A big part of it has to do with my father, Irving Pearl, being a mechanical engineer. He owned a company that did heavy machinery installation. That was his specialty. He would install machinery like the vats for a brewery and 300-foot long ovens for Nabisco. In a way that's kind of like what we do as cinematographers, especially for big set-ups, big night-for-night scenes or even big interiors. He'd basically go on a scout like we do, he'd tell them, "I need this machine out of the way, take this wall out," and so on. Then, he would assemble a crew, the equipment, come back on a pre-arranged date and install the machine. My mother, Marietta Pearl, did quite a lot of painting. So that completes the picture. I think what’s unique about cinematographers is that we are artists and technicians, which is what confuses a lot of people. You meet a lot of people who are technically inclined and a lot of people who are artistically inclined, but we're the few that have a foot in both camps. My parents also named me Daniel Pearl. The initials are DP. Is that fate?

QUESTION: Some directors claim that digital technology makes it possible for them to do both jobs. You have done both jobs, directing and shooting. What’s your take on that?

PEARL: I think it's extremely difficult. A cinematographer is a collaborator with the director. Of course the relationship can range from where a director knows exactly what he wants to shoot to a director who hasn't got a clue. I think it is very difficult for one person to have both talents.

QUESTION: What were your experiences as a director?

PEARL: Once when I was directing music videos, an artist refused to come out of the trailer for two or three hours. She didn’t like the wardrobe. It was a catastrophe that ripped my heart out. As a cinematographer, when an artist won’t come out of the trailer, it can be a gift that gives you more time to design shots and improve the lighting making them bigger and better.

QUESTION: Do you have any other thoughts on that issue?

PEARL: This is not to put down directors…but they spend a lot more time on each project than we do. A director in the feature world may take a couple of years to get a project off the ground and six months or more in post. Cinematographers are on the set day in and day out, so we don't get rusty. This is just a fact. If you're shooting every day and you're assigned to work with a director and he hasn't shot in a year, he may be a little rusty and not really aware of all the options. I can't imagine we're just going to do away with cinematographers and put a camera on the director’s shoulder. The director is like a quarterback, the leader of the team, but they don’t play all the positions.

QUESTION: What did you plan to do after school?

PEARL: My plan was to become a teacher. I had taken every course that had anything to do with cinematography and cinema. In the English department, I studied screenwriting. In the Russian department, I studied the history of the Russian cinema. I studied photojournalism in the Journalism department and photography in the Art School. In the Drama department, I took stage lighting courses. I shot everyone’s student projects with state-of-the-art cameras, dollies and lights. I had planned to go to graduate school at NYU, UCLA or USC. When I checked them out, our program was way ahead of them. I already owned a 16mm Bolex camera and was shooting sync-sound films. The University of Texas offered me a teaching assistantship if I would go to graduate school there. It wasn't a large amount of money but it was like a dream come true. I was going to live off of cinematography. However, there was one problem. I was kind of like an illegitimate child in grad school because I was a cinematographer and that wasn’t considered an academic pursuit. They needed one cinematographer in the school but told me I would have to fulfill certain directing requirements. That’s how I began studying with Rod Whitaker. The first day of class he said, "You're all going to direct films and Pearl you are first." It was a fantastic experience because this man is a genius.

QUESTION: Did anyone else influence you at that early period in your life?

PEARL: My minor was still photography in the art school. I was studying under a man named Russell Lee, who took some very famous photographs that you see in The Family of Man. This man had a great career and now he was sharing his wealth of knowledge. My first class with him involved an exercise with a 4x5 view camera. I photographed a gingerbread Victorian kind of house in Austin. I made this three-minute exposure at night. There was only one lit window in the house. Everything else falls off, except for this very faint glow in the yard and the sidewalk. I'd taken a very symmetrical, wide-angle picture of the house. Later I sold about 70 or 80 prints. After that I made extra money by selling art prints to galleries. Russell told me I saw things differently. I never just tried to tell a story with one picture. I would always shoot establishing shots and close-ups.

QUESTION: Did you shoot a lot of film in grad school?

PEARL: What happened was that some of the students I knew graduated and were starting to get a few jobs locally. I shot their films including some public service announcements for the State of Texas. My first professional film was for the United States Information Agency. A guy who later became my partner, Larry Carroll, was directing and shooting. He offered me $40 or $50 a day to help with the camera and move the lights. The first day we were shooting handheld with a 16 mm camera. He decided it was too much to be directing and shooting, so handed me the camera. That was my first paid job as a cinematographer. By my second year, I was shooting a lot, including commercials. I announced to my wife that I was going to be shooting features by the time I was 35. Two weeks later my phone rang and it was Tobe Hooper.

QUESTION: Did you know him before?

PEARL: I had bumped into him once at the lab in Austin. Tobe had a background as a cinematographer. He was trying to figure out how to shoot under fluorescent lights, which are quite green. I had learned a 30 magenta filter would take most of the green out of fluorescents. He was standing there at the counter and I was picking up some footage. We were shooting reversal at the time, because the negative stock was too grainy for 16mm. Just in passing, I said use a 30 magenta. He called me five or six months later and said, ‘Daniel, I'm doing this film. It's really important that I have a Texan shoot this film. I've seen some of your stuff on television. I want you to shoot this film.’ I hung up the phone and told my wife I was 12 years ahead of schedule. There was a delay in getting started and I started worrying that they were going to hire someone like Laszlo Kovacs or Vilmos Zsigmond to shoot this film. They were the renegade cinematographers in Hollywood. Why would he hire me to shoot this great script? I asked Tobe when we were going to begin and he said, "Daniel, we're making this film for $80,000 and we've got $70,000. As soon as we find the other $10,000 we start production." So, I hung up and called a friend who had a wealthy family and told him about an opportunity to invest in a film. I brought him the screenplay for Texas Chainsaw Massacre and five hours later he called and wanted in. I was given four percent of the film for finding an investor and I gave small percentages of that to my crew. The rest of the crew were my classmates and associates from film school. Ted Nicolaou was the soundman and Larry Carroll was one of the editors. Most of my crew — the grips, the camera assistants — were students of mine because I had just finished being a teaching assistant.

QUESTION: Did Tobe Hooper have a visual style in mind?

PEARL: Yes. He definitely knew the shooting style he wanted. He wanted to shoot handheld. He had been a documentary, cinema verite shooter before he started directing. He knew that I had shot a lot of handheld film and wanted that sort of fluid movement and tension. There were no handheld 35 blimp cameras available for us, so we had to shoot in 16mm. We didn't have a choice. I don't know how we could have made a 35 mm film on our budget, but that was the original intention. We called all the Hollywood rental houses and there wasn’t a handheld, blimp camera available. That’s how we decided to shoot 16 for a 35mm blow-up. That created quite a problem for me because the stock at the time was 5247. It was more than adequate for 35mm, but it was too grainy for shooting 16mm films. I decided to use Ektachrome ECO. It was a 25-speed, tungsten, reversal stock. I used two 5Ks and a 10K to light the night sequence. It was quite interesting because I was basically self-taught. I worked with a gaffer who was experienced. The production manager was also quite experienced. I remember him asking me how many C stands I needed? I had never seen a C stand. If I wanted to hang a flag, I taped something to the ceiling and let it hang it down in front of the light. I told him, ‘the usual dozen.’ I understood the possibilities for negative light as soon as I saw my first C stand. There's quite a good story about a dolly shot everyone still mentions.

QUESTION: Yes, we want all of the details.

PEARL: We were about a week into shooting and were sort of flying by the seat of our pants. The executive producer — the guy who had put the majority of the money in — heard from someone else that we needed a shot list. He thought that would make us more productive. So, they shut us down for four or five days and Tobe was forced to write a shot list. When we started shooting again, Tobe told me he just wrote the shot list to get the guy off his back. So anyhow, we were outside shooting the sequence where the killer, Leatherface, has just taken his first victim inside he house. We cut to a girl, who was sitting outside on this quite bizarre swing that was made out of railroad ties. She got up and walked towards the house. We had 48 feet of pipe dolly track with a flat platform that we'd basically put sticks on. We didn't have a pedestal dolly that could jib up and down. I realized that if I laid down flat on the dolly holding the camera over the edge, I could fit under this swing, get behind the girl, and use the swing as a frame with the house almost a dot in the bottom of the frame. I had a 1.85:1 matte in my viewfinder and an 8 mm lens. I realized I could keep the track just out of the shot and follow her as she walked to the house. That way, the house would grow and grow, and go from seeming very small until it dominated the picture. It’s terrifying for the audience because they know what she’s walking towards. I told Tobe my idea and he said, "Daniel that's incredible." Around this time, the producer figured out we weren't following the shot list. He told Tobe, we had to move on to the next scene. Tobe tried to explain my idea but the producer insisted he live by the list. Tobe really stuck his neck out but history has proven him correct. He said the shot is brilliant. You probably will fire us after this, but you cannot stop us from making this shot. It didn't take us all that long and somehow they forgave us. It's the shot that has gone down in history. People ask me about it all the time.

QUESTION: And you were shooting with a 25-speed film with very little exposure latitude?

PEARL: It had no exposure latitude. It wasn’t a problem except for night exteriors. We had a small crew with limited equipment. I had a 10K and a couple of 5Ks. I'd never seen anything bigger than a 2000 watt light before. I felt I had to go along with the conventional use of blue gels for moonlight. I was shooting with a 25-speed film, which I couldn’t force develop because I was trying to preserve the grain structure for blow-up. So, we took our 48 feet of track and put it down in a wooded part of the ranch. We set up a multi-purpose dolly shot that I could light from two scaffold towers. We worked for several nights, dollying the camera right and left, shooting in the opposite direction with the camera off the track. This is the sequence where Leatherface is chasing Sally. I had an incredible grip. He could get me up to a full run in two strides and stop me in one stride. One night, I panned too much, which brought my elbow off the dolly. It slammed into a tree as we're flying through the forest, and the camera smacked me in the eye. I had this big black eye and sore elbow for the remainder of the movie.

QUESTION: What made this film so scary?

PEARL: The script and the acting. The guy who played Leatherface, Gunnar Hansen, could wield the chainsaw like it was a toothbrush. It was like it was nothing in his hands. He was so strong. The frightening thing about this film is that its not science fiction. It could happen.

QUESTION: I think one of the things that made it scary was that the camera was so subjective. You guys pulled the audience right into this story.

PEARL: I remembered seeing a technique in Fearless Vampire Killers, a bit of a comedy about vampires. I think Roman Polanski directed that film. He used a lot of misdirection, like a magician who is doing a trick with his right hand will do a little flourish with his left hand to distract the audience. I remember almost jumping out of my seat when the vampire appears in Fearless Vampire Killers, because I hadn’t noticed him coming into the frame. I talked to Tobe about using this technique and we designed a lot of our scariest moments this way. We would purposely lead the eye away from the side of the frame where Leatherface was going to make his entrance. By the time you realized he was in the frame, he was already doing something scary.

QUESTION: So, even then, you were using movement, composition and light to tell the story?

PEARL: I’ll give you an example. Do you know the scene where Leatherface jumps out and gets Franklin who was in a wheelchair? Just prior to that, Franklin was moving and he was holding a flashlight. It was very sketchily lit on a very dark night in the forest. He's moving his flashlight around, so your eye is going to the thing you can see most clearly. The audience does two things — look into people's eyes and look at bright things. I'm sitting here now and I'm looking at you, but my eyes can't avoid going to that bright building outside the window. That’s a basic rule in any photography. You put a bright thing in the frame and the eye will go to it. It can be a highlight on a character’s hair. So, you're creating a little distraction because you know the way people will respond. They're also going to look into the eyes because to get an idea about what someone is thinking. We had this flashlight moving around and the audience is following it. Leatherface enters the frame and the scary song comes on at the same time. Franklin swings the beam of the flashlight onto Leatherface. He was just sketchily lit before that. Now, you see him and the chainsaw smack dab in the middle of the frame. You also heard the rrrrrrrr. People jump out of their seats. It was scary and surprising.

QUESTION: Was that spontaneous or planned?

PEARL: Everyone assumes things like that are spontaneous because it feels that way. But I recently shot a concert, and the director told me he was a Texas Chainsaw Massacre nut. He told me he had everything. He had the posters, the toys — I didn’t even know there were toys. I promised him a copy of the screenplay that had my original notes. I dug it up and even I was surprised by all of the notes about locations, camera set ups and lighting. There was a plan and a methodology for everything we did.

QUESTION: One of the things that makes this so fascinating is all the hype today about new technology freeing you to do creative things. This was a low-tech film, shot 28 years ago.

PEARL: I remember an idea Tobe had for playing a night scene in the headlights. I wouldn’t be ashamed to show it today as an example of my work. I mounted two 1K 1000 watt units to a bumper of an old pick-up truck where the headlights were supposed to be. I placed them so we got nice shafts. We kicked up some dust in the dirt road with a rake. We got these two characters silhouetted in the foreground. Maybe that’s going to happen naturally, if you are just there pointing the camera, but that’s pretty unlikely. I was a teacher for a while at the University of Texas. In fact, the Biblical meaning of the name Daniel is teacher. You can teach people the skills but they have to be born with some talent. Part of that talent, is an ability to pre-visualize how lighting contributes to a story. There are certain things you can only learn from experience. You can theorize and talk about filmmaking but when you start doing it, it's a whole different thing. It’s one thing to talk a good film. It’s another thing shooting it with all the pressures and strains imposed by financial and time limitations, and unexpected things going wrong. A big part of the job is your ability to solve problems.

QUESTION: I take it you’ve seen the articles that say it doesn’t matter, because the producer or director can fix anything in digital post?

PEARL: A few years ago, I might have told you cinematography is going to be dead because they're going to come up with these digital cameras that can do it all, and with CGI they can fix the rest. But, that’s not the reality of making good films. When you are on the set, you are the director’s ally and sometimes it seems like you’re their big brother. Sometimes I look at a CG shot and I could swear it is real. Other times the spontaneity is missing. Unless you retain the integrity of the artistic idea, you strip away the emotions. I think when the novelty wears off there will be a push to do as much as possible in original photography and then involve the cinematographer in the digital suite.

QUESTION: This will be my last question about Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Were you surprised by the phenomenal success of the film?

PEARL: I thought it was going to be a good film because of the screenplay. Did I think it was going to make the impact that it did? I couldn't possibly have imagined that. I went through serious soul searching after it was released and became a big hit at Cannes. I was 23 years old, and I was wondering if I would ever hit that plateau again. Here we are 28 years later and you are still asking questions about it. I saw a story in Premiere Magazine saying it is number 35 in the top 100 films made.

QUESTION: What happened next in your career?

PEARL: I stayed in Texas for another three years thinking another opportunity like Texas Chainsaw Massacre would come along. I was shooting local commercials, documentaries and even some industrial films.

QUESTION: Do you collaborate with Tobe Hopper on any other films?

PEARL: I shot my 15th film with Tobe in 1985. Actually, at the time I was very hot shooting music videos, but Tobe wanted us to do this film together and I owed him that much. It was a remake of one of my favorite films as a kid, the original Invaders From Mars. I must have watched it every time it showed on Million Dollar Movie. If it was on 20 times a week, I watched it 20 times because that film just blew my mind.

QUESTION: Did you have any connection with the Guild early in your career?

PEARL: My first attempts to get into the Guild happened after Texas Chainsaw Massacre, while I was in Texas. I applied to the Chicago local. They said it was unheard of for a 24 year old to want to be a cinematographer. They said their youngest cinematographer was 25 years older than me. I tried to join for years. I would go to shoots that I heard were going on in Texas and I would try to talk to people. The cinematographers would tell me I needed three signatures from members in good standing. A few told me they only signed applications for their sons, or for the sons of people who signed their sons’ applications. A film called Lead Belly came to Austin. It was the story of the blues musician. Bruce Surtees (ASC) was the cinematographer. They needed an extra operator one day, so they gave me a permit to work with Bruce. He called a meeting of the camera department and made everybody sign my application. However, when I moved to Los Angeles, very shortly after that I couldn’t get the time of day.

QUESTION: How did you get into music videos?

PEARL: I told you about "Rock 'n' Roll Nose". My second film in school was a parody of a televised sporting event. Both had run on the Z Channel and PBS, and so I would watch a lot of Z Channel. There was no HBO. There was no Cinemax or Movie Channel, and Z Channel was a great way to see films. This was before MTV. I saw my first music videos on Z Channel. They were promos designed to sell records. I was fascinated by the work of a director named Russell Mulcahy. Unbeknownst to me, he was a total Texas Chainsaw Massacre fan. In the fall of 1982, the music video industry was driven by English directors who were starting to work in Los Angeles and New York. Russell is an Australian, who was working in London with the leading company in the music video field. One day, I got a call from his producer who said Russell Mulcahy wanted to meet me. I was thrilled but I played it cool. I was 32 or 33 years old and shooting B movies. He told me during the first meeting that we were going to do a Super Tramp video called "It's Raining Again." He explained that he needed 64 set-ups and if he came away with 60, it wasn’t going to work because of the way he edited. He said, "I want the best looking pictures I can get but I need all 64 set ups." He asked if I had ever seen a Rank-Cintel telecine machine, and explained we’d transfer the footage together. We’d be able to manipulate colors and contrast. He explained to me that we could change a color selectively and not affect anything else. It opened a whole new world.

QUESTION: That must have been a revelation.

PEARL: I was impressed by what could be done in a telecine bay even back then before it was digital. It was the beginning of a long learning process. A lot of young cinematographers ask me how they should prepare for the future. I tell them to ask permission to sit in the back of a telecine suit and watch. I also tell them it always begins with the photography.

QUESTION: Do you think digital post will become an extension of cinematography?

PEARL: It already is an extension of cinematography. Certainly in my career it is. I’m about to go to Okinawa to shoot a car commercial for Mitsubishi. They want my input, so they are going to do the telecine work in Los Angeles with a colorist of my choice. It is definitely an extension of the collaborative process, and it should be part of our job. A good telecine artist understands that it’s our look. They know they're not the cinematographer. It is important to have good relationships with colorists who know your look and respect what you are trying to do. That’s when your images really start to blossom.

QUESTION: You were there at the beginning of the revolution when the first Rank-Cintels were first being used and when MTV first went on the air. That must have affected your thinking?

PEARL: Absolutely. It still affects me. I learn something every day.

QUESTION: Did your success with music videos get you stereotyped?

PEARL: I’ve tried to resist that. It happens mainly in commercials. When I was trying to get into commercials, the agency people wanted to know what I did. Was I a tabletop guy, a car guy or what? My answer was, I'm a cinematographer, a shooter. I do everything. Once I started to do a lot of music videos, I was shooting everything. But, I remember after I shot a Michael Jackson video in the Palladium Theater, people called from all over the world and wanted me to light spots in theaters.

QUESTION: What happened after that first video with Mulcahy?

PEARL: He took me straight from telecine to a party where he basically presented me as the new guy to all of the English music video directors who were working in Los Angeles. Three days later, I was shooting "She Works Hard for her Money" with Donna Summer for Brian Grant. I also worked with Steve Baron and Godley and Lol Creme. They were the early big names in music videos. It was an incredible experience. Within a few weeks I was shooting for all of them. I shot Michael Jackson's "Billy Jean", which to me is a landmark piece because music videos prior to that were either performance films or included elements of other films the directors liked. "Billy Jean" had nothing to do with anything anyone had ever seen before. It was totally the brainchild of Steve Baron. I really think it marked the place in history where music videos became it's own genre. Pretty soon commercials and everything else was borrowing from the music video look.

QUESTION: Were you totally concentrating on music videos in that period?

PEARL: From late 1982 until '85 I was sort of the king of music videos. It seemed like I was offered every interesting job. I did "Every Breath You Take" with the Police for Kevin and Lol in black and white. That's the great thing about music videos. I love black and white film. It's more surrealistic. You're not bound to reproducing reality. You can alter and interpret reality. I always ask directors if they want the National Geographic version, which means excellent, realistic renditions of a set or location or something more interpretive?

QUESTION: What do you prefer?

PEARL: Cinematography is absolutely an interpretive process. It’s like anybody can learn to use a typewriter, but it doesn't make them a writer. Everybody can turn on a camera but it doesn't make him or her a cinematographer. Cinematography is about your ideas and your ability to execute them. We’re working all the time, either shooting or studying by observing what’s happening around us. Even if you are alone on an island, you’re probably studying the light at sunrise and sunset. I don’t know what I would have done if cinematography didn't exist. I haven't got a clue. We are an odd breed.

QUESTION: Were those early music videos as experimental as reputed?

PEARL: Yes. Absolutely. We experimented with alternate looks and playing with focus. Sometimes we only lit the subject and everything else fell off . I shot Police’s "Wrapped Around Your Finger" at 48 frames a second with a crystal motor synchronizing to a double speed sound tracksound. In the final edited version it looked like it was in slow motion, but the sound was normal. Godley and Creme had the idea to exploit this technique, which I must say had been proposed before, but they were the first to pioneer the technology and have Larry Barton build a box which would crystal control the speed of the camera at speeds other than 24 frames per second. A few years later while shooting U2’s "With Or Without You", we found that we needed another two stops of exposure to help out the focus puller, so the director asked me to hook up the box which could also run crystal 6 frames per second, hence the birth of the six for six technique. We were doing things that technical people would have considered mistakes, but that’s where the art is when you break the rules.

QUESTION: When telecines turned digital, did that give you more control?

PEARL: The directors didn’t like it at first. They felt something was missing. It wasn’t quite as organic. I didn't see that much of a difference. But with digital telecines, we started to get power windows that let you isolate elements within a frame and change them without affecting anything else. I didn’t mention it before, but there was a brief time when I thought I’d be a still photographer. I built a darkroom, and absolutely loved the selective control I had making my own prints. That’s what you can do now in telecine.

QUESTION: Do you think that experience helped you later?

PEARL: Absolutely. It taught me to think a lot more about composition. I could change a still picture by using a different grade of paper making it more or less contrasty. I’d put some bleach on a Q-Tip or do some dodging to hold light off part of a picture while I was exposing the paper. I’d make some things darker and others lighter. We are doing all of those things now in telecine.

QUESTION: I was surprised when I discovered you guys were shooting music videos on film?

PEARL: We were shooting film because it looked better. There’s a lot of misinformation about video. One of the claims is that you shoot it with no light or less light than you need for film. The truth is film comes a lot closer to seeing what the human eye sees in shades of contrast between black and white. That’s where the romantic look comes from but you have to light it to make a statement.

QUESTION: There was a generalization about an "MTV look" being all quick cuts.

PEARL: There are many different styles that can be associated with MTV. If you asked for a list of my 10 favorite videos, they would probably have 10 different looks.

QUESTION: When did you start shooting commercials?

PEARL: I started shooting public service announcements in college. I moved from Austin to Dallas, where I was shooting commercials for things like charcoal briquettes and Purina animal feed. I started getting big commercials after I made a name shooting videos.

QUESTION: What’s the difference between videos and commercials?

PEARL: Music videos are a much more free form of filmmaking. If we plan to go up to the top of a mountain to shoot a commercial looking down on a beautiful serene valley that’s what you shoot regardless of what's going on. If it’s a music video, and there’s a lightning storm breaking loose on the other side of the mountain and it looks interesting, you just might go for it on the video.

QUESTION: You have filmed a lot of beautiful women?

PEARL: I've been fortunate to photograph many beautiful divas including Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, Toni Braxton, Shania Twain, Janet Jackson and others. They are all beautiful to start with, but its still a precise science. I model and sculpt everything else with light, but that doesn’t apply to beauty shots. Film is a two dimensional medium and a shadow implies depth. There are only a few shadows tolerated in beauty shots and they’ve got to be in the right places.

QUESTION: Are there basic rules for great beauty shots?

PEARL: It’s important for your subject to know you really care about them and you can’t fake that. The great divas all have an inner beauty. We have to earn their trust so they show us their inner beauty. They have to feel comfortable and relaxed and know that you are going to make them look great.

QUESTION: How do you decide how to light beauty shots?

PEARL: The first thing I do while we are saying hello is really look at their face. I’ll orientate them toward the light. I may ask them to step by a window or to spin around in a chair. I size up their facial structure. Are there weaknesses or strengths? What about the shape of the nose, cheekbones, and jaw line? Is their face symmetrical? Most people part their hair to open up the good side of their face. Basically, I use light to de-emphasize things they don’t like and to accentuate their best features.

QUESTION: How do you use light to de-emphasize?

PEARL: Wrinkles show up as dark lines, but if we drive light into them they disappear on film. It’s the same with bags under someone’s eyes. You begin with the key light that is usually pretty close to the line of the lens. I shift the light a bit to one side or the other based upon the structure of the face. Some divas look best in dead-on hard light — depending on where its placed — and others need softer light, maybe through a diffusion frame or a Kino Flo. Someone with a chin problem shouldn’t wear high, white collars because the light will bounce back and accentuate the chin.

QUESTION: What determines the angle of light?

PEARL: If someone is tired with bags under their eyes, you want the light a little lower. If there is a strong muscle under the eyes, it should be higher. You always have to put a sparkle in their eyes because that’s how they connect with the audience. Often, I’ll use a white or silver bounce card from below or maybe an eyelight.

QUESTION: Are there new tools that you find useful?

PEARL: There are new, bigger lights and faster films with finer grain structures, but it also comes down to the individual. I designed a special lightbox to shoot Mariah Carey for MTV Unplugged and often come up with different lighting rig. I am always trying something new, trying to keep ahead of the game. I tend to shoot the slowest, finest grain film available but its also situational. I have no hesitation about shooting the (Kodak Vision) 500T film and pushing it one-stop because I always shoot in Super 35.

QUESTION: What about video?

PEARL: Why would you shoot video on a beauty shot?

QUESTION: Do you have any other tips?

PEARL: Shoot it while the makeup is fresh and while they are at their best. A lot of music videos have grueling schedules, so I've learned to work with the director and assistant director to schedule the beauty shots first while the diva is freshest and most energetic.

QUESTION: Are there cost pressures to shoot HD or other video formats?

PEARL: I shot a concert tour with a top star, where the record label wanted to shoot video to save money. They told the star if she wanted film the difference would come out of her advance on royalties for album sales. I told the producer that the look she likes has to do with the way images are recorded on film. It a more romantic look because of the range. We shot the tour on film.

QUESTION: Do you think film will go away?

PEARL: All of us have heard that story for so many years. They told me that in film school. I think the real danger is that the industry may underestimate the audience. If that happens, and we give up film just to save money we might as well all become K-Mart managers.

QUESTION: Have you ever gone back to shooting narrative films?

PEARL: Not since Bob Giraldi asked me to shoot Hiding Out for him in 1987. If your question is, would I do it now then the answer is yes if it was a great screenplay and a cinematographer's film.

QUESTION: Are music videos and commercials still evolving? Are they still experimental?

PEARL: Definitely. Not only are they evolving, but they are also leaving their mark on feature films. Techniques like cross-processing and bleach by-pass came out of commercials and videos. There is more experimentation in music videos than in commercials, because you’re working with artists who tend to be more experimental. They want their music videos to be special, and are more likely to roll the dice and try something different. For example, you are starting to see more letterboxing on TV shows now, but it began with videos and commercials. Certain subjects just compose better that way.

QUESTION: You mentioned that you’ve done some directing?

PEARL: I directed some music videos a few years ago. The truth is that I passed on a lot of directing opportunities for 15 years. I didn’t have a burning desire to direct. My first video as a director wound up being number one on MTV's most requested video list. After that, I directed a few videos for Mariah Carey. I’ve been shooting videos for her for years. The truth is that I'm a visual artist, and that’s when I’m happiest. I've been a cinematographer now for 28 years, and I still love every day I shoot.

QUESTION: Have you ever counted the numbers of videos and commercials you’ve shot?

PEARL: Somebody told me I was approaching 400 videos and concert performances, which I call organized chaos. I don’t know how many commercials. Maybe around 250 or more? The last few years I’ve been averaging 67 to 75 jobs a year, and typically they run from three to four, and as many as eight days, of shooting.

QUESTION: Why do you think cinematographers don’t get more recognition?

PEARL: Some time ago I noticed that when a production company gave me copies of a video I shot my name wasn’t on the credits. They listed the song, the talent, the director, producer and editor. Their explanation was that if we were better known, we’d only charge more money and would be less available. They feel it isn’t in their best interests to promote us. That’s probably part of what motivated me to try my hand at directing.

QUESTION: Daniel, how do you keep your enthusiasm for your work so high?

PEARL: I think we each have a responsibility to continually strive to advance the artistic side of what we're doing, if for nothing else but to keep ourselves from going crazy. I don’t believe its lost on the audience. I remember how films moved me when I was nine years old and I was the audience. There has to be a balance. You can’t take three years shoot a perfect music video, but that doesn’t mean you should just cave in and simply aim for the lowest common denominator because it’s cheaper. This is both an art and a business. It takes both to succeed. I’m sure that DaVinci, Michelangelo and Raphael use to sit around complain about their patrons. I shoot film for people who are selling cars or records. I believe if I do it artfully they are going to get the best results.

QUESTION: What about this notion about DV cameras being more democratic because anyone can use them to make a movie or a video?

PEARL: That’s assuming everybody has something to say.

QUESTION: The New York Times claims that digital projection is the most important invention in the history of the industry after color and sound. What do you think?

PEARL: If I had to pick one thing, I’d say the remote crane because it allows us to take the audience virtually anyplace. That has done as much as anything to change the visual style of films.

QUESTION: When's the first time you used a remote crane?

PEARL: In the spring of 1983, right after the Louma crane was invented. I was working with a director named Jay Dubin doing a Kenny Rodgers' video that was designed to appear to be one continuous shot. There were obviously cut points where we'd go behind things, wipes and things like that, but the idea was for it to look seamless. We started on a roof, came in through the window of a skylight, dropped down and went around Kenny at a drafting table. It was very complex move, but it let the audience see inside the heart of the song. I remember thinking, ‘Great, I don't have to ride on it and the hole in the window doesn’t have to be big enough for my AC and me. We don't have to split the whole building apart because you've got this gigantic crane. I don't have to try to move with the camera. I can sit or stand at a monitor with the pan and tilt wheels, the gear head, and go anywhere." Now we have the Technocrane, which is even better, because it telescopes. We tend to visualize arcing moves with our subject as the center of the arc, but with a regular crane that doesn't telescope that doesn’t always work because the crane naturally uses it’s fulcrum point as the center of the arc. A telescopic crane allows us to extend the arm long or shorten it. Its quite phenomenal as compared to putting track down. It’s especially useful on commercials and videos because we have less time than you do on features.

QUESTION: What about some of the other important advances in technology?

PEARL: Faster films — meaning more sensitive to light — have freed cinematographers. You can easily push today’s 500-speed films to 1000. When I started out the only negative speed was 100. It means you can work at much lower light levels. The light in this room is enough to shoot by, but it may not be the quality or the direction we want, so we probably wouldn't just walk in and shoot –but we could. Or we could photograph the previously un-photographable. We could use Dayglow paint makeup and a low intensity black light, or an argon laser beam, and get a wonderful look. Those techniques bring film closer to the human eye. When we put ourselves into a completely dark situation, the human eye has this incredible tonal range. If you make everything dark enough, the iris in our eyes will open enough to allow us to see. The faster films allow us to make more efficient use of the light, much like the way our eyes work. We don't have to take a light and point it right at the subject if it's not appropriate. We can put it through tracing paper or other diffusion. Maybe something heavier like bleached muslin, which makes the quality of light super soft. We can bounce light off of reflective surfaces and get a more naturalistic look. Things don't look so lit if we can be a bit wasteful with the light, because we can make it more like it really is. Like we're sitting here in this scene right now, the principal light source is the light bouncing off that building coming in the window and hitting me here. Well, I don't have to take a light out there and point it at me and smash it at me. I can bounce it off a card, just like it's bouncing off that building. I can reproduce that quality of light because the film is sensitive enough. The lights are bigger and brighter than they were 28 years ago when I started. That's also helpful to us. The lenses are faster. So faster film that is more sensitive to light, bigger and brighter lights and faster lenses are all important advances that affect how we make films.

QUESTION: What about the ability to fix or alter images in digital post?

PEARL: Not everything can be fixed. That’s an oversimplification. But overexposure is better than underexposure. We could talk about it for hours. We have certainly made a lot of great advances, but you have heard me say before that Jordan Cronenweth’s (ASC) work in Blade Runner is really the birthplace of modern cinematography. He did it with a 100-speed film. That makes it all the more astounding. Just look at those delicate shafts of light he created. He was one of the first people to shoot with Xenons, which is another important advance in lighting technology.

QUESTION: If you had to give one piece of advice to young people, what would it be?

PEARL: Shoot as much as you possibly can. The most important thing I got out of film school was not so much the knowledge imparted by my film professors — it was the ability to shoot, shoot, shoot. That was invaluable. You shoot something, go to the lab and see it, and you start to understand how to interpret things. This is an experience you can't get in any other way. It’s trial and error and experimenting. For someone who wants to be a cinematographer, if you can’t get to shoot, work as a gaffer and learn about lighting. Keep your eyes open and really watch what's going on. Assistant cameramen have an outrageous opportunity to watch cinematographers at work because they're right there at their elbow all day long. I missed that opportunity myself because I never really worked with other cinematographers. I worked maybe 15 to 20 days as a camera operator.

QUESTION: If you were starting your career and could pick any cinematographer to apprentice with, who would you choose?

PEARL: Raul Coutard. I’ve studied all of his films. Jordan Cronenweth’s work is still amazing. Vittorio Storaro (ASC, AIC). I always watch his films. Conrad Hall's (ASC) work is fantastic. John Toll (ASC). Allen Daviau (ASC). I could keep listing names we all know. It's not like any of them have gotten there by mistake. Everybody's gotten there for a reason. And they are all different. No two people see or shoot things exactly the same way. I was discussing this recently with a colorist. We were talking about shooting at the dry lakebed in El Mirage. You can send 10 cinematographers to the same lakebed with the same lenses, films and cameras, and they’ll all get a different look. I think that we all get zeroed in on our own ideas and it seems that's the only way it can be done but everybody has a different take on every shot. That’s what’s wonderful about this work. I am constantly amazed.