A Conversation with Bill Roe, ASC
By Bob Fisher

Bill Roe, ASC, literally grew up in the film industry. His father, Jack Roe, was a first AD and later a production manager, who often worked on independent films with the legendary producer/ director Herbert Ross. During his childhood, Roe was a frequent visitor on his father’s sets, including a long stint when Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was filmed in Germany. Roe liked hanging out with the grips, but his father told him to forget that as a career path. If he was going to work in the film industry, he was going to be a cameraman.

Roe worked his way up through the ranks of the camera crew system beginning in 1978 as a loader with Owen Roizman, ASC on Sgt. Pepper’s Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band. He earned his first credit as a second assistant cameraman on Mr. Mom with Victor Kemper, ASC, who later moved him up to first assistant (Pee-wee’s Big Adventure) and operator. Roe also worked on camera crews led by an all-star cast of cinematographers, including Bill Fraker, ASC, Laszlo Kovacs, ASC, Bill Butler, ASC, Michael Chapman, ASC, Adam Greenberg, ASC, Michael Watkins, ASC and TV commercial trailblazer Joe Pytka. He says every cameraman he worked with influenced his approach to cinematography in unique ways.

Watkins elevated Roe to cinematographer when he directed a 1997 telefilm called Detention: The Siege at Johnson High. The next year, when Watkins produced and directed a new TV series called Brooklyn South, he enlisted Roe to shoot it. In 1999, Roe took over cinematography of the hit TV series, The X Files, after it moved to Los Angeles. Roe lensed some 85 episodes of that series and he earned an unparalleled four consecutive nominations in the annual American Society of Cinematographers Outstanding Achievement Award competition. Roe won in 1999 for his work on the episode “Drive” and he repeated in 2000 for “Agua Mala.” He was nominated in 2001 for “Patience” and again in 2002 for “This is Not Happening.” Roe was also nominated for Emmy awards in 1999 and 2001 for his work on The X Files. He is currently shooting the new series R.H.D./LA for Michael Mann.

ICG: Is it true that you are one of those rare native Southern Californians?

ROE:  I was born in Los Angeles, raised in the San Fernando Valley, and did all my schooling in the Valley.

ICG: What are some of your most memorable boyhood experiences on sets?

ROE:  My dad was a first AD on one my favorite movies, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. My mom would take my brothers and I on location to be with my dad. We spent six months in Munich, Germany while they were shooting. I was 12 years old and I had the best job in the world. My job was to clean the chocolate river. I have great memories going on many locations especially Paint Your Wagon. Bill Fraker (ASC) was the cinematographer, David Walsh was the operator and Bobby Byrne (ASC) was the first assistant. Monte Walsh was another memorable location. Bill (Fraker) directed that film and David (Walsh) was the cinematographer. There were so many locations I went to, but those were some of most memorable.

ICG: Did you grow up believing you were going to be in the film industry?

ROE:  No. I grew up like every other kid wanting to play professional baseball and football. I held onto that dream until I got into college. I went to College of the Canyons where I played football and baseball, and took film classes. When I visited my dad on sets, I spent most of my time with the grips. When I was 15 or 16 I thought about being a grip, but my dad told me that if I was going to be in this business, I was going to be a cameraman. I’m not exactly sure why he felt that way, except a lot of his friends were in the camera department.

ICG: When did you first think about the possibility of being a cameraman?

ROE:  On Willy Wonka, the cameraman was Arthur Ibbetson. I celebrated my 13th birthday while I was there. He gave me a birthday card that said, “You’re going to be a cinematographer one day.” I remember that was great fun. Maybe it was meant to be.

ICG: What was your first experience in the camera department?

ROE:  After I decided I wanted to get into the camera department, I worked at Warner Bros. Studio for free for an entire year. I would go to college until about noon or one o’clock, and then I would sneak onto the lot and go to the loading department where I hung out with the guys for four or five hours. I was learning things and hoping that a position would open up. One day, the man who ran the department told me, we don’t need you anymore. Go back to school. But, I did learn a lot. We don’t have any camera departments anymore. They are basically gone, and that whole training system is gone. It is unfortunate because it was a good educational experience.

ICG: How did you break-in?

ROE:  My dad was working on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band as the production manager. He helped me get into the camera department on that film. Owen Roizman (ASC) was the cameraman and Don Thorin, Sr. was the operator. I started as a film loader and worked my way up to second assistant. My first film as a second was Mr. Mom with Vic Kemper (ASC). I was a second assistant for about seven years. In those days, there was a group system. You were in group one, two or three depending on how long you were around. No one in group two was suppose to work until everyone in group one was working, whether a cameraman requested you or not. I got into the union in group three. I worked on a movie called Legend of the Lone Ranger with Bill Fraker directing and Laszlo (Kovacs) was cameraman. After about a month in Santa Fe, I had to leave because they found out I was still in a group 3. I got a warning from the union and didn’t work for about a year because of that. They finally did away with that system, and I started working regularly. I also did some films with Bill Butler (ASC), Laszlo Kovacs (ASC) and Michael Chapman (ASC), and quite a number with Vic (Kemper) who moved me up from second to first assistant on Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, and about three years later from first to operator.

ICG: You made a quick move to operator. How did that happen?

ROE:  One day we were having breakfast while we were shooting a commercial, and Vic said, ‘You’re ready to move up.’ I said, excuse me; I’ve only been doing this for three years. He thought I was ready. I was working with a great operator at the time, a guy named Bobby Thomas, who’s no longer with us. He was a really close friend of Vic and with Conrad Hall (ASC). I learned a lot from him about how to use the camera. He was like a mentor.

ICG: Looking back, how did some of the people you’ve worked with influence you?

ROE:  I’ve been influenced by every cameraman I’ve worked with… you learn something from everybody though you may not realize it until you get into certain situations and you start remembering how someone handled them. I remember asking Owen (Roizman), how he dealt with the pressures to go faster, and he said, even if it takes you an extra half hour or 15 minutes, and they’re breathing down your neck, you learn to ignore that a little bit if you need that time. You have to learn to fight for that time, but make sure they see the results on the screen at the end. I learned a lot from Vic (Kemper) and from Michael Chapman, who really knows how to run a set…his lighting was always great, and he knew how to make it simple. I think that was an important experience… trying to make it simple. I’ve found that if you put the one light in the right place, it can do a lot of work… finding that place though, can take some time. I learned a lot from Michael Watkins… I’ve never been around anyone else who has so much fun on a set. Sometimes, I wish I could be more of a free spirit like him. His spirit and energy lit up the whole set. I did one of the first TV miniseries as a second assistant cameraman, The Thorn Birds with Bill Butler (ASC). I did a number of films with him, and also with Adam Greenberg (ASC). Everyone I worked with was different. The trick is watching and listening and sticking that information into the back of your mind. Every once in a while something leaks out and it helps you. That’s the only way I can explain it.

ICG: When did you first think about stepping up to director of photography?

ROE:  I was operating on Wyatt Earp with Owen (Roizman), when Kevin Costner came up to me after dailies one day and he said, ‘You know what? You’re going to be a cameraman someday.’ I don’t know why he did that, but it was a nice thing for him to do. I got my first job as a cinematographer with Michael Watkins. He showed up on the set while I was working with Adam Greenberg on Dave, and he interviewed me on the Oval Office office set. I operated for him on Heart and Souls, and we became lifelong friends. He moved me up to cinematographer on a little TV movie called Detention: The Siege at Johnson High School. We went on to do a TV series called Brooklyn South the next year. It only lasted for a year, but Michael became the executive producer/show runner on The X Files when it moved to Los Angeles, and he brought me in to meet with Chris Carter as a cinematographer. The rest is history.

ICG: What was it like coming onto to a show that had earned accolades for cinematography for six years?

ROE:  It was quite a challenge, but there couldn’t have been a better place for me to be. We never had a normal situation. We were always doing something different. Either we were going out to shoot in the desert or the ocean, or we were filming in some hangar that was five miles long. We never seemed to repeat ourselves. I think that was part of the appeal of the show. The finale of the series was a two-hour episode. We shot quite a bit of it in Borrego Springs, where we blew up the Indian ruins on the side of a mountain.

ICG: How involved did Chris Carter stay with the show?

ROE:  He was there every day, not necessarily on the set, but he was always involved. He worked very hard at it, and that is definitely one of the reasons that show was so successful. He wrote a lot of the scripts himself and got final-approval of the others. I think one of the main reasons why it was so successful was the writing, and, of course, the directors and actors. The producers were always willing to fight with the studio for what they wanted. They never once took the easy way out.

ICG: I think the show had great respect for the audience. It treated them as though they were intelligent and understood how to read the visual language.

ROE:  That’s another reason why people liked The X Files, besides the scary stuff. We never assumed the audience didn’t care or understand. The true X Files fans were amazing. They knew every single thing about every episode. They knew them by season and by name.

ICG: You really explored the use of darkness. Could you talk about that?

ROE:  There is a fine line between not seeing something and seeing it… it’s kind of hard to explain. You want to see their faces and their expressions, but you also want to make it dark and conceal things from the audience so they put their imaginations to work. Sometimes a shadow in the darkness can be more powerful than a close-up of a face. That’s what makes it magic. I pushed myself to take chances every day, but I still finished every episode thinking I should have been bolder. It’s like someone was whispering in the back of my mind, don’t be afraid to make it darker. I think a lot of it has to do with separating characters from whatever they are in front of or from whatever is in front of them.

ICG: There are plenty of studio executives who literally go nuts when the audience can’t see faces of stars who they are paying big bucks.

ROE:  I believe sometimes you should see their faces and other times you shouldn’t. One of our philosophies, especially when it came to monsters and things like that, was less is more. Chris Carter believes the audience is smart enough to fill in the spaces. Sometimes what they see in their imagination is far scarier than anything we could show them.

ICG: When The X Files moved to Los Angeles, it was already an award-winning and trend-setting show. Did you emulate the visual style or change it?

ROE:  We did a lot of research on how they did it in Canada. They did great work, and we did our best to make it better. Chris (Carter), Frank Spotnitz, Michael (Watkins), Michelle MacLarenand the other producers always told me to shoot for feature quality.

ICG: What was the visual style besides the use of darkness?

ROE:  We were shooting with two cameras almost all the time, plus we always had a Steadicam available. We also always had a crane and a hothead ready. Always. Every day. We were on dollies a lot, but sometimes we did handheld shots. Sometimes we put a long lens on a softball right on the dolly. It’s hard to do a handheld, 200 mm shot. It’s a little too shaky. With the softball, the camera operators can grab hold of the camera, but it still has some sort of a floating feeling. That was part of the beauty of working on this show. We didn’t have any limits.

ICG: You are literally talking about a real softball?

ROE:  Yeah. I used it before on a show one time. I think on a ladder. It’s a little different look than a Steadicam, regular dolly move or handheld shot.

ICG: Can we go back a bit to what you were saying about separation?

ROE:  Let’s say you have a person in the foreground. There has to be some separation between that character and what’s behind them… a wall, a window, trees or whatever it is… and you do that by creating layers so there is a sense of depth. Sometimes you do it by taking light away. Other times you add light. Sometimes you have to bounce something into the set, or you put a light on the ground. It depends on the situation and what’s behind or in front of them.

ICG: You shot at many practical locations, and they were always different. How did you prepare? Were there storyboards or did you get chances to scout?

ROE:  That was one of the hard parts about doing this show. I never went on any scouts or to production meetings. I never had time. Luckily, I had good people on the crew who did the scouting and the preproduction discussions. I would read the scripts, talked on the phone with the next director while I was shooting the current episode, looked at the digital photographs the guys would take when they scouted locations, and came up with ideas before we got there.

ICG: Who on your crew did the scouting?

ROE:  Usually it was the best boys for the riggers. Bob LaBonge, our second unit director of photography also did a lot of scouting. They’d come back and tell us what they thought. Sometimes their pictures and conversation weren’t enough, so I would send the gaffer, Jono Kouzouyan, and the key grip, Tom Doherty …like in the last episode where we did some shooting at an underground power plant in Fresno. It was about a mile inside the mountain. We figured out how we needed to light it.

ICG: How did you light it?

ROE:  We used a lot of PARs and shot them up into the ceiling. We did something really interesting … they had these sodium vapor lamps hanging from the ceiling. There must have been 30 of them. We all know sodium vapor isn’t the greatest light in the world, especially when it’s on top and shooting straight down. It just flat lights everything. We came up with this idea, the key grip and the gaffer and myself, and we did some testing by borrowing one of the lights from the plant and shipping to the studio, where we hung it on a stage. We experimented and made this big round saucer shaped card that we hung on the bottom of the lamp so the light bounced up to the ceiling. We did that with all of those sodium vapor lights in the plant; so we got bounce off the ceiling and we lit the plant the way we wanted. The whole interior surface was made of granite rock that had this great texture. It was a great environment for that scene.

ICG: I recently had the editor of a magazine for location managers ask me what cinematographers are going to do now that there are fast films and digital cameras? His perception was that you don’t have to light anymore?

ROE:  That’s not true. It depends on the situation. If you’re shooting in downtown Los Angeles at night, it is true you don’t need as much light as you used to, but you still need to light the area around the camera and the actors. It depends on what you want the audience to see and what you want to conceal and the mood you want.

ICG: How do you know how much light is enough?

ROE:  You just know. I usually don’t use a meter until the last second. I was taught that by a famous gaffer who told me to put my meter away. It was Earl Gilbert. I met him while I was doing second unit work and inserts. I was reading the meter all the time, and he said, ‘Put that thing away until the very end.’ He told me to look through the camera and see what I’m looking at first and then light it the way I thought it should look, and then read the meter.

ICG: Do you learn to trust your eye from experience or is it intuitive?

ROE:  It’s both. I think you can learn a lot, but everyone sees things differently. I was operating once on this big film. During a huge rehearsal, I thought the scene looked wonderful. I turned to the cinematographer and said it looks great. You don’t have to do anything. He said, ‘no, if we shot this way, we’ll be fired.’ He turned all these lights on, and it was fine, but it wasn’t nearly as moody or dramatic as I thought it could have been.

ICG: Doesn’t that come down to individual taste?

ROE:  Sure. You have to trust your eye and have confidence in your judgment, and you also need the support of the director and the producer.

ICG: Do you also have to be a bit of a psychologist?

ROE:   Sure, you’ve got 100 people on a set and most of them are answering to you, or they are asking you what’s happening. You have to keep everyone calm and feeling everything is okay.

ICG: Were there different directors on The X Files every week?

ROE:  We had a couple directors who were basically on staff as producer/directors. They would do five to seven shows each, and then there were directors who came in for one or two shows.

ICG: Were there standard rules for visual style?

ROE:  We never did anything standard. We loved to put the camera down low and shoot up with low-angle prisms and do crane shots while they were moving the camera, but there were no rigid rules that we had to follow. Every show was different.

ICG: But, you were pretty much always moving the camera?

ROE:  Partially it was to show the audience the sets, because we were on different locations all the time, and also to help build tension. We had a lot of high-wide and low-wide moving shots with 10 mm and 14 mm lenses … not many TV shows do that. It was something we started doing in the very beginning. Mainly, we used the Kodak 5298 film, and when I really needed some extra stop, I used the 800 ASA (Vision 5279), but very rarely. We used Panaflex cameras and a lot of lenses, including short zooms and also 11:1s, and always primes. We used close-focus shots a lot, because we were always in somebody’s face or racking to a phone and racking back to somebody else. We literally had everything we needed available, even a Spacecam. I think the audience expected this from us. We always had Technocranes and insert cars. To answer your question, we were moving the camera all the time.

ICG: You said the producers were willing to fight with the studio… about what?

ROE:  It was always about the money. We had scripts calling for humongous sets, and I would say 90 percent of the time we got them. In the last episode, we were actually supposed to be on an aircraft carrier for a week at sea. The logistics were too overwhelming with the cast and crew—it would have taken us too long.
 

ICG: How did you use the two cameras?

ROE:  We used two cameras whenever we could. Maybe one was usually a wide over, and the other was on a tight over, or maybe one was low on the hip and the other over a shoulder.

ICG: In general, how much in advance would you get a script for the show?

ROE:  We usually got the script a week in advance, and usually it was the first two acts. I’d read that whenever I could to find out the gist of the story, while we were still shooting the previous episode… maybe at lunchtime or at night. There was kind of a teaser that set the stage… I’d read that to get an idea, and then I would call Chris Carter or one of the other writer/ producers, and we’d talk about it… and the location scouts would bring me pictures. The directors were also pretty specific about knowing what they wanted.

ICG: How much of the show did you do on stages versus locations?

ROE:  I would say probably half was filmed on stages. Some were on our X Files sets and other were built for episodes. It depended on the episode. Sometimes we were out eight days and other shows we were inside for five days and on location for three days.

ICG: How did you deal with the crew working at that frantic pace?

ROE:  I tried to be nice to them. You can only drive a crew for so long. Especially the last couple years, I made it a point of to let people off when they needed some time. At the beginning of the season we got together and I told my camera crew, the key grip and gaffer and their crews, if you want a Friday off or a long weekend, take it. It’s going to be a long year.

ICG: Did you try to establish relationships with the actors – and how do you do that?

ROE:   Some actors you can become friends with and some you stay away from. You get a feel for it. Every one of them is different. David (Duchovny) and I became close friends. We played golf together. I think it all depends on the person and what you have in common.

ICG: Did actors look towards you when the director was at the video monitor?

ROE:  Sure, and I always pointed to the director. You’ve got to be careful about that especially on TV, because I’m always there and the directors come and go, so they’d look to me because I was the common denominator. But, I was always looking out for the actors, because that’s part of your job. We’d make the light a little softer on actresses’ faces, so it sort of wrapped around them, and maybe we’d use a little heavier filter on them, or double the paper up.

ICG: Did you encourage your crew to make suggestions?

ROE:  Absolutely. You have to. You can’t think of everything yourself. It’s impossible. You’ve got two cameras running, you’re looking at three different scripts half the time, and people are asking you to shoot tests… and somebody comes up with a suggestion, you say great, but don’t get mad if I say no…I’ll probably say no most of the time. But there’s always some idea that works. You’ve got to keep the crew involved…and they have to want to be involved, because you need all the help you can get. You can’t do it alone.

ICG: Is there going to be a DVD set of these shows?

ROE:  Yeah, they’re already on season six. They’re already out and they are great. I don’t think they’ve released season six yet, which was my first year.

ICG: Let’s talk about the final, two-hour episode. How long did you have that script?

ROE:  We didn’t have it very long at all. In fact, we were still prepping while we were doing it. On weekends, we were shooting and then scouting locations on Sundays.

ICG: Where did you shoot it, and how much time did you have?

ROE:  We shot near Fresno, on a stage at the studio and in the desert at Borrego Springs, a national park just outside Palm Springs. We did it all in 26 days.

ICG: That episode opened in some kinds of a military facility where Mulder was supposed to have murdered someone. It was a strange environment. Where did you shoot that?

ROE:  It was an underground power plant at Shaver Lake, in Fresno. It was about a mile under the ground or in the side of the mountain. They had tunnels, and we also shot in them. We were there for four or five days.

ICG: That must have been interesting lighting?

ROE:  It was wonderful. The gaffer Jono (Kouzouyan) and our key grip Tom (Doherty) went there about three days before I did to prep and get it ready. He did a wonderful job.

ICG: What was it you blew up at the end? It looked like the side of a mountain. I was wondering if that was a digital effect or a miniature, because it looked real.

ROE:  The set was supposed to be an ancient Indian ruin in a mountainside. We built it on the side of the mountain. I think it took them three weeks to build it. W shot there for four days, and blew it up at the end of fourth day. We had all the buildings rigged and actually blew them up.

ICG: Do you think the audience can tell the difference on things like that – whether it is a real explosion or a digital effects?

ROE:  I believe so… it was a huge shot with the helicopters in foreground shooting rockets at the ruins … I absolutely think they can tell. I’m not saying that you should never do green screen scenes or never use computer images, but I do think actors sometimes respond better in real places. The sets are part of the story. I think the fact that we shot on realistic sets affected the texture of their acting and the audience also senses that the explosions are real.

ICG: There’s been a lot of hype about being able to judge lighting on HD monitors on 24P shoots. You’re about to shoot a 24P show. What do you think about that?

ROE:  We’ll see. On X-Files, I didn’t look at the monitor for lighting. I like to light through the camera lens. Sometimes I checked the monitors for composition, because we had two cameras working, so it was impossible to look at everything. Every once in a while something would catch my eye on the monitor. … but I mainly relied on the operators.        

ICG: How often were you surprised when the next day when you lit by eye?

ROE:  I worked with a director named Michael Ritchie… I did a couple movies with him. He just passed away recently. I was the operator, and he would sit right next to the camera all the time. He refused to have video assist, and this was when it was pretty prevalent. It was obvious that he knew who was in and out of frame from the lenses we were using. He’d turn to me after a take and ask, what do you think? I’d say, it was great, or the guy stepped out of frame. He’d say, yeah, I thought he did. He stayed next to the camera because he wanted to see the actors’ faces. I asked him about not using the monitor one time, and he said, ‘When I go to dailies, I love being surprised.’ It’s just my opinion, but I think the actors feed on the directors being there with them. Now granted, it doesn’t happen very often anymore. Most of the directors are back at the monitors. You see the actors waiting for a reaction and nobody’s there. The director is in the back talking to the script supervisor or the cameraman.

ICG: Back to my question about checking monitor for lighting…

ROE:  We never did it, and I can’t remember that being a problem.

ICG: How many episodes did you shoot?

ROE:  I think I did about 85.

ICG: Are there any that stand out for you?

ROE:  Sure, there’s a few that I really like a lot. “Drive” was the second episode that I shot, and we won an ASC Award for that one. That was just really special. Then, I did another one that was called “Agua Mala” that I really liked the next season. It was about the ocean. There are giant squids coming up through the drain and they’re eating people. Photographically, it was probably my favorite of all time. We did everything with flashlights, candles, lanterns and moonlight. We recently we did a “John Doe” episode that I really liked. It was the first one that Michelle (MacLaren), our executive producer, directed. It was supposedly set in Mexico. I overexposed the exteriors by three and a half stops, because I wanted a hot, kind of grainy, saturated look…and then we’d go inside and the look was dark and hot.

ICG: Did you pre-visualize the look you described or discover it while shooting?

ROE:  You pre-visualize it and then figure out how you want to do it. We did do a lot of testing on this series. Somebody would come up with an idea and we’d try doing it different ways. One of my favorite shows was an episode called “Triangle.”Every single shot was on a Steadicam, because everything was supposed to be happening in real-time.

ICG: What was that episode about?

ROE:  “Triangle” goes back in time to the Nazis. It takes place on a boat. Chris Carter directed that episode. It was our first experience together with him directing. We were just talking about it the other day, and how we wished we could do it again.

ICG: Why?

ROE:  We’ve evolved and become close friends. It would be fun to try and do it now with what we have learned, because we’ve all grown on this show. I mean, I’ve only been a cameraman for five years, and that was my second year of shooting. I think now we would probably do it not so much differently, but probably better. I hope we would do it better the second time around, but obviously we’re not going to have that chance. Dave Luckenbach operated the Steadicam for 10 straight days. He did an awesome job. It seems like every shot was four minutes long. It was a Bermuda Triangle theme.

ICG: Do you foresee the role of cinematographers changing?

ROE:  I don’t think so. I still think you’re the guy who runs the show… especially on a TV show. You’re the only one who is there all the time. Directors come and go, and producers are off prepping the next show. You’re there on the set with the cast and crew. I don’t think that will change. … as Michael Watkins put it, you’re the horse, and they ride you. You are the driving the force who creates the look and keeps it going.

ICG: What about your relationship with the colorist?

ROE:  Tony Smith at Hollywood Digital… I didn’t get to go very often, because our hours were just so wacky. We also had some great dailies guys on the show. They came and went, but Tony Smith was the colorist since the middle of season six. We became very close friends. I called him all the time, and he would call me. He would send me a final cut, and then I would put my notes down on every scene and how it should look. If there was a problem, he knew what the look was supposed to be… he was really great. He knew what we needed. He would call me every once in a while and say, you know, they want to do this, what do you think, and I would tell him what I wanted. 

ICG: Is that hard to do without seeing the film together?

ROE:  Yes. It’s awful. I was able enough to go in for a day on the last episode just before the final cut and airing. We went through scenes together. Now, they are going through the process of making DVDs of the series. I asked who is transferring this stuff? Nobody ever asked for my opinion. Finally, somebody from the studio talked with me for a little while about it with me. Obviously, there is nothing legally I can do or say. It’s a weird situation.

ICG: Do you find there is kind of a feeling that digital technology will save money for producers because it simplifies the cinematographer’s job and requires less time?

ROE:  The Guild has done a good job of dealing with the video contract issue on 24P productions, but there is feeling at the studios that digital technology will make the job easier… but it doesn’t always work that way. I heard a story about a 24P show wanting to eliminate the slate, because the time code is automatic, but the star insisted on it being in front of him on every take. It was important to him. For him, it was part of the rhythm of shooting the film. There is another story about how you’re going to save an hour a day in reloading time with video cameras, but the truth is how many times are you going to ask the operator to hold the camera for a 12-minute take, and how long is the boom guy going to hold the boom? This isn’t an assembly line. Stopping to reload gives people a chance to think about what they are doing. There is a certain rhythm that makes films work.

ICG: I’m just curious. How much time did you actually spend reloading cameras? 

ROE:  We normally used a 1,000-foot magazine, so the run-time was about nine minutes, or if you are shooting three-perf it’s about 12 minutes. It takes less than a minute to reload. It depends on the actors and director. Sometimes you reload at the end of a take, and it’s no problem. Sometimes, you in the middle of the take, and the actor wants to start with the slate and re-do everything after you reload. The truth is that whether it is a film or a digital camera, you still have to light and you still have to set the composition. You still have to lay dolly track. The basics don’t change. You still have to do those things to make movies and TV programs.

ICG: Have you worked much on commercials?

ROE:  I did a lot of commercials with Joe Pytka earlier in my career. I worked with him for two years. I went everywhere with him…China, Africa. We worked hard and also had a great time. Spontaneity is a big factor in how he works. I learned that you don’t have to shoot tons of footage to get the product you want. Everybody kids him because he plays basketball all the time. He does it for a reason... it gets his mind going. He’s always thinking. That was the hardest thing about The X-Files, finding time to think. There were many times when I would have loved to have a day to think about some set or some scene, or watch a rehearsal of a scene we were going to shoot the next day. That never happened in four years. Sometimes, I would tell a gaffer, you know, Jono, let’s bring the light from this side. We’ll come in from the window, lay the dolly track here and push in and shoot here. Then, I would walk to the office or grab a snack at craft services. You have to walk away and think. I’d guess about 75 percent of the time, I would come back and change something. That’s the only way you get time to think.

ICG: Do you think of this as a craft or an art or both?

ROE:  I think it’s a bit of both. You have to learn the craft and keep up with it as things change, but it’s also an art because everyone lights and does things differently. If you put 10 of us on the same set with the same director and actors, we’re all going to light it differently.

ICG: What’s next for Bill Roe?

ROE:  I’m starting a new program with Michael Mann called R.H.D./LA. We are going to be shooting in Los Angeles, in 24P format, and I think it is for the right reason… there’s a look he wants.

ICG: Maybe we can talk about your initial reactions during the live chat.