Nancy Schreiber, ASC:
One Cinematographer, Two Styles of Filmmaking

Originally Published in Filmmaker Magazine in Summer 1998

Within one recent three week period, Nancy Schreiber, ASC, was timing two movies, Your Friends and Neighbors and Thicker Than Blood. Both were shot at practical locations, the first in Los Angeles and the second in New York.       

Your Friends and Neighbors is mainly a dialogue film about three dysfunctional and overlapping relationships in an urban setting. It features Ben Stiller, Jason Patric, Nastassja Kinski, Amy Brenneman, Catherine Keener, and Aaron Eckhart.      

Thicker Than Blood is also in set in the city where a teacher tries his best to help a talented student find his way out of an abusive home and street life. The film stars Mickey Rourke and Dan Futterman and is based on a true story.           

Your Friends and Neighbors, distributed by Gramercy Pictures, will be at the cinema in August. Thicker Than Blood is a TNT Original movie.           

Your Friends and Neighbors appealed to Schreiber because it was an opportunity to work with a talented new director, Neil La Bute (In the Company of Men). He guided the ensemble cast through a three week period of rehearsals. Because locations were locked prior to this, Schreiber was able to attend rehearsals and connect with both the director and cast in ways that led to a very intimate and harmonious set.           

Thicker Than Blood was an opportunity for Schreiber to work again with director Richard Pearce, whom Schreiber had worked with in the beginning of her career when she was gaffing. Pearce has directed such films as Leap of Faith and Heartland and had been one of the great handheld cameramen (Woodstock).            

Schreiber has done her share of documentaries and extensive handheld shooting. After receiving degrees in psychology and art history at the University of Michigan, she moved to New York where she became an electrician, then a gaffer. She began shooting documentaries and short dramatic films eighteen years ago, then shot her first feature film in 1988. Schreiber has subsequently compiled some 30 feature and television credits including Lush Life, Chain of Desire and Visions of Light. Schreiber has earned many cinematography honors at film festivals, including Sundance, and the 1997 Kodak Vision Award at Women In Film’s Crystal Awards.           

Although Thicker Than Blood was a television movie, Schreiber says she didn’t approach it any differently than a theatrical feature. The producers were film people— Michael Hausman (Milos Forman’s producer), Charles Darby (who works with Woody Allen) and David Manson (Bring on the Night).           

“We shot extensive feature coverage and kept the camera moving and alive,” says Schreiber. “The main difference from Your Friends and Neighbors was the limited prep time. I had just over a week of prep.”           

Schreiber says writer-producer Bill Cain’s script and producer David Manson’s connection to another gutsy television venture, Nothing Sacred, are what drew her to the project. “I was amazed at the originality and boldness of the script. We shot much of the story tableau style, with the actors moving within the frame rather than the camera moving. This alternated with several scenes that run as long as four minutes with no cuts and choreographed Steadicam or dolly moves.”           

As visual points of reference, they watched Carnal Knowledge and Manhattan. They also looked at Interiors and its use of Edward Hopper colors and a restrained camera.           

“There’s not a single exterior in the whole movie,” she says. “We shot in Los Angeles and Neil wanted the actual location of the film’s setting to be ambiguous, maybe Chicago or New York, but definitely a large city.”           

Your Friends and Neighbors was framed in Super 35 format (2.4:1 aspect ratio).           

“Neil envisioned large tableaus, perfectly composed, and as wide as possible,” Schreiber says. “I shot with Primo lenses, often wide angle (17.5 and 20 mm) because it allowed me to put all the actors in the frame. Our close-ups were never longer than 75 mm or 100 mm.”            

The apartment and loft sets were dressed and painted to reflect the personalities of the characters. Schreiber describes the sets as “very controlled with a Hopper palette including lots of muted greens, mustards and beiges. The only person with some color is Nastassja. Production Designer Charles Breen used reds and oranges that match her character’s passionate personality. I also used warm gels on tungsten lights.”           

As the camera moves, composition and lighting all subtlety guide the audience to places in the frame where the main action is happening. Schreiber lit mainly through windows, often with the aid of condors, scaffolding and, in one 10^th floor setting, from a roof across the street.           

“In a dialogue film, you have to make the camera organic and keep it interesting without drawing attention to the shot,” she says. “It has to be integrated into the story.”           

Schreiber used techniques such as more frontal lighting on one of the actresses to reduce her undereye circles. The lighting on the men was more modeled.           

“Every face is different,” she says. “I didn’t use heavy glass diffusion because I didn’t want to degrade the images. I was conscious of the extra optical step in the lab with this (Super 35) format. I softened with diffusion on the lights and used a light black ProMist.”           

Schreiber used the Kodak Vision 500T film, which she rated at E.I. 400, to get a fuller negative for the blow up. After testing during preproduction, she felt the fast stock could handle the anamorphic blow up and also allowed her good depth of field, and a cooler set.           

Thicker Than Blood is based on an award-winning play, Standup Tragedy. It was mainly filmed on location in the Bronx. A lot of the story happens in boys’ school. The school interiors, which were crisp and colorful, were actually in Brooklyn, because it was mostly empty and the school exteriors were in the Bronx. The other main set is a funky apartment, a chaotic world with drug addicts coming and going, and an older brother who beats his own mother, and occasionally, the boy.            

“Unlike the normalcy of the school, I lit everything in the apartment with a green gel on the lamps and a touch of smoke,” Schreiber says. “It feels almost fluorescent, a little monochromatic, sad and depressing. The camera moves all the time. There was a lot of coverage and quick cuts. We used longer lenses than on Your Friends and Neighbors. We had a rainbow cast of characters with many shades of skin tones. On a large screen, the variety of skin tones was interesting.

But when we went to telecine, I found the DaVinci color corrector useful, for example, to pull red out of one actor’s face who was very ruddy and called attention to himself.”

She used the same Vision film on the TV movie, in addition to [Eastman EXR] 5293 film, coupled with Panavision Primo lenses. One technique she employed in the apartment was a “Doggie cam” which puts the camera at a low point of view to help the audience see something through the boy’s eyes. The camera traveled along the ground, winding through circuitous hallways. “Even if there had been room physically,” she says, “we felt the Steadicam’s floating quality would not be appropriate for the grittiness we were trying to achieve in Thicker Than Blood.”