Young at Heart

John Schwartzman, ASC Pitches New Light on The Rookie

By Pauline Rogers  *  Photos by Deana Newcomb

This article originally appeared in ICG Magazine in Mar. 2002.

Jim Morris (Dennis Quaid) needed something to motivate his high school baseball team. So, he made a bet with them. If they qualified for the State playoffs he would try out again for the Major League. Well – they made the playoffs. Now Morris has been given a second chance at his dream of Major League ball, testing his relationship with his family and his own personal commitment to a dream.

"Based on the true story of major league's oldest rookie pitcher, The Rookie is a simple story about fathers and sons and not giving up on your dreams," says cinematographer John Schwartzman, ASC. "After the schedule driven complexity of Pearl Harbor, I wanted to do a film that wasn't driven by huge logistics. The Rookie was a picture about the silence between the dialogue. It needed to be done simply, one camera and a crew of filmmakers with a lot of heart."

When Schwartzman met with writer (A Perfect World, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil) turned director John Lee Hancock their discussions were about being able to keep the simplicity of the characters and their interpersonal relationships in the forefront. "John Lee Hancock is one of the brightest people I've ever met," says Schwartzman. "He was prepared with visual ideas. We both knew that where we put the camera and whether we chose to shoot at four feet on a 50mm or 3.6 feet on a 40mm was going to make all the difference in a scene."

In discussing the format for this picture, Schwartzman pushed for anamorphic to give the story a sense of scope. He chose Panavision Platinum cameras, and the same set of lenses the A-camera used on PearlHarbor.  Everything was done single camera (two cameras for the high school baseball scenes) with only two days of Steadicam for a crucial big-league game. Film choices were Kodak's 5274 for overcast days, 5277 for bright days, and 5279 for nights.

To hone in on the look, the two watched films like Hud and The Last Picture Show. "It was important to find a way to make Texas almost as much of a character in this story as Jim Morris and the people around him," he adds.

Ask John Schwartzman about the most memorable shots in this picture and he will immediately go to the ending. This is where Jim Morris takes the field to pitch a Major League game. "For the first time in the history of baseball, we got permission to literally stop a Major League game for 90 seconds and film Dennis Quaid taking the mound," he says with the enthusiasm of a true baseball nut.

"We didn't have the budget to paint people in the stands, so we organized a promotional give-away and got the largest  crowd of the season at the ballpark at Arlington for this one scene. What we had to capture was the opening of the bullpen doors and Dennis as Jim Morris entering like a bullfighter. To do this, I brought in one of the best Steadicam operators in the business - Robert Presley.

"Running along side Dennis Quaid in front of 42,000 screaming fans during a Major League baseball game might seem a daunting task, but on a John Schwartzman movie it is just another day on the job," laughs Presley. "I had fought along side him on Pearl Harbor and this was an even more amazing experience.

"The challenge on this shot was the time frame," he says. "We had 90 seconds and only 90 seconds. My concern was twofold. What if Dennis got a little too carried away and sprinted faster than I could run while carrying the Steadicam. And, what if I fell down in front of 42,000 people and a television audience trying to keep up with him?

"We did several shots prior to our sprint on the field during the 7 inning stretch, but our real moment came when we made our way down to the Texas Rangers bullpen. The shot was to run from the bullpen all the way to the infield with the camera tracking Dennis as he took in the moment. We also wanted to make sure we took full advantage of the production value of the full stadium. The shot had to be in low-mode for two reasons - the team on the field was the wrong team for the story, and the low angle made Dennis look much more heroic.

"Dennis and I discussed the speed," Presley continues. "I was carrying so much extra weight and I needed to be able to keep up with him (we only had one shot at this!). As the moment came, the crowd was a thundering noise and Dennis was pumped up for this. He took off like a rocket! You have no idea how loud 42,000 screaming people can be! I was yelling at the top of my lungs (while running) to get Dennis to slow down - but forget it! I couldn't even hear myself!"

"Robert and his first assistant Todd Schlopy pulled it off magnificently," says Schwartzman. "We even had enough time to get another take before we were booted out."

"We were actually here for three days," adds gaffer Andy Ryan. "The first two days at The Ballpark at Arlington were dedicated to shooting Dennis in the bullpen and shots of our actors in the stands. There were no games these two nights so we could do what was necessary.

"For the bullpen lighting we supplemented the stadium lighting with our HMls that matched color temperature," Ryan continues. "We also tried to build a little contrast by taking out some of the excessive stadium lights.

"One of the hardest parts of shooting in any stadium is the logistics," he adds. "Your genie is on the street and your cable runs are always long. It is a bit of a job getting your lamps up into the bleachers. When shooting in the stands, we tended to use 6k PARs because we could get the most bang for our buck. And, they were easier to move than 18ks.

"And, when we got to the shots in the stands, we shot in a Major League Press Box," he adds enthusiastically. "It was simple to light. We changed out the tubes to match the stadium lighting and added a few small HMI lights that we plugged into house power. It's great when laymen like us get to work in a place like that!"

"We covered the baseball games rather extensively," adds operator Ian Fox. "With so many characters out on a field, in both bull pens, as well as the stand, when a specific event happened in the game we had to get everyone's reaction.

"We would set up a shot and John Lee would walk the actor through those moments," he continues. "In covering the game itself, we tried to find interesting angles and camera moves to fit the action. It was fun and challenging to come in every day and find ways to cover the game without repeating angles, lenses, or camera moves and capture all the dramatic moments."

Since much of this story takes place on baseball fields and in stadiums, capturing the audience, the condition and class of the field was paramount to the story. "Our basic plan was to find Minor League baseball stadiums with decent lighting and get rid of any blue that was too much in the timing,"  Schwartzman explains. "For most of the shots we used Kodak's 5279 without the 85 filter because we needed the stop in case we wanted to over crank, and I knew Bob Kiser would be able to time the blue out later."

The production shot at venues from a High School stadium in Austin that stood in for Morris's first stop in the minors to Dell Diamond, a new minor league stadium in Round Rock that stood for Durham.

"Major League baseball requires certain levels inside their parks. When we stuck our meters out on the field the footcandles remained consistent," says Ryan. "That was a great help. On the last night in Arlington, the Rangers allowed us to park a genie on the Warning Track in the outfield. This saved hours of running cable."

"When we shot the High School team with Dennis coaching we had a few surprises," says Schwartzman. "We had a real team - and they could hit the ball hard! So much so that we had to put protection around the camera! We even had to protect our 18ks with cages! At one point, a ball almost took out a fernel!"

Schwartzman and team worked hard at making the baseball sequences look like baseball. "Part of what made the baseball look like baseball was working with hot shadows from the sun," says Schwartzman. "We didn't want to over fill and make the shots look pretty. If we had sun we used a little grifolyn for bounce and that was it. If things started to look too beautiful, we would lose the reality of the game. So we would step back and throw on the polarizer and shoot. We wanted West Texas hot, contrasty, and saturated."

One of the most stylized baseball sequences is the opening shot, which was to take place in the 1920s. This was captured in front of a huge oil derrick (built for The Newton Boys). The shot is supposed to be without vegetation. "We had a lot of rain and the 10,000 normally dead acres were lush and green," Schwartzman adds. Instead of making production designer Barry Robison spray 500,000 gallons of RoundUp on the location, he decided to take a cue from Roger Deakins and digitize the shot ala Oh Brother Where Art Thou? At Buena Vista Imaging after the film was completed.

"John Lee and I decided to remove the green from the shot and roll the color toward brown," Schwartzman explains. "After we did that, we then pulled Chroma out of the entire scene.

"It's nice to see that techniques that have been pedestrian in the commercial world are becoming available in the feature world," he adds. "The cheaper it gets for Inferno time and the cheaper it gets to scan, the more available these techniques will be.

"Between features, for the last ten years, I've been doing commercials. So, I am familiar with what you can do when you go to a place like Method. It's just that this only used to be available in NTSC resolution and now it is available and affordable in film res.

"The most important thing to consider is that nothing is better than original negative," he adds. "These new techniques are still only to be used in the service of a story. And, I certainly think this was a better fix than adding half a million gallons of RoundUp to an already compromised environment.

"I've never had more control over optical and digital optical than I had on this movie," he adds. "It takes the commitment of director John Lee Hancock, producer Mark Johnson and editor Eric Beason to keep you in the loop during post production.

Many of the baseball sequences were shot with three cameras - Ian Fox on Acamera, Don Reddy or Brown Cooper on B-camera, and Robert Presley on Steadicam or C-camera. "They worked great together," says Schwartzman. "As usual, the most difficult challenge on something like this is coordinating with each other. We would have a list of shots that related to the story. I would tell them I would need this and this and that - then turn them lose. Richard Mosier and the local crew in Austin handled the logistics of equipment wonderfully. It was freeing, not to have a video village like we did on Pearl Harbor. If I wanted to see what the various cameras were doing I would have to run around the stadium to look! So, I didn't do that. I trusted my operators!

"Ian had some interesting challenges here," Schwartzman adds. "We had to cover a frame of several different games at once. Since the dimensions of baseball parks are all the same, we were able to do these transitions by whip panning from one different outfit to another in a poor man's motion control."

"We also did some interesting shots where Les laid a dolly track around the mound," he adds. "The irony of this film is that, rather than trying to schedule day exteriors for Magic Hour, I tried to schedule as much baseball as I could for the middle of the day."

Where would a baseball movie be without a locker room sequence? For John  Schwartzman these shots were part of the joy and challenge of real filmmaking. "The locker room was beautiful," he says enthusiastically. "It was the kind of location that, at first, you think you can't shoot in. The walls were this awful green and the windows were high transom lights. However, when I talked with Andy and key grip Les Tomita, we came up with a plan that worked.

"We went for simple lighting – three 18ks and two 6ks on lifts pounding through the windows and bouncing around for a hard and natural feel."

"A well placed beadboard for fill inside and that was it," adds Ryan. "Simple and elegant and a pleasure to do for a change!"

Even though most of the story centers around sports and sports moments, there are some intense personal moments in the picture. The most crucial telling moment for Quaid's character is when he tries to find out if he can get back what he had when he was younger. "It's a beautiful scene," says Schwartzman with enthusiasm. "Jimmy Morris knew he had the opportunity to make it into the majors when he was in his late teens. Only he suffered a setback and had to have a series of operations. He promised his wife that he wouldn't play again.

"But that dream never left him," he continues. "One night, after he challenges his students, Jimmy decides to find out if he can still throw. He starts by throwing the ball against an old chain link fence at an American Legion ballpark. Someone sees him throwing - and tells him he isn't fast enough for the majors.

"That night he drives through the city past a radar machine that tells him he's going at 27 miles-per-hour. He stops, backs up, and decides to test himself against the machine. What he sees is the radar gun registering 78 miles-per-hour. As he walks away, only the audience sees that two of the light bulbs are out. He has thrown so hard (98 mph) that there are only five or six men in the game that can throw harder!"

Shot on a country road near the airport, the set up was simple. "We lit it with 18ks (with half CTO) on condors for the moonlight/edge," says Ryan. "We let Jim Morris's truck headlights do the rest of the work. We cheated the headlights with a couple of PAR cans on Variacs. We then brought a 6k into a grif in for a little moonlight fill."

For Jim's interaction with his family and the residents of his hometown, the production created various small-town Texas moments in Thorndale. Production designer Barry Robison found an old furniture store and turned it into a Five and Dime, a barbershop, and a restaurant. "This is the kind of building that tells you how to light it," says Ryan. "When we walked in, John saw the old florescent fixtures and the old faded sun screens that had moved toward the orange. We used them as our basic lighting.”

"For the dime store sequences of young Jimmy, we used the second floor for our lighting," says Schwartzman.

"We did most of the lighting using big HMIs outside and smaller lamps inside to continue the look," adds Ryan. "One of our favorite shots took place upstairs in the Five and Dime where Dennis is talking to a few of the town elders as they play cards. Our key was a 2()k through an eight by eight soft frost with a little edge here and there. 20ks are great for this. The light is so soft and it wraps forever."

Production also used several locations in Taylor, Texas. "One is really famous," says Ryan. "It is a barbecue restaurant owned by Louis Muller. The walls are thick with this black/brown patina from years of smoke. We let the room take the lead and lit it with old florescent lamps that were there, swapping out the tubes with optima tubes. We then lit our ballplayers around the table with an eight-foot Junior through diffusion for our key and PAR Cans for edges.

"At one point, we came around and saw outside where we had condors lighting the street and the parking lot.

"One of the challenges of a movie this size is the rigging and wrap become part of your workday," Ryan adds. "You don't have the luxury of a rigging crew and rigging packages like you do on bigger pictures. You have to figure out a way to incorporate all the work in an already full shooting day. This is where I lean on my long-time Best Boy Dave Christensen. He is my second set of eyes."...

Even though these great real locations served to open up the story and capture the character of Texas - a big part of the story - production also needed a place to run to when the weather took over. "We converted a high school gym for a cover set," says Schwartzman. "This was Les Tomita's biggest challenge. He had to black out the gym and hang a grid system for us to rig from."

Ask John Schwartzman what his favorite shots are - that aren't baseball - and he will smile. They are the little shots between the characters. "We had a shot between Morris and his son (played by Angus T. Jones)," he recalls. "It takes place on the street at night. So that we wouldn't get in the way of Angus's performance, we had 60-feet of crane dolly track laid and used the crane over the sidewalk so the two actors could walk without worrying about track or spreaders. Spending the time to lay the track allowed us to get the shot quickly and avoid the artificial performance you often get when actors are dividing their concentration between their lines and the wedges and spread bars in their path."

There is another Schwartzman favorite featuring Scottish actor Brian Cox (the original Hannibal Lector) as Morris's father. "Actually, all the shots with Brian were great," Schwartzman adds. "We had to take him from age 45 to 65. The challenge was making the lighting work for young and then older. For the early shots, we came in with soft frontal lighting and filled in the lines in his face. Later, we went for harsher lighting.

"One of my favorite shots is an emotional moment between Jim and his father that takes place on the front porch of their house," he continues. "We fell back on a tool that we used a lot on Pearl Harbor – bat strips. For this location we used bat strips with 100-watt bulbs lower than the porch lights to light the faces. We then used a 5k through light grid and cut just right so the shots didn't feel too precious. For shots like this we weren't afraid of actors going in and out of light - this was part of what we needed to support the story."

Push Schwartzman a little further and he will tell you about his ultimate favorite shot. "It is when Jim first tries out for theTampa Bay Devils," he says. "We shot this at 120 frames-per-second. And ultimately we lifted a frame from the film to be the poster shot. It is a wonderful moment that says everything - a silhouette that is timeless - a man going for his dream against an orange sky in the background."

For John Schwartzman and team this picture was their dream come true. They got to support a real story about a real man in a real struggle for his dream with all their creative tools. "It was a joy to be having conversations about whether we should be two foot ten inches on the 40mm lens or three feet six inches on the 50mm lens instead of how many cameras and what compromises to make the schedule," he sighs.

"We even got to use the tools and toys we had on Pearl Harbor — without the pressure. Our bat strips came in handy for a lot of simple lighting moments. And, we made great use of the Lenny arm and hot head. They might have been extravagant for a lower budget movie but they added so much more to the story.

"We could do these things because of the superior talent I had behind the camera. Many people think of crew members as just labor," he adds. "But in my case, every guy on my crew, Ian Fox, Richard Mosier, Thom Lairson, Andy Ryan, Les Tomita and George Borthwick are bright and interested contributors - not just guys that drag cable or fold rags!

"This business asks a lot from you and if you don't get enjoyment out of the work you do and the people you do it with, it will eat you alive. My work is certainly a culmination of many people's talents. I would be foolish not to listen to their opinions. All these guys had opinions on the script and screenwriter Mike Rich listened to all of them. I encouraged all the guys to contribute their ideas. The real beauty of it is that I get the credit. Just kidding!" Schwartzman laughs - making it even more obvious that this was probably the most fun he's had on a picture in a very very long time!