By Bob Fisher

Dante Spinotti, ASC, AIC was born in Italy and raised in a rustic environment near Venice. He began taking still photographs and making enlargements in a homemade darkroom when he was about 11 years old. When he was 17, Spinotti went to Kenya where he worked with an uncle who was a documentary and news film director/ cinematographer. He shot his first documentary footage with a handheld, spring-loaded Eyemo camera. After about a year, Spinotti returned to Italy, where he worked on commercials, documentaries and dramas for RAI, the state television network. That led to opportunities to shoot his first features during the early 1980s.

Dino De Laurentiis discovered Spinotti and brought him to the United States to shoot Manhunter in 1986. He subsequently earned Oscar nominations for L.A. Confidentialin 1997 and forThe Insider in 1999. His body of work also includes Beaches, True Colors, Bandits, The Mirror has Two Faces, The Last of the Mohicans, Blink, Nell, Heat, Wonder Boysand Red Dragon. Following is an edited text of a conversation:

ICG: Where were you born and raised?

SPINOTTI: I was born in sort of an out of the way place in Italy, north of Venice and Trieste, very close to the Austrian border. It’s an area with a very specific culture. They speak one of those romance languages that came out of the encounter between the Romans and the local population. After I was born, we moved almost immediately to an area close to Venice on the farmland plains where I lived until I was 15. I lived in the country, which was kind of good for a kid to be around nature.

ICG: When and how did you get interested in photography?

SPINOTTI: I started doing still photography with a camera that my uncle gave me when I was about 11. He was a cinematographer who became my mentor. I took pictures of my sister, my aunt and others in my family. I also took a lot of pictures around the countryside, landscapes and winter scenes. I developed the negatives and made prints with an old photo enlarger that was in my bedroom. I became the official photographer for the local soccer team when I was around 12 or 13. I would station myself behind the goal net with a camera and a flash attachment that I built myself. My photos of the soccer team were enlarged by a local photographer who posted them at the local bar with my name on the bottom—‘Photo by Dante Spinotti.’ A newspaper also published them. That’s how I started as a photographer. Another big passion in my life was drawing still life pictures. I got my highest grades in school in that class.   

ICG: What type of cinematography did your uncle do?

SPINOTTI: He was a director/ cinematographer who specialized in documentaries and newsreels. I worked with him in Kenya when I was 17, after I finished high school. We did quite a bit of newsreel work for United Press International. We had an old 35mm spring-loaded Eyemo camera, which was such in bad shape that you could see the gap between the lens and the lens holder with your eye. I remember shooting with it handheld for the first time. It was a story for UPI covering Jomo Kenyatta, who was supposed to be one of the Mau Mau leaders. He was coming out of imprisonment, and on the way to become the first president of independent Kenya one year later. I remember being in the middle of a number of international documentary and newsreel filmmakers. I had to elbow my way into the crowd to get some of those shots, which caused some problems with the British newsreel cameraman. UPI from London said it was a little bit too repetitious, but they paid for the coverage, so I was paid for it.

ICG: In retrospect, what did you learn from that experience?

SPINOTTI: I learned that you have to be willing to go where you can work. I traveled far away from home to Kenya, which in those days was uncommon. I had to learn a new language and also take personal responsibility for myself. I had to make a commitment to being the best I could be at everything I did. I learned how to overcome frustrations and difficulties.

Once I was assigned to cover a three-day East African safari rally, which is an absolutely magnificent speed race. I loved the cars. I was driving with an Australian team manager and asked him to stop, because I saw a great shot. I jumped out, put the camera on the tripod and got these beautiful shots of other cars coming around a curve, except I forgot to take off the cover of the lens.

Another time I worked on a German film called Our House in Africa. I was assigned to be the assistant to the sound mixer. They had told him not to worry about bringing somebody to Kenya, because he’d find fantastic technicians who can help you there. Instead, he found a guy who knew nothing about sound recording. I was one of his boom operators. I still remember the German cameraman telling me to keep the shadow of the mike out of the picture. I also remember long nights spent with a German crew in the Hatari Hotel, where we could see Mt. Kilmanjaro. Everybody spoke German, so I couldn’t understand a single word. It was frustrating, but I was determined to make the most of that experience. I wasn’t going to give up.

ICG: How long were you in Kenya?

SPINOTTI: After about a year, I decided it was time for me to return home and be more on my own. I worked on commercial crews and then I met one of the directors of the government television network (RAI) in Milan. He had been a prisoner of war in Kenya, so we had a lovely conversation. He hired me as an assistant cameraman on a freelance basis, at first, for television.

ICG: What type of work were you doing?

SPINOTTI: Once I became a cameraman, I was working on small features. We would spend three weeks shooting each one-hour TV movie. There were many different types of projects that offered a possibility for experimenting. It was also secure. They couldn’t fire me, because it was a state owned company. I experimented with shooting reversal film at 2000 ASA. It was all 16 mm film for television. Sometimes, they were six or seven hour films. One crew would shoot videotape on the stages in the studio and we the film crews would integrate shooting 16 mm black and white or color film on location. Video was never a mystery to me.

ICG: How did you get a chance to shoot movies for cinema?

SPINOTTI: I was working in my safe television job, but I wanted to be a cinematographer like Gianni Di Venanzo. His control over the whole range of grays was absolutely beautiful. He brought pictorial realism to stories. Do you remember the scene with Marcello Mastroianni at the public baths in 8-1/2? It was beautiful black and white images with over-exposed whites and perfect camera work directed by Federico Fellini and photographed by Gianni Di Venanzo. It was surrealistic, but at the same time extremely realistic. I have a marvelous, original poster of 8-1/2 at the entrance of my house. When Vittorio (Storaro, ASC, AIC) visited us he almost fell to his knees like it was a sacred icon. Vittorio took what Gianni Di Venanzo began and he brought it forward to an even higher level. Vittorio changed the way audiences look at movies because of the influence of his images on storytelling.

ICG: During the early 1980s, you began shooting feature films in Rome?

SPINOTTI: I have always tried to do films that had something interesting to say about humanity. I was lucky because the first pictures I did were with talented directors. I worked with Lina Wertmuller on several films, including Sotto… Sotto (Softly, Softly in 1984). My first 35mm film was an extremely low-budget period film. We shot it in Venice with a number of French and Italian actors. I remember timing it at Technicolor (in Rome) with Ernesto Novelli, who was like a legend to me. I was lucky because I had opportunities to shoot movies, but it took some time for my work to be noticed on films that had some wider success.

ICG: How did you become involved with Dino De Laurentiis?

SPINOTTI: One of the directors I was working with was Liliana Cavani. She was very conscious about the quality of images. One of those pictures was The Berlin Affair, which was a love story set in Nazi Germany before the war. Around that time (1985), Dino De Laurentiis was planning to open a studio in North Carolina. He was looking for collaborators, including directors, production and costume designers who weren’t from the mainstream Hollywood industry. I was shooting some good movies, and I spoke English because of my Kenyan experience. Dino offered me a three-year contract. It was like the scene in Alice in Wonderland when the door opens and there is a whole new world. The first director he introduced me to felt that I wasn’t experienced enough to shoot his film. It was Taipan, and Jack Cardiff (BSC) ended up shooting it. The next day, Dino said, ‘Dante, don’t worry. We’re going to put you together with a very young, upcoming American director, who is very bright and talented.’ He arranged a meeting with Michael Mann, which was a major turning point for me. I flew to Wilmington, North Carolina and screened 10 to 15 of my shots for him. He must have liked what he saw, because he said, ‘okay, let’s give it a try.’ I started working with Michael Mann on Manhunter. It was a story about a serial killer, which Michael took to a transcendental level. I loved every minute of that experience. Michael’s decisions about the visual dynamics, camera angles—why we put a camera two inches to the right as opposed to inches to the left or two inches higher as opposed to two inches lower—or why the background has to be slightly blue-green. That was the opportunity I was looking for. It was a total immersion in a filmmaking experience right down to the very last drop of blood circulating in my veins. It was an amazing experience. We spoke very little, and just about basic issues. He probably liked what I did because we did a few more movies together after that one, including The Last of the Mohicans and Heat.

ICG: How does your cultural background affect your approach to filmmaking?

SPINOTTI: When I was a boy in Italy, I could go to the local cinema and see a film photographed by William Daniels (ASC) and other great cinematographers from different cultures. Whether you realize it or not, you are learning something every time you see a movie. I remember shooting a 16 mm television program for RAI. We were shooting in a beautiful palace that was built around 1600. Every room was different. I remember deciding, I would light one room like Vittorio Storaro, and another room like Giuseppe Rotunno (ASC, AIC), and a third room like William Daniels or Daniel Fapp (ASC). All of them were huge heroes to me.   

ICG: How about Crimes of the Heart directed by Bruce Beresford in 1986?

SPINOTTI: Dino De Laurentiis recommended me. Bruce Beresford hadn’t seen any of my pictures. I was a relatively unknown Italian. He asked if I could show him a film, which would make him feel comfortable. I told him I had just shot Manhunter with Michael Mann who was still cutting the movie. We called Michael and he sent a reel with eight or nine shots. Bruce also asked me how I would approach shooting a scene in the script for Crimes of the Heart. After that discussion, he asked me if I wanted to work with him? Bruce has an interesting approach to making films. We had a wonderful working relationship. He came to the set in the morning with very small storyboards that he usually designed himself. They were very simple sketches…maybe showing the face of an actress with a little cross expression for a close-up. He would arrive in the morning with eight, 10 or 12 of those sketches, saying this is the day’s work. Having said that, it was just the beginning. We were free to invent different shots. It was the first time in my career that I was working with three big movie stars, Diane Keaton, Jessica Lange, and Sissy Spacek. You have to find ways to transfer these beautiful faces and interesting personalities to the screen along with the quality of depth that is inside of their souls. It comes through their faces and eyes. I remember a scene with all three of them sitting at a table. Bruce wanted to shoot this scene with three cameras at the same time. It was an emotional scene where he wanted to show what happens between the three of them in real time. They were moving from crying to laughter in the same scene. Each of these actresses had their own “custom” light. On the first day of shooting, we had a scene with Jessica Lange at a piano. Bruce wanted to put the camera down at a low angle. Later, when we saw dailies, Jessica told us, ‘you guys can do whatever you want, but please do not put the camera below my chin again.’ Later, on another film (Illegally Yours in 1988), Peter Bogdanovich told me to always shoot women stars from higher angles. There are a lot of rules, but you also have to know when they should be broken. I can’t imagine doing a picture without breaking rules and doing some things that I haven’t done before.

ICG: How did you happen to shoot True Colors with Herbert Ross, and what was that experience like?

SPINOTTI: A production designer (Ken Adam) who I had worked with told Herbert Ross about me. He called and asked me to fly to Paris to meet him. We spoke, and then Herbert asked me to work with him on this film. It was a very interesting story about politics and corruption. I learned a lot from him about how to shoot action scenes. We had a scene with a fistfight between two characters that alternated. One of them, the character shot from behind, was a stuntman who had the same hairstyle as the main character. Herbert showed me how to use handheld camera, lenses and camera angles so the action of the stuntman integrated with the performance of the real actor. My point is that every film opens new windows and those experiences become part of you. I remember this method when shooing a fight between Guy Pearce and Russell Crowe in L.A. Confidential.  

ICG: What about The Last of the Mohicans?

SPINOTTI: Michael Mann called and spoke with me about this film, and he sent me the screenplay. What else would you want from life than a chance to film a great story set in 1700? Michael’s visual references included a couple of paintings, including Thomas Cole and Alfred Bierstadt. This is very typical of Michael. He shows you a simple image and says, ‘this is the movie.’ The paintings all showed how small human beings are in the scope of nature. Michael wanted everything to be extremely accurate. He offered me the picture, but it took a lot of time for him to put this project together. While I was waiting, Gary Marshall offered me a film called Frankie and Johnny. That was the film, which finally allowed me to get into the camera Guild. That opportunity was very important to me. It enabled me to work on other films in Hollywood, and also because I was always connected to union activities in Europe. Gary Marshall is a wonderful director and human being. A few weeks after we finished Frankie and Johnny, I was in Rome. One of the producers called and said Michael Mann wanted me to shoot The Last of the Mohicans. They booked me on a Concorde on a three-hour flight on Friday night. I was jet-lagged when I arrived and saw this amazing set of a British fort with actors dressed in military uniforms from 1700. All of our lighting was going to be based on sun and moonlight bonfires, torches and candles. There was a wonderful cast, including Daniel Day Lewis and Madeleine Stowe. Michael said he wanted was to keep the look monochromatic. One of the scenes that I was happiest with reproduced the pounding power of a waterfall in an interior shot set in a cave at night. You can’t see the waterfall, but you can feel its immense power in the pounding water on the faces of the actors. We bounced light from a couple of 4K Xenon’s with some big 12 x12 Mylar frames that a grip was shaking in front of them You can see the pattern of moving light on the faces and feel the power of the waterfall.

ICG: How do you make decisions like that? How do you know what to do and what effect it’s going to have when you create that kind of light and you put it on a film?

SPINOTTI: Also, a big part of the art comes from your collaboration with the people you have around you. I needed some reflective material and my key grip suggested Mylar. Many times in situations like this, you don’t have a lot of time to think about what you want to do. Every other art form give you more time to think. A painter can spend months in front of his canvas, and repaint and repaint it until he is satisfied. An orchestra can rehearse until the maestro is satisfied and a writer can write and rewrite. As much as you prepare a film, countless decisions have to be made 30 seconds before you shoot. When I was shooting Blink in Chicago, there was a gaffer who had a great idea for using a Chinaball for long Steadicam shots. You could walk with your Steadicam wherever you wanted to place your camera and still have the actors lit. It seems simple and obvious now, but back in those days (1994) it wasn’t that simple. I remember another film where my gaffer, Jeff Petersen and I designed a lamp that had a row of tiny PAR 16s. We used it to light Nicholas Cage and Tea Leoni sitting across each other at a table in a restaurant. The unit was shaped as kind of a half a circle four to five feet in diameter, so it could be used to light both actors. We used it to create ring backlight for one or both actors. The light also wrapped around their faces. It could be a ring-light on one actor and light the other’s face.

ICG: What film was that light used in?

SPINOTTI: The first time we used that light was in The Family Man (2000). We had a lot of location shooting hours. We had Steadicam shots that moved 360 degrees around rooms. The lights were on dimmers, so I could lower or raise either the front light or backlight. They are very small units, so we could hide them in the corner of the ceiling where the camera couldn’t see them. The output doesn’t look like movie lighting. It has a very interesting rendering on the faces.

ICG: Who was the director of Blink?

SPINOTTI: Michael Apted was the director. Madeleine Stowe recommended me to him, I think because she was very happy with a close-up I shot of her in the infirmary scene in The Last of the Mohicans. I knew what kind of light I wanted on her face, but my gaffer gets credit for suggesting a wedge light with a diffusion frame. The light was very soft. In Blink, one of the challenges was to show the audience how this woman sees the world after she regains her eyesight after 20 years of blindness. Our inspiration came from paintings by Francis Bacon. I also did some research, including reading medical studies. I felt that if the problem was the cornea of the eye I had to create a problem in the lens. I decided that we needed special lenses that lost details around the edges of the frame. Denny Clairmont was totally open to that challenge. He invented a set of lenses that were called blurtars. We also invented a set of plastic filters that we undulated with heat, so they were irregular. Clairmont also constructed a matte box that could rotate. There are images that are distorted, so there is a question of whether she actually saw the killer and if so was it in real time or images that she recalled seeing maybe an hour earlier?

ICG: We also want to ask you about shooting Nell?

SPINOTTI: Nell was my second film with Michael Apted. The star, Jodie Foster, was also the producer. It was also an opportunity for me to work with Natasha Richardson again. She was in a film called The Comfort of Strangers (1990), which I did with Paul Schrader. Nell is about a woman who lives in her mother’s house, somewhere in the countryside with the memories of her twin sister who died at a young age. It’s a lonely place with no communications with the outside world. This girl rarely sees anybody. Jodie Foster felt that we should shoot the movie in 1.85:1 aspect ratio, because it was an intimate and dramatic story. I felt the anamorphic wide screen format was a better approach to telling an intimate story. Michael Apted said he was okay with the idea of shooting in anamorphic, but I had to convince Jody that this was the right approach.

ICG: How did you convince her?

SPINOTTI: Due to jet lag from Italy, I woke up in the middle of the night with an inspiration and began writing why Nell should be produced in anamorphic. I mentioned other movies that were shot in anamorphic and spoke about using a big screen to show Nell in her environment. Her house in Tennessee was surrounded by glorious artificial lakes and dams. I thought we should make that background part of the film. The house was in the forest with a jetty and a lake nearby and mountains in the background. I described how we could create a feeling of infinity stretching towards the mountains. I suggested the film should not have ended up like something I watched on a small screen in a multiplex with a muddy print off a dupe negative in 1:85 spherical. One of the interesting challenges is that we had some day-for-night scenes in that environment. I used a day-for-night technique that I learned from an Italian director who made his own grad filters. Maybe these days that is not even worth talking about, because you can do that in the computer with a touch of the button. We had a day-for-night dream scene with Nell on the jetty with her twin sister who had died, and scenes in her house against a forest setting at twilight. It was the only way we could do it, because we couldn’t light acres of land and miles of a lake surface at night. It would have looked unreal, whereas day-for-night can look extremely realistic.

ICG: How about L.A. Confidential (directed by Curtis Hanson)?

SPINOTTI: The producer sent me a script and a screenplay. I found the script very fascinating. It is a wonderful story. After I read the script, I was shooting a documentary for some friends in the Italian Alps. It was about the history of skiing. We were shooting with a video camera that I was operating myself. We were running up and down the slopes following the skiers. After I got back home there was a telephone call and someone started speaking with me about L.A. Confidential. I asked him, who are you? Are you the producer? He said, ‘No, Dante, I’m the director.’ It was Curtis Hanson. We spoke for a while and he said, ‘Dante, if you tell me now that you will do the picture, I’m going to go to the studio and say that I want to work with you.’ That was three very short weeks, maybe three and a half at the most, before we started production. I visited locations with Curtis and (production designer) Jeannine Oppewall. We had to decide on a visual language that would guide the choices we made while shooting this picture. Every movie has is a different language. Los Angeles in the 1950s had a fascinating atmosphere. It was a very different city. One day at lunch with Jeannine and Curtis someone said there was a great exhibition of Robert Frank pictures in town that we should take a look at. I knew that Robert Frank was a photographer from who came to the US from Switzerland in the ‘50s. The lighting in his pictures generally came from natural sources. That influenced the way we designed our lighting. Robert Frank had a very intellectual approach to photography in the way he used his camera to express ideas that were totally constructed inside of his mind. There is dry symbolism in his composition. It was a very deep form of storytelling. I said to Curtis, ‘why don’t we photograph this movie as if we had a Leica in our hands?’ The Super 35 format was the closest thing to a still photo. Curtis, of course, is an Angeleno, so he knew what he was looking for and he shared those ideas. Every director has a different way of communicating with his collaborators. Curtis’s way of communicating with his actors, production designer and cinematographer is to plant a seed of an idea and have you think about it. He allows you to stretch your imagination in any direction knowing that he is interested and will listen to your ideas. There was a very close collaboration with Curtis, Jeannine and myself. The production designer is absolutely essential. They give you the elements of the background and their suggestions, and then with the director and your crew you figure out how to get deep into the intimate emotional details of the story.

ICG: Can you give us an example of techniques you used to accent emotions?

SPINOTTI: The techniques you use are only useful as vehicles that deliver the emotions you want to portray to the movie screen. Do you remember the sequences with the police interrogations using two-way mirrors? I remembered Robert Frank’s photographs looking through store windows. Every shadow and other elements of those photographs had a meaning. We used that technique. I also used a technique that I learned from a TV director in Italy in sequences in the interrogation room. It was a little trick for photographing bare bulbs that are the source of light for whoever is in the scene. He told me to buy a tiny paintbrush and China ink…it’s called India ink here. It’s very thick ink and anywhere we’d put it, it would stay. I used the paintbrush and ink to block tiny portions of the filament of the bulb so we avoided flares that would have been distracting. You can see the shape of the bulb and still use it as a source.

ICG: We also wanted to ask about The Insider, another film you did with Michael Mann, which happens to be one of my personal favorite all-time movies.

SPINOTTI: The grammar of part of this story was based on staying with the on the thoughts inside the heads of our characters. A lot of drama plays on the faces of the actors and the very interesting psychological interplay between them. There are times when their spirits are really high and also moments of frustration, and other moments that verge on tragedy. This movie was about photographing faces and there was also a very exacting stylistic approach to the settings right down to selecting the right colors for the walls of hotel rooms. We did an incredible amount of scouting, and it was very exacting. We carried a couple of tiny torchlights, and used them check all our key sources. We would move this torch light, and say, yes, in this sequence, this top light will work nicely on Russell Crowe. We were also looking for camera angles. In one case, we shot over the rim of a glass with the actor’s face only a few inches away. We also decided when to use a handheld camera to convey the state of mind of a character. Michael is not impatient. He gives you the time to light. We have known each other for some time, so I knew that he would want to shoot in five different directions with five different actors without lighting changes, and he would want to move the cameras. We had a very delicate dialogue scene in a restaurant, where the wife of a scientist at a tobacco company finds out that her husband is going to do a television interview about very secret information. She’s scared, because she knows the interview could destroy their lives. Diane Venora played the wife (Liane Wigand). Russell Crowe was her husband (Dr. Jeffrey Wigand). Al Pacino played the part of a 60 Minutes journalist Lowell Bergman. Mike Wallace was played by the great English actor Christopher Plummer. In the background we had a bar in a beautiful restaurant. Michael Mann wanted to play this scene in a very soft and reassuring atmosphere with three cameras. All of them were moving around the set and free to choose the actors he wanted to focus on. There was a sense of instability in the cameras movement, which were mounted on shot bags with long lenses and a contrasting feeling of richness and softness in the environment. We had warm, beautiful, soft, diffused light. All the actors had to look their best. That is the kind of challenge I love. The goal is to have the audience experience the emotions.

ICG: When we were speaking earlier, you mentioned that a number of cinematographers have recently timed movies digitally. Do you have an opinion about how advances in digital intermediate technology will affect the future of cinematography?

SPINOTTI: I think that’s the way movies will be made in the future, but if you think about it, it’s nothing new. When I was a boy I used to go into the darkroom with my still pictures and enlarger and change certain things that were on the negative. Why not do that shot-by-shot on a movie? Sometimes when you are shooting a film you are working in conditions when you have to compromise, because of lighting changes beyond your control, or there are problems with schedules. There are thing you can do during digital timing that can make your images go more in the direction of the original concept of the picture.

ICG: What do you think it’s going to take for cinematographers to retain control of that process rather than having the director or even a producer take over and alter their images?

SPINOTTI: We have always had to deal this issue. Dede Allen was an editor on a movie I shot, and we became good friends. She told me that when she cut Bonnie & Clyde, she ended up timing the movie because there was some political complexities between Warren Beatty, the director, and, of course, the cinematographer was caught right in the middle of it. I said this earlier. Technology is like a form of transpiration that delivers the film to its destination. It doesn’t replace human judgment. There are directors who are very good at understanding the visual aspects of their movies. On The Insider, I was with Michael Mann during the first three passes of the answer print at the lab. I left for Italy, knowing that Michael would keep working on the answer print. You have directors who that have that kind of ability, but that’s more the exception than the rule. I think most directors are going to want their cinematographers, who intimately know the intensions of the images, there during digital timing sessions. I don’t see digital timing as a threat. I plan to use it on my next film.  

You have to master new technologies, but that shouldn’t be what your movies are about. When I was 23 years old, I shot a documentary about how language is connected to power and the history of Italy. We shot a sequence in the trenches during World War It showed how people from the rural south of Italy were coming together with the industrial workers from the north. They couldn’t communicate because they didn’t speak the same language. I shot these scenes with a handheld 16 mm camera and black and white film. After it was processed, we took the negative through an electronic transfer and recorded it back to film to raise the contrast. It was almost all black and white with almost no grays. It looked very close to stock footage from the war. Thirty years later, I saw that same look in scenes in Saving Private Ryan, Steven Spielberg’s film with Janusz Kaminski (ASC). They used a newer technology, but it is the same look and feeling and it still took a cinematographer’s eye.

ICG: Dante, you have such a large and interesting body of work. A few years ago, you shot The Family Man and Wonder Boys, and last year you filmed Red Dragon and Pinocchio, which are all totally different genres. How do decide what films you want to shoot?

SPINOTTI: I consider a combination of factors. How pleasant do I think the experience will be working with the director, producer and cast? How will the film allow me to express myself and my ideas? Ideally, I have to be fascinated by the screenplay. I also like working on films that are challenging to the mind. You also have to consider your family when you make commitments to shoot a film. How long will you be separated from them and how far away will you be? Of course, there are financial considerations. If you are raising a family, you have to think about that, too. All of those things are part of the equation.

ICG: I understand that you designed the film test that ASC shot for the seven studio’s Digital Cinema Initiative committee. This is the test footage that they are going to use to evaluate the performance of digital projectors made by different manufacturers.

SPINOTTI: It was a great team effort, involving Daryn Okada (ASC), Ron Garcia (ASC), and Cutis Clark (ASC) and other cinematographers. I had an idea for designing a wedding scene with the groom dressed in black and the bride in white with different colors in other costumes and backgrounds. They want the film to test the technical qualities of projectors and also how effectively they convey the emotions of the scenes. We wanted to design a test that will allow the studios to compare how digital projectors handle colors and contrast. My basic idea was to repeat the master shots at least six times with more or less exactly the same set-up at different times of day and into different night situations. We planned for one on the yellow and another on the cold blue-green area, as both these—colors yellow and sienna—represent a problem in digital reproduction. The bride and groom and a group of people are coming out of a church and walking to a dinner table in the middle of a village square where there’s a party going on. We designed a test that was shot on the European street on the backlot at Universal Studios. Cameras were panned to shoot in different formats, including 35 mm anamorphic and spherical (1.85:1) and 65 mm. We planned to shoot in full daylight with overhead sunlight. Another shot was planned for sunset, where we would ideally deal with warm, yellow sunlight crossing the scene. A third shot was planned for twilight, where we would light some darker areas. The fourth pass was a candlelight shot with torchlight. We wanted a very yellow, warm background lit with sodium lights. The fifth pass was more traditional with white light and a blue-green background. We planned to use mercury vapor lights, which is a very critical color for digital rendering. The sixth pass was a rainy day where the actors were under an awning. The husband and wife kiss, and we pull back and see drops of rain coming across the screen. We also designed a scene where thousands of pieces of bright, white confetti are pouring down against a blue-sky background to test the compression system in projectors. It was a fascinating project.

ICG: Are you optimistic about the future of this industry? What do you say to young filmmakers at the beginnings of their careers when they ask you that question?

SPINOTTI: I tell them that they have to stick with it and understand that every project is an opportunity to meet new people and learn new things. There were times when I could have become discouraged, but I chose to keep moving forward. I also tell young filmmakers I hope they will make films with human values that will have a place in history.

We understand that the Camelot Theater and Desert Film Association in Palm Springs, California will be showing a retrospective of five of your films on November 1 and 2, followed by conversations with you and some of the other filmmakers. We are going to save our questions about that event for the online chat.