Governor Earl Long's cronies were clustered around a long table counting money. The camera glided by giving the audience a close look at the bills. It tilted up and came in tight for a fleeting glance at a single face. Without pausing, the shot moved beyond the table just in time to catch the governor walking into the room.

It was just a brief transitional sequence without dialogue. But it gave the audience an insight into what was happening, and set the stage for the following scene. In a lot of ways that ability to alter visual perspective is the most basic difference between stage plays and movies.

Haskell Wexler, ASC, who photographed Blaze, used his own "Hothead" to shoot the sequence. A Hothead is a dolly with a long arm. The camera at the end of the arm can be tilted and panned by remote control.

This device gave Wexler the freedom to send the camera places it couldn't go with an operator behind it. It allowed him to reveal information to the audience from an interesting visual perspective -- it was voyeuristic, almost like spying. 

Blaze is a reality-based story written and directed by Ron Shelton for A & M Films and Touchstone. The story is set in Louisiana during the early 1950s. It was the beginning of a tumultuous period. World War II was a memory growing dimmer. The civil rights movement was germinating, but it was a seedling without deep roots.

Huey Long's younger brother Earl was a two-time governor. He was a maverick; a fading populist in the twilight of his career. The law didn't allow him to succeed himself. But, Long had a scheme for retaining power. He was going to eliminate poll taxes and make it possible for tens of thousands of black people to vote for him.

His plan might have succeeded, but Long, portrayed by Paul Newman, had frailties of both body and soul. He had a drinking problem, and there were questions about both his physical and mental stability. His main point of vulnerability, however, was an open love affair with Blaze Starr, a vivacious young stripper who played the club circuit in Louisiana. That role is portrayed by Canadian actress Lolita Davidovich.

There were a couple of days shooting in Tennessee and Los Angeles. But primarily, Blaze was filmed in Baton Rouge, New Orleans and Winnfield, La., where it all happened. There were no formal studio shots, though various locations had built-in sets. There were many interiors in homes, in political offices and in nightclubs.

Before production started, Wexler listened to tapes of Long talking on radio, studied TV news clips and newsreel footage, and poured through period newspapers and books searching for pictures and insights into the man and the times.

"He was a colorful character," Wexler noted. "Long didn't like to be on TV news. He always held his hands in front of his face. Newman adopted a lot of his mannerisms, including that one."

The period was established in large part by the costumes, created by Ruth Myers, and the art direction, by Armin Ganz. The art department changed the fronts of buildings, put up period billboards, and in one town they even changed the sidewalks because they were made of a material that wasn't available during the 1950s.

The frame for telling this story was the 1:85 aspect ratio. There was some thought given to shooting in super 1:85, but Wexler said there wasn't a compelling reason to use a wider format.                 

The original plan was to design a super-realistic look for the movie. But Wexler could see that Shelton and the cast were taking the story beyond reality.

"Paul (Newman) was playing Long as a larger-than-life character," he continued. "The director wasn't really comfortable with a docu-drama style of photography, so we altered the preconceived look to something resembling an old Preston Sturgis movie (i.e., The Power and the Glory, The Great McGinty, Sullivan's Travels, etc.)." 

The shaping of the look was more of an evolution than a design. "People talk about preconceiving a look," Wexler said. "That imposes unnecessary limits. It's like a poet who sets parameters where everything has to be 14 lines ending in a couplet."

The photography enhanced the story in a lot of subtle ways that were transparent to the audience.

"As the story evolved, Blaze's career improved," Wexler said. "This is reflected in the photography. We did a lot of shooting in nightclubs with colored lights. The strippers had brightly colored costumes. I didn't use the brightest colors early in Blaze's career. But, as she got work in better clubs, I saturated colors more by using gels on lights."

Photography was also defined by how the cast members interpreted their roles and by Shelton's direction. 

"Ron (Shelton) wanted the audience to see Paul's blue eyes. Instead of an eye light, I used a very small unit right over the lens with cloth diffusion. Usually, this kind of light is used with photo enlargers. It is softer and lasts longer than a photo floodlight. Instead of looking round, it looks square like a window when it is reflected in someone's eyes."

Wexler believes the most innovative thing he did on Blaze was to liberate the camera to move freely. There are around 70 Steadicam shots, all done by operator Steve St. John.

For Steadicam work, Wexler used a custom lightweight Panaglide camera (about 15 pounds) which has a built-in video assist capability instead of an optical viewfinder. The camera was originally built for use with the Skycam. Weight was reduced by hollowing out some parts, and by replacing metal parts with aluminum and aluminum parts with magnesium. The custom Panaglide camera is typically used with prime lenses or with a short 20 mm to 60 mm zoom lens.

This lightened the load for St. John, and that can make a big difference on a picture where there is a lot of Steadicam use.

Wexler also put the lightweight camera and Steadicam on a dolly. In this setup, the Steadicam acted like a shock absorber. For instance, there's a two-minute scene shot on a city street with Newman and Davidovich walking and talking. The street was filled with bumps and holes. It wasn't possible to lay tracks or boards because they would have been in the frame at the end of the shot.

"Putting the Steadicam on a dolly gave us the freedom to shot one long, moving shot with coverage from every angle we wanted," Wexler said. "A normal dolly shot without tracks would have been bumpy and noisy, and it would have been an entirely different look if we shot this with a Steadicam on Steve's body."

Wexler also used the Steadicam/dolly combination to shoot a key scene in the chambers of the state legislature. Production was done during a long weekend, which was the only time the chambers were available.

There were many actors and extras moving around in the scene, and the camera was also in constant motion to create a sense of visual excitement. In one sequence, Newman walked down a long hallway into the chamber. At that point, there was a 360 degree pan which quickly established the setting, and allowed the audience to see it through Long's eyes.

Wexler used the combination camera/Steadicam/dolly to create a visual point of view that put the audience in the middle of the scene. Sometimes, St. John started a shot on the dolly and moved the Steadicam to his body to take advantage of unrehearsed opportunities.

For example, in one situation an actor turned his face away from the camera. Wexler had St. John take the Steadicam off of the dolly and move around the actor.

Much of the time, Wexler worked from a wheelchair, having torn a ligament in his ankle early in production. He had a video tap rigged to transmit images from the camera viewfinder to a hand-held Sony Walkman with a liquid crystal display. Wexler was in two-way radio contact with the operator so he could give him directions regarding framing and motion. Usually, Wexler handled the zoom lens and T-stop, while a camera assistant pulled focus by remote control.

Because of the mobility of the camera and the wide area of coverage, there was no place to hide lights on the floor of the legislative chambers. Wexler used sunlight coming through big windows as his keylight. That gave him a natural look with backlight in most directions. He augmented the sunlight with a single 12 K unit placed high in one corner of the chamber. Wexler also used a little smoke for atmosphere and overall diffusion. 

He recorded this scene on Eastman color negative daylight film 5297. The film is rated for an exposure index of 250 in daylight. Since he didn't need an 85 B color correction filter on the camera lens, the light level was sufficient for Wexler to pull a deep stop at T-4. That gave him good front to back sharpness in the big room.

Even though it took two full days to shoot, the intensity, direction and quality of light had to match since the footage was cut into one composite scene. Wexler used translucent shades on the windows to keep the level and quality of light consistent.

"We used a spot meter to measure the light coming through each window, and if it was too bright, we closed the curtains until we got to the right level," he said.

Most of Blaze was shot on Eastman EXR color negative film 5296; about 300,000 feet in all. It was one of the first major uses of the new film. Wexler tested it at exposure indices of 500 and 1000. He decided to use it as a 500-speed film, as recommended by Kodak, in part because of the suggestion of the color timer he was working with at DuArt Labs in New York. That allowed the lab to work at a printing light in the low 40s.

Wexler shot most of Blaze with an Arriflex 35 BL 4 camera, mainly with a new Angenieux 17 mm to 102 mm zoom, which he primarily used as a variable focal length lens. Footage shot with this lens intercut seamlessly with film exposed through super-speed lenses.

Occasionally, Wexler used the zoom lens for combination pan/dolly/zoom shots. But, in those instances, use of the zoom was so subtle it was never apparent to the audience.

"It's a terrific lens," he said. "I even used it for interiors which I wouldn't have done without a true 500-speed film. Sometimes I underexposed by a stop. I felt the 5296 film had sufficient underexposure latitude to handle that."

Wexler noted that the speed of the film also helped in staging. "If you are shooting a two-shot at stop T-1.4, the director has to be really careful about placement in order to keep both people in focus. There is much more freedom of movement at T-3," he explained.

Wexler used the 5296 film for interiors, night scenes, and when he needed depth of field for exteriors shot during the transition from twilight to darkness. In one situation, Wexler filmed Newman and Davidovich arriving at the governor's country home just before darkness replaced the fading sunlight. The sky was a velvet soft deep blue. Wexler was pulling a deep focus at stop T-3, even in the fading light. That was crucial.

"I wanted to keep them in sharp focus in the foreground after they got out of the car, and at the same time I didn't want the house in the background to go soft," he explained.

As Newman and Davidovich were walking to the house, the transitional light was blending into blackness. But even in those conditions, Wexler was able to record both the darkening tones of the sky and the rough texture of the exterior walls of the house without the image going soft.

Wexler used the EXR 5245 film as a finer grain version of 5297. "It's terrific if you don't want a highly saturated look," he said. "The EXR film eats into the shadows, and knocks the contrast level down."

There were a number of daylight exteriors staged in small towns where campaign rallies were held. There were hundreds of extras, local high school bands playing, and actors portraying politicians making speeches. Ideally, you do that type of cinematography early or late in the day when the sun is lower in the sky.

But, because of the organizing it took to stage these sequences, they were shot usually between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m., with the sun directly overhead. For authenticity, many of the men wore fedora and other wide-brimmed hats. That, combined with the harsh overhead light, resulted in faces being obscured by harsh shadows.

Wexler did two things. He used big reflectors to bounce softer light from ground level that got under the wide brims of hats and into faces and eyes. Also, he shot these scenes with the EXR 5245 film, which dug details out of the shadows, and gave him a rich, rounded look.

"The 5245 film was most useful in bright, harsh sunlight where I would have needed low contrast, fog filters and fill light to knock the contrast down with the 5247 film," he said.

In one crucial exterior scene, Long was stricken by a heart attack and carried to the front of a produce market by some of his cronies. It took a large part of the day to shoot the sequence that occurred in front of the market.

"We anticipated how long it would take to shoot the scene. During that time, the quality of light would change from hard toplight, to crosslight to sidelight unless we got cloud cover," Wexler said.

Having anticipated the problem, Wexler had an easy solution. He rigged a sheet over the top of the exterior of the market. That provided a softer, more even light to shoot in throughout the day.

 The biggest nightclub interior was a set built in a warehouse. Gary Holt, a gaffer who has frequently worked with Wexler, helped to design and build a kind of cocoon light which was used on this and various other sets.

The cocoon light was wrapped in a lightweight silk and contained four 1000 watt bulbs, all on dimmer controls. The light spread evenly in all directions.

"One of the problems with lighting this kind of a set is that sometimes a wall gets too hot," Wexler said. "We controlled that with the dimmers. And, we didn't worry too much about color temperatures. In mixed lighting situations, I used the Eastman 5297 film which does a very good job of handling mixed sources of light."

Wexler also made considerable use of Chinese lanterns. These are round, paper lanterns wrapped around a single bulb. "This kind of light has great wrap-around potential," he explained. "If you can wrap light around a subject or object, you don't need to fill."

The cameraman used umbrellas to create soft light, and he made ample use of Cronencones, named after Jordan Cronenweth, ASC, who invented them. A Cronencone is shaped like a trapezoid. It fits over a lamp and provides an easy way to slide colored gels or diffusion paper in front of the light. This produces a projected soft light with variable colors, which was particularly useful for Blaze's nightclub scenes.

"Soft light doesn't penetrate, so one of the things I did was use a Cronencone on a 10 K light," he said. "We pulled the light as far back as possible. That gave us a nice uniform soft light."

There were a few club scenes where Wexler used a bank of fluorescents with various color temperatures to create a wall of light.

"I used various combinations of filters depending on lighting and the look we wanted," Wexler said. "For example, I used double quarter fogs in conjunction with a Mitchell B filter when we were shooting close-ups. I used nets in many scenes where I wanted highlights to sparkle, like they were shot through a starlight filter."

However, he used very little or no filtration with the EXR 5245 film. 

"If you are shooting a film in bright daylight, and you want the look to have an aura of reality, the 5245 film combined with a crisp, sharp lens, will yield brilliant, truer-than-life images without filtration," he said.

The closing scene started with a medium shot of a woman coming out of the front door of the state capital building. The camera gradually pulled back until she was a small figure walking down a long set of steps.

The camera kept moving away, looking back at the structure. There was a flag fluttering in the breeze at the top of the building. The camera moved smoothly down to river level, under a bridge, where the flowing water filled the screen as background for credits.

Wexler shot this scene with a gyrosphere provided by Howard Preston. The camera was suspended from a helicopter in a sphere with a gyroscope used to steady the images. Changes in stop and frame speed were computer controlled and were so smooth they were transparent.         

The day before the scene was filmed, Wexler went up in the helicopter and planned the shot. There was no room for him to be onboard during production, but he was able to monitor the shot via video assist.

In addition to the carefully choreographed camera movement and composition, subtle adjustments were made in frame rate. At the start of the scene, the camera was operating at 48 fps, which extended reality. As the camera pulled away, Wexler slowed the frame rate down to a normal 24 per second. Then as the helicopter moved over the river, the frame rate was gradually reduced to eight per second.     

A shot like that is the result of instinct combined with visual memory.

"I've been shooting variable frame rates since I had my first camera, a Bolex. It had a wheel which allowed me to adjust the frame rate between eight and 24 per second," Wexler said. "I've used this technique a lot in commercial work, so it was easily visualized what this shot would look like."

Then, it was a matter of sharing that vision with Shelton. A gyrosphere wasn't in the original budget, but after Shelton bought the idea, a decision was made to combine this sequence with the closing titles -- which were budgeted.

There's something inevitable and final about these closing images that puts everything into eloquent perspective: Life goes on, and we all leave our marks, if only temporarily. The audience will leave the theatre with the impression that Earl Long left a bigger and longer lasting mark than most people.