Two Sides to Every Story

Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC illuminates
parallel lives for Melinda and Melinda
By Robert Allen • Photos by Brian Hamill

Imagine Salvador Dali and Norman Rockwell taking turns dabbing paint on a canvas to create a mutual work of art. Try conjuring up a picture of Richard Wagner and Mick Jagger composing music together. How about drawing a mental image of Woody Allen and Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC blending their unique talents to create a motion picture? That one works, because unlike other forms of artistic expression, collaboration is the heart of moviemaking magic.

Melinda and Melinda is the product of Woody Allen’s fertile imagination. He conceived and scripted the story, which begins in a restaurant where a few writers are sitting around a table arguing about whether drama or romantic comedy is a more compelling form of storytelling. The discussion dissolves to alternating scenes from two stories about the same character. Her name is Melinda, and she lives in Manhattan.

Radha Mitchell portrays Melinda in both stories. All the other characters in the two scenarios are different. The ensemble cast includes Will Ferrell, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Stephanie Roth Haberle, Chloe Sevigny, Josh Brolin, Amanda Peet––and that’s just the short list. The film was produced at Manhattan locations, including restaurants, nightclubs, apartments, a race track, and such landmarks as Park Avenue, Greenwich Village and Central Park.

Allen and director of photography Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC brought uniquely different aesthetic perspectives and skills to the task of translating the script into moving images that tell the dual stories. Allen Konigsberg, a.k.a. Woody Allen, was born in Brooklyn. He began his career at the age of 15 writing jokes for Sid Caesar’s Show of Shows, The Colgate Comedy Hour, Candid Camera and other classic TV programs. Allen earned his first feature film credit in 1965 as the writer/director of What’s New Pussycat. He has been nominated for 20 Academy Awards in writing, acting and directing categories, and has won Oscars for scripting and directing Annie Hall and writing Hannah and Her Sisters.

Zsigmond was born and raised in Szeged, Hungary. He worked in a rope factory in Szeged during his late teens, while Allen was writing jokes for TV shows produced in New York. Zsigmond studied cinematography at the state school of film and theater arts in Budapest. He made a perilous exit from Hungary in 1956 in the wake of an uprising against the communist regime that was crushed by Russian troops and tanks.

Zsigmond arrived in the United States as a political refugee with a seemingly impossible dream. He didn’t speak a word of English and had no connections in the Hollywood establishment, which didn’t readily welcome outsiders. Zsigmond won an Oscar in 1977 for Close Encounters of the Third Kind. He earned other nominations for The Deer Hunter and The River and has complied some 70 narrative film credits.

Zsigmond credits Michael Green as being the catalyst for his collaboration with Allen. The camera operator has worked with Zsigmond on commercials and with Allen on films. Green saw the possibilities for a creative synergy. Helen Robin made the call and asked Zsigmond’s agent if he was interested in working with Allen. Robin is a long-time member of Allen’s team. She was co-producer and unit production manager.

“I said I’d like to read the script, but at first Woody said he wasn’t sending it to anyone,” Zsigmond recalls. “Finally, he sent me the script.”

Once that bridge was crossed it was like destiny had brought them together.

“I had never met Woody before,” Zsigmond says. “He has a great sense of words. The dialogue is wonderful, and he was always open to talking about ideas.”

In an early conversation with Allen, Zsigmond noted that a main difference in the two Melindas’ lives is attitude. One character is happy, accepting the problems in her life and excited about the future. The other Melinda is anguished and leery about her future.

“I thought the audience could get confused unless we had different looks for the two stories,” he says. “I suggested locking the camera down in the dramatic scenes with the lens at a slighter lower angle, and letting movement come from the actors. Woody agreed, but he didn’t want strange camera angles or anything superficial that would feel unrealistic. There is more movement and higher angles in the romantic comedy scenes.”

Zsigmond also suggested using brighter and more saturated colors in the romantic comedy sequences. He explains that the nuanced differences in the two visual styles are designed to augment the dialogue, situations and performances without intruding.

There was no discussion about format. Zsigmond says that it was obvious that Academy aperture 1.85:1 aspect ratio was right for the dialogue-driven story.

He had about five weeks in preproduction. Zsigmond scouted locations with production designer Santo Loquasto, a long-time collaborator of Allen’s, while the director was touring Europe showcasing another movie. The main locations were the apartments where the two personas of Melinda lived. They found a loft apartment on the third floor in the Soho district with some sunshine coming through the windows. The other apartment is a first floor townhouse on the upper West Side of Manhattan.

“Helen Robin introduced me to Petr Hlinomaz, a New York gaffer who came from the Czech Republic,” Zsigmond says. “He’s a terrific young guy who has worked with Miroslav Ondricek (ASC). I have preferred using tungsten lights and softening them up a bit, but he convinced me that there were situations where we could use Kino Flos.”

Others on the crew included first assistant David Baron, second assistant Matt Balzarini, camera loader Elizabeth Hedges, Steadicam operators Kyle Rudolph and David Thompson, and key grip Gary Martone. Most of them have worked on other Woody Allen films.

Zsigmond says that the loft was big enough to hide lights everywhere. They repainted the blue walls shades of orange, red and yellow. The townhouse was more difficult to light, because it had a low ceiling and the colors weren’t nearly as bright.

In one of the earliest scenes, Melinda arrives at a party, where she meets a friend of the guy who owns the loft apartment. She tells him that there was a fire in her house, and her husband is leaving her. She says she had no place to go. That scene cuts to an apartment in a townhouse where a party is going on. Melinda is a neighbor who shows up at the door. Those two scenes establish Melinda as the main character in parallel stories, and it also establishes the two settings where she lives.

Zsigmond estimates that they shot about 60 percent of the film at those two locations. Many scenes were day-for-night by the simple expedient of blacking out the windows, and decorating the set with practicals that motivated light.

“The story is basically about sex, love, marriage and divorce,” Zsigmond says. “Woody wanted the women to be beautiful like they were in silent black-and-white films. That was an art form. They knew how to light each face. In those days the actors didn’t move so much when they did those close ups, so they could decide whether to light someone from the right or left side. Today, we create environments for the actors.”

Zsigmond shot a few make-up and costume tests, because Allen wanted to see how the images played when the film was projected on a big screen. He says there was no need for signature lighting for Mitchell or the other actresses. Zsigmond says they are young women who were basically playing themselves and needed to be lit naturally.

“They are parallel stories with different actors who are similar in some ways,” Zsigmond says. “In some ways, it is like movies that Truffaut and other New Wave directors made in Europe years ago. We shot the dramatic scenes first for a couple of weeks, and then changed over to the romantic/comedy at the end of the schedule. That accommodated the schedules of the actors who were only in those parts of the film.”

Zsigmond assembled a modest camera package, including a Panaflex Platinum and Panaflex GII bodies with the older Panavision Super Speed lenses that render images with a softer look than the new Primos. He also made infrequent use of 11:1 and 4:1 Primo zooms for variable focal lengths on a few tracking shots.

“Woody told me that he hates zoom shots, but he was flexible when I said it was the only way to cover some moving shots,” Zsigmond says.

 There were also a few crane shots to establish locations, and just a few Steadicam scenes in Central Park and on streets where it wasn’t practical to lay tracks.

“We were on the same page,” Zsigmond says. “Woody doesn’t dwell much about the technical details of cinematography, because he trusts the cinematographer.”

Zsigmond decided to record the dramatic sequences on Kodak Vision2 5218 color negative, and romantic/comedy scenes with the Kodak Vision Expression 5284 film. Both are rated for an exposure index of 500 in 3200 degree Kelvin light.

He explains that the 5218 emulsion renders somewhat more saturated colors, and the Expression film records a slightly softer look. After a while, Zsigmond decided to shoot everything with the 5218 negative coupled with “a bit” more fill light on dramatic sequences. Occasionally, he treated it as a 1,000-speed film when an extra stop was needed. Zsigmond used very light diffusion on lenses, usually a Soft Effects 1, and occasionally a Soft Effects 2 filter, in combination with soft light on women’s faces.

He used a digital still camera to record different set ups. If a scene called for a warmer, golden look, he manipulated it with Adobe PhotoShop to show the timer at the lab what he had in mind. The stills were also a useful guide for the three days of retakes and pick-up shots at the end. He could see how shots were lit and how they looked.

Melinda and Melinda had a Monday through Friday five-week production schedule with three days tagged on at the end for a few reshoots and pick-up shots.

“Woody didn’t think the opening scene in the restaurant was romantic enough,” Zsigmond says. “We reshot that sequence by adding warm filters for the ceiling lights and wall sconces, and kept the background darker and more romantic.”

 Zsigmond estimates that some 85 to 90 percent of shots are interiors, mostly staged at night. He says that many exterior scenes were filmed at magic hour.

“Woody is a very confident director,” Zsigmond observes. “I like the way he makes his movies. His staging is very simple. He makes one big master shot, which can go on for two or three minutes, and ends with a medium shot with two people or maybe one. Once he gets the master shot, he says print it, and let’s move on. It was like a breath of fresh air. I loved the idea that he does it in one shot and it works.”

Zsigmond says that Allen worked by the camera and with the actors rather than isolating himself in a video village. There was a video tap on the camera, but it was mainly used by the sound crew to make certain there weren’t any booms in the frame.

“I loved having Woody with me by the camera,” Zsigmond says. “He doesn’t think that a little video screen can show him what a shot looks like and how it will work. He wants to see film dailies projected on a big screen. Woody has the same feeling about shooting with a single camera, so he can see what he is getting. I believe that helps the movie because there is only one best angle for lighting.”

 Zsigmond continues, “Woody loves working with the cinematographer and crew, and he doesn’t meddle in lighting. Occasionally, he would tell me he wanted something darker, and what darker meant to him. I made a color chart and gave it to the lab, so they knew what he meant when he wanted something darker or brighter colors than normal.

“He has this very simplified way of making movies. He likes to do things the easiest, simplest way with no gimmicks in photography. Many people on his production team, camera and electrical crews have been working with him for years.”

Zsigmond says that was a big help, because there were no storyboards and few rehearsals. Green and others on the crew, who knew Allen, provided insights for Zsigmond about Allen’s tastes in blocking shots and coverage.

“Woody usually wanted at least two good takes and sometimes as many as 10 to 12,” he says. “He is truly a purist who works with the actors to get the performance he had in his mind on the screen. Body language is a big part of the performances. Some directors think you have to cut, cut, cut like a music video. They don’t hold shots for more than a second. You can make certain kinds of films that way, but not for the character driven life stories that Woody Allen likes making.”

The camera was on a dolly almost all the time, but it wasn’t always tracking, and when it did, it was smooth. Sometimes, Zsigmond put two cameras on the same dolly. One was on a wide angle and the other on a medium shot. Occasionally, he covered scenes from an objective perspective, but Zsigmond says it was usually subjective.

“I could never pin him down the night before we shot a scene,” Zsigmond says. “Woody read his own script in the morning, and he was very improvisational. Maybe he was fresh, because he didn’t have ideas based on what he wrote months before he knew who the actors were. He knew what size he wanted, but didn’t tell me where to put the camera. He might say, let’s get a little closer or tighten up the lens or move the camera a bit. He is a very patient person who understands that good lighting takes time.”

 When they were preparing to shoot the opening scene around the table, where the writers are discussing the virtues of drama and romantic comedy, Zsigmond suggested that it would be visually interesting to establish the setting with a high angle crane shot of the city outside with people walking and casting long shadows on the sidewalk. There was no budget for a big crane, but Zsigmond persisted, and suggested shooting that scene with a smaller crane. Allen told him to get what he needed and shoot it.

“We had that type of trusting relationship,” Zsigmond comments.

At 11 a.m. each day, Allen lined up a big master shot. He explained the situation, and went home to eat lunch. After lunch they typically shot until about 4 to 4:30 p.m., and then Allen would say, let’s go home and come back tomorrow.

“We had a couple of big night scenes, where we had to pin Woody down,” Zsigmond says. “I told him, this is what we are lighting for tomorrow night, and if you don’t think you’ll like it, we have to know, because we can’t move the cranes and lights around and still finish on time. We didn’t have the luxury of finishing the scene the next day. We had to finish everything on time. There were times when he helped us finish the day on time by saying he didn’t need an extra close-up or some other shot.”

They were shooting in the fall, so it was dark by 6 p.m. Zsigmond notes there weren’t any long night exterior scenes requiring shooting past 8 or 9 p.m. He believes that is reflected in the freshness and energy of the actors on the screen. Zsigmond also credits AD Richard Patrick with helping to keep the production on schedule.

“Because of the shorter hours, the actors were always on top of their game,” he says. “I don’t think they ever got tired. At 5 p.m., they’d go home, have dinner and sleep and be ready at six the next morning for make-up.”

Zsigmond also notes that Allen doesn’t have any hang-ups about cinematographers talking with the actors. That freed him to tell the actors where their key light was, and that they would look better if they turned towards it. The actors appreciated it.

Front-end lab work was done by Joe Violante at Technicolor in New York. Allen insisted on film dailies. He has an office and screening room a few blocks from where he lives. They screened dailies after they finished shooting every day.

“Usually, it was Woody, the editor (Alisa Lepselter), Petr (Hlinomaz) and myself,” Zsigmond says. “I wanted my gaffer to see how the lighting, contrast and colors were working in different scenes. It gave all of us an opportunity to talk about ideas for making it better. I don’t think the audience will notice differences in the looks of comedic and dramatic scenes. They will definitely be able to see some differences, but it isn’t obvious. The story telling is more important than the style of the cinematography.”

Melinda and Melinda is a Gravier Production that was produced and distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures.