Forever Young
James Carter captures a strange and magical romance in Tuck Everlasting

By Pauline Rogers • Photos By Ron Phillips

It's a Disney live-action fairytale about life, death and the cycle of nature. Tuck Everlasting (from the book by Natalie Babbitt) follows the story of Winnie Foster (Alexis Bledel), a teenage girl longing for a life away from the control of her domineering mother (Amy Irving). When lost in the woods near her home, she meets Jesse Tuck (Jonathan Jackson), a most unusual young man. Jesse's kind family (William Hurt, Sissy Spacek, Scott Bairstow) take her into the fold and Winnie learns that the Tucks harbor a powerful secret that the mysterious Man in the Yellow Suit (Ben Kingsley) wants to exploit. Soon Winnie must decide whether to return to her life or stay with her love, Jesse, and his family forever.

The film was shot in and around Baltimore, Maryland (with three days in a little town called Berlin) on a tight 38-day schedule in anamorphic for about an 18 million dollar budget," says cinematographer James L. Carter (The Shape of Things, Zig Zag, My Dog Skip, One False Move, Family Law's first season, ASC nominated Michael Hayes, Emmy award winning Torn Between Two Fathers) proudly.

"Director Jay Russell (Carter's cohort on My Dog Skip) has a real sense of place and time. The anamorphic format allowed us to keep the environment a part of the story built around these strong characters, even in close ups. We could always get a sense of where these people are at all times."

To make sure this format was what fit the story, Carter and Russell watched films like Manhattan and The Patriot. They also looked at painters like John Singer Sargent and John Singleton Copley and the formal portraiture of the artists became the basis for the Foster family.

To bring this slightly updated story (Winnie is now 15 instead of 10) to the screen, Carter chose Panavision G2 cameras and both Primo "E" and "C" series lenses because of the Steadicam and B-camera. His stock of choice was Kodak's 5279 and 5246.

"We did very few tests on this picture," says Carter. "Jay and I knew what we wanted and how to achieve it. My only concern was finding the right stock to shoot the exteriors in the woods that are an important part of the picture. We needed a fast day stock that could work in the darkness of the Maryland woods. Unlike areas in other parts of the country, where the sun creeps into the thickness, these woods are so dense that not much light reaches the ground. The 5246 held up just fine."

Carter also tested the skip bleach process in negative development and printing for a significant story point that goes back to the early 1800s, when the Tuck family discovers the spring.

One of Carter's other challenges in this picture was capturing the period with as much natural light as possible. Most of this fable takes place in 1914, which was pre-electric lighting. "What modern conveniences that Winnie's family 'might' have didn't extend to the Tuck family's world," Carter explains. "They are stuck way back in the woods and in the time where they discovered the spring's value."

Carter and production designer Tony Burrough worked hard at making the two worlds very different. "The Foster house with mother, father and grandmother was basically neutral to blue," Carter explains. "Tony put green in the walls and furniture keeping everything in the cooler tones. When there is something like warm sunlight, we made it the only warm thing in the image. And, out the window the world was cooler--slightly blue.

"Photographically, we didn't move the camera in these sequences. We planned the shots carefully, staging them in front of a static camera, something we loved in Manhattan."

Director Jay Russell made use of clocks as another tool for distinguishing the difference between the two worlds. In the Foster home, clocks were often in the shots. Here, they were heard ticking and chiming and making themselves almost another character.

However, in the Tuck cabin, the clocks have stopped because nobody has wound them. When they were seen in the shot they were stopped at the various moments when they "wound down" in the old world. "This was also a warmer world," Carter explains. "We wanted a psychological feeling of warmth here, too.

"There might have been gaslight and electricity in the Foster homes and those surrounding them, but here, deep in the secret woods, it is a world of wood fires and oil lamps. It is truly a world where time had lost all meaning."

Ask James Carter about his camera and lighting approach to this picture and he will insist that it was extremely simple--most of the time. What lights were used were there to supplement the "natural" lights or give a little kick to the daylight.

Early on in the movie, there is the one and only planned effects sequence. "We called it the 'firefly scene,'" he explains. "In this scene, Winnie is trying to catch fireflies in her front yard, when the mysterious Man in the Yellow Suit appears and he tells Winnie he is searching for lost relatives.

"Almost every word and action in this scene has multiple meanings," Carter explains. "It is very ominous. The two characters are separated only by the iron gate, with it's pointed tips.

"The Man in the Yellow Suit grabs a firefly out of the air as he talks to Winnie about predators and prey.

"We used fiber optics, hidden down his sleeve, to put the firefly glow inside his hand. We added some 1/4 plus green to give the glow that firefly color.

"And, then, he releases the firefly. Pixel Envy did all the digital fireflies, including the one Ben catches and releases.

"Mrs. Foster then appears, and chides her daughter for talking to strangers. You get the feeling that something bad has been averted."

Later on in the story, there is a point where Miles sits Winnie down and tells her the family secret--the secret that this mysterious man is after. "The events he describes happened in the early 1800s," Carter explains. "After drinking the water, Jesse falls from a tree and before Mae Tuck (Sissy Spacek) can work up a good cry, he is completely healed. Other unexplained things happen to those who have sampled the miraculous spring. This sets the town against the Tucks and they eventually burn their cabin, thinking the family is in league with the devil.

"This is where we used the skip bleach process," he explains.

"We wanted to make this a significant moment where the two young lovers share the truth. By using the skip process off the negative, where the silver is still on that negative, we could make the images look a little more contrasted and the colors more pastel.

"We wanted to skip bleach in both the negative and the positive print because it enhanced the desaturated and contrasted look. The whites were whiter and the blacks were blacker.

"Because we needed a negative for the answer print, we had Cinesite digitally scan the skip bleached negative and then we matched that to our dailies. Cinesite then produced a negative that was cut into the original negative for printing."

"And, since we were shooting these little pieces handheld and without sound, we were able to turn the camera on and off indiscriminately. This allowed us to move through the story by jumping ahead--moving through these 'white' moments, finding that when we saw the images, we were five feet along in the story.

"We had thought about doing different approaches to these period images," he explains. "We thought about skip bleach again. But we knew that we couldn't skip bleach the print so we thought about digitizing the footage to make it look like skip bleach and then make the negative and cut it into the original at Cinesite. Then we realized we could do it on film.

"We also thought about another process, where we would shoot Ektachrome and then process it like a negative, but that was too harsh for us.

"We even tried other ideas like color, filtration--using double fog, making it blue or orange, but could never get the right amount. It was dreamy, but too harsh.

"Turning the camera on and off and giving it that pixilated look worked just right."

Carter and crew did not use any special equipment on this picture. "It just wasn't in the budget," he says, truthfully. "However, we did have to become very creative on what looks like a simple shot on screen.

"At one point in the story, Jesse wants to show Winnie his 'Eiffel Tower.' The viewpoint was on a little precipice about 60 feet long and four feet wide--and literally 1000 feet up in the air.

"To get our crane (a 30 footer with a G2 and powerpod carrying a 40mm Primo lens) out for the shot was a major event," he smiles. "The grips had to build a platform that looked like a nice deck to have iced tea on," he laughs. "There was some major engineering done by the crew to have this eight foot wide and 30 foot long deck for our M88 crane.

"The day before we were to shoot, we went out and everything looked beautiful. We covered the crane up and put the equipment to bed.

"Of course, Murphy's Law kicked in and there was an electrical storm that night. When we got to the controller cart for the Powerpod it was dead because the storm had fried the inside. Here we were, on top of a mountain, on a tight schedule and we can't get the equipment working! Wish I could say we had a cover set, but this was a small film. We didn't count on natural disasters."

Carter and crew found another interesting challenge when shooting the Tuck cabin sequences. The wonderful cabin and boat dock was created on the edge of a reservoir in an extremely inaccessible place. "But we needed to show the cabin, the little creek beyond it and the water as it ran down the gully," he explains.

"When the set was finished, we had a wonderful cabin, beautiful land and a dock into the water.

"Soon after everything was finished, it began to rain in Maryland," he says, slowly. "We thought we were safe--all we had to do is cover everything up and protect it from the mud. What we didn't count on was that we were on the edge of a reservoir. When it rains, the water level goes up dramatically. Our nice strip of land turned into a three-foot strip!

"We couldn't get anything in to shoot the scene!

"And, because we were on the edge of the reservoir that feeds water to the towns surrounding it, we couldn't bring things in by water. To keep the drinking water pure, the area is patrolled heavily. Nothing can 'sail' on the water that hasn't been cleaned and inspected.

"So, after they opened the locks to let the water out, we were allowed to bring in three 18K HMIs on pontoon boats that had been cleaned--and that was it. That was our lighting.

"That and the 4.8K HMI balloon that we used when the woods were too dark and there wasn't enough fill."

Another "equipment heavy" (for this picture) sequence is the ending of the film. "Well, we did have a crane on that one, too," Carter laughs. "That was about all of our big guns.

"The challenge was to capture the opening of the sequence, which was set in 1914, and transition to 2002 without a motion control shot," he explains.

The location was a small town main street in Berlin, Maryland (the same street used in Runaway Bride). "It was perfect," Carter says enthusiastically. "We took a picture of the town taken in 1912 that we found in the hotel we were staying in outside with us and looked down the main street. Few things had changed.

"For the 1914 period our production designer swapped the streetlights and stop lights for period pieces. We broadened the sidewalks and dirted down the main street for several blocks.

"In this sequence, it is a time when the Foster family is going on vacation," he explains. "As they go away, there are horses, wagons and 1914 cars on the street.

"We have a G2 powerpod on an M88 crane at the South end of town looking North.

"The crane pulls up and away from us as Winnie and her family look out the back window of the car. When the crane gets to the top and then starts to go down, the transition begins. A horse drawn wagon circa 1914 comes from the left to center frame, which the audience's eyes will follow.

"At this point, a car, circa 2002, enters the bottom right end of the frame--the transition period is in progress.

"Bit by bit, each point of the frame transitions into 2002, until the crane stops on the face shield of a motorcyclist (Jesse).

To do this without motion control, Carter and team "marked the hell out of the town with spikes in the street for the base of the crane. My first AC, Steve Hurson, and key grip, Rodney French, measured everything--height, distance, bucket from sidewalk, angle of arm, etc.--and of course, we recorded the shot with video playback.

"It was 'high pressure,' but a heck of a lot of fun!"

James Carter finds that doing a sequence like this in-camera with what is available is simple, creative and what making movies is really all about. He subscribes to the less-is-more theory in his mechanical and his lighting approaches. "Some of the sweetest sequences in this film have no sound, but tell the simple story in just a few moments of images," he says.

"There is a scene in one of the Foster bedrooms. We are looking in through the door and see two-thirds of the bed with the grandmother in it and the doctor leaning over. The mother comes in as Winnie watches through the door. She lies down next to her. There is no dialogue and no sound, but it says everything.

"To light this, we put a China Ball over them off to the side for mood. We added a couple of softened Tweenies for the background with 1/2 CTS. And, a window in the hallway for backlight, using a Junior with 1/2 CTB and light grid diffusion.

"Same simplicity for shots when the Foster family is having dinner," he continues. "There is a particular sequence that is a wide shot where we see the family having dinner in silence. Everything is cool except a warm light behind on the wall. We had a 4 by 6-foot softbox overhead with 212 bulbs and 1/2 CTB in it.

"The image says everything about what life is like in the Foster family--silent."

Then there is the opposite side of life in this story, which is the Tuck family. Completely chaotic, whether it is in their house where the clocks don't run or out in the world. Miles Tuck is having trouble being immortal. He is always testing himself and the world that changes when he does not. At one point, he goes into a bar and plays cards. He is accused of cheating and owns up to it. He wants to be in trouble.

"The sequence is a series of shots," says Carter. "The exteriors were shot in Berlin and the interiors in Baltimore. Now, since this is 1914, what we have is gaslights and oil lights. We put a few in the frame, like a gaslight chandelier, but not much.

"For the outside, we have a subtle moonlight with gaslight accents.

"For the interiors, we supplemented the gas lights with top light from Pancake lights (Tungsten Chimeras) and Babies, Juniors or Seniors through muslin and light grid where needed. For the exteriors we used big sources close by through 12 bys. In this case, we have 36-lights through half-blue and light grid for the base.

"For both inside and outside we used a Lee 102 gel because it is more yellow than gold and seemed to fit the gambling atmosphere," he adds. "And, when necessary on many of the shots, we used CTS instead of CTO as well as 147 Apricot for any of our sunset shots."

James Carter feels the most memorable shot is an extremely simple sequence between Winnie and Angus (William Hurt). "It is out on a rowboat where he gives her a speech about immortality," Carter recalls. "I really love the way it looks.

"We did it very simply, with a medium and close up as well as a wide shot to show the boat and the lake and the green trees. It was lit basically with bounce only.

"We had their boat out on the water and shot them from a pontoon boat that was hooked on to the hero boat. We had a six foot jib arm, so we could get it over the shoulders of the actors for nice close ups."

For Carter, the biggest and most challenging shot in the film is also the shortest. "It is a train yard at night with period steam trains," he says quickly. "We shot it on an 180mm lens, anamorphic, at night--with steam everywhere.

"Of course, it was the first shot of the schedule and the only people I knew on the crew were my operator (Marty Layton) and first (Steve Hurson). Newt TerMeer, the gaffer, and Eric Lopez, the best boy didn't know the grip crew or most of the electricians, either.

"Since I used to be a gaffer, I tend to relate to the grip and electric crew as much as my camera crew," he adds.

"All I could think of was 'Help!' and whom I would turn to if I had to ask for something at night in the dark when I couldn't see anyone!"

James Carter struggled through. He set up at the old B&O Museum in Baltimore, putting the historical steam train way at the end of the shot. "We wanted it to come toward us on the left hand side of an old building where trains were repaired," he explains.

"We had to set up train cars from the period on the side tracks to block things like modern apartment buildings," he adds. "We also used packages and people (like porters in period costume) to block what we didn't want to see and take the eye to the period.

"What we did want to see was some of the period buildings, or at least the hint of them," he adds. "We wanted to add a golden light to the shot and this was the perfect place to show the warmth of the moment by having that light seem like it was emanating from these building windows.
"Because the train was about a quarter-mile away, we had to light about 1000 feet for a 180mm lens shot of two figures running and hopping onto the train," he continues.

"To do this, we had four Condors with 36-lights, four 12-light Maxi Brutes and four 18Ks. From the ground, we have four 10Ks, ten Seniors, 30 Juniors and assorted little lights.

"Okay, so not all of our shots were done with minimal lighting," he laughs. "For this shot, our main light came from the Condors. The rest of the lights hit the tracks and what was happening around us.

"It was a little scary," he says. "It was a big shot on the first day of shooting with a crew that I didn't really know and we had to see a black train in the black night with two very significant people to our story.

"Yes, we did sweat it a little bit, but we learned quickly just how good our crew was," Carter says gratefully.

"At one point on this first sequence, we had to turn around in the middle of the night to shoot our boys (Miles and Jesse) on top of the train, going away from us.

"All the Condors had to be moved, while the grips rigged the jib arm on top of the last train car for close ups of Miles and Jesse, sighing with relief as they leave the Man in the Yellow suit behind.

"It all got done," Carter smiles. "The shots turned out great. And my pulse went back to normal.

"Well, almost," he laughs. "That probably won't really happen until the movie opens and we get the reaction of our audience. I hope they are as pleased with Tuck Everlasting, as the studio was when they saw these first shots!"