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Razor
Burn By Kevin H. Martin • Photos by Melinda Sue Gordon “You’re not very bright, are you? I like that in a man.” So says scheming seductress Matty Walker (Kathleen Turner) to tomcatting lawyer Ned Racine (William Hurt), in writer-director Lawrence Kasdan’s homage to film noir, Body Heat (a 1981 feature photographed by Richard Kline, ASC). That film, like most noir efforts, focuses on a man who gets in over his head as a result of greed and blind lust. But in the case of the Coen Brothers’ The Man Who Wasn’t There, set half-a-century ago in Santa Rosa, California, barber Ed Crane (Billy Bob Thorton) is a man whose downfall does not arise from out-of-control passions. After discovering his wife Doris (Frances McDormand) is embroiled in an affair with her employer, department store magnate Big Dave Nirdlinger (James Gandolfini), Ed remains calm and cool. He plans to extort money from Nirdlinger, after which he will be able to invest in a ‘get-rich’ scheme masterminded by Creighton Tolliver (Jon Polito). Like Racine, Ed demonstrates substandard judgement with regards to the character of those around him, but even so, this does not contribute to his undoing. Instead, it is plain dumb circumstance, coupled with fallout from well-intended actions, which leads the barber, along with many others in his orbit, to doom.
“Right from the very first, the guys wrote this as a black-and-white picture,” Deakins states, “so there was no doubt or question that this was how it was going to be shown in theaters.” The decision to go black-and-white would suggest a limited number of film stocks from which to choose, but another factor soon arose to complicate matters. “The producers told us that their delivery contract specified they supply a source that could be used to output a videocassette release in color for some overseas markets,” reveals Deakins. The cinematographer had already begun an investigation into various approaches, examining modern color films as well as older black-and-white originating stocks, but the question of how best to achieve the final black-and-white look would remain unanswered for a time. His solution involved shooting color and outputting in black-and-white. This would allow the producers to distribute a color version, while also permitting the cinematographer to avail himself of technological advances recently made to color stocks. As a result, Deakins elected to shoot the film entirely on Kodak Vision 320T. “I find the 5277 to be quite fine-grained, and I wanted a bit of extra speed to avoid having to shoot interiors on a really slow stock. [Then] we had to go from Kodak color neg to a black-and-white release stock. After some searching, we came across something that typically is used for titles [Kodak 5369, a high contrast panchromatic film employed by cinematographer Amy Vincent in the camera for specific ‘memory’ sequences in The Caveman’s Valentine.] The folks at DeLuxe found that by manipulating the gamma on that title stock, the contrast could be altered a bit, and so we ended up with a really nice look, very sharp and grain free.” Deakins notes that releasing on black-and-white stock in this day and age is an undertaking not without drawbacks. “On Schindler’s List [photographed by Janusz Kaminski, ASC], there was a problem with the amount of silver contained in a black-and-white print,” he reports. “This caused too much heat buildup in some projectors, which as a result were more liable to experience damage while running hotter. To get around this, they wound up having to wax the prints. At this point, there’s still a financial issue for us about how many prints will go out on the print stock. We may produce a fine-grain intermediary, [from which we can] go to color release print stock, though the majority of the release will utilize [5369]. Deakins collaborated with another longtime Coen Brothers associate, production designer Dennis Gassner. They needed to ensure that the film would read properly even in its color incarnation. “We had to think about tonalities right away,” he relates. “In terms of a period black-and-white picture, you might not worry about the impact of shocking colors like bright yellows, but we did have to protect against that for that certain video release. It was a shame, because that added to expense and made the job of the art department much much tougher.”
Other practical locations included the Hollywood steakhouse Musso and Franks, plus a jail in Lincoln Heights and a Wilshire hotel lobby. These locales all had to intercut seamlessly with Gassner-built hotel rooms and corridors, plus a jail hallway set. “There were a lot of cheats involved,” says Deakins. “We’d redress and reuse the same stage hallways for different parts of the motel. A lot of it had to do with matching the quality and direction of the light. We could have someone run out of a stage set, continue that action with a cut to them going across a location exterior, then cut again to the Paramount backlot to show them enter the barber shop. It was a real jigsaw puzzle of lighting and locations. The key to it all was sustaining the feel of that time of day, which meant consistent lighting as well as continuity in the actor’s movement.” Close Shaves The film opens at the barbershop, which required extensive supplemental lighting to convey specific qualities of daylight. “That’s one reason why we chose the Paramount backlot to shoot it, for control,” Deakins states. “We needed a raking light that came down through blinds from above and outside, and sunlight alone wouldn’t have done it for us in a sufficiently-controllable way.” Deakins, Gassner, and The Coens discussed the configuration of the barbershop extensively. “The Brothers wanted a long thin traditional-looking place with a window at one end. But since we’d be shooting towards the window all the time, I thought that was going to be rather restrictive in terms of lighting. I asked if we could put the door in at an angle, over in a corner. Angling the door in this way gave me an extra direction to bring light through, extending across from this restrictively narrow main window, and that put the illumination on more of a diagonal, which gave me a much better opportunity to light with a sense of dimension.” A large truss was arrayed above the window, with chain motors permitting it to be raised or lowered to change the angle of lighting units, all of which were HMI sources. “The lights were out of shot above the window, bouncing into a large reflector that was sort of goalposted on top of the window, where the camera couldn’t see,” Deakins explains. “For the raking sunlight effect, we had an 18K on a condor, bringing this hard light from above frame through blinds.” The Coens’ usual storyboarding process was useful here in planning the order in which barber shop shots were done. “We needed them in order to see when we’d be shooting towards these windows and when we’d be shooting inward, away from them. Visually, it was better to wait for the sun to reach a point that put the buildings on the far side of the street into shade. That made it easier for us to balance the light inside and out.” Throughout filming, Deakins employed an Arri 535-B, shooting exclusively with Cooke Primes, with the final product a result of the Super 35 process. The Arri’s built-in features proved especially useful for early views of Ed as he drives home, seemingly out of phase with his environment. “We closed down the shutter a little to provide just a bit of jerky motion for his view of the pedestrians outside,” Deakins explains. “We wanted some slight feel of disconnection on his part; I’m not sure how noticeable the effect is, it could be that no one is aware of it, but I liked it a lot.” The film’s noir elements play out against black-comedy aspects that serve as something of a counterpoint to the proceedings. Much classic film comedy unreels in the Chaplin-esque vein, with the camera recording a performer’s antics rather than working in tandem with them. But, as is the case with most Coen efforts, the camera in this film is a participant, at times seemingly ‘in on the joke.’ In one instance, an on-camera character issues a question. Following a pregnant pause, the camera swings round to center on Ed, paying off the joke wordlessly with ideal comic timing. Exteriors for the home of Ed and Doris Crane were photographed in Pasadena, but no suitable interiors were unearthed, so those too were fabricated on stage. For scenes of Ed and Doris eating dinner, Deakins used in-frame practicals above the kitchen table, but embellished their effect with off-camera tungsten lighting. “I put in a little bounce rig above the table lamps,” Deakins remarks. “To get this effect, I cut open the ceiling to place the other light source, which extended the reach of the practicals and created a more graduated falloff. The supplemental light doubled what was there, so it reached the characters but didn’t go too far – that was important, since I didn’t want to light up the room’s walls.”
After Ed inadvertently causes Big Dave’s demise, he is shocked when wife Doris is charged with the man’s murder. Things become even more confusing when Ann Nirdlinger (Katherine Borowitz) makes a brief appearance on Ed’s doorstep one night, spouting wild-sounding stories about strange beings she and Big Dave had once encountered. “That was one of those cases where we mixed the softer foreground light with a harder-edge in the background,” Deakins acknowledges. “All those night exteriors needed to be quite snappy with plenty of contrast. We wanted a feeling of light coming through leaves, with the motion of the wind causing shifting patterns of shadow. That locks you into using direct sources to create these effects. We played with leaf shapes to create a sense of motion and some shadows. By using a 6K or a 4K Fresnel HMI that was set a ways off, we could place cut and shaped branches so their shadows would fit the frame, then spend just a bit of time to get the wind right and be able to shoot.” Deakins allows that a ‘spooky look’ was warranted given the odd nature of Ann’s conversation with Ed. “We had a strong rim light on her coming from street lights. For the most part she remains in shadow, so it is this background that gives you the snap in the image. Combined with her lace hat and a veil, made by costume designer Mary Zophres, the elements worked very well. The veil put her face in something that looked like a little cage.” To punch through the veil and capture Borowitz’ features, Deakins used a bit of white bounce light. “You think about things like this before you go out and do it, but then you always wind up fiddling some more when the actress actually comes on. Even if you’ve guessed correctly, there’s always a bit of time to get the backlight on her to mold just right, and in this instance that also played into the background edginess I spoke of earlier.” While some cinematographers use a bit of net behind the lens or some other kind of diffusion on the camera, Deakins is vehemently opposed to such practices, even in traditional glamour situations. “When we are photographing a lady and need some sense of glamour, I believe that can be created by varying the softness of the light at the source, rather than by affecting the whole image with filtration,” he states. “But softness isn’t always the answer either. Specific movements of the script sometimes suggest a different look. When we first see Doris putting on her stockings, that needed a graphic, snappy look, an approach that allowed her to stand out in relief from the surrounding darkness.” Soft lighting was employed for views of Doris while she is imprisoned and awaiting trial. “There’s more of a wraparound softness to the light there,” Deakins observes. “That first time you see her in there, we deliberately had her in front of a window, keeping her face totally shaded, with a lot of backlight on her. Later, in the visiting room, she seems more immersed in this soft gray kind of light. These looks were very specific and deliberate choices.” The More You Look, the Less You See Ed hires high-priced lawyer Freddy Riedenschneider (Tony Shalhoub) to represent Doris, and the attorney holds for with a stunning monologue about the Heisenberg uncertainty principle as it might be applied to legal matters. By evoking Heisenberg, Riedenschneider brings into play the notion that even mere observation of an event is enough to influence the outcome of said event. While legions of anthropologists might find cause to debate this idea, the mathematical basis behind this new school of physics is considered unassailable. Deakins seized on a way to highlight the lawyer’s discourse visually, by “standing Tony in this bleaching white light as he holds forth. We kept everybody else off in the shadow, barely lit, as if this big graphic light falling on him was bouncing off a table and spilling softly onto them.” In another scene, Ed becomes enchanted by the sound of piano music, which leads him to a teenaged girl named Birdy(Scarlett Johansson.) “We go with him through a field of blackness inside Nirdlinger’s before she is revealed,” Deakins notes. “The camera tracks toward her with small moves. A lot of the subjective camera in this film is showing things from Ed’s point of view, so the moves feature only minimal changes in perspective. This was also the case when we see Ed in an auditorium as she plays, and when he leaves afterward and sees her with a boyfriend — little moves, but very crucial in terms of how that action is carried out.” Deakins worked principally with an Aerocrane off a fourteen-foot jib arm, utilizing a power pod remote head. Ed attempts to arrange a big break for Birdy, driving her out of town for a professional evaluation of her piano playing skills. “The music room involved one of our most interesting technical challenges,” Deakins states. “That was a location we chose because we like the shape of the windows, but it was on the seventh floor of this apartment block in Pasadena. There was a balcony outside the window, through which I’d hoped to be able to light, but it turned out to be too rickety and would have collapsed. There didn’t seem to be any way to get light in there.” The solution came from both below and above. “We got hold of the biggest boom arm crane I’d ever seen, about two hundred feet tall, and put it in the street outside. There was a large lighting platform on top, about twenty feet across, with six 18Ks on it. To soften the look, we went up to the roof and dropped silk down to the balcony. So on the day of the shoot, all we had to do was raise the platform up, turn the lights on, and the whole scene was lit. What looked to be a horrendous lighting situation turned out to be very simple, and allowed us to get two days of work finished in just one.” Like most of Ed’s plans, the recital goes miserably, and he is crushed to hear an uncharitable estimation of Birdy’s talent, though the girl is considerably less upset about the evaluation. Birdy thanks Ed for his efforts on her behalf, attempting to bestow an unsolicited sexual favor upon him while the vehicle is in motion. This leads a panicked and distracted Ed to lose control of the car. While night drive interiors all featured poor-man’s-process, this scene and the other daylight automobile sequences utilized bluescreen. “The Brothers wanted the feel of an old black-and-white movie, which suggests process work and RP,” Deakins allows. “But bluescreen allows you to have more control over the way character’s faces are lit. Since there was a specific, slightly unreal quality desired, ultimately that control proved to be more important.” The car leaves the road on an arching suborbital path that takes it across frame before crashing offscreen. Like the driving interiors, this view of the car was also shot bluescreen. “We had the car set up on something resembling a rotating split, with a pipe going in the front and out the back. Then we tracked the camera along past it, shooting up from below, to make it look like the car was sailing by in the air, which lets the audience experience a shift in perspective as the vehicle passes. To help fill out the environment, the guys at MVFX added some falling leaves afterward, and composited [the car] with a background plate. Visual effects supervisor Janek Sirrs [an Oscar winner for The Matrix] is someone we’d worked with quite a bit who I find to be quite brilliant.” Sirrs also contributed to the effects-heavy series of saucer-like elements that play out in Ed’s mind after the crash, which change from a hubcap to a UFO to the medical light on a surgeon’s head. The Fall Guy Ed wakes to find he has been charged with murder, but not for the one he actually committed. Before dying at Ed’s hands, Big Dave had sought out his unknown blackmailer, and mistakenly killed Creighton Tolliver, who only now has surfaced from a watery grave. Underwater views revealing Tolliver’s fate were captured at Universal Pictures’ Falls Lake, where a segment of the Coen’s own O Brother, Where Art Thou? was shot. “It’s a very practical place to work, in large part because there’s a concrete surround,” discloses Deakins. “That creates a sharp-edged area next to the pond, so it was easy to bring light through. I had a pair of Condor-mounted 18Ks going through a diffusion frame to get the light to read underwater with a bit more bite. We shot [the reveal of Tolliver] with a camera poling down on an arm from a Giraffe crane, using a remote head with an underwater housing. That provided plenty of control so we could jib down very smoothly, as opposed to the drifting/floating-free feel you’d get with a diver using a handheld camera.” Ed winds up on trial for murdering the wrong man. With both Ed and Doris facing charges at different times in the film, several scenes are set in a courtroom. These were accomplished at the Don Carlos Stages in East Los Angeles. “That was an existing court stage, but the lighting setup was kind of rudimentary,” Deakins notes. “Usually the place is used for TV, so it was mainly overhead coop lighting. After a bit of painting, the general configuration of the stage worked pretty well for us, but that flat TV-style lighting was not good for us. So we tore out all that and made the main light source appear to be coming in through a single large window on the side. We had 10Ks and maybe one 20K down there, using tungsten throughout, and went through tracing paper to create a diffused backlight that blew out. There wasn’t much room outside the set, so the light through that window was bounced through big silver reflectors.” Since there was a limit to how far that light would reach inside the set, Deakins augmented it, extending the apparent spill of daylight across the courtroom by adding some more tungsten units set up over the top of the set. Convicted and sentenced to death for Tolliver’s murder, Ed experiences a vision that once again revolves around UFOs – this time, hovering above the prison. “Ed goes toward a door that leads out onto the prison grounds, which we shot on a little set,” Deakins explains. “From there, we shot a wider view of Billy Bob standing in a doorframe in an otherwise empty parking lot, looking up at the UFO. We panned a spotlight across the lot, suggesting the kind of searchlight associated with prisons. Then, to fill that view out, a model of the prison was built and photographed.” Hunter Gratzner Industries, miniature specialists (who duplicated an existing church in small-scale for End of Days, built the train and Martian town for John Carpenter’s Ghosts of Mars and fabricated the only non-CGI spacecraft featured in Star Trek Insurrection) constructed the scale prison exterior. A neighboring effects facility known for its miniature/motion-control camerawork, The Chandler Group, photographed HGI’s model, taking pains with lighting to match the look of Deakins’ live-action parking lot element. “Janek Sirrs also managed to extend the look of our practical searchlight, letting it travel up the walls of the miniature,” Deakins marvels. “He even got some interactive bounce light qualities to show up on the wall as the light tracked off the model and onto our sliver of live-action.” After this vision, Ed’s life returns to the more mundane matters of life. . . and death. “For Ed’s walk to the death house, Dennis didn’t need to build too much of the actual corridor,” Deakins states. “The Brothers wanted to convey the idea of a nearly endless passage, and while there was a fifty- to sixty-foot stretch that looked pretty dark, we cheated the length by putting a small bright light at the end of the path that implied the door, but also made the corridor seem to run much longer than it actually did.” The death room itself was envisioned as an extension of the white look seen in the corridor views. After more conversation between production designer, cinematographer, and the Coens, the decision reached was, “Less is better. We went with a kind of limbo look. The room has a rather luminous white element throughout, though if you look closely, it’s possible to just see where the floor meets the wall. A large silk was hung over the top of the set, then lit with space lights to create this incredibly soft source.” Deakins enhanced the limbo look by overexposing one full stop, which allowed him to add to the luminous qualities without sacrificing detail in the actors’ features. Ed accepts his demise with the same mild response that greeted most events in his life, and The Man Who Wasn’t There ends with him. . . well, no longer there. Deakins, who has already begun his next collaboration with the Coens, To The White Sea, finds the finished film of The Man Who Wasn’t There to be “quite different in tone from most pictures made in today’s climate. Personally, I think the film is one of the best made in a long while. Down the line, it could perhaps come to be remembered as an American classic. |
The
Coens turned to many of their regular collaborators on this project,
including cinematographer Roger Deakins, ASC. Deakins’ association with
the writing/directing brother act extends back six films, from the recent
O Brother, Where Art Thou? to Barton Fink. Deakins graduated
from still photo and documentary work to feature efforts on a trio of
Michael Radford-directed films. He earned high honors from the ASC
as well as an academy award nomination for his cinematography on Frank
Darabont’s The Shawshank Redemption, and contributed to a pair
of Edward Zwick pictures, Courage Under Fire and The Siege.
Filming
ranged from city street exteriors in Orange, California to various other
Southern California locations (“The real Santa Rosa doesn’t have that
look from Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt [photographed by Joseph
Valentine] anymore,” Deakins notes). The production also employed Paramount’s
backlot, Universal’s Falls Lake tank, and a number of interiors built
on stage by Gassner’s team. With typical efficiency, the shoot began
on July 26, 2000, and wrapped the first of September. Deakins attributes
the speed of the work to extensive preplanning. “With The Brothers,
it is always a matter of working out the advantages and disadvantages
of locations versus stage, and we always go through the script very
methodically, taking into account practicalities such as the expense
of a location. The main street shoot in Orange took only a day, so the
organization and planning really worked out well there.” 
A
key confrontation between Ed and Big Dave takes place at night in an
office above the sales floor at Nirdlinger’s department store. “It would
have been too much of an expense to build this whole area on stage,
so Dennis modified a disused clothing store in Glendale,” Deakins notes.
“It was basically a blank space when we scouted, so we really brought
in the works — all of the electrical stuff, plus the big glass window
in the office. Everything was oriented toward views looking out past
these foreground figures in the office, down at the store floor beyond.
If you looked in the other direction, there wasn’t much there at all.
The Brothers were very specific about what they needed to see, so there
was no need to overbuild for coverage we wouldn’t need to shoot. They
always intended to play that sequence with Ed talking to Dave as one
extended profile view of the pair. But while setting up that wide profile,
I suggested shooting some cover, to provide options in editorial. Since
we had plenty of time to get the setups, that is how it happened, shooting
overs [over-the-shoulders] as well as the master.”