Smooth
Criminal Once upon a time in America, a young con artist named Frank Abagnale, Jr. led law enforcement agencies on a merry chase. Abagnale was the spawn of a dysfunctional family that lived on the wrong side of the law. He was 17 when he began his crime spree. There was no violence. It was all guile. Abagnale stole from the rich without sharing his loot with the poor. He had various alter egos, including doctor, lawyer, airline pilot and assistant attorney general. Abagnale mastered the art of forging millions of dollars in checks and he made the FBI’s Most Wanted list before his 20th birthday. He was nabbed in France about five years after it all began.
Catch Me If You Can is set in the 1960s. It is based on a book authored by Abagnale and Stan Redding called Catch Me If You Can: The Amazing True Story of the Most Extraordinary Liar. The book was adapted for the screen by Jeff Nathanson. It is a performance-driven story with no visual effects, gimmicks or car chases, and nothing is blown up. Instead there is comedy, drama and characters you’ll remember. Catch Me If You Can was filmed in just 56 days at more than 100 locations, mainly in Los Angeles. The visual style is an almost authentic rendering of the real people, times and places with a hint of fantasy reflecting the dream-like lifestyle that Abagnale created for himself. Kaminski compares the look to “…opening a bottle of champagne and pouring it into a glass… it’s pretty and bubbly,” with occasional darker sequences. Abagnale is portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio. The pursuit is led by a fictional FBI agent named Carl Hanratty, portrayed by Tom Hanks, who eventually develops feelings of empathy for Abagnale. The fictional character is based on a real life FBI agent who became kind of a surrogate father for Abagnale at the end of the chase. Others in the ensemble cast include Christopher Walken, as Abagnale’s father, Jennifer Garner, Amy Adams, Martin Sheen, Frank John Hughes and Brian Howe.
This was a different type of film in every way. Kaminski had six weeks of prep time. He says eight to nine weeks is more typical on a Spielberg project. Keep in mind they were preparing to shoot at two to three different locations literally every day. Kaminski credits his gaffer (David Devlin) and key grip (Jimmy Kwiatkowski) with doing much of the location scouting groundwork. “David and I have worked together for the past eight years,” he says. “He knows what I like. David showed the production designer (Jeannine Claudia Oppewall) where I needed lighting fixtures and windows, and only called me when he thought a location was really unsuitable or just plain ugly. He’d say, ‘I know you are not going to like it, but you’d better come and check it out before it’s too late.’ They are true partners who covered my back, so I could concentrate on lighting. Jeannine also did an amazing job.” Three days of shooting were slated for Montreal, one day in Quebec and three in New York City. The rest of the story was filmed in and around Los Angeles. “Leo (DiCaprio) plays a charming guy who steals $6 million by the time he’s 18, but with such panache that no one is ever physically hurt,” Kaminski says. “I believe the audience will like and empathize with him, and they will be sad because at the end, he’s a lonely guy looking for the ideal father that he never had.” Salesman, a classic documentary shot by Albert Maysles with his brother David recording sound, was a key reference for Kaminski and Spielberg––showing the importance of visuals for understanding characters. “It’s a story about basically pathetic creatures who are losers in life and live in a pretend world,” Kaminski says. “It’s a great film. We also looked at Frederick Wiseman’s High School (another documentary). We wanted our film to feel a little bit like that one. We avoided the conventional kitschy and cliché representation of the 1960s and ‘70s that you see in many period films. We had amazing locations and the costumes by Mary Zophres were also fantastic. They are all part of the look. When you shoot a film with this many locations, you do broad strokes because you have to move fast.” But, Kaminski notes that doesn’t mean they shot in documentary style. “It’s stylized, romantic lighting, though there are also scenes that look realistic,” he continues. “For instance, we wanted to create the impression we’re actually in an FBI office. We created fluorescent top light that was kind of a pale white with bluish tones and just slightly bright. There are sequences in a hospital where the light is bright and flat, but there is also a little contrast. There is a wedding with very romantic, warm backlight with 1/2 orange gel mixed with blue and white.” Catch Me If You Can is framed in Academy aperture 1.85:1 aspect ratio, mainly because it’s an intimate, character-driven story. The camera package included Panavision Millennium and Millennium XL bodies with Primo prime and zoom lenses. Kaminski describes the visual perspective for Catch Me If You Can as mainly objective, with the camera usually serving as an observer rather than as a participant. “It’s the opposite of the approach we took in Minority Report,”he explains. “It’s very straightforward with no slick camerawork and no CGI. The camera is usually moving, because that’s how Steven likes to tell stories.” They shot at many practical locations, including the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, houses in Pasadena, and on a college campus. One of the exceptions was a huge set for FBI headquarters, built in a big abandoned warehouse with existing lighting fixtures and an entire wall covered with windows. An existing set on a stage was used to film scenes in the apartment where Abagnale’s parents lived. Those few sets on stages were treated as though they were practical locations with no wild walls or ceilings.
Kaminski lauds the actors, paying special homage to DiCaprio. “Leo has to play someone who is 17 at the beginning and 21 by the end,” he says. “Makeup, hair and wardrobe were important, but mainly it’s his performance that makes the character believable. He acts like a teenager when he’s 17 and like a young adult when he is 20 and 21. Actors are amazing people. I think they have the hardest job. I try to protect them, and insist that my crew treats them with respect.” Kaminski worked with his regular crew, including camera operators, Mitch Dubin and Dave Emmerichs, who also operated the Steadicam. His assistants were Steve Meizler, Tom Jordan and Mark Spath, and the film loader was Paul Toomey. After shooting a series of make-up and wardrobe tests, Kaminski decided to mainly work with Kodak Vision 5277 film. The 320-speed film is balanced for exposure in tungsten light. It is designed to render sharper images with lower contrast than most other Vision films. Kaminski says the film tests served several purposes. They provided an opportunity for the actors and the crew to bond in an informal environment. He explains that it breaks the ice so they feel more comfortable with each other. “I do very extensive testing,” he says. “It’s not just an actor sitting on a chair against a black backdrop. I built a set with windows and used extras and props. We tested different make-ups, wardrobes, colors, lighting styles and camera angles to see what worked best with different characters. We also tested prosthetics, because Leo had to look like a teenager and also a young man. I tested the amount of darkness under his eyes for different situations, the length and colors of wigs and his facial growth. “With Tom Hanks, we tested wardrobes to see how he looked dressed in a classic FBI uniform (a dark suit) from that period. We also tested props. One set of glasses made him look like a character from the TV show Dragnet, so that got eliminated.” Kaminski also conferred with the costume designer during preproduction. “Mary (Zophres) understood the period,” he says. “We talked about the wardrobe and color palette. The colors were warm and soft. Leo’s character wore James Bond style clothing, because he wanted to be seen as a gentleman criminal.” He notes the tests also enabled him to show Spielberg his concepts for lighting. Important scenes take place in bank lobbies, where Abagnale is cashing checks. “We played with the idea that the banks he visited were like modern temples,” he says. “We shot in a bank in Brooklyn that looks like a church, so we played with that idea. When Leo comes into the bank to cash a check for the first time, we make him seem small in a really wide-angle shot. You see the entire lobby of the bank in kind of an angelic light with this small tiny figure walking across the floor.”
“Every picture is different,” Kaminski observes. “In Schindler’s List, Oscar’s lighting was two dimensional, because he was an enigmatic character with good and evil sides. Leo is playing a charming con man, so his lighting was pretty flat.” Because of the nature of the story, DiCaprio is in almost every scene. Kaminski thinks the actor had one day off during the production. “We spoke about that, and he said the worst thing about moviemaking is the hours,” he says. “The actors have to get up at 5:30 every morning, come in for make-up and work 13 or 14 hours every day or longer. There’s really no reason for that. You don’t need seventeen different angles of coverage of the same scene. Steven is a masterful director, who knows what he’s doing, so we were usually working 12-hour days. But it’s still hard on the actors, so we did everything we could to make it as easy as possible for them.” Kaminski says that Spielberg doesn’t typically work with storyboards unless it’s a CGI sequence. They blocked scenes with the actors, but some of them had cameo roles and were only on the project for two or three days. Kaminski observes that it was difficult for those actors, because they had to mesh with the flow with little preparation. “We were working at an intense pace,” Kaminski says, “but Steven still gave all the actors the freedom to take some dramatic license from take to take, which meant that the crew had to be alert and watch the lighting, framing and focus every second.” Kaminski explains that he used hard or harsher light to convey a feeling of danger and softer light to accentuate beauty. “There is a scene where Leo (Abagnale) meets with his mother and father in their apartment,” Kaminski explains. “We had hot light coming through the window. It’s kind of bluish green and a little bit smoky. They are moving through bright light and darker areas. There’s a strong backlight that I had rigged right above the door. You can see the shaft. It isn’t motivated, but it could be coming from a skylight. It just felt right.” Kaminski discusses a sequence filmed at the TWA terminal in New York City. “It’s a fantastic location,” he says. “The architecture is beautiful. It’s curved and shaped like a saucer with huge windows. Fortunately, we shot on an overcast day so there wasn’t hot sunshine coming through the windows, because we didn’t have enough Condors or crew to drop silks to block the sun.” Mainly they covered scenes with the more compact Millennium XL camera and predominantly with prime lenses. Initially, Kaminski says they were thinking about shooting the entire movie with just 35mm and 85mm lenses. They decided to add 14mm, 25mm, and 50mm Primo lenses to the package. Kaminski observes that 50mm is often the long lens of choice for Spielberg. The cinematographer explains that he prefers the optical qualities of the prime lenses, partially because they give him the option of using filters to soften the look without degrading the images. Kaminski says they frequently covered scenes with a single camera tracking from left to right or right to left, craning up, coming around 200 degrees and then swooping down into a close-up. One of those sweeping shots ends with a close up of Abagnale forging a check. Kaminski describes another shot with the camera on a cable rig. Abagnale is watching a movie in a theater. The camera starts with a long shot on the screen and dollies through the entire length of the theater ending on a close-up. “We had huge crane shots downtown in New York,” he says. “In one, the camera is on the arm of an Akela crane, which descends to the pavement, where we see crowds on Park Avenue. We blocked off eight blocks for several hours and shot with period cars and costumes, and moved through the crowd with both huge dolly shots and the Steadicam.” There were a few scenes where Spielberg wanted coverage with multiple cameras. One was an elegant shot of a romantic encounter at the Ambassador Hotel between Jennifer Garner, who plays a high-class hooker, and DiCaprio. “She looks gorgeous, the location is wonderful and their clothes and makeup are fantastic,” Kaminski says. “Leo is standing at the door of a room, and we are shooting over her shoulder, down the hallway. The second camera sees her from his perspective.” There were video taps on the camera feeding two monitors. One of them was positioned slightly behind the camera, close to the actors, where Spielberg, Kaminski and usually the script supervisor were standing or seated on apple boxes. “Steven and I both like being as close as possible to the actors,” he says. Front-end processing was done by Technicolor with John Bickford timing dailies. “Cinematography is not about making things look pretty,” Kaminski says. “It’s about taking chances. I know I’m ready for a movie when I dream about lighting. I go to bed and can’t wait until it is 4:30 am, so I can get up and go to the lab to see dailies. What happens if the light is three-and-a-half stops overexposed? Will it be too bright? What happens when it’s two-and-a-half or three stops underexposed? Are the shadows dark enough and will the audience see what we want them to see? What about the colors? I can’t wait until I see light going through the film and images projected on the screen.” Usually Kaminski’s gaffer and first assistant, and sometimes the key grip viewed dailies with him at the lab. He watched corrected dailies again at lunch in a trailer that followed them to locations. Kaminski believes dailies are an important opportunity for everyone to see the movie progressing on the big screen. They can see how nuances affect the emotional tone and flow of the story and that inspires ideas for subsequent sequences. Kaminski concludes with a surprising, but revealing comment. He says, “The hardest part of every film for me is the last step, color timing in the lab. I hate it. Something always disappoints me. But I suppose if I am ever fully satisfied, and say that’s the best I can do, it would be time to find another job.” • |
Think
of Catch Me If You Can as the yin to the yang of Minority Report.
Both films were developed by DreamWorks, directed by Steven Spielberg and photographed
by Janusz Kaminski, ASC. That is where the similarities end. Minority Report
was a big budget vision of a future where society takes a dark turn. The story
was visually punctuated with a unique in-your-face quality as original as Blade
Runner was in 1982.
Don’t
let the glittering array of stars fool you. The film was an ambitious endeavor
accomplished on a comparatively slim budget. It was Kaminski’s 22nd narrative
credit during the past dozen years. The cinematographer began his career working
for Roger Corman as a gaffer and B-camera operator after emerging from AFI during
the late 1980s. During the 1990s, he earned Oscars for Schindler’s List
and Saving Private Ryan, and a third nomination for Amistad. Four
of his recent projects, Minority Report, Artificial Intelligence: AI,
Saving Private Ryan, and Amistad, featured stylized cinematography
employing bleach bypass processes. 
“I’ve
always loved shooting at practical locations,” Kaminski says. “You can’t move
the walls, and the light comes from directions where there are windows and lamps.
But light doesn’t always have to be motivated. It can be totally unrealistic and
stylized if it fits the story. You can analyze it, but it also has to feel right.
The big question is whether you have the guts and heart to trust your intuition.”
That’s
just one example of how an intuitive decision made by the cinematographer establishes
a visual grammar for telling the story. Kaminski always kept in mind that the
images would be augmented by a John Williams musical score and that the film would
be cut by Michael Kane—both are constants in Spielberg films.