By Kevin H. Martin
Photos by Kerry Hayes

As far as murder-mystery whodunits go, The Caveman's Valentine manages to transcend genre expectations. Based on the Edgar Award winning first novel from George Dawes Green (also the screenwriter), the film follows a private citizen's murder investigation after he finds a young man hung in a tree outside his abode. The twist comes in the form of the investigator himself - Romulus Ledbetter (Samuel L. Jackson), a homeless schizophrenic who lives in a forest cave on the outskirts of New York. Although once a classically trained pianist and family man, Romulus - now known to city folk as "the Caveman"- has largely forsaken that life and instead spends much of his days trapped in fantastic delusions. He believes himself to be the target of persecution by a powerful and unseen figure responsible for all the world's evils - one who happens to operate from atop the Chrysler Building. The Caveman often retreats even further from reality, and his consciousness fills with visions of muscular seraphs orbiting round him as he plays beautiful music only heard within the confines of his own mind.

But the murder is real, and Romulus vows to capture the killer, whom the vagrant believes to be famed photographer David Leppenraub (Colm Feore). His policewoman daughter Lulu (Aunjanue Ellis) tries to steer him clear of trouble, but - using his tremendous music skills as an entree - the Caveman connives and contrives to gain access to Leppenraub. In the course of determining matters of guilt and innocence, his brilliant-though-confused mind wends through a torturous route. The suspense revolving around determination of a guilty party is largely superseded by the growing tension of whether Romulus will survive the investigation with his life and shards of sanity still intact.

Following her critically lauded feature debut, Eve's Bayou (1997), director Kasi Lemmons chose to reteam on The Caveman's Valentine with that movie's star, Samuel L. Jackson, as well as cinematographer Amy Vincent. After a college background in Theater Arts (at UC Santa Cruz) introduced her to the world of lighting, Vincent developed an avid interest in moviemaking. In the early Nineties, she worked as second assistant camera on several features (Little Man Tate, Father of the Bride, Fire in the Sky and Natural Born Killers) then became a camera operator on two more (Feeling Minnesota and Gridlock'd). After Eve, she acted as director of photography on a half-dozen other films, including Jawbreaker and the cable telefilm Freedom Song. "Kasi and I had become good friends while doing Eve's Bayou," Vincent remarks, "so I knew about The Caveman's Valentine long before it was officially green-lit. We had talked about it quite a bit, looking at it from both technical and aesthetic standpoints. Kasi wanted to be a cinematographer when she started out, so she's quite savvy technically. During Eve, she and I hit upon a way of shooting that could perhaps be called 'Formalist,' and some of that carries through here. We like to have a very specific visual language about what is being photographed."

To determine a visually appropriate approach for the various moods needed in Caveman, Lemmons and Vincent chose to forego in large part the usual business of viewing other films during prep. "We used a lot of book work, referring to other kinds of artists working in two-dimensional forms, still photography and drawings mainly," Vincent relates. "This was a nice and different way to prep. Looking at movies to see how a particular sequence worked is great, but this approach started me on this incredible round of self-education, covering still photography from 1890 up 'til now. Now I can't stop myself from buying the books. It is amazing how much visual reference source material is out there when you go back to basics. I also took Kasi to see Paul Kopeikin who owns a gallery on La Brea, and he showed her many photos there as well. These were great jumping-off points for us."

One of the most important aspects included previsualizing the character of Romulus himself. "To nail him down, we started off by working on storyboards with Christopher Glass," says Vincent, "who drew terrific boards and is a brilliant artist as well. We told him our thoughts on how the Caveman looked and he set to work. Kasi credits him with creating a good part of the final look, since his drawings were used to communicate to hair, make-up and wardrobe departments what Kasi wanted for his look." Part of Romulus' guise involved the use of a wig (a constant for Jackson, most notably on Pulp Fiction and Unbreakable) with long dreadlocks that often obscured the actor's face - which on occasion made for a less than ideal lighting situation. "During hair and make-up tests, I saw that while Sam's dreadlocks looked amazing, they were going to be difficult to deal with for nine weeks. He had a big hat and a huge coat also, so there was a question of whether we were ever going to be able to really see the guy. I told Kasi that at times he was on the verge of becoming a hat with hair. Being very sensitive to the needs of actors, Kasi didn't want to ask Sam to get the hair out of his face, so we tried not to mess with him and solve it on our own."

While shooting interior scenes with the lead actor, Vincent employed what she calls a Nine-light sandwich. "Others might call it a booklight, but in any case, we were bouncing a Nine-light MaxiBrute off a piece of beadboard, then letting the light pass through a diffusion frame usually fitted with either 216 or light grid. The resulting softlight striking Sam had a very beautiful quality, plus some serious pounding of foot-candles. This softlight had enough to punch through his hair, and I could control the amount of light just by clicking off various globes. But it also required a lot of flagging and took up much space." On other occasions, Vincent illuminated the Caveman by directing the light from more extreme angles. "I came in much lower and more frontal with his key than I would have normally, but the approach succeeded in letting his hair fall naturally, so, while it was tough, it worked. It did make me thankful for the scenes when Romulus is dressed up with his hair pulled back, since I could get a nice edge on him through sidelighting."

Romulus discovers the young man's dead body just outside his cave dwelling in a forest. The exterior cave was a fiberglass construct, built by production designer Robin Standefer (The Rapture, The New Age, Practical Magic) and erected within the woods. "I was glad to be in on the selection process for that location," acknowledges Vincent, "because I wanted to make sure that we were in an area that had the right amount of trees. It couldn't be so dense that light wouldn't come through, but there had to be enough there to break up the light on the snow. That's one of the challenges with winter night exteriors. In this instance, we also kept things very monochromatic, since there wasn't the usual blend of differently-colored streetlights to use as sources." She employed the LRX system, a truck-based bank of lights that has recently become Canada's answer to the Musco light. "The LRX has four 6K Par heads and is an HMI-based system, so I used half-CTO to correct them away from blue. Additionally, I had tungsten units with half-blue to match the LRX look for close-ups."

The innards of Romulus' cave consisted of a stage set designed to match contours of the location's setpiece. "That set was kind of interesting, mainly due to its size," Vincent recalls. "Usually these kinds of sets are built fairly large to allow access, but for the sake of realism we decided to go very small, which kept the actors from moving around and was realistic in terms of blocking. There was only one fixed wall, while the others were 'wild' and could be pulled out. There were also three removable ceiling panels, and they were a key for realism; once they were in, that took the cave below Sam's height and forced him to move like he was in a real cave."

"There were a few daylight scenes in there, so we decided that cracks in the cave roof let hard sunlight in," she continues. "I put some signs of this in on the walls behind the actors and let some light bounce off the floor. For the most part though, the cave scenes are set at night - lit by firelight or lanterns or the imaginary glow coming off the Caveman's TV, which isn't plugged into anything. For the firelight, I chose to use a slightly warm key light on the actors but didn't put any flickering movement in because I felt that it was distracting. The only flickering on their faces comes from the actual firelight. What I did add was a slight flicker effect on the walls, which I found to be more pleasing while lending a bit of realism."

Before making his gruesome discovery, Romulus hears footsteps outside his cave. In his mind, the Caveman creates a visual image to complement these noises. "Romulus thinks he is seeing these images on his non-functional television, so we decided to come up with a way of generating smeared imagery," the cinematographer states. "We wanted a unique look for these shots, and wound up using what I call the shutterless camera, which was something first assistant cameraman Russel Bowie had worked on with Panavision-Toronto for another project. It was an old Gold body with the shutter removed, and a spray deflector with a shutter painted on it that went in front of the lens. The film is being exposed while moving [through the gate], because there is no synchronization between the motor and shutter, which causes some streaking effects." Vincent utilized both 12 and 18 frames-per-second rates for the shutterless camera shots, which were captured on Eastman's Double-X (5222) stock. She overexposed a stop, rating the film normally (at 200ASA), and pushed it a stop during processing, resulting in an increase in both grain and contrast.

Vincent chose to enhance the unusual perceptual aspects of The Caveman's Valentine through a wide variety of emulsions, each serving to differentiate various perspectives. "We needed to decide what we'd use for a given point of view, then maintain those parameters throughout to give it some integrity," she affirms. "To create a kind of visual imprint for clues, I got some ASA 6 [5369, a black-and-white title stock] from Deluxe Labs. As you can imagine, we had to go through quite a lot to get a good exposure with such slow stock. I had to have black pressure plates made for the cameras when using this super high-con stock, which had a really strong graphic presence. Then there is a flashback seen from the perspective of another character, and to make that stand out from everything else I used 7239, an older VNF reversal film, cross-processing it as negative to bring out even more grain and contrast." Vincent shot day exteriors on Eastman EXR 100T (5248), using an 81 EF filter to half-correct and retain the cool blue of winter. Daylight-balanced 250D (5246) Vision stock was selected for day interiors, while she exploited Vision 500T (5279) on most night interiors and exteriors.

Initially, The Caveman's Valentine had been planned as an anamorphic show, but wound up being shot in 1.85. "Losing the anamorphic format meant I had to find some other way to keep my enthusiasm and creative energy to move forward," Vincent reveals, "so I started thinking about all the things that could be done with spherical lenses that wouldn't have been possible in anamorphic. We could take chances, so I did things like putting a 17mm lens just 10 inches away from Sam's face." Employing a Panavision Platinum and a GII, Vincent relied on a set of Primo primes augmented with 11:1 and 4:1 zoom lenses.

The cinematographer does not use diffusion on the camera lens, instead preferring to soften her subject as needed by selectively affecting the light source. "I've never liked it in films when the overall resolution of the lens changes visibly during cuts in to a close-up during a scene," she declares. "The whole business of putting heavy diffusion in front of the lens to make [an actress] look 'better' is just crazy to me. I don't want to see the cinematographer's effort to make someone look good. Instead, I want to see the character look good, and I think that happens when the actor is both integrated into the scene properly and lit in a flattering manner. My solution is to soften at the source of illumination, and let the image be as clear as possible. Some people think Primo lenses are too sharp, but I love all that perfection. When you combine years and years of research and development on the filmstocks from Kodak, with what has gone into these Panavision lenses and the lab work at DeLuxe, and then put all that into a film being projected properly on screen, the result is such awesome perfection! So I take a lot of pride in delivering a really perfect negative. We may want to mess it up later, and that's fine, but I believe in starting with something well-exposed and sharp."

An example of Vincent's approach to beauty photography without filtration is apparent in sequences featuring the visage of Romulus' ex-wife Sheila (Tamara Tunie), who appears to the Caveman as an externalization of his mental musings. "He sees her as she was 15 years ago," Vincent explains. "I'm not sure how I feel about the notion that a woman is more beautiful in youth than in maturity. But since he has no recent memories of her, it made sense for the story. Beauty lighting really relates to women on an individual basis, so you have to really study each face, in order to see how different angles and heights of light work. Tamara's look really lent itself to classic movie star lighting and, as 'old-school' as it sounds, the cinematographer really does need to make the principal actresses look good."

Lemmons and Vincent considered multiple means for heightening the wife's presence in these mystical appearances. "At first, there was some talk of shooting bluescreen and compositing her over 120 frames-per-second backgrounds, but in the end simplicity won out. Instead, it was more of an editorial approach handled with cuts, though we did use the speed-aperture control a couple times to bring her in and out of scenes at different frame rates - like she is dropping in and out of his consciousness. That was an interesting tool, and if we'd been able to budget for its use throughout, I'd have used it in a different context; I wanted to do a lot of barely perceptible changes, like 22 to 26 frames-per-second, throughout, in order to show subtle perceptual differences. As it is now, the only other time the speed-aperture frame rate change was employed is at the end of the film, when the Caveman goes off through the trees and lifts his arms - it is very subtle, but the speed change is in there."

Innervisions
With all the many visual treatments necessary to depict the Caveman's perceptions, Vincent and Lemmons needed to settle on parameters early on for the more elaborate manifestations requiring visual effects. "We're telling a story that is seen in part through the eyes of a crazy person," offers Vincent. "He's an incredibly brilliant crazy person, but crazy nonetheless, so there's a sense of the fantastic about these visions, but they are not in the tradition of science-fiction movie effects. We had submitted a wish list of visual effects for budgeting, but it came back priced four or five times higher than we hoped. This meant we had to pull back, and that decision ultimately worked better for the film we wound up making. Most of the effects are things we did ourselves in-camera, with practical light cues on stage, or as a combination of those cues with digital enhancement [by C.O.R.E. Digital]."

As part of the paranoid fantasy of being under attack from the Chrysler Building, Romulus imagines being caught up in beams of colored light - the so-called Y-rays. "Ideally, proceeding with the in-camera philosophy, we'd have put Xenons on top of the actual Chrysler building," Vincent chuckles, "not that this was ever a really viable option. During hair and make-up testing on Sam, I incorporated various approaches to these rays using stage lights, hoping to hit on something that would be magical. We started by swinging some yellow- and green-gelled Xenons around, but Sam didn't really respond to those. But when I put 12-light Maxi-Brutes on dimmers, this more amorphous light - overexposed by about six stops - came up and Sam really responded well to them; it was as though the Caveman really saw the Y-ray at that moment, and that sewed up the approach for creating the effect." Vincent favored using the MaxiBrutes for other reasons as well. "Since the Maxi-Brute is a collection of 1K globes, you can control the up-time and down-time when putting them on dimmers. With 10K or 20K tungsten units, there is a slow decay rate that can't be varied. I use a lot of multi-globe units anyway, because when you need to change intensity you can just click globes on or off, as opposed to using dimmers and then having to contend with color temperature changes."

For the most part, Vincent kept the Maxi-Brutes arrayed as side- and backlights on the Caveman, enabling extremes of overexposure. Though for the first occasion that a Y-ray is shown "the character is by a dumpster and the appearance of the Y-ray is prompted by a passing tow truck with a yellow bar. We had the Maxi-Brutes, equipped with Lee 104 gels, hitting him straight on, while in the background, there is a CG effect emanating from the Chrysler Building. The only digital part is the background effect."

Later on, as Romulus is drawn deeper into the real-world murder, a new light ray appears to menace him. "For the 'Z-ray,' we did wind up augmenting the Maxi-Brutes with 7K Xenons. They were fitted with full CTO, and Lee 090. When Romulus is up on a rooftop at night, I had Xenons with lamp operators on buildings at either side of him and directly across the way, and these were directed to move through space, then slice through and envelope him."

The Caveman's mind holds bizarre and wondrous visions of a world populated by moth seraphs, and the vista encompassing this disturbed man's dreamscape benefited from the historical art research undertaken by director and cinematographer. "We looked at Gustav Dore's illustrations for Paradise Lost and The Divine Comedy, which became major influences for the skull set that these moth seraphs inhabit," notes Vincent. "Kasi had a very specific vision for the seraphs themselves: 12 naked, bald Black men with moth wings. The moth seraph sequences were among those that Kasi felt most strongly about, and that extended from the look of these creatures to the music playing and the choreography of movement. This part of the film is a quintessential example of how all our creative forces came together to realize Kasi's vision."

Vincent's theater arts background ended up tying in with the stylized nature of the Romulus skull set. "This was kind of like going back to lighting for modern dance and Shakespeare for me. Robin Standefer [production designer] had designed a combination of anatomically correct looking bone structures. The colors we came up with for this environment contrasted with our harsh, winter day exteriors; instead of hard light and cool color temperatures, the skull is warm and filled with soft sources." Most of the color comes through the set walls, which were made from a translucent, painted and textured latex lit from behind. "The wall panels were very, very warm, even warmer than they look in the movie. During pre-lighting, we discovered this and wound up using three-quarter blue correction on the open-faced tungsten units we had back there to compensate. The lights were hidden behind the solid, bone-like structural parts of the chamber." The color temperature on other lighting units employed on set - which included Maxi-Brutes up high - ranged from one-quarter-CTO to straight white tungsten.

Otis Sallid choreographed an entire routine running several minutes for the seraphs flitting around Romulus. Since most of the seraph performers were athletes instead of professional dancers, the moviemakers decided that performances would be improved by shooting the dance as a single piece of action. "We'd shoot these long takes with two cameras, usually with one on a dolly track and the other set up high on a remotely-operated head. Then we'd go back in and move the cameras and shoot another five- to six-minute full performance piece. Again, it was very much in the tradition of theater."

In addition to the gyrating seraphs, there were flying seraphs, which C.O.R.E. Digital produced as digitally animated fly-bys under the direction of visual effects supervisor Bob Munroe and animation supervisor Brian A. Smeets. "Originally we wanted to put real guys in flying harnesses and do wire removal," indicates Vincent, "but instead the CGI guys wound up using one of our guys in his costume as the basis for their work. After the computer model was made, they had the basic elements of the actual character, so the main challenge was creating a suitably moth-like wing-flutter pattern. Kasi and I had studied entomology and poured over books on moths, finding out that real moths fly in a rather erratic and fluttery way - as opposed to gentle and elegant. Ultimately the final effect fell somewhere in between a glider and a moth."

Living in the City
The Caveman's investigation takes him to various locales in and around New York. Like nearly all tales of life in the Big Apple, The Caveman's Valentine features several scenes in the metropolitan subway system. "We had a subway car set up on stage," details Vincent, "and to suggest light sources whipping by, there was a series of computer-operated VariLights set up outside every window in the car. They are used in rock-and-roll shows a lot, and worked through the use of moving mirrors. Gaffer Bryan Forde designed the setup, which allowed the color of lights to be varied from the dimmer board, so you could go from blue to orange to white as needed. The speed and intensity at which the lights cycled could also be varied. Additionally, for the practical interior lights, we had daylight-balanced KinoFlo 5500K fluorescents. These could be cued on or off individually or all at once, and then a couple of strobe lights went in to beef up the activity a bit."

In addition to standard interactive light effects, special editorially mandated cues were also employed during the subway train stage shoot. "Kasi and I knew that in many murder mysteries, there is a scene for people who fell asleep in reel three to get caught up - the big recapitulation. But we didn't want it to be strictly verbal, and thought the 'clue' shots we'd be getting all along - the high-con black-and-white - could be reemployed to show to the audience what had happened. To get into those cuts, we created actual light cues on the subway car that were timed to coincide with breaks in Sam's dialogue; these led to flashcuts showing a relevant part of the puzzle. Since we didn't want to mess with Sam's performance, Kasi sat at the dimmer board with the operator, telling him when to cue the events, based on Sam's delivery. It sounds weird, but worked out great."

Although the train interiors were handled on stage, the subway station itself was pieced together from Toronto and New York locations. "We weren't allowed to shoot with a full unit in the New York station, so my A-camera operator Henry Cline and I went off and did a kind of second-unit shoot on our own. It was this big theatrical feature, and yet the DP and the operator were running around with a couple of spare magazines and battery belts in a canvas bag. We just grabbed a few shots and no one ever knew. That helped us a lot with the station, since the rest of the shots had to be done on a non-working subway platform in Toronto that didn't match at all. We shot it as tightly and as minimally as possible"

The Caveman's Valentine shot from February to May, but only nine days were spent in New York, with the remaining photography taking place in and around Toronto. "After being so visually satisfied during the New York part of the shoot, you have to reconsider everything while in Toronto," warns the cinematographer. "There are fundamental physical differences between the two cities, ranging from the quality of light to what is in the frame. New York is far denser in every way - people, cars, the number of old posters peeling off walls, frequency of yellow cabs - and also has a very strong vertical element. That meant dealing more with the shadow side of tall buildings going way up: the way that affects the winter sky is different when you're in the flatlands of Toronto. During the Canadian part of the shoot, I had to take care while cheating angles to frame out streetcar lines, and still try to build up that sense of visual density. At worst, our Toronto exteriors are nondescript - I don't think any of it blows the illusion completely. While our real New York views are totally and unmistakably New York - under the Williamsburg Bridge, in the East Village, and of course, looking up at the Chrysler Building."

Another instance when New York and Toronto locales had to mesh seamlessly were scenes of Romulus sojourning in an upscale townhouse. Realizing that he needs to upgrade his appearance in order to infiltrate a gathering at Leppenraub's, the Caveman manages to intrigue a broker named Bob (Anthony Michael Hall), who offers him a swank suit of clothes in exchange for a display of this piano virtuoso's talents. The impromptu recital takes place in Bob's high-rise home. "We had chosen Tudor City, a midtown New York locale, for Bob's home," the cinematographer comments. "This was based on a very literal-minded matter, about where you'd have to be in order to see the Chrysler Building out the window. The building we found was amazing but only functioned for the exterior and rooftop. The art department found a practical location in Toronto to work as an interior, but that meant putting in a bluescreen for the window area so the skyline plates we shot in New York could be laid in during post. The screen, which had to be tented and weatherproofed for the five days of shooting, was very expensive to set up and install. The interior was a difficult location to work in because it was a historical monument, and the rigging opportunities were limited.

For Leppenraub's country retreat - supposedly situated in Upstate New York - production scouted out a Toronto farmhouse. "The buildings there could be used for both exteriors and interiors, but it was quite an effort to make it work. The farmhouse was great for the exteriors, but inside it was just disgusting, filled with old cars and piles of lumber and manure. It was a mere shell of a building, with all these holes so light leaked and wind came through. Robin had it cleaned out, then sandblasted and sealed the walls. She created the main room in the photographer's house there within that 3000 square-foot space, along with an ancillary building that became the apartment used by Leppenraub's sister Moira [played by Ann Magnuson]."

A prop room and freezer were also built on that site; the only interior used in the Leppenraub sequences not shot on that location was the photographer's work room/studio, which wound up being another locale - a warehouse in Toronto proper. The artist's graphic photography is displayed on this room's walls. Although the idea of using large backlit transparencies was considered (and abandoned due to expense), photo blow-ups were featured instead, with lighting coming from above frameline. "The photographs were based on simple, specific script directions," Vincent points out. "Robin found a photographer [Eric Anthony Johnson] to shoot them, based on direction from her, Kasi and I. Some of these shots were turned into multi-paneled triptychs. In creating a body of work for this character, we first thought David Leppenraub's photos might resemble the work of Joel-Peter Witkin or even [Robert] Mapplethorpe [1946 - 1989], though we felt his images were a little too extreme. We found our target by turning back to early 1900s pictorialism, specifically F. Holland Day [1864 - 1933], which had a classical sort of beauty."

Like many of her colleagues, cinematographer Amy Vincent has many concerns about changes that can be introduced to imagery during the post process of our electronic age. Such considerations only become intensified when one is dealing with a profusion of visual effects, which was the case with The Caveman's Valentine. "I tried to make a concerted effort to stay as involved in postproduction as possible - which is sometimes tough because it's 'off to the next job' - to work with the digital effects and optical house to ensure that there wouldn't be any problems with the answer printing process.

"Kasi and I wound up very happy in coming back to a more organic approach to the effects," she continues. "I'm learning more about digital effects all the time, but for the world of Caveman's Valentine, a simpler photochemical approach often worked best. Most of these effects-oriented visions were coming from a human mind, and weren't representing some mathematically complex scientific gadgetry at work.

"I'm glad that this movie's look seems interesting to the eye, but I'm also pleased that the visuals don't supersede the story. Early reviews are praising Sam's performance as one of the best he's ever given, so it wouldn't make sense to do anything that took away from that aspect. Lots of films now seem overwhelmed with effects, but Kasi isn't one to tell that type of story."

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