If Wishes Were HorsesJohn Schwartzman, ASC crosses the finish line with Seabiscuit By Bob Fisher • Photos by Francois Duhamel
“Seabiscuit is about the American experience… it’s about hearts being broken and getting mended… America at a time of crisis during the great depression of the 1930s… It is also a story about second chances for a broken down race horse who wouldn’t quit and for the people who believed in him,” says cinematographer John Schwartzman, ASC.
Schwartzman was in Austin, Texas, shooting The Rookie, a movie about a high school baseball coach whose dream was to play in the majors. They were shooting five days a week. Sometimes Schwartzman flew home to Los Angeles to visit his family on weekends. This weekend he decided to stay in Austin and read. Michael Rich, who authored the script for The Rookie, recommended Seabiscuit, the best-selling, non-fiction book by Laura Hillenbrand.
Schwartzman was skeptical and asked, “Who wants to read a book about a race horse in the 1930s? How can that be interesting? Michael said, ‘Trust me. It’s one of the best books you’ll ever read.’ I went to Book People at 10 a.m. and bought a copy of Seabiscuit. I got back to my apartment, made some lunch and started reading. I read straight through 400 pages and finished at 3 a.m. Sunday. It is a magnificent story.”
Schwartzman urged John Lee Hancock, a screenwriter who was directing The Rookie, to look into acquiring rights to produce a film based on Hillenbrand’s book. He told Hancock that he knew something about the subject, because his father had owned racehorses. Schwartzman had spent countless days of his childhood at racetracks with his father, and often in the company of Martin Ritt, a blacklisted director.
After reading the book, Hancock instructed his agent to inquire into the movie rights. He discovered that director/writer Gary Ross had acquired the rights three years earlier when the story first appeared as an article in American Heritage magazine. Schwartzman and Ross had attended the same private school in Los Angeles. Ross was three years ahead of him. It was a small school, so they knew each other casually, but they hadn’t spoken for some 25 years.
Following the completion of The Rookie, Schwartzman told his agent that he was going to concentrate on directing and shooting commercials until he read a script he wanted to shoot. He has been filming TV spots since the dawn of his career.
“Several ad agency people had suggested that I have the temperament and ability to direct as well as shoot commercials,” he says. “When I got an opportunity to sign on with RSA, Ridley Scott’s company in Los Angeles, I grabbed it, because they have a history of doing interesting work. I think directing has made me a better cinematographer, because it has given me insights into the things a director has to deal with.”
“The Rookie was an opportunity for me to get back to my roots,” says Schwartzman. “We had no money and no time, but it was a wonderful story with a talented first-time director. I suggested shooting exteriors in the middle of the day with top-light and very harsh shadows creating a broad range of contrast. You end up with people having dark circles under their eyes, but that was the point. Why would anyone want to leave this small town in Texas, if The Rookie looked liked The Natural? The audience understands those visual clues.”
Schwartzman says he and Ross connected during their first meeting. After some discussion, the director asked Schwartzman if he was interested. It was like asking a fish if he was interested in swimming or a bird if he felt like flying. Within a few weeks, they began an extraordinary process of preparing to shoot a story that stretches from 1904 to 1942 and incorporates scenes from eight horse races, including a classic 1939 match pitting Seabiscuit against the champion War Admiral.
“Seabiscuit was a broken down horse who had been beaten into submission,” Schwartzman says. “He was comparatively small, had bowed legs and the aerodynamics of a duck. But, he had a giant heart and didn’t like to lose. His owner, Charles Howard, was the richest man in the Western United States, whose 15-year old son had been killed in a car crash on his property. The trainer, Tom Smith, was taciturn and the jockey was Red Pollard, who was beleaguered with troubles. He was the one who discovered the possibilities for greatness in Seabiscuit.”
Schwartzman recites one of Ross’ lines that reflects the spirit of the film, “Just because someone is banged up doesn’t mean their whole life is worth throwing away.”
Ross is the son of a successful screenwriter. He describes himself as a fabulist. Ross earned Oscar nominations for authoring Big and Dave. He debuted as a writer/director in 1998 with Pleasantville. Ross pioneered the use of digital film mastering when he converted analog images to ones and zeroes, and selectively desaturated main elements of scenes set in a black and white TV world in that film.
Schwartzman was born and raised in Los Angeles, where his father was a lawyer who specialized in the entertainment industry. His clients included Stanley Kubrick, Francis Ford Coppola, John Schlesinger and William Friedkin. Schwartzman nurtured a boyhood interest in still photography, but his father steered him away from a career in the film industry, because he felt “it was a recipe for a lifetime of heartbreak and insecurity,” Schwartzman recalls. He majored in economics at the University of Colorado, but minored in fine arts and ultimately decided to pursue a career as a filmmaker.
Schwartzman enrolled in the graduate program at University of Southern California, where he concentrated on cinematography. He began his career in the mid-1980s, mainly shooting hundreds of music videos, commercials and occasional horror flicks on minimal budgets. His credits include The Rock, Conspiracy Theory, Armageddon, Edtv and Pearl Harbor.
“Gary is a fantastic screenwriter,” Schwartzman says. “His script is a beautiful adaptation of the book. It is very emotional without being overly sentimental. We prepared by spending twelve weeks together, eight hours a day, talking about the script and making shot lists that filled a 250-page notebook. There was no one else around except the script supervisor. We read the script, dreamed the movie and storyboarded with words instead of pictures. One interior scene takes place on a very cold day. There is condensation coating a window. We described what it felt like instead of storyboarding the shot. Another shot happens at the break of a “blue dawn.” What does that feel like?
Schwartzman and Ross dug deep into a wealth of historical references, much of it uncovered by production designer Jeannine Oppewall. She found newsreels of horse races and historical events at the UCLA Film archives and other film and still picture archives. Schwartzman later used video copies of the newsreels to recreate scenes in 1930s movie theaters of audiences watching period newsreels. Much of the 16 mm black and white positive film still exists, but most of it was only available in video format.
They scanned the video into digital format. The editor, William Goldenberg, cut the pieces together and provided DVDs for Schwartzman’s comments and suggestions.
“I’d asked things like, ‘Can we make that scratch bigger, and add more contrast in this scene?’” says Schwartzman. “He did a great job. I stacked two 24P Barco projectors one on top of the other to get the luminance needed. We filmed the black and white images in color with a static camera on a screen in a movie theater in San Pedro. It looks real.”
One seminal scene they designed compresses the 1928 collapse of the U.S. stock market into a 40-second montage of still images with a narration by historian David McCullough. Schwartzman likens that scene to the visual montages that Slavko Vorkapich integrated into movies during the 1920s through the 1940s. Vokapich taught a generation of USC film students to think about how to express themselves visually.
Ross and Schwartzman analyzed how to film realistic races and other scenes with horses that could accelerate from zero to 40 miles per hour in three strides. There were countless questions, including how the horses would react to Technocranes and insert cars in their midst. How do you film those scenes without endangering the horses?
They were convinced that the movie should be framed in a 2.4:1 wide screen aspect ratio, partially because that matches the dimensions of the horses, and also because the story cries out for cinematic‘Scope images. The main question was whether they should shoot in anamorphic or Super 35 format with spherical lenses.
“I’ve probably said 50 times in print how superior the anamorphic format is in terms of picture quality,” says Schwartzman. “When you shoot Super 35 there is an extra optical step for squeezing the spherical images into wide screen format. But I wasn’t sure if we could pull it off with anamorphic lenses. Wider-angle lenses would convey more of the speed and tactile feeling of energy of running horses moving towards or away from the camera. A 21 mm spherical lens covers the same point of view as a 40 mm anamorphic lens. The spherical lenses also tend to be sturdier, because there are fewer moving parts, and we anticipated shooting on rugged terrain with insert cars.”
Ross and Schwartzman also discussed following the trail the director had blazed on Pleasantville by converting the film to digital files for timing and fine-tuning images, in addition to integrating visual effects shots. That could alleviate concerns about image quality, since the footage recorded with spherical lenses would be “squeezed” into wide screen format in the computer and recorded directly onto color intermediate film.
All of those and other questions were answered beginning in June when Ross and Schwartzman arranged to film tests with five real racehorses along with their trainers and jockeys at the Santa Anita Park. Schwartzman arranged to shoot tests with different insert cars outfitted with Technocranes. They quickly determined that the horses weren’t spooked by the camera cars and cranes around or above them.
Schwartzman observes, “The horses are bred to do one thing, and that is to run counterclockwise as fast as they can, and nothing distracts them from that. Horse racing is the most dangerous sport in the world. There are more fatalities than in auto racing. We needed to find a safe way to track with the horses and shoot without creating hazards. We knew we couldn’t run the camera car directly behind the horses in case one stumbled. I thought about putting a 30-foot Technocrane on a vehicle, so the camera car could drive parallel to the horses, about eight feet away. That way, if there was an incident, we could just boom the crane up and out of the way. If a horse stumbled, we could drive past it like we were in lane two on a freeway and the horse was in lane four.”
Schwartzman realized there weren’t going to be a lot of three and four take shots, because there was only so much they could ask from the animals.
“We needed an insert car fast enough to keep up with the horses, and which carried the two remote, gyro-stabilized cameras needed to tell the story,” he says.
This is where Allen Padelford entered the scene. Padelford is an ex-race car driver and insert car designer. He designed and built the Mobile Technocrane Vehicle (MTV) for Seabiscuit. The 28,000-pound truck can be driven 45 miles an hour over rugged terrain carrying a Wescam XR head in front and a 30-foot Technocrane off the back. They also designed another vehicle to carry two animatronic horses.
“It was 12 inches off the ground and traveled 40 miles an hour,” Schwartzman says. “The animatronics held realistic-looking horse heads made of foam. They moved up and down simulating the movements of horses with real jockeys seated on both of them. The camera car could drive inside or outside of the real horses, so we could shoot close-ups of the jockeys, Tobey and Gary Stevens, looking like they were in the middle of the race. They could talk with each other. Jockeys do that all of the time. We shot those scenes with a Steadicam and handheld cameras.”
Schwartzman and Ross also shot Super 35 test footage that they ran through digital mastering processes at Technique, EFILM and Cinesite in Los Angeles. The same film was also optically “squeezed” onto a wide-screen intermediate at Technicolor labs. Schwartzman and Ross felt that all three digital masters were superior to the optical test.
“All three facilities did wonderful jobs with impressive picture quality,” says Schwartzman. “I wasn’t comparing them. We just wanted a full sense of the possibilities, and what it was like working with different colorists. They were all in the game. Based on that test, we decided to shoot in Super 35 format and time the film digitally.”
Schwartzman shot another test designed to create point-of-view footage from the perspective of the jockeys. They initially experimented with an Aaton A-Minima camera, which weighs about four pounds with a battery pack and magazine. He was impressed with the results, but worried about what could happen if a rig broke and the camera fell on the track. What if a horse stepped on it and injured itself?
“We decided to take a different approach, borrowing a technique that Emmanuel Lubezki (ASC) used in Ali,” he says. “We used two very small PAL lipstick cameras in a housing that was about the size of a package of chewing gum. We extracted a 1.33:1 image from each camera and digitally stitched them together at Cinesite to create 2.4:1 pictures. The whole thing weighed less than a pound. We weren’t worried about the quality of the images, because they were brief glances from the jockeys’ perspective.”
During preparation, Schwartzman also worked closely with Oppewall and costume designer Judianna Makovsky, who played important roles in defining the period look. Schwartzman notes that no cinematographer can make a drab set or wardrobe look appropriate. They tested fabrics and colors in addition to makeup and hair.
“Our color palette was fairly muted until we shot at the track,” he says. “The silks worn by the jockeys were a metaphor for wealth. The poor people escaped the realities of their mundane lives at the racetrack. Charles Howard got the tracks to open the infield to ordinary people who couldn’t afford box seats in the grandstands. The grass was a lush emerald green, and the red, blue and yellow silks exploded with saturation.”
Schwartzman and Ross wanted a natural look with the camerawork transparent to the audience. Most the characters wore fedoras or other 1930s style hats in exterior scenes. The brims took the top-light out of their eyes, and Schwartzman made painterly use of bounce cards or subtle fill as he felt it was necessary.
Much of the story was filmed at Santa Anita Park, which Schwartzman points out looks pretty much the same today as it did during the 1930s. There are a couple of satellite dishes, a shopping mall in the background from one angle and an office building visible about a mile away in another direction. Those details were digitally “painted” out of the backgrounds during postproduction.
The Howard’s home was a practical house built in Thousand Oaks, California. The 10,000-square foot set was designed to give Schwartzman the freedom to light and move the camera in ways that served thedrama without wild walls or ceilings. Four weeks of additional photography in and around racetracks in Saratoga, New York and other U.S. locations completed the film.
“The entire movie was shot during the fall and winter,” Schwartzman says. “We couldn’t have picked a better schedule. When we were in Saratoga, the leaves were falling off the trees, but more importantly, when it is 20 degrees (Fahrenheit) you can see the cold in the actors’ faces and performances, and also in the horses’ breath. The actors’ noses were red, and the horses were breathing steam. You can’t fake the reality of those effects.”
His camera package was provided by Panavision in Los Angeles. It included a couple of Panaflex Platinum bodies and a high-speed camera for shots where Ross wanted to slow down or speed up the action. The latter was used sparingly. Schwartzman carried a complete set of matching Primo prime and zoom lenses.
He limited his film inventory to two stocks, Kodak Vision 200T film 5274 and Kodak Vision 500T film 5279. Schwartzman notes that the 200-speed film offered an extra stop compared to a 100-speed emulsion, and that contrast and grain characteristics tested well during the digital mastering tests. Since the days would be shorter and darkness came earlier during the fall and winter seasons, the extra stop gave him the latitude to keep shooting with the same stock when afternoon scenes finished near dusk. About two weeks into production, John Bickford at Technicolor showed Schwartzman test footage of the new Kodak Vision2 500T film 5218 negative shot by John Toll, ASC.
“It was beautiful,” he says. “It had the grain structure of a medium-speed film with no color shifting or intrusive grain, and shadow details in the nether regions of darkness. I immediately switched to using that 500-speed film. I used it for night work, primarily, and for interiors when I couldn’t bring the light level up to shoot (52)74.”
Schwartzman contends that Seabiscuit was easy to shoot, because the actors were responding to the story, the locations were great and the pre-production planning defined the intentions of every shot. The script told him how to light and choose lenses, and where to place and how to move the camera. He points out that the horses trained and raced in beautiful places, but that countless aesthetic decisions were designed to amplify the action, mood and to accentuate the sense of time and place.
There were actually five horses cast in the role of Seabiscuit. They were identical chestnut horses with little white stars on their foreheads. One was better at lying down, another liked to run like the wind, and a third was most comfortable in the starting gate.
“Gary is an incredibly visually oriented director, but he gave me the license to trust my instincts, and I gave my crew the same latitude,” Schwartzman says. “Sometimes while we were blocking, we would talk about where we wanted to put the camera, and Ian Fox, my A camera operator would ask why. Sometimes he had suggestions. It was a totally collaborative effort with the entire crew.
“There are visceral scenes where we put the audience places they have never been before,” he continues. “Normally, you watch horse races with binoculars from a quarter of a mile away. It’s a different experience when you are right there in the middle of the race with the jockeys and horses.”
There are also intimate scenes, including some when the jockey is saddled on Seabiscuit, talking to the trainer or owner or both of them. Schwartzman didn’t want to lay dolly track, because it could accidentally trip and hurt one of the horses. As an alternative, he used a Steadicam or Technocrane to move around the horse and characters. That also enabled him to adjust to spontaneous movements of the horses.
“We shot most exteriors during the winter, when the light was beautiful,” he says. “The sun was low and made an arc across the horizon. We didn’t have to worry about matching light, because there were 459 scenes and a lot of them were 5/8 of a page. The light and weather were generally consistent enough to get us through the shot.
“We started many days shooting with the sun in the morning and ended them on cloudy afternoons. We felt that the weather and exterior light were part of the story and embraced Mother Nature. If it snowed or rained, it became part of the setting. Many other times, we created rain on sunny days and sunshine on rainy afternoons.”
Crowd reaction shots were filmed night for day because of the limited sunlight available during the winter. When the sun went down, Schwartzman created artificial daylight by lining up some 20 18Ks and a Musco light diffused through 400 square feet of silk. He blasted it into the grandstand to show people reacting to the race in daylight. There were generally a few hundred extras scattered in the stands surrounded by some 7,000 three-dimensional, inflatable mannequins dressed in silkscreen t-shirts. The low-tech crowds are totally convincing and cost-effective.
“The mannequins cost about 40 cents each,” says Schwartzman, “and when we let the air out they folded up to the size of newspapers. We could put 7,000 of them on a five-ton truck and drive them to the next venue. You can’t tell they aren’t real people, because there are enough details, and your mind fills in the spaces. It’s a fraction of the cost of crowd replication, and I’m convinced it’s more believable.”
The final stage was the digital intermediate process at Technique. It wasn’t a new concept. Schwartzman has seen miles of his music video and TV commercial images converted to digital video files. He observes that telecine and color correction technologies have become increasingly sophisticated, providing more flexibility for manipulating images in an interactive process.
“You see the digital images projected on a screen, and you can tell the colorist or timer, ‘Put a window around the sky to isolate it. Now make it a little bluer. Let’s see what that looks like,’” he says. “There are countless possibilities for adding and subtracting nuances in colors, textures and contrast, so it is essential for the cinematographer to supervise timing. The most important thing you have to realize is that while the possibilities are exciting, it doesn’t preclude the need to shoot good film. It has to be there on the negative, and then you can tweak it and create nuances.”
Schwartzman was just beginning to time the film at Technique as we went to press. We will follow up with him in a future issue. • |
Seabiscuit
About
three weeks after The Rookie began playing in cinemas last
March, Schwartzman heard from Ross, who wanted to speak with him
about Seabiscuit. During their first meeting, Ross explained
that his seven-year-old son told him to hire the cinematographer
who shot The Rookie. Ross took his son to see the film again,
and afterwards decided it was the aesthetic approach he was envisioning
for Seabiscuit. 
Seabiscuit 