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Robert Yeoman, at the end of the Master Class : "On the set of Asteroid City. I like Vincent’s photo on the left because it says, ‘no smoking’ and ‘no taking pictures’.” On the right, Vincent Scotet, Truman Hanks (loader) and Félix Terreyre Saint-Cast.
Robert Yeoman : Wes’s style of shooting is very different. First, I think it’s a little bit strange for people when they come on the set to see how we work. But once they get used to it, they kind of understand it.
Vincent Scotet : It becomes really funny.
Hélène de Roux : Did you guys find it strange at the beginning ?
VS : Oh, the learning curve is pretty steep. It’s demanding at first, because of the smaller crew, compared to what we would usually have. We still carry a lot of gear. It’s just the three of us, the 1st AC, the 2d AC and the loader. Nobody to take care of the video. So, it takes time to just... First of all, you have to stop fighting his system. You have to go with it. And that takes time. And once you just say to yourself, okay, I’ll just go with the flow and try to do my best. Obviously, Bob is very supportive, but then you have to just find systems to make your life easier and be able to work faster with very few people on set. When we roll, there’s just 10 of us on set. Everyone has to go away.
RY : You have to be doing something. And we had to fight. I remember when we started doing this, I would have to argue with Wes to have a 2d AC on set. He would just want the first AC to do the slates and everything.
VS : Which I still often do. But again, if that’s the way to do it…
HdR : Is that why he’s always shooting out of the US ? Because he couldn’t work with the Unions, right ?
RY : Part of it is that, yes. On Moonrise Kingdom we had the Boston Teamsters, who are notoriously… They’re like a mob. Wes would want to go shoot with the kids on a Saturday in the woods. Just me, a camera assistant, the sound guy who would boom himself. When the teamsters heard we were shooting on a Saturday, they said, “Oh, then we have to bring the trucks”. And Wes was like, “No, we don’t need the trucks. We have a camera, we got a battery, we got the lenses. We’ll just go with it.” We showed up and all the trucks were there, because they would get paid double time.
Wes was furious. And I don’t blame him. You know, I’m on his side. They were not pleasant. They weren’t there to help you make a movie, they were in the way. They were there to do as much overtime as they could. Somebody was ratting on us because one time he had a producer hold a bounce card, when he’s not allowed to do that. So, someone called the union, and Wes just got fed up and he said, “I’m out of here”. I’m a member of the Union, but I see how ridiculous it can be sometimes. When he’s in Europe, there’s no meal penalty. He can write the rules himself, which he wants to do. That’s why so many of the productions are moving to Europe now. It’s just cheaper. In America productions are hurting big time.
VS : I think it’s the flexibility that Wes enjoys, because we’re used to trying to be helpful. We won’t say, “I won’t touch this apple box, because this is not my job, I’m in the camera team.” It’s just not the way we work. I think it’s really more suited to Wes’ style of shooting, people being happy to do two things at a time, like pulling focus and handing a prop to an actor during a take. Once you get used to it, it’s a lot of fun.
HdR : Isn’t he aware that his way of working is different and you are very few ? Do you have more time ?
RY : No ! (Laughts)
VS : Part of our job is to make his life easier, not to trouble him with the fact that maybe we’re struggling because we could use more people, or this or that. This is exactly the opposite. We have to do as if it was not an issue and we have to be part of the solution for Bob and for Wes. After a few months working with him and once we got used to each other, and I think once he started to trust me, it became easier for me to talk to him directly and sometimes assess things. Once you build this sense of trust, it gets easier. The beginning is really difficult because you don’t have access to Wes. So, in my personal case I would rely on Bob or Sanjay or someone who knows him better to just help explain why this or that was not the way he wanted it. But once he gets used to it and he sees you are trying very hard to work within the system he’s put in place, he is not against you. You’re part of it.
RY : He brings these guys in all his movies now. Obviously, he likes them. He brought Sanjay Sami to the US, which was impossible. Owen Wilson, Adrian Brody, myself, we all had to write letters. Wes even went to the Governor ; he was not going to take no for an answer. Sanjay was the first below the line person from India to work in the US and became kind of a hero in India. They made it tough, and I guarantee you now with Trump in, it’s going to be even harder. It’s going to be impossible. That’s a longer subject, but it’s getting scary what’s going on in there.
HdR : Don’t you want to stay in France with us ?
RY : I love Paris. I like the energy. I live in LA, and it’s a whole different pattern.
HdR : You said that you teach at USC, and you are about to give a masterclass about shooting on film with the ASC. Do you have specific technical things that you want to make sure that your students know ?
RY : I try to downplay the technical things and make it more an expression of yourself. Students at USC are often just overwhelmed by the technical aspects of film, or even digital. Lighting, camera placement, lenses. I address those things, but I try to make them make films. At USC we have a stage with lights and cameras. I say, “so, what are you doing this weekend ? - Oh, we’re doing a thing like this”. So, we set up the situation and I show them different lighting options, so that they can learn as something that they’re actually going to be doing. I’m a big believer in learning by doing. Many of them have told me at the end of my semester, “Oh, I was so afraid of all the technical things of cinematography and now I’m so much more comfortable with it”. I teach technical things, but it’s not the emphasis of my class. I always tell them, “If you’re not having fun, go to the business school”. You should enjoy what you’re doing, and this should be fun. Make mistakes ! That’s why you’re a student. That’s where you learn, from your mistakes. I make the students be actors in the scenes, so they know what that’s like, and a lot of them don’t want to do it but I make them anyway be in front of a camera. Some of the people, particularly the Chinese students, don’t want to get out there. But then they start getting into it and having fun. I think it should be a process that you enjoy, you have passion for it. If you don’t have that, you’re not going to stay.
HdR : How did you understand that it had to be a process that one should enjoy ?
RY : When I was a student. Students would make little crews, and I often would be their cinematographer even though I didn’t know much technically. But I learned as I went along. I made mistakes, like we all do. But we would have fun, just as students making a film, even though the films were all pretty bad. My daughter went to film school, and she said, “oh, the films here are terrible”. I said, “well, that’s the whole point of it. Almost every student film is stupid.” I mean, some of them are great, but not all of them are that good. This is why you’re in film school. If your movie wasn’t so great, maybe make another one. It’s how you learn. I try to take the pressure off it. USC is a very high-pressure place.
HdR : How many students do you have ?
RY : In the intermediate class, there’s 15 and I teach the cinematography part of it. The intermediate class is digital ; they shoot these little Sony cameras which are pretty good cameras, and it’s a way to learn. My advanced class is 10. They’re all graduate students from all different countries and we shoot 35-millimeter film. They all have to shoot a little film in their semester, and rotate on every position – focus puller, grip, gaffer - on the others’ films. Even if you don’t want to be a dolly grip, now you’ll kinda know how to use a dolly, and you kinda know how to lead track, and you kinda know what’s involved in it. I think that’s important for people who want to become cinematographers or directors. You should know what everybody does.
HR : Try and pull focus when you’ve never done it before...
RY : Focus is always the hardest one, because they’re used to digital. Pulling focus at full aperture on film is tricky ! They have to do it old school, without a monitor.
HdR : Vincent, how do you work on a Wes Anderson movie ?
VS : Most of the time on the knob, old school. But whenever I feel I need it, I can use a monitor, like for a close-up on a long lens. Even on film it’s helpful. There’s not just one way of doing it, but I like to keep it simple. As we have to reload every 12 minutes, I like to stay close to the camera, stay close to Bob.
HdR : What kind of T stops do you have ?
RY : I always try to get at least a 4. That’s my stop for interiors, T4 or 5.6. Sometimes Wes will say to me, “I want to hold someone very close to camera and someone else far away.” Then we shoot at T11. Outside it’s easy, but inside, it gets a little trickier. On Asteroid City it was anamorphic, and we shot at 5.6 a lot.
VS : Often you’d have like a T4 base and then we have to build it up a little bit, so you get to 5.6 if it’s required. Last time it was Master Anamorphics, Cooke S4s for the black and white parts, and a 32mm Cooke Anamorphic for the corn field sequence.
RY : Wes likes to hold everything in focus, and a lot of times the Cooke, which are wonderful lenses, will fall off on the focus on the edges. If you have three movie stars in the frame, and one of them is on the edge, I have to keep them sharp. That’s why I like the Master Anamorphics, as they hold focus all across the frame. But the Cooke are wonderful lenses.
HdR : You’re giving a master class with the ASC in June about shooting on film. What are the most meaningful things that you want people to remember after your workshop ?
RY : It’s about trusting your eye. I was guilty of this when I first started : I tended to over light. They have to learn to trust their eye and trust the film. I use my light meter quite a bit, but many of the best shots I’ve ever shot in my life on film were shots where I was put in a very tricky situation. For instance, in Moonrise Kingdom, when the girl’s reading the book by the fire. Of course we weren’t allowed to use any lights ! We would start shooting right before it gets dark. Like, right now (he points at the dusk light through the window). We would start shooting it a little bit earlier, until it got really dark. I remember thinking after several takes, looking at my meter, “this is never going to work”. And oftentimes those were the most spectacular shots.
I remember in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou there was a shot of Bill Murray at the end of a dock. It was so dark I thought, “Oh man, we’re screwed…” And that came back as one of the most beautiful shots in the movie. You have to trust the film. Some of that comes with experience. Wes is always telling me to turn lights off. (laughs !) And sometimes he’s right. With digital you’re seeing exactly what you’re going to get so it’s a little easier. But you can be a little bolder sometimes. Trust the film. Don’t over light it. That’s one thing I really want people to realize. Nothing’s scarier than when you get the film back and it’s too dark and there’s nothing to do about it. But after a while... Shooting a film, I have a pretty good idea of what it’s going to look like.
HdR : And do you think this is something that you can teach ?
RY : I think it comes with experience. In my class, I will show them : with the fill light, without the fill light. Then we all go look at the dailies together : “This is with the fill light, this is without the fill light”. And maybe it’s better without the fill light. Just take chances. Taking chances in the past I almost never got into trouble. It almost is like, “Wow, that turned out great”. Particularly to students, I say, take chances. If I’m in a big movie with big movie stars, you better be a little careful, but the best shots often are ones where you take chances like those. You train yourself after a while. You can look at it just to your eye and know if you’re okay or not. But sometimes, like I said, I get surprised, it’s happened to me for sure.
HdR : Surprise is not a word you often hear on film sets right now nowadays, with monitors everywhere.
RY : With film, it’s different, particularly if you’re shooting at night and you have to get a T4 or 5.6. When you walk in the place it looks really lit, and the director will often come to me and say, “This is supposed to be a night scene”. But you want to shoot 5.6, so that’s when you have to trust your meter. I use the meters at night exteriors pretty much. I use the spot meter to make sure the background is still there. But that also comes with experience. Younger people who just shoot digitally have a different lighting idea because with digital, sometimes they’ll just pull out a little fill light and they’re ready to go. I’m not saying they don’t know how to light, but when you have to light for film, it really teaches you a discipline of lighting.
HdR : Did you guys learn about shooting analog in film school ?
Félix Terreyre : I did a 2-year technical training in Cannes, and then I had one year of license at the Sorbonne. On the whole, we had maybe one week learning about celluloid.
Vincent Scotet : At CineCreatis school in Nantes, we had the chance to shoot maybe 2 reels of 16mm during the last year.
RY : Several months ago, I bought an old Arri 16SR with Zeiss Super Speeds. I have the old wooden sticks and an old O’Connor head. I haven’t had a chance to use it yet, but when I get back, I’m going to find an adapter for the batteries and start shooting. I love old 16mm cameras. That’s where I started. We did the mini-series "Henry Sugar", for Netflix, on 16mm, anamorphic. which was amazing.
VS : We shot on Hawk x1.3 anamorphic lenses, which can give you either a 16x9 aspect ratio from a 4x3 sensor, or a 2.40 ratio from a 1.85:1 surface. The 2.35 short film is the 3rd one, Poison.
HdR : Robert, can you say a word about your work with William Friedkin ? You started with him as second unit cinematographer on To Live and Die in LA.
RY : I got hired to do a test, they liked it, and they started sending us out. There were four of us, including a sound team. Second unit, we did shots of the freeways and sunsets, nothing with actors, and they really liked that. Robby Müller, the main cinematographer, was very much a one camera type person, but we started doing these action sequences for which you have a wide and a tight. So, they brought me in to do the tight shots. And oftentimes in action, the tight stuff looks better than the wide stuff (laughs). So, we were like, “oh wow, look at the B camera, look at the B camera”. The shoot was going over and Robby had a previous commitment to do another Robert Altman film, so I took over for the last four weeks. I did all the car chase scene. Billy was... Not the easiest guy to work with. He was kind of crazy. A bit of a yelling and screaming.
HdR : HR : Is there anything that you learned from him back then that you’re still leaning on as of today ?
RY : His method of working. He was very definitive on what he wanted, but he gave me a lot of room lighting-wise and things. I loved Billy. I went back later, when I took that one picture of him by the Exorcist steps. He was doing a documentary about Exorcist. They called me and I said, sure, I’ll work for free, because he gave me my big break. Without that... Who knows what happened to me. After that, I did a movie with him called Rampage. He was difficult ; he doesn’t give you any time to light, or to do anything. But it makes you think quickly on your feet. Robby was kind of the same way. You must learn how to make your decisions very quickly, you can’t take a lot of time to light, and it better look good. Robbie was also very bold with the lighting : he would use front light, which I never would do–I always backlight or sidelight things. Occasionally, the light’s just blasting at people, like in Paris, Texas. It was very German. He was one of the first people I ever met to use fluorescent light, like in Barfly ! I had never seen that before, but it looked cool. Color temperatures, like in The American Friend, where he let the fluorescence go green.
He was very bold about what he did, and he taught me to be bolder and Friedkin taught me that too. And the one thing Friedkin taught me is that in action, you don’t want things to be smooth. You want it to be… (he groals and mimics a recalcitrant steering wheel). When he did The French Connection, a lot of it was just kind of crazy. When Gene Hackman is going underneath the subway, just the shots ! He says, “You look at the dailies and you’re like, ‘I’m not so sure about this’. But then when you edit those moments and things together, it creates this whole feeling”. Friedkin back then would often just do one take, and he wouldn’t shoot any coverage. He said he didn’t want the studio to go and wreck his movie afterwards. So, the most we ever shot was four or five takes. He felt it was better with the actors, who were fresher and more spontaneous in the early takes. After you’ve done the same shot over and over again the camera becomes very smooth, whereas he liked it if it was a little... We shot all the car scenes of To Live and Die In LA with no lights, which wasn’t heard of in Hollywood. At that time, they usually put big lights in front of the cars ; we didn’t use any lights on those car chase scenes and it just... gave it a gritty feel. About a year ago, I had to introduce the movie at the Academy in Los Angeles. So, I watched it again. It kind of holds up ! It’s a pretty good movie. The French Connection and Sorcerer are masterpieces. I saw a kid wearing an Exorcist shirt ! Even though Billy was rough and tough, I think people that knew him really loved him. He was super talented. I learned a lot just hanging out with him.
(Interview by Hélène de Roux for the AFC)
