Do you want the audience to see this film as a fantasy or reality?
Carroll: Today's audiences are pretty sophisticated, though they may not know why they are responding to something. It's our job to create alternate worlds that create emotional responses. I don't think they mind being manipulated that way.Zsigmond: If you are doing a Frankenstein movie or Star Wars, it doesn't have to be realistic — in fact, it should be more impressionistic or surrealistic. If you are telling a story about real people, the classical painters gave us a good model. They never lit anyone badly, and they never used soft light. They always had nice modeling light on the faces and darker backgrounds so the people would stand out.
How did your ideas about the look of the film change during production?
Carroll: There were fewer and smaller stylistic differences between the various segments than we originally discussed. When we started shooting, we decided it was better to minimize those differences and give the movie a cohesive look.Did you previsualize any specific actors in roles?
Carroll: I wrote parts with Gena Rowlands and Ellen Burstyn in mind, and fortunately they were interested. Gena and Ellen have auras. They seem to be lit from within, which is special when Vilmos Zsigmond is the cinematographer.Did you have time to shoot makeup and costume tests with everyone?
Zsigmond: We shot makeup tests with Gena, Ryan Philippe [who plays Keenen], Gillian Anderson [Meredith], Dennis Quaid [Hugh], and maybe some others. Keenan is supposed to be a young guy, but I was a little concerned that he was going to look too young. We decided to ask Ryan not to shave, and that gave him just enough of an edgy look.Did the different characters have visual signatures in terms of the way you lit them?
Zsigmond: Hugh is kind of suspenseful in the beginning. You don't know who he is or where he's from, but he shows up in a bar and claims he's killed his wife and child. We shot that scene film-noir style, like an old black-and-white mystery. Other characters, like Meredith, are lit more romantically with lots of backlight. However, these were subtle differences, because we didn't want it to look like six different movies.How long was the production schedule?
Zsigmond: We shot for 41 days. Scheduling was important. We were able to get star-quality actors because we only needed some of them for eight or 10 days. I think that Gillian Anderson worked the longest, 18 days. Sean Connery and Gena Rowlands worked for eight consecutive days, and all of their scenes were in one location.Was it a handicap to work with some of the actors for only six, eight or 10 days, in terms of trying to develop a rapport with them and learning how to light them?
Carroll: It was like starting another movie every week. We shot for five days a week and rehearsed on the weekends with the couple that was starting the next week. Vilmos and some of his crew were there, and they had an opportunity to do some blocking. That gave us an opportunity to break the ice with the actors.What was the shortest time you had one of the main actors?
Carroll: I think we had Jay Mohr for four days. He plays Mildred's son, who is dying of AIDS in a very sterile hospital setting. That mother-son love story involves some very difficult and emotional scenes that are important to the story.
Zsigmond: My real lighting job began during the rehearsals, when I saw what Willard wanted to do with the actors. Another factor was that because we had so few days with some actors, it was important for us to be ready to go at 9 a.m. every day.
Carroll: At the end of every day, we'd stage a rehearsal for the first scene the next day. It usually didn't take more than 10 or 15 minutes, but it helped us get started on time in the morning. That helped us a lot with our budget and schedule.
Willard, once you were shooting, did you have time to keep communications flowing with Vilmos, or were you totally focused on the actors by then?
Carroll: I'm not a 'monitor director,' so Vilmos and I were standing next to each other all the time. We kept talking. In fact, another advantage of working with Vilmos was that he also had really good rapport with the actors. That's really important on a character-driven film like this.Did you shoot in anamorphic or Super 35?
Zsigmond: Willard originally wanted Super 35, but the more I thought about it, the more I felt it should be anamorphic because the image quality is so much better. It's a different look. It turned out that Miramax didn't want Super 35 anyway.How did you use the anamorphic format to amplify story points?
Carroll: My favorite pure anamorphic shots are in the hospital. There's one shot in which Jay Mohr is on the far left side of the frame and Ellen Burstyn is on the right edge, with a lamp between them. Ellen moves and the lamp lights Jay in a sort of aura, with her more subdued in the background. We held that shot for a considerable amount of time. It's a really beautiful image that says what the relationship is about. You couldn't do it in 1.85:1.What type of anamorphic lenses were you using? Zsigmond: I prefer the older Panavision C-series lenses for a story like this, because faces look better and much softer - but not in the sense of softer focus. The C-series lenses see people the way your eye sees them.
Did you use any diffusion?
Zsigmond: I typically use some light diffusion because the lenses and camera stocks are so sharp today that you have to make the images look gentler and more lifelike. I like using a sharp film and lens for landscapes and wide-angle shots, but on close-in shots on people, I use very little diffusion — not enough for anyone to really notice it.
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