Have you applied any special lab processes?
Toll: I did a lot of testing at Technicolor before we left to go on location, and I was initially planning to do ENR prints because I really wanted to get the richest blacks possible. At the last minute before we answer-printed, though, I tested the new Kodak Vision print stock and it looked great. The blacks were very good, and I felt that the color rendition of the Vision stock was more appropriate for this picture than ENR. The ENR process is a great look, but it does desaturate some colors to a certain extent. I wanted to maintain the richness and variety of all the natural color we photographed in our tropical environments, and therefore switched to the Vision stock. Kodak was great, and we were able to get enough Vision print stock for the entire release.
While I'm on the topic, I must mention the work of color timer David Orr at Technicolor. He did a great job timing this movie on a very tight schedule. He was able to match the light in some sequences, which I was slightly nervous about. I actually was blessed on this picture with two great timers, because my dailies at Atlab in Australia were supervised by Arthur Cambridge, whom I'd first met on Wind. Arthur is the premier color timer in Australia, and I couldn't have been in better hands.
The presentation of violence in the film isn't quite as visceral as the battle scenes in Saving Private Ryan [see AC Aug. '98]. Was that by design?
Toll: The combat was certainly important to the story, which is about men experiencing warfare for the first time. However, the graphic and visceral aspects of that experience weren't nearly as important to Terry as the individual soldiers' reactions to the situation. Therefore, our presentation of that type of action isn't as hyperreal as it is in Private Ryan. I was initially interested in taking that kind of approach, but it wasn't Terry's focus. Gary Capo and the second unit did a lot of the combat footage, and they did a great job, but we weren't aiming for the same degree of intensity that Private Ryan has. This is a different kind of movie.
Were you keeping tabs on Private Ryan while you were in production?
Toll: We were shooting at the same time. My wife, Lois Burwell, was the chief makeup artist on Private Ryan. She was in Ireland and England while I was in Australia, and we would talk by phone or send e-mails back and forth. She was very excited about the work they were doing. She was designing amazing prosthetic devices and making elaborate blood rigs. She would tell me something like, 'I can't believe how great the dailies look. It seems so real; it's like you're actually watching the war. I'm really excited.' And I would say, 'Oh, that's really wonderful, dear. You must be so happy.' Of course, I was really thinking, 'My God, no, that's what I wanted to do on this film!' I had been trying to get Terry to do more graphic combat right from the beginning, but he didn't see the picture that way. After talking to my wife, I'd tell him, 'Hey, Lois is doing all of this graphic blood stuff on Private Ryan. And he'd reply, 'Oh, really? I don't think I want to do anything like that.' We were obviously interested in seeing how Private Ryan turned out, but it didn't have any influence on what we were doing. Now, after seeing Private Ryan, I must say that I think Steven Spielberg, Janusz Kaminski [ASC], and the crew of that picture created a whole new level of expertise with that type of action and effects work. They did the best job ever of creating that kind of combat experience on film. Ryan is a fantastic film.
Did you use multiple cameras for any of the battle footage?
Toll: We didn't do that as much as I had on Braveheart. There was only one day when we had a combined first and second unit and we shot with four cameras. The majority of the time, the first and second units shot with two cameras. I was almost reluctant to do this movie because of Braveheart; I thought that the last thing I should be doing at this point in my career was another day exterior battlefield movie [laughs], but I was drawn to the material and the idea of working with Terry. I tried not to think about Braveheart while we were shooting, and this movie didn't have that kind of scale. It didn't involve the same numbers of people, and we didn't put as much emphasis on the fighting itself. The battles weren't as grand in scope.
How extensive were the practical effects in those sequences?
Toll: Again, it wasn't quite as involved as the work in Private Ryan. We had a great special effects team, headed by an Australian named Brian Cox; they did a terrific job, but [the combat] wasn't the most important aspect of the picture. We had several mortar and artillery barrages that were fairly big, as well as nighttime pyro effects for a bombing raid on the airfield. All of our lighting in that sequence came from the explosions themselves; we played the soldiers in silhouette as the 'bombs' went off. We did some tests with the effects guys to determine how hot their explosions were going to be, and then exposed at around T4.
What kind of footage were you after when you went back to Guadalcanal?
Toll: One aspect of Guadalcanal that wasn't in the book, but which interested Terry very much, was the ethnographic aspect of the island. The story of the Melanesian people who lived there during the war is really interesting. They had existed for centuries in this very peaceful and tropical place when they were suddenly invaded by all of this large-scale violence. Even today, it's a fairly isolated environment.
When we went back to the island, we wanted to find some native people to put in the picture. One of the lead characters, Witt [played by Jim Caviezel], spends time in a Melanesian village, and that's where the picture opens. Terry wanted to introduce this idea early on, and he wanted to present these people in their traditional lifestyle, as it had existed back in the 1940s. We did a lot of research, and we discovered that this culture no longer existed in the areas of Guadalcanal that were logistically accessible to us. We therefore put together a special third unit to find a village and shoot anthropological footage. The unit was headed up by Reuben Aaronson, who had done a lot of National Geographic shoots. He and his team went to this traditional village on the south side of the island, and stayed there for a couple of weeks.
How did the Melanesians react to having a camera crew in their midst?
Toll: Sometimes it worked out, and sometimes it didn't, but that's the nature of ethnographic work. Reuben had an anthropologist with him, Christine Jourdan, who has made a career out of studying the people of the Solomon Islands. She really knew the people, and how to blend in with them. They shot footage of these people existing with no trace of modernity around them, and some of it's in the picture. Reuben had never shot 35mm, and he suddenly found himself working with a Panaflex and anamorphic lenses. He did a great job, though.
When the first unit went in later, we re-created a portion of the village in an area that was accessible to us, and got some of the locals to come in and interact with our actors. They spent a few days getting to know each other, and then we improvised a few sequences. The people were very natural, because all they had to do was be themselves. We used a very reduced unit to make them feel more comfortable.
What else did you shoot on Guadalcanal?
Toll: We were able to get some shots that established the geographic continuity between Savo Island, the beach, the palm trees and the hills. Savo Island was the site of several horrendous naval battles, and the huge coconut groves on Guadalcanal really had the signature look of the South Pacific. In addition, the hills on the island are within a mile or two of the beach, but those areas didn't exist in Australia. By shooting on Guadalcanal itself, we were able to establish that connection.
How did that experience affect you personally?
Toll: Going to Guadalcanal was the best thing we could have done to get a sense of the real circumstances of the war. In fact, there are still a lot of artifacts from the war lying around. The locals showed us pieces from their collections, which included weapons, uniforms, helmets, and so on. We were constantly finding remnants of the battle at some of our locations. One of the assistant directors even tripped over a spent artillery shell that was buried in the ground.
Being there also helped to give us a better appreciation for what everyone there must have gone through. The jungle on the island is an extremely uncomfortable environment — it's very hot and humid. We visited the sites of many of the battles described in the book, and they were pretty amazing. You just cannot imagine how horrible it must have been. The idea of these men living out there for months at a time in such dangerous and brutal combat situations seems just incredible to me. I think we all came away with a real sense of the sacrifice that was made by everyone who participated in the war. Hopefully, our film works as an illustration of that.
As much as any film I've ever worked on, this picture was about an idea. I believe that what Terry wanted the film to be about, most of all, was that the real enemy in war is the war itself. War, and not necessarily one side or the other, is the great evil. It isn't often that one gets to work on films of this nature, and I'm grateful that I had the opportunity to participate in making it.
© 1999 ASC