The cinematographer’s foremost challenge on Any Given Sunday was to lend each of the film’s five football games its own distinct look. Crucial to this goal was Totino’s decision to employ both Kodak and Fuji stocks. “For instance, I shot with Fuji’s 125 ASA 8531 film during the first half of the first home game at the Orange Bowl in Miami, which took place during the day. The second half turned into night, so I switched to Kodak’s Vision 320T 5277. Game 2 was another Miami exterior daylight game, which I shot entirely with the Fuji 8531. Game 3 was an exterior at Pro Player Stadium in Miami, which was meant to stand in for a Los Angeles stadium, and I shot the whole game with Kodak [EXR] 5248.
An accomplished amateur Italian chef, Totino maintains that “cinematography is like cooking — you use the ingredients you need to make a given recipe. The fact that Kodak and Fuji stocks each have their own look added to the film. A lot of the locations have a different feeling, and I wasn’t trying to keep a continuity of look throughout. Early on in production, I shot some Kodak Vision 200T 5274 at some nighttime locations, because I wanted more of a defined contrast. I also used 74 in the locker room at Pro Player Stadium for Game 3. I used 77 for most of the interiors and nights. I like to mix it up, and I used a lot of different stocks.”
Totino says that his “kitchen instincts” were met with occasional bemusement from Stone. “At one point, I was explaining to Oliver the effect of mixing some colors with HMI light,” he recalls with a chuckle. “Oliver said to me, ‘Everything to you is like a pasta recipe! You put in a little paprika and some pepper, and you lay in a little salt�’”
In addition to their use of different stocks, Stone and Totino also mixed their lens strategy to add to each game’s distinct character. “For some games, we went with longer lenses, which really added to the effect of the cameras inside the action,” Totino says. “For other games, we used zoom lenses exclusively. The wide angles were a bit tough sometimes, because we had to worry about how full the stands were with extras. Long lenses really seemed to get in on the action and isolate the players. You really felt them. I shot mostly with Panavision cameras, but I used [Panavised] Arri 435s for the high-speed footage. I initially wanted to shoot with Arriflex Zeiss lenses, but the necessity of using the Panaflex 3:1 and 11:1 lenses, which are superior zooms, made us go that route. I’m generally not a fan of zooms at all. They have a lot of glass inside, and if you have a large focus pull, the frame size breathes a little. I’d rather take a few extra moments to change a lens than use a zoom, which is a lazy man’s lens. They were pretty necessary for what we were doing, though.”
In the interest of lending the game of football a more stylized, distinctive look, Totino chose to disregard strict realism in his lighting approach. “Generally, I didn’t use any stadium light,” he says. “I wanted to stay away from that look, because all football movies are shot that way. I think a lot of people involved with the film were apprehensive about that. They felt like, ‘This isn’t the way a football film is shot, it’s not the way football is supposed to look.’ But that’s almost encouragement to me, because I’m ready to prove them wrong.”
While available light — augmented with bleached muslin bounce for sideline shots — was employed for day games in the mostly sunny Miami stadiums, Totino felt free to indulge his experimental side for the night games. During the darkened second half of Game 1 at the Orange Bowl, Totino made the unconventional decision to light the stadium entirely from one side. “I thought it would be interesting, because everybody’s so used to seeing football lit one way,” he says. “I used 24 Dino lights, each of which contained 24 medium and spot bulbs. Part of the reason we lit from one side was so the viewer couldn’t see more into the stands. In Game 4, which took place in the rain, I wanted the scenes backlit to pick up the moisture and make the game look very dramatic. The backlight for the rain game was the same as the one-sided lighting in Game 1, with the difference that we shot into the light, with very little fill.”
The conceit of setting the film in the near future was necessitated by the actions of the image-conscious National Football League, which decided at the last minute that it wouldn’t sanction the film because of concerns about the warts-and-all script. Nevertheless, this key story alteration freed up the filmmakers to conceive of visual improvements to the way the game is currently presented. “[Production designer] Victor Kempster designed huge continuous advertising on the walls around the stadium,” Totino details. “It was like one big lithograph or silkscreen. All of the different advertisements had a football theme, and they melted into each other around the stadium. It was so much more artistic than what you see now in NFL football. When the league sees this film, I think it will inspire some ideas. When we had to do a sideline shot, it was like putting somebody in front of a painted backdrop.”
[ continued on page 4 ]