First off, the various rear-projection computer “readouts” built into the bridge set would not read on film properly if the room was illuminated much above 20 footcandles. In addition, Kline was shooting in anamorphic 35mm and was using 65mm for any live shots that would later be combined with visual effects. Nevertheless, Wise wanted a depth of field that would allow him to spread actors across the widescreen frame, where they were often staggered at varying distances from the camera. Once again, Kline’s solution was to use split diopters; he employed them “on about 80 percent of the scenes shot on the bridge, sometimes using as many as three in the matte box to get the required composition in focus while concealing the seams in shadows, hot spots or vertical lines found in the set.”

Much of the soft light in the film was created with directional bounced light, generally angled off of cards or foamcore, because there was not enough distance to use direct sources and diffusion. To avoid flatness, Kline often combined this technique with straight backlight, or would light a wall and allow the actor to slip into semi-silhouette or even full silhouette.

Kline wanted to support the film’s muted production design with his photography, and he decided to control contrast through lighting and the overall color palette instead of relying on special lab work. Because much of his footage would be subjected to optical-effects work, he did not want to degrade his images or allow any buildup of grain. He shunned zooms for the same reason, instead employing high-speed Panavision primes to help ensure optimum image quality and a “pristine” look. “In the end, however, Star Trek is an effects film, and [visual-effects supervisors] Douglas Trumbull — who also worked with us on Andromeda Strain — and John Dykstra [ASC] deserve much of the credit for its success,” says Kline.

Although the cinematographer has plenty of experience working with major actors, the “biggest” star he ever worked with was the great ape in King Kong, Dino De Laurentiis’ 1976 remake of the 1933 classic. Jessica Lange stars as the beauty who beguiles the towering beast. Directed by John Guillermin, Kong was a complex production on many levels, but the dilemmas invariably boiled down to one issue: making the 50'-tall gorilla seem believable through the use of life-sized and miniature effects. Italian animatronics expert Carlo Rambaldi earned the bulk of the credit for creating Kong as an impressive, full-sized ape with movable appendages. However, makeup artist Rick Baker, who performed marvelously in the Kong costume on miniature stages, deserves his share of kudos for providing the big simian with the essential personality that sells the character. Aided by second-unit cinematographer Harold Wellman, ASC, who specialized in effects photography, Kline worked closely with Baker throughout the studio-based portion of the shoot. “Rick proved to be a most talented and cooperative performer,” he attests.

In close-ups, one of Kline’s most effective tools for giving Kong life was also perhaps one of his least powerful: a small quartz lamp that he would handhold just off camera. Using his bare fingers or a gobo to delicately flag and shape the light, he added a bit of free-floating fill to the creature’s expressive brown eyes, which were, in fact, Baker’s own, covered with oversized scleral contact lenses. “It’s more than just an eyelight, really,” the cameraman says of his “Kline Light,” a technique he actually began using many years before Kong. “It adds just a twinkle of life, a glimmer, and a touch of fill. I’d fan it and direct it based purely on intuition, depending on what the performer was doing. Because I stood right next to the lens, I could see exactly what was needed.”

Although 90 percent of Kong takes place in “exterior” settings, approximately 80 percent of the production was actually shot onstage at MGM. Footage taken on identical, full-sized and 1⁄10-scale sets had to mesh with location photography shot in New York City and on the Hawaiian isle of Kauai.

During the film’s climax, Kong climbs the twin towers of the World Trade Center and squares off against a squadron of attack helicopters. This sequence was largely shot onstage, with Baker performing in his stifling ape suit. However, the finale, in which a defeated Kong lies dead at the foot of the towers amid a crowd of thousands, was filmed on location in lower Manhattan. Back in the Seventies, Kline told AC that one angle taken from atop one of the towers — a wide shot looking straight down at Rambaldi’s massive, animatronic Kong prop in the plaza below — “was very difficult to light, not only because there was no place to hide the lights, but because of the distance from the lens to the subject, which was a quarter mile below us. What read in footcandles would not truly be the right exposure, so we had to use some educated judgment to determine what the right exposure might be. I was operating the camera, which was basically out on a tiny platform attached to the side of the building, and I communicated by radio with my gaffer, Ed Carlin, who was down below. We spread the light at 50 footcandles, but at that distance it looked like five. Fortunately, through some force-processing, we were able to get it right.

“It was quite impressive, really,” Kline says of the view from his vantage point. “We had about 30,000 people in the plaza, and there was an excitement in the air. It became very difficult to control the crowd at the end, and they literally tore Rambaldi’s Kong apart. They wanted souvenirs, and someone even stole his eyes, which were the size of bowling balls. My only regret was that nobody got a photo of me out on that platform, because our stills guy was afraid to go up there!”

A few years later, Kline shot Body Heat, which he now modestly refers to as “kind of a cult film.” To fans of film noir it is far more: an ode to the stylish, hardboiled genre born in the 1940s, and a film that has become a classic in its own right. Written and directed by Lawrence Kasdan and set during a steamy Florida summer, Body Heat is a potboiler that bears more than a fleeting resemblance to the noir favorite Double Indemnity. As one critic noted, the movie’s tough-talking characters “sound like they’ve been boning up on Chandler novels.”