Providing the movie studio with sharp, well-exposed and dynamic photos of major actors and pivotal scenes will always be the unit still photographer's "bread and butter," but a director's clout can be an influential factor in which stills are chosen to represent a film. British-born SMPSP member David James, who has photographed three of Steven Spielberg's most recent films Schindler's List, The Lost World and the upcoming Saving Private Ryan says that the famed director maintains a unique and photographer-friendly modus operandi when it comes to culling stills from his productions. Rather than simply handing off his film and transparencies to the studio publicity department, James reveals, Spielberg "trusts [me] to pick the pictures myself. Whatever I want to show him is what he'll look at. He never looks at my contact sheets. I show Steven the 8-by-10s that I'd like him to see, he selects the ones he likes, and those shots then go to publicity."
Since the director has a huge passion for still photography, the hands-on arrangement means that Spielberg's movies will often be represented by some unusually daring and iconoclastic unit still photography. "Saving Private Ryan is about World War II and the Normandy landings," James explains, "so I made [legendary war photographer] Robert Capa my hero for the film. I tried as hard as I could to emulate his work in my stills. If one of my photos looked like a blurred war picture, it was a winner. I've got more pictures of the back of [star] Tom Hanks' head than I have of the front, because you never saw a combat war photographer running backwards in front of soldiers in World War II. They'd be keeping low behind the soldiers, so that they wouldn't get hit!"
While it's tempting for still photographers to focus much of their attention on the actors, those behind the camera often prove to be every bit as expressive. During the shooting of Schindler's List, James was aware of the emotional toll the project was having on Spielberg. "We were shooting the last scene of the movie at an old factory in Poland, when Oskar Schindler is put in a car and drives away with tears running down his cheek," the photographer recalls. "Steven said, 'That's it, it's a wrap.' He was at his monitor, and his back was to me. Suddenly he put his hands on the monitor and started crying! His wife, Kate, was touching his shoulder, and I shot that moment. You can't see Steven's face in the photo, but you can tell it's him from the cap and the jacket. It's probably my favorite shot of Steven."
Another unheralded aspect of the unit still photographer's responsibilities is the shooting of images that will be featured in the finished movie, such as a framed family photo propped up on a character's desk or a montage of black-and-white photos in a period film. "You end up being every kind of photographer you can imagine," Melinda Sue Gordon comments. "We do advertising photography, period photography. You always try to figure out who you are as a photographer, why you're there, and how you would be shooting it. On The Truman Show, it was a particular challenge because so much of the back story between the characters had to be established through my photographs. I actually had a week with the actors that was fully scheduled in the production. You end up functioning as a director in a way, moving actors through these photo sessions. I shot a wedding between [stars] Jim Carrey and Laura Linney, and we had bridesmaids, a reception, the whole bit. I also had to shoot a high school graduation, Thanksgivings, Christmases, and birthday parties involving characters at three different ages."
James finds himself constantly stimulated by the sheer photographic variety to be found on film sets and locations. "You're somewhat of a time-traveling photographer," he says. "I've shot in the 13th century for Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. I've been on the planet Mars with Arnold Schwarzenegger for Total Recall. I've been on the Normandy beaches in World War II on Saving Private Ryan, and in the Jewish ghettoes in the 1940s for Schindler's List. Who knows where I'll be next?"
Not surprisingly, the myriad visual challenges facing the unit still photographer demand total technical mastery. In the opening montage of Field of Dreams, Super 8 footage and home video were mixed with "aged" still photographs shot by Gordon. "The sequence started off at the turn of the century with old family photos," Gordon relates. "I shot a black-and-white photo of a little boy in a cornfield, printed it and then soaked it in a combination of tea, coffee and yellow food dye. The montage then moved into what was supposed to be the 1960s, when color photography was becoming more common. I shot a photo straight on 2 1/4" transparency, made a print and then dyed it to give it that golden ['60s] photographic look. There are several books on the preservation of photography, and I used examples of how it's done wrong as a kind of guideline!"
Similarly, for The Game, Tony Friedkin was asked by director David Fincher to provide a photo for a pivotal moment in the story when Michael Douglas' character finds an old photo of his father's suicide. "It was supposed to look as if it was shot in the 1950s by a police photographer, so I ended used a 4-by-5 camera with 4-by-5 film, just as they had in those days. I then worked with the lab really carefully to make sure the photo looked 'aged.' Even though the picture is onscreen for only a tiny amount of time, if I had shot it in 35mm, the audience would not have found it credible."
In general, however, the still photographer's role on the set is that of an observer rather than a participant. As one of the few crew members not usually making a direct contribution to what's onscreen, the still photographer can face some frustrating, occasionally insurmountable technical difficulties. Always challenging are evening and low-light scenes, since the cinematographer is lighting for the specifications of the motion-picture camera rather than the still camera.
"I got the lowest light reading of my entire career on The Game," Friedkin says with a laugh, recalling his work on director David Fincher's dark, nocturnal psychological thriller. "I was shooting with 1600 ASA film, at a shutter speed of 1/60 of a second and an 0.75 f-stop! At one point I said to David and [cinematographer] Harrison Savides, 'You guys have just broken the record!' Onscreen it's going to look okay because there's movement in the frame and actors moving from one side of the room to the other. But from a stills standpoint, you're dead. You'd like to change the lighting, but obviously you can't. You just have to employ super-fast lenses and maybe use a monopod, or just stay as rock-steady as you can at 1/15 of a second. Thank God film manufacturers have come up with some new high-speed color print films."
Low light levels aren't the only hazard of the job. At other times the unit still photographer can be at the mercy of more political considerations in the high-stakes climate of contemporary Hollywood filmmaking. One of the long-term goals of the SMpsp is to improve the standing of the unit still photographer within the sometimes rigid caste system of a Hollywood film crew. "I told the society's members from the very beginning, 'Whatever we do now, we'll probably never see the fruits of our labor, but it will be a blessing for the next generation of still photographers,'" Sorel says. "It will take a lot of time to get attitudes to change. You know, Hollywood is Hollywood. Right now it's a paradise for actors and agents, but not for everybody else. Still photographers often have a very tough time. On certain shows, an actor will say, 'You can't be there, you're in my eyeline.' On other shows, you might be working with a director who just doesn't want to give you any time at all. In this day and age, whether it's a big-budget or low-budget movie, sometimes the only thing that's important to the first assistant director is what's on the screen for the next day's dailies. As a still photographer, your work is going to be used six months down the line, so often they don't want to spend that extra second to allow you to get a shot."
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