Director of photography Don Peterman, ASC, helps give the term "illegal alien" a humorous twist in the sci-fi comedy Men in Black.
Asked to describe his role on director Barry Sonnenfeld's science-fiction farce Men in Black, cinematographer Don Peterman, ASC replies with a chuckle, "It was a big job." The duo had previously collaborated on the comedies Addams Family Values and Get Shorty; Peterman was first asked to shoot MIB while doing retakes on the latter film in late 1995. Though the cameraman had previously photographed fantastic beings in Splash, Cocoon and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (earning himself an Academy Award nomination for Trek), MIB's multitude of alien characters would soon make him a virtual expert on xenomorphs.
A native of Hermosa Beach, California, Peterman began his career as a loader and assistant in the opticals department at Cascade Pictures, the same commercial house where special effects pioneers Dennis Muren, ASC and Ken Ralston also got their starts. The cameraman's other feature credits include Flashdance (which also earned him an Oscar nomination), When a Stranger Calls, Rich and Famous, King of the Mountain, Young Doctors in Love, Kiss Me Goodbye, Best Defense, Mass Appeal, American Flyer, Gung Ho, She's Having a Baby, Point Break, Mr. Saturday Night and Planes, Trains and Automobiles.
Based on the cult comic book The Men in Black by Lowell Cunningham, MIB's premise will seem familiar to even occasional viewers of The X-Files. Known only by their initials, dark-suited MIB agents K (Tommy Lee Jones) and J (Will Smith) are part of a top-secret Federal bureau that monitors interstellar immigration. Their job: to keep their fellow Earthlings in a blissful state of ignorance by concealing the identities and activities of the nearly 1,500 aliens that live among us — mostly in Manhattan.
While investigating an unauthorized visitation, K and J uncover an intergalactic terrorist plot to destroy the Earth. Their nemesis, known as Edgar when disguised in human form (Vincent D'Onofrio), is actually a three-meter-tall, roachlike insect. The Ray-Ban-wearing duo eventually confront him in a showdown at the now-decrepit site of the 1964 World's Fair in Flushing Meadows, New York.
The picture was complex on both photographic and logistic levels; Peterman had to deal with complicated special effects issues (physical, makeup, mechanical and digital) throughout MIB's 17-week production. The cameraman recalls, "Fortunately, we had a nine-week prep period. We needed that time because there was a lot of New York location shooting scheduled in between our stage work at Sony Pictures in Los Angeles. Naturally, things changed all the time, such as deciding where to shoot certain scenes and where to build the sets. Until we started shooting, we didn't know whether we were going to do the night exteriors on location at Flushing Meadows or on a stage at Sony. We finally wound up building a big set on stage."
In fact, two key exteriors were constructed at Sony: Flushing Meadows and a desert along the U.S.-Mexico border. "There are so many effects in those scenes that to work in either New York with short nights or out in the real desert would have been impossible," says Peterman. "Starting in March of 1996, we shot the opening desert sequence and the MIB headquarters scenes at Sony. We went to New York in May and finished a lot of night exteriors in Manhattan. Then we then returned to L.A., where we'd also done some exteriors up in Simi Valley, and finished shooting on the Flushing Meadows stage, which we had prepared for while doing location scouting in New York."
Much of Peterman's prep was also spent with visual effects supervisor Eric Brevig of Industrial Light & Magic. "We mostly discussed when to use VistaVision, what stocks to use, and when we could get by just using 4-perf," the cinematographer says. "We also discussed angles, lenses and all that — with Barry working shots out ahead of time so ILM could match our stuff when they got into shooting miniatures and doing other effects work."
Peterman feels that the constraints imposed upon cinematographers by visual effects techniques have lessened radically since he shot the films Cocoon and Star Trek IV. He recalls, "Way back, when I was at Cascade, I did optical printer lineup and was trained to do effects work. All of that experience is now out the window because of computers, but I understand the concept of compositing layers of images — although I certainly never sought out special effects pictures because of my background. My agent had to talk me into doing Star Trek IV, which was a great experience and ultimately helped me in terms of dealing with the types of complex effects we had on this film. There's a certain mindset you have to have on an effects film like MIB in order to piece everything together and have a complete image of the film in your head while you're shooting."
Asked if working with Sonnenfeld, who was a highly regarded cinematographer before becoming a director, added an extra degree of difficulty to his work on MIB, Peterman offers, "Not at all like you'd think. When Barry asked me to do Addams Family Values, he said, 'I don't have to get involved with the photography, and I don't want to worry about the photography — I've got my own problems as the director.' He is very hands-off as far as the lighting, angles, or anything else is concerned, but he does like to pick the lenses, and they're going to be wide lenses. Barry always used wide lenses on the movies he shot, such as Raising Arizona and Blood Simple. He'll usually choose a 10mm, 14mm or 21mm, and he likes to shoot close-ups with a 27mm.
"Barry's philosophy is that you have to be in here with the camera to shoot a close-up," Peterman elaborates, gesturing to within a few feet of his own face. "Otherwise, the shot just doesn't ring true in his head. But of course when you do close-ups with such wide lenses, the subject can never actually look at the other actors. The distortion makes it seem as if they are looking in a completely different direction, which ruins the eyelines. To correct the problem, the cameraman usually puts a little piece of white tape right next to the lens, and the actor has to look at that during the shot.
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