During the prep period, Kuras and Lee discussed a Seventies’ color scheme consisting mostly of burnt orange, red and yellow. Kuras and gaffer Ray Peschke (JFK, Natural Born Killers, He Got Game) also chose an appropriate palette of color gels for the key sources and backlights. To mimic the flares’ flickering firelight, they used a reddish-orange gel dubbed Mayan Sun (Rosco 318). Other gel shades included Yellow Sun (GAM 455), Flame (GAM 375) and occasionally Straw. In consideration of the cross-processed reversal work, certain colors were added to Therese DePrez’s production design; royal blue, yellow and orange, for example, happen to be exceptionally susceptible to supersaturation through cross-processing.
Kuras also let loose with gelled Par cans placed just out of shot as backlights during a neighborhood block party held by reigning Bronx mob boss Luigi (Ben Gazzara) during the blackout. This sequence includes handheld shots following baseball bat-toting thugs, who make their way into the crowd after conducting an organized patrol of the darkened streets. "Given that it was blackout, it wasn’t easy to think about how to light such a broad area," says Kuras. "We had to turn off existing practicals—streetlights or lights from the interiors of houses. In addition to party lights that would be run off of generators, we set up a Condor rigged with space lights, as well as a 12’ x 12’ muslin overhead for ambience."
The Unholy Sheen of 5017
For all intents and purposes, 5017 is a still photographers’ stock; the emulsion therefore had to be reperforated so that it could be run through Kuras’s Arriflex cameras. In order to do this work, Kodak required a month’s worth of advance notice, along with a minimum order of 14,000’. "I really like what Malik Sayeed did with 5017 in He Got Game—he’s a very innovative cinematographer," states Kuras. "There was one beautifully shot scene where some guys dressed in fluorescent orange and yellow came into a green room and threw a pair of red dice on the floor. The colors were supersaturated and had a lot of black in the shadow areas. I was struck by the way the colors were rendered, particularly the greens."
A hot, contrasty, yellow-green hue permeates the dance space of the Virgo Club, a local disco where the troubled Vinny and his wife, Dionna (Mira Sorvino), go to boogie down. This offputting tone resulted from shooting 5017 with practicals gelled with a Yellow Sun filter. Notes Kuras, "[That filter] has a green cast, but during the timing, I didn’t take all of the green out. It’s common practice for timers to automatically time green out. In this instance, I wanted to play off certain strange colors so that the look would convey the feeling of being unsettled. Just think about how creepy that time and place was—1977 with the Son of Sam on the loose. Nobody knew who the killer was. People were very afraid and even suspected each other—he could have been your next-door neighbor.
"5017 is a stock to be reckoned with," she adds. "The shadow areas will go very black unless there is enough fill. Without the ability to hide big lights in a small location, 5017 is a struggle because of the extreme contrast and slow ASA, especially for night exteriors. We tried to use it effectively, as in the scene where Vinny and Dionna are dancing in the Virgo Club. We used [strobing] Lightning Strikes units as our keys, along with some backlights and a couple of hard sidelights. A few years ago, I did something similar on a music video for the band Lush with director Mark Pellington, but I was using 5245, which is a very slow [50 ASA] stock. I just put in a few effects lights and then used the Lightning Strikes units to reveal what was in the shadow areas."
Compensating for 5017’s slow speed proved a bit too revealing during filming of a steamy sequence set in the infamous swingers club Plato’s Retreat. After an evening of clubbing, Vinny and Dionna wind up indulging in a Dionysian orgy of partner-swapping and substance abuse. Photographed with lights of different color temperatures, the Plato’s Retreat scenes resonate with varying tints. However, Kuras had to brighten every area with enough illumination (4K, 2.5K and 1.2K HMI Pars) to expose for the 64 ASA emulsion—much to the actors’ discomfort, given their semi-nude state. The cinematographer went to great lengths to reassure the performers, particularly Mira Sorvino, that once the footage was printed down, the debauchery would not be too overt onscreen.
The cinematographer also brought 5017 into play to capture David Berkowitz’s inner torment as he is holed up in his bedroom. Crouching on a ratty mattress, the Son of Sam (David Badalucco) clutches his head in mental anguish as the incessant barking of a neighbor’s dog drives him past the brink of madness. In other scenes, Berkowitz is shown scrawling his deranged rantings on the cluttered apartment’s plaster walls. Imbued with turquoise hues, the walls’ porous surface seems to pop off the screen. "I wanted the blacks to go off into darkness, and to give the colors a more super-saturated feel," offers Kuras. "In a way, that harkens back to the music video and commercial experiences I’ve had; when you get into the film-to-tape transfer, you can crush the blacks and manipulate the colors. Also, I used wide-angle, 100mm close-focus and longer focal-length macro lenses in the apartment, which helped to throw the background out of focus and underline a more claustrophobic look. Using close-focus lenses in a dramatic situation is very different than on a commercial. With almost no depth of field, the assistant has a tremendous challenge to keep the action in focus. The close-focus lenses also work most effectively when the subject is very close to the camera, which is not always the case in dramatic blocking. No matter what situation my A-camera first assistant, Carlos Guerra, was placed in, he and the other assistants did a fantastic job."
In addition to the lenses mentioned above, Kuras’s package consisted of Zeiss Superspeeds (between the 18-85mm range), Zeiss Standards (20mm, 40mm, 100 mm and 135 mm) and two Cooke zooms (an 18-100mm and a 25-250mm). Kuras also employed the Arriflex SwingShift system, using 45mm, 90mm and 110mm lenses. The special lenses were placed on a locked-off camera to cover the murder sequences, which were portrayed as they occurred in reality—without a second’s warning.
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