"I didn't want to filter Michelle, but I did want to help her a bit, so I worked the film stocks," Goldblatt continues. "I've experimented for the last two years with Kodak's low-contrast negative stock. In its previous incarnation [EXR 5287 200T], before the advent of 77, I really disliked it. It was too flat and grainy, and I just couldn't get on with it. But this time, using [the new 5277 Vision 320T], it really worked. It has a lovely, soft gradation and was my basic choice for daylight interiors at around 250 [ISO]. I found that it gave a very smooth, flattering skin texture which could still be used interchangeably with the other stocks. It wasn't such an obvious difference that it jumped out at you, but it was much nicer than the 5293 [EXR 200T] and the 5246 [Vision 250D], which I used in the hotel scenes. More often than not, Kodak's 46 is far too contrasty for me, and I have trouble with the highlights, which just blow [out] in a breath, whereas the 77 holds them beautifully. My night stock was 79, which I'm really used to. I've developed a T2.5 eye for 79; I can just look and see that it's around 21 or 22 footcandles and bang! I don't need to meter it. I got there with 77, too, but the 93 and 46 puzzle me a bit — they don't come naturally, and I've got to work harder to get them to look the way I want them to onscreen."
With these experiences in mind, Goldblatt relied on the Vision 320T as his principal interior stock, using EXR 5245 50D, 5246 Vision 250D and 5279 Vision 500T to round out his palette. He shot the picture with a Panavision Platinum package, mainly employing the 4:1 Primo zoom and a conservative set of Primo primes.
At the beginning of The Deep End of the Ocean, Beth takes her three young children along to her 15th high school reunion in Chicago. Shortly after arriving at the hotel, her son Ben disappears into the crowd. In lighting the sequence, Goldblatt and longtime gaffer Les Kovacs decided to take a rather unorthodox tack, employing the relatively new 12'-diameter HMI balloon as a principal light source in the hotel lobby. While covering a large scene in a relatively short period of time, "Stephen surprised me," asserts Kovacs. "We sent up the 12' balloon, and I thought we were going to anchor it and simply use it for the overall ambience in the lobby. All of a sudden, we started dragging it down, dollying around with it and using it as a key light, because Stephen loved the way it looked on Michelle."
"For close-ups," adds Goldblatt, "we would drop the line and bring the balloon down, still keeping it 30' or 40' away. Instead of being above, it would be virtually eye-level, and we got this beautiful light that was very quick to work with. The technique provides a very naturalistic look. Then, for reverses, we just pulled the balloon down, moved it over 40', let it float up again and tied it off."
"This was my first experience with the 12-footer," Kovacs continues. "But I own two of the six-footers, and we put those to good use as well. Of course, the 6' 4K balloons are tungsten, so I had some blue skirts made for them to keep everything at 5600°K. Then we had fun with the 12' balloon. For the shot where Michelle walks through the hotel's front door, we covered that with a Steadicam and just dollied the balloon along with it — which is amazing enough, because it's this big 12'-diameter thing, but it worked like a charm."
Although the narrative takes place in Wisconsin and Chicago, all of the principal photography took place on stage and on location in Southern California. Utilizing neighborhoods in the Los Angeles-adjacent towns of Sherman Oaks, Northridge and Pasadena, the production altered existing locations to suit the Midwestern feel they sought. The majority of the film takes place in the Cappadoras' second home in Chicago, which was built on stage at Universal Studios. True to the film's naturalistic environment, all of the sets were built with hard ceilings and realistic set dressing.
During one dramatic moment in the story, Beth becomes convinced that a boy at her front door, who asks to mow the lawn, is actually her long-lost son. Goldblatt used a Steadicam to follow Pfeiffer as she races frantically through her house to retrieve her camera. "That was like a domestic Das Boot, because the set was real, with solid ceilings and kids' toys on the floor," he quips, referring to the difficulties that cameraman Jost Vacano, ASC had with the practical submarine sets built for Wolfgang Petersen's famed World War II film. "We wanted to convey the urgency of the moment through the camera movement while still keeping things real, and [Steadicam operator] Mark Van Loon certainly had fun working through the obstacle course of the house. Again, it was always our collective principle of mine that everything should be straight and natural. This film could very easily have become melodramatic, but we all strove to carefully cut back all the time."
[ continued on page 3 ] © 1999 ASC