HEAVEN SENT
 • page 2
 • page 3
 • SIDEBAR 1
 • SIDEBAR 2
   • page 2
DVD
 • page 2
 • page 3

Steadicam operator Arnot picks up the story: "Harper takes us into the kitchen, where she and Joe do a little dance around the table and along the counters as they argue. In frustration and anger, Joe circles back around the table and out of the kitchen, undoing his tie as he walks down the hallway. The camera is preceding him once again. I count off a predetermined 20 paces and make a sudden blind turn backward, through the doorway of their bedroom, with just inches to spare. Joe passes in front of the camera and goes to the bedroom closet. Harper enters and sits on the edge of the bed, left of frame, boxing him in."

The scene cuts to a reverse from Joe's point of view as the couple continues to argue. Joe then rushes past Harper and heads back down the hallway, with the camera leading him. Harper can be seen behind Joe, hot on his heels. As the camera and Joe arrive in the front foyer, Harper crosses around Joe and puts her back against the front door, preventing him from leaving. Now the camera is over Joe's shoulder, looking at her. The shot ends as the camera pushes in over his shoulder to a single of her. "To orchestrate that kind of shot is really a team effort," says Arnot. "If anybody is just a second off, it can be a train wreck." With a laugh, he adds, "Our first rehearsal was a train wreck."

Angels in America was filmed in 1.78:1, the widescreen format for television. Goldblatt shot most of the picture on 5284, but he used a faster stock, Vision 800T 5289, to film two night scenes in Central Park. "Knowing that I would be going to a DI, I wanted a film stock that would be particularly forgiving on flesh tones," he explains. "5284 is the lowest-contrast stock Kodak makes, and it's very beautiful and smooth."

With the exception of on angel sequence that was filmed in Italy, Angels in America was shot in New York. The local Panavision rental house supplied the gear, which included a dance dolly, various remote cranes and a Titan crane. Goldblatt's lens package consisted of Primo primes, 11:1 and 4.5:1 zooms, and Compact Lightweight zooms for the Millennium XL that was used for Steadicam work.

A couple of key fantasy sequences play out in black-and-white. (They were shot in color and altered in post; see Sidebar 1.) One pays homage to Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast, shot by the great Henri Alekan. In the sequence, which was dubbed "the dream boudoir," Prior walks in slow motion down a long hallway that is lined with candelabra. As in Cocteau's film, the candelabra are held aloft by human arms. Curtains wave in dream-like fashion as the camera leads Prior down the hallway.

Goldblatt overcranked the camera to achieve Prior's slow-motion pace, and he used a variety of frame rates. As Prior advances down the hall, the candelabra seem to give way, as though the character is opening up the walkway. The Steadicam had to pass so close to the candles that Arnot wore a hat made of black aluminum foil to keep his hair from catching on fire. "Mike Nichols was very specific about the movement he wanted for the curtains," recalls Goldblatt. "The effects team not only had to get the speed of the fans just right to achieve the dreamlike ripple, they also had to work out where to place the fans to get the desired effect. They would pan the fans on and off, alternating the wind flow, but then they had to adjust their methods as the frame rate changed. Otherwise, the degree to which we overcranked the camera might have made the curtain movement too slow."

Goldblatt notes that the final images are tri-tone, not pure monochrome - the highlights are slightly yellow, and the midrange and shadows are in differing degrees of blue. He notes that at first, Nichols wasn't sure how he wanted the sequence to look. "He initially wanted everything to be white and blown out, and I thought, 'Oh, no.'" Using some stills he had taken of the set, Goldblatt used Photoshop to create the kind of image he had in mind. "When Mike saw the prints, he changed his mind. To be able to show the director what you have in your head, even if crudely staged, is enormously helpful."

Likewise, Nichols was concerned about the angel sequence that was shot in Italy, just outside Rome. "He thought it looked too ordinary," remembers Goldblatt. "So I took some of the photos I had made on the set and made variations of looks: a Pointillist version that was very impressionistic and dotty, with pastel colors, and a stark black-and-white version in which only Prior's cloak had color. The latter was my favorite, because the red cloak is actually a story point. I e-mailed them to Mike, and he responded that he liked the black-and-white one. Then I went to EFilm and showed an identical print to my wonderful colorist, Steve Scott, and said, 'Do this.'"

One scene with which Goldblatt is particularly pleased is Cohn's death. Ethel Rosenberg is in the hospital room, which was a set, waiting for him to die. Along one wall is a window, and rain is cascading down the pane. "Outside the window was a big piece of plate glass with an angle on it, with water running down it," says Goldblatt. "We used something sticky, like glycerin, to make the water slow down and go in rivulets. The scene was basically lit through the window with one light, an open-eye 5K or maybe a 10K, which was placed fairly far back. We used a conventional Fresnel but didn't use the lens, and we put a blue gel between the lamp and the glass - otherwise, it would have burned up."

"I wanted the light to be diffuse, and we just experimented with the distance between light and subject. If the effect seemed too sharp, I'd ask Gene to move the lamp back. I like using one light and then treating it with water or a flag or a net. The bigger the lamp and the farther away it is, the more freedom you have. If Meryl walked forward five feet, her exposure didn't change. What people learn - painfully - is that small lamps create big problems. Big lamps are quick."

Reflecting on the production, Goldblatt observes that Angels in America was an unparalleled opportunity for him to use everything he has learned as both a stills photographer (during the Sixties, he was an official photographer for The Beatles) and a cinematographer. "I couldn't possibly imagine being able to have done this film even 10 years ago," he remarks. "It was a fantastic experience."