MOVIES AND MINSERIES
James R. Bagdonas, ASC
Hidden in America
Showtime's Hidden in America reunited cameraman James Bagdonas, ASC with director Martin Bell; the two had previously worked together on the 1993 feature American Heart, which concerned a paroled convict trying to adapt to the outside world.
Like American Heart, Hidden in America focuses on the disadvantaged and the downtrodden. Beau Bridges plays an auto worker who loses his job; unable to support his family, he watches helplessly as his children begin to suffer from malnutrition. He soon begins to lose hope along with his son, who attempts suicide. "Martin and I wanted to keep the same raw edge we had on American Heart," says Bagdonas. "We didn't want it to look polished, or like a documentary."
During preproduction discussions, the two men talked about using a lot of handheld and Steadicam techniques, but they changed their minds a week before shooting began. "We decided to stick with simple camera movements," Bagdonas submits. "We dollied very little and let the action just happen in front of the camera. We didn't want to distract from the performances."
Bagdonas elected to shoot the entire film on Kodak 5293, noting the stock's sharpness and fine grain. At one point in the story, Bridges' character can no longer pay his electric bill; the lights are cut off, motivating some unusually dark nighttime scenes. "Sometimes you get kind of freaked out in TV if you have a black screen, but we let it go," says Bagdonas. "The 93 is a medium-speed film, and it really kept the blacks rich and dark and maintained a nice, warm tone. As Beau walked through the apartment, we kept just edge light on him. We played some of it from a window, and some for no rhyme or reason except that we thought it looked good."
Bell and Bagdonas tried to shoot as much of the picture as possible in continuity. As production progressed, the film began to takes on its own character. Likewise, as Bridges' character evolved, the filmmakers found that they had to change some of their own ideas about how the picture should be shot. Bagdonas cites the film's climactic scene as an example. "The son tries to commit suicide. We'd always figured we would go cold and blue, but we wound up doing exactly the opposite making it warm, using pleasing colors, and staging the scene at sunset. As you come into the room, you think everything is fine, and then [you see the boy]. The contrast worked brilliantly; what you see is really heart-wrenching. And we [got the idea] from shooting in continuity."
— Jean Oppenheimer
Frederick Elmes, ASC
In the Gloaming
Frederick Elmes, ASC, became interested in photography during his boyhood in New Jersey, after his father lent him his Leica camera. Elmes went on to study photography and filmmaking in college, and was later awarded a fellowship to the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. There, he met directors David Lynch and John Cassavetes, for whom he would shoot a series of striking features (The Killing of a Chinese Bookie and Opening Night for Cassavetes; Eraserhead, Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart for Lynch). Since that time, Elmes has compiled an impressive resumé that also includes River's Edge, Night on Earth and The Ice Storm (see p. 56).
Elmes was surprised and flattered to receive an Emmy nomination for HBO's In The Gloaming (see full coverage in AC May '97), the story of an AIDS-afflicted young man who returns to his wealthy parents' home to die. The telefilm marked the directorial debut of actor Christopher Reeve.
Gloaming is a Scottish term for twilight, and the film revolves visually, emotionally and thematically around that magical time of day. Six scenes in the one-hour movie take place at twilight, all of them consisting of two characters sitting quietly, talking and watching the sun set.
The entire film was shot on location at a home in Westchester, New York. The house, however, was a split-level structure, making it impossible to get Reeve's wheelchair upstairs for the bedroom scenes. Although the director could watch video monitors from downstairs, Elmes felt that he would benefit from some kind of video viewfinder. New York's Arriflex equipment house, Camera Service Center, built one. "They took a standard viewfinder, to which we could attach camera lenses, and rigged it with a color TV camera and a video screen," explains Elmes. "I could walk around the room and show Chris the shots that I saw."
A second camera a kind of video spy unit was set up in the corner of the room, so Reeve could look at one monitor and see the whole room, with everybody in it, and then look at the other monitor and see the video viewfinder. Director and cameraman would watch the rehearsal from their respective rooms, then communicate via an intercom system. According to Elmes, the system worked beautifully, and helped to facilitate an fruitful, creative and award-worthy collaboration.
— Jean Oppenheimer
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