Having watched you work a number of times, I know you have a tendency to ignore certain technical aspects of the craft. I’ve heard you say, ’Oh, bring me a light that’s about this big.’ [Both laugh.] Now, I know you’re talking about a 10K, but do you deliberately just want to free your mind of all of those details?
Hall: Should I know all the names of all the lights? There’s just so much new equipment coming out all the time. In terms of lights, I basically work with big lights and tiny lights. I simplify. I’m loathe to take walls out to shoot a scene. A production designer I recently worked with said to me, ’Conrad, when you shoot, you have a circle around your subject and you work within that circle. When Piotr Sobocinski shoots, he peels the circle back, leaving just a wall here behind his subject. When Emmanuel Lubezki [ASC, AMC] shoots, he does the same thing, but then he kicks a hole in the wall to make space for a backlight.’ Well, I like the reality of shooting in a room with set dimensions. I’m not used to tearing out a wall and pushing back 40 feet so I can use long lenses. I’ve just never thought about working that way. I like to live in this kind of formal reality, in the same way that a painter lives with a canvas of a certain size. That sets up certain rules and suggests an approach without creating the possibility of the viewer being somewhere he or she cannot be.
Do you think that adds to the filmic or dramatic reality you’re trying to establish?
Hall: Not necessarily. It’s just a way of looking at things. You can work any way you want to, but what counts are things like focusing on the material and understanding it visually. How do you see this from a certain person’s point of view? Does everything key off of how one person sitting there sees the action? Or is the camera a voyeur does it provide a storyteller’s point of view? I think the point of view is extremely important.
What that’s asking is, ’Where do you want to put the camera?’
Hall: Exactly. When I go into a scene, I first try to understand what’s important for the audience to see in order to appreciate the story. If you have several characters, you have to determine how they will be composed. Will they be covered separately, or together in the frame? I know there’s not just one way to attack a scene, so again, I rely on my instincts to feel what’s right.
There are four or five important races in the film, with the Olympics events maybe being the most obvious, but each has a different feeling so we don’t have the sense that we’re watching the same thing over and over again. Some are very intimate, with the camera right in there with the runners, while others are more detached and shot with long lenses. Part of these feelings also come from the way the scenes are handled dramatically and editorially. How did you decide how to cover each race? Was it just a matter of covering things very thoroughly and supplying enough material?
Hall: I believe there are eight races in the story, and Robert had some very definite ideas about how to approach shooting some of them. One I remember distinctly was the long race Pre had with [running rival] Frank Shorter [played by Jeremy Sisto].
That scene was very interesting dramatically because Prefontaine and Shorter had a gentleman’s agreement to exchange leads at every lap they would change positions until the end and then race to win. The key moments were those changes.
Hall: That’s right. It created a sense of suspense while also significantly portraying Pre’s character, which gave Bob some very interesting ideas on how to shoot the scene. In fact, I should mention that Bob carefully storyboarded almost the entire film. We didn’t always follow the boards, but they were very useful in creating a distinct look for each race. That was important, because we were basically shooting them all simultaneously, usually on the same track location, while trying to make them look like different places by suggesting different weather conditions, restaging the races, and using different visual methods.
Bob’s storyboards for the Shorter race were wonderful. He first wanted to emphasize the difference between the two men’s positions as they ran by using very long lenses, with the runner in front in sharp focus. He’d then repeatedly cut back to the same point on the track during each lap. That way, in each shot we’d watch the space between them gradually diminishing as they overtook each other with the runner coming from behind taking the focus with the lead.
Then, to hide the finish and maintain the suspense for the audience by not letting them know who wins, the camera swept through other athletes in the middle if the field, catching up with the two exhausted runners at the end of the track. We only see the result of the race much later. That was all planned by Robert. The sequence also included inserts of the runners warming up and toeing the starting line, as well as the reactions of those watching the race much of which was done in slow motion.
Did you do a lot of tests with camera speeds to determine how you’d shoot your slow-motion material?
Hall: No, it was more instinctive depending on whether we wanted moderately slow or very slow. We were usually at about 96 frames per second. But there is tremendous grace and beauty in slow motion as you watch the human body moving rapidly.
In depicting eight races, you had to find every ounce of detail possible to tell the stories differently and illustrate how these athletes are testing the limits of physical ability. There’s one race that Pre runs with an injured foot bandaged and bloody and it’s so extraordinary because every time he takes a step we can feel his pain. And this is even more important because, as you noted, we generally know the outcome of these races.
Hall: Again, the slow-motion effect reveals expressions that would normally be hidden. Now, I’d like to touch on the fact that I became sort of lost during the making of this film because we were shooting all of these track meets at once. It was hard to follow the cutting continuity of each in my mind’s eye. Further complicating matters were the time constraints of the schedule, which required writers to rewrite, shorten and condense scenes together. Because of that process, I also sometimes found it difficult to follow the dramatic continuity of the film, other than during specific sequences, like when Pre loses his race at the Munich Olympics.
Well, that part of the story alone makes the film quite different, because unlike most sports films, it doesn’t lead up to Pre winning in the end. This is a film about a someone who is difficult to like and loses the biggest race of his life. But by the end we love him.
Hall: It’s that aspect that drew me to the story. At the end of the film there’s a wonderful scene between Pre and Bowerman where they talk about the running and the idea of winning, and what it all means. Their conversation suggests that someone can change, and might perhaps want to change and become something else. It’s that growth that makes you come to love Pre as a character. In the last scene of the film, Bowerman gives a eulogy that makes it clear in the audience’s mind that Pre was a young person struggling to do the best things for himself.
