When the time came for Van Sant to select a cinematographer for his third feature, My Own Private Idaho, he was faced with a tough choice between two Portland-based candidates Edwards and director of photography John Campbell, who had shot Mala Noche. Van Sant solved the problem by simply hiring both, forming an unusual arrangement in which Edwards handled the lighting and Campbell the camera operation. "I'm not sure why Gus liked the arrangement, but he must have been pleased with the results, because he asked us to do it again on Even Cowgirls Get the Blues," says Edwards, who later shot Van Sant's media satire To Die For."I love John Campbell he's a great friend and a great cinematographer in his own right but the arrangement was never comfortable for either of us. In my opinion, there's a very important break in the relationship between the director and the cinematographer, and that's the camera operator. Even now, I don't like having operators. Often the director and camera operator will go off and discuss the camera angle, and the cinematographer gets cut out of the process. To me, [operating the camera] is a central, fundamental area of communication between the director and cinematographer. I even operated the camera myself on [subsequent cinematography assignments] Kids and Flirting with Disaster."
During prep for Cop Land, Edwards used a color video printer to make a series of video stills from appropriately themed films as possible reference points, and then showed the results to Mangold. "I always like to establish some kind of visual dialogue with a director prior to working with him," the theasc.comments. "I rented a lot of New York films before shooting Cop Land, because the aesthetics of New York City were important to this film. In [the cinematography documentary] Visions of Light,several of the directors of photography talk about a New York street aesthetic that was happening in Seventies cinema, which led me to watch films like Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, and Shadows. We were also influenced by Sweet Smell of Success and its whole love affair with New York. There was an urgency and a gritty feel to that film that was really good. We also looked at Westerns like My Darling Clementine, 3:10 to Yuma, High Noonand Once Upon a Time in the West. The Western always seems to be about the good American individual lining up against the collective evil of the 'town gone wrong,' and that's also what Cop Landis about."
Thus, in their approach to both cinematography and production design, the filmmakers treated their Edgewater, New Jersey location (which became the fictional Garrison) like a small Western town. "The film had to take place in a 'town square' environment," Edwards points out. "We had to visually tie these buildings together by being able to see [the town] through windows. Visually, this film is almost aboutdoors and windows I shot and lit actors through doors dozens of times."
The production converted an Edgewater public water and electric works building into their sheriff's department. Production designer Lester Cohen arranged Heflin's office with an eye toward the frontier sheriffs' offices of yesteryear. "Lester chose very dark, shiny and 'live' colors for Freddy's office," Edwards explains. "That particular set really had a Western look; the sheriff's office even had its own jail! The main light was provided by aiming lights through windows as much as possible."
Despite the clear Western aesthetic at work, Edwards was careful not to cross the sometimes blurry line between the comfortably familiar and the trite in his lighting. "We used Arri 6K Par lights through the windows," he says. "There were some venetian-blind shadows on the walls of the sets, but I avoided using them on faces because they're such a cliché. I also tended to avoid smoke, except when I wanted to lower the contrast slightly. I basically have a 'cliché detector' that goes off in my head whenever I find myself doing something that I've seen in too many TV shows or films!"
Since the filmmakers wanted viewers to be able to see outside the windows of Heflin's office, Edwards had to constantly juggle neutral-density gels on the windows. "We had to fight the changing weather a lot," he recalls. "We had a very wet summer during shooting, with clouds constantly coming over the sun. We'd go from N3 gels to N9 and back to N6 in a matter of moments. It's tough on your producers, because they're always wondering why you're taking so much time gelling the windows. Hanging from the ceiling of the office were these four-foot fluorescent fixtures, which were remakes of an original 1950s design. [Production designer] Lester Cohen got those for us. I would just put Kino Flo daylight fixtures inside them, and balance the whole scene with the windows."
For one particularly tricky scene, Edwards and key grip Gary Martone resorted to outright illusion to compensate for the sharp contrast between the bright light of the "town square" and Heflin's fortress-like office. "Stallone had to walk through the front door of his office from the outside, and Jim wanted to see him from head to foot," Edwards describes. "We could gel the door, but not the area behind him. Gary came up with the ingenious idea of taking an 8' x 8' piece of Rosco ND material and placing it outside the door like a baffle. The Rosco material was rigged up by grip stands and fastened in place by high rollers to act as a background behindStallone. The light came around and hit Stallone, but the 8' x 8' gel covered what the camera saw behind him. By having the panel outside the door beyond Stallone, we managed to doctor the reality that the camera saw in a very specific way."
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