In 1986, director Dan Curtis asked Lohmann to shoot the European sequences for the 38-hour TV mini-series War and Remembrance. Afterwards, Curtis brought Lohmann to the United States to shoot the remaining sequences. The cameraman spent two years shooting the sprawling series, and his work earned him a 1988 ASC Award. Lohmann subsequently relocated to Los Angeles. His other cinematic credits include Silence Like Glass, Salt on Our Skin, Knight Moves, The Innocent, Color of Night, A Couch in New York, Snakes and Ladders and the upcoming disaster film Deep Impact, also directed by Mimi Leder.
Commenting upon his cinematographic approach, Lohmann says, "My education generally fostered an appreciation of art. I still spend time in museums looking at old paintings, studying the artists' techniques and how they use light in their pictures. My cinematography has been influenced by both American and European movies. The European style of filmmaking is different than the American style, but there are also differences between French, British and Italian movies. Even though I shot many films in Germany, I think I am more influenced by British and French filmmakers than Germans and Italians.
"The most important thing that I've learned is that good lighting is not necessarily 'pretty.' Good lighting is something that you don't notice. If the images are too beautiful, they will take you away from the storytelling."
The Peacemaker was shot on location in New York City, and the following Eastern European sites: Bratislava, Ohrid and Bitola, Macedonia and the surrounding environs, and Martin, Slovakia. Leder, producer Branko Lustig and production designer Leslie Dilley (The Empire Strikes Back, The Abyss, Alien) spent four months in Slovakia and Croatia scouting locations and building sets. In blocking out his camera moves, Lohmann benefited from brief visits to the locations and concentrated time with Dilley. The production designer created sets for the interior of a full-sized Boeing 727 and a two-story Pentagon war room within an unfinished trade and conference center near Bratislava. He also transformed an ice hockey arena into a 200-foot-long White House corridor and a basement complex which duplicates the command center for the Nuclear Smuggling Group. "Leslie understood our needs for space for camera movement on the Steadicam, dollies and cranes, for wild walls, and for [motivated] source lighting," the cinematographer notes.
Lohmann believes that cinematographers and costume designers should always have ample time to confer, especially on the selection and mixing of colors. "Sometimes what you see with your eyes isn't what you are going to see on film," he says. "One color can sometimes pop out much more than the others. It makes a difference in how you light. It's important to shoot costume tests, but we didn't have much time to talk about costumes or shoot tests, because I was scouting the locations."
Leder and Lustig had considered filming The Peacemaker in the 35mm anamorphic format until Lohmann convinced them to shoot in Super 35. Though both widescreen formats share the 2.35:1 aspect ratio, Lohmann prefers the lenses available for Super 35, which are also employed in the spherical 1.85:1 format. "I've shot a couple films in Super 35, and the experience has always been good," he says. "With improvements in negative and intermediate films, as well as in the optics used in the labs, you can get high-quality prints in 70mm and widescreen 35mm formats."
One concession Lohmann made in shooting Super 35 was minimizing emulsion grain to compensate for the optical post-production process required to create widescreen intermediates and prints. "I wanted a fully exposed negative with as little grain as possible. This was before the Kodak Vision films were available. I shot tests comparing Eastman's [100-speed] 5248 and [500-speed] 5298 films to other stocks."
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