DP Owen Roizman ASC & The French Connection

June 30, 2007
Subject: DP Owen Roizman ASC & The French Connection

Sorry for the long delay since the last posting where I promised some info on Mr. Owen Roizman and his work in general and his cutting edge contribution to the industry on The French Connection (1971) an iconic and pivotal motion picture. Roizman used fast film stocks on the film in ways never before tried on a major production, He also developed new styles of camera placement, movement and operating on many scenes, the famous car chase being one of the most prevalent examples. William Friedkin, the film’s director, wanted to take a radicle departure from the basic film look of that time – late 60’s early 70’s – when most film lighting was high key. This was necessary because color negative film stocks were slow – 100 ASA. Kodak was coming out with faster color negative, but most major theatrical production, as well as television spot commercial production, didn’t like to use the faster stock because of the grain factor. But for Friedkin’s creative mind set on “Connection”, the grain was ok. He wanted a gritty look and Owen Roizman was ready to give it to him, as you will see from the interview below. I’ve taken the liberty of making the following selections from an interview with Owen Roizman by the International Cameraman’s Guild (ICG):

ICG: That was in 1970. What happened next?

OWEN ROIZMAN: A young director named Billy Friedkin was looking for somebody to shoot The French Connection, and again, Dick DiBona recommended me. Billy looked at my commercial reel. He liked it but it wasn’t a feature film, so he screened Stop. After about four reels, he said, ‘It’s pretty stuff, but all high-key. I want The French Connection to be a gritty, realistic, down-and-dirty, documentary-style film. Do you think you can do that?’ I said, ‘Why not? I’m a cinematographer. You tell me the mood you want, and I should be able to get it on film.’ I think he liked my spunk. He offered me the film.

ICG: How did you prepare to shoot The French Connection?

OWEN ROIZMAN: I read the script, and started thinking about how I was going to light. There were things I had never done before like shooting low-key scenes in a car at night. I recruited my wife, Mona, to stand-in for Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider. I experimented with lighting those scenes in our in garage in total darkness. She sat in the car, and I experimented with placing a few lamps to get a feel for the look and the mood I wanted.

ICG: Did any of you have an idea when you were doing The French Connection that it would become a classic that is still inspiring other filmmakers?

OWEN ROIZMAN: I don’t think anybody knew it was going to become iconic. It’s still one of the best scripts I’ve ever read. When we were shooting it, we all knew we were getting some good things. One day the production manager was handing out our paychecks when we were about halfway through the picture. He said to me, ‘You’ll probably be going get an Oscar.’ I said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding.’ I had never thought of it in those terms. When they were in the editing stage, I was talking to Billy (Friedkin) on the phone one day, and I asked, ‘How does it look?’ He said, ‘There is no way to tell yet.’ I don’t think anybody knew until it was released and the audience responded.

ICG: This sounds like a dumb question, but how did you know what to do?

OWEN ROIZMAN: When you were shooting commercials in those days, everything was high-key. We hardly ever shot at night or interior car shots. You never wanted to make anything look grainy, low-key or realistic. It was all stylized. In our early conversations, Billy said he wanted the picture to have almost a documentary look. He wanted it to be very real looking. I just started thinking about that and I decided to underexpose and force develop the film and then print it up. That gave a very grainy look.

ICG: Where did that come from? How did you know what to do?

OWEN ROIZMAN: Instinct. We sometimes shot in available light and low-key situations, and stretched the exposure latitude of the film. Everybody thought I shot The French Connection in available light. I always joke and say yes, I shot in whatever light was available from the truck. The goal was to make it look like it wasn’t lit, which was a radical notion in those days.

ICG: This is either a dumb or rhetorical question. During the past several years, there has been a series of articles in newspapers and some trade magazines about how digital cameras are eliminating the need for lighting, and how directors are now making their own movies by putting digital cameras on their shoulders. They are basically saying that lighting gets in the way of the actors and just slows things down. My question is whether future directors and cinematographers will need to be concerned about lighting?

OWEN ROIZMAN: My simple answer to that is FOREVER. I believe every film has a mood …some kind of quality that you want to capture to transmit the essence of the story to the audience. It doesn’t have to happen on a conscious level. I’ve always felt that you subconsciously draw the audience into the film, so that they’re not aware that there’s a camera, lights or anything else. They are just sitting there as voyeurs seeing a story unfold. There are many elements that go into capturing that mood and drawing the audience in, including composition, lighting and camera movement. The video camera is just another tool. You still need creativity and taste, and you still have to know how to achieve the looks and the moods you want. It really does matter. Imagine that you’re shooting a dark scene in a closet and there’s no light on, and yet everything is very brightly lit. Subconsciously, people are looking at it and they’re saying, what’s wrong with this? This doesn’t feel right. Even if it’s not on a conscious level, subconsciously they feel that something’s wrong and you’re doing the film and the audiencean injustice.

ICG: You got an Oscar nomination for The French Connection. Did you get countless offers after that, and how did you decide what to do next?

OWEN ROIZMAN: I never wanted to work non-stop, picture after picture after picture. I turned down a lot of films and filled my time with commercials. I started directing commercials during the mid-1960s. I liked the process of directing and shooting. I could do a lot of experimenting with commercials, and I could be more selective about the scripts I chose.

The following includes questions from Eric Roizman, Owen Roizman’s son who is also a cinematographer and more form ICG:

ICG: Here’s the question of the day for you. You compiled 18 credits in just 12 years and earned your fourth Oscar nomination for Tootsie in 1982. At that juncture, you decided to stop shooting narrative films and concentrate on directing and shooting commercials. Why?

OWEN ROIZMAN: Eric was 13 years old when I finished Tootsie. Actually I shot one more film after Tootsie. It was Vision Quest, which my good friend Harold Becker directed. After that I felt it was important for me to be around home more with a teenage son growing up. I figured if I opened my own commercial company it would tie me down and I wouldn’t be tempted by a great script to go off and shoot a film at a remote location for six months. I turned down a lot of good projects during that period, but I have no regrets.

ICG: How many commercials do you think you did in that span?

OWEN ROIZMAN: I have no idea. Sometimes you don’t do as many when you’re directing because there’s prep time involved. You may have weeks of prep for a one-day shoot, and there’s the whole bidding process. It was probably in the hundreds.

ICG: What did you learn from that experience?

OWEN ROIZMAN: I gained a lot of respect for producers and directors. I had directed commercials before, but now I was responsible for coming in on budget, and making sure I had all the elements. I also had an obligation to the crews to make sure that they were well treated well. I had a staff working for me and a big overhead every month, so there was a lot more responsibility. I became much more aware of the other elements of the process of filmmaking.

ICG: Why and when did you go back to shooting narrative films?

OWEN ROIZMAN: When I started my commercial company in 1983, I signed a five-year lease for office space. The five years were coming to an end, and there was a huge actors’ strike in the commercial industry. The business was getting very cutthroat and Eric had his driver’s license, so I figured, he didn’t need me hanging around anymore. Larry Kasdan asked me to work with him on I Love You to Death and I was interested. Right after that I worked with Sydney Pollack again on Havana and then the following year I shot The Addams Family and Grand Canyon.

ICG: Eric, what did you concentrate on in film school?

ERIC ROIZMAN: I concentrated a lot on the new media, the Internet and the use of computers for delivering content, because it was the dawn of that era.

ICG: What were your questions for your dad?

ERIC ROIZMAN: How much does production design affect what you do?

OWEN ROIZMAN: Production design has everything to do with what we do as cinematographers, because they provide the palette that we have to photograph. It’s the same with wardrobe, costumes, set decorators, all of that makes a huge difference. That’s why it’s important for cinematographers to come onboard as early as possible during the pre-production stage, so you can have meetings with the production designer and director, and hopefully guide them to your way of thinking. Too often, you are brought in after those things have been decided and you’re stuck shooting that palette. It makes a huge difference when you’re working with a really talented production designer. I remember, for example, Three Days of the Condor. It was my first film with Stephen Grimes. I remember we were looking at a set with very fine striped black and white wallpaper. I said, ‘Steve, you’ve got to change this, because this is going to dance and strobe, because it is too contrasty.’ He was totally embarrassed that he had made that mistake. I thought to correct it he was going to take the wallpaper off, but all he did was tech it down to take the contrast out of it. We developed an immediate respect for each other and later worked together on several films.

ERIC ROIZMAN: You have told me that you adhere to a less-is-more philosophy. How do you adhere to the less-is-more philosophy on large sets on soundstages or big night exteriors?

OWEN ROIZMAN: I don’t think the size of the shot makes a difference, because you can just adjust the size of the lights to coincide with the shot. If you’re going to shoot a bottle, for example, or a tin can on a tabletop, you don’t need a huge light, but you are still using one source from one direction. You use whatever size it takes to give you a believable source. This may be an exaggeration but I’ve always felt that if you’re working with a great production designer, you should be able to walk on a set, take one light, put it strategically in the place you want and everything should look great.

ERIC ROIZMAN: When you’re shooting in a practical location, how do you begin? What’s the first thing you look at while deciding how to light it? In other words, do you start from the space and then move onto the actors or do you start from the actors and move out to the space?

OWEN ROIZMAN: Everybody has different theories, but I always think about faces, because eventually you will end up with close-ups on the actors. I always look at their faces and think about how I want to end up lighting them. From there, I work my way out to the set. There are other cinematographers who light the sets or locations first and let the actors find their best light.

ERIC ROIZMAN: Why do you choose a certain stop, say a T-2.8 or 4? What determines that? It seems like the differences sometimes are very subtle.

OWEN ROIZMAN: These are great questions. Two things always decide the stop for me. First, I try to pick a stop that I would want to work with for the entire film, because I train my eye to see things at a certain light level, so I know how it will translate to film. If I was working a key of 15 footcandles, I could feel how much fill light I needed. I didn’t even have to measure it, because I just knew from the dailies and doing it every day what it was going to look like. The other reason why I would pick a stop to work at was based on how much information I wanted to see in the background all the time. If I wanted to go for close-ups with the background to be out of focus most of the time, which is the way I generally like it, I would pick a more wide-open stop. Come to think about it, there’s another reason, too. If I had an assistant who I thought was going to be really, really good pulling focus, I could work at more wide-open stops.

ERIC ROIZMAN: So, the crew can be part of your aesthetic decision-making?

OWEN ROIZMAN: Absolutely. There are very few auteurs who can make great movies alone. It is a collaborative process. The crew is like my family. You are living with them day-in and day-out for months, especially when you’re on location. You have to know what everyone can contribute and keep encouraging them to do so.

ERIC ROIZMAN: I have a few more questions. What do you look for during rehearsals?

OWEN ROIZMAN: When the director is working with his actors and laying out a scene, I’m looking at it in terms of the different kind of shots that I think are necessary. It’s all about editing. Is this going to play well with just one master? Which direction will we get the best coverage? Which direction are the actors facing? How can I to get them in the best light? I’m always looking at it in terms of how I’m going to light the actors when they’re looking in a certain direction from a certain spot, and what kind of coverage will we need to make the scene go together smoothly? It’s a multi-faceted approach to thinking that starts on a conscious level, but it becomes almost subconscious or instinctive. It’s both an art and a science.

ERIC ROIZMAN: I’m throwing this question back at you. How would you light a scene in a space that has no light like someone in a closet or maybe a coffin?

OWEN ROIZMAN: Since I’m always asking that question, the truth is that I don’t really have the answer. It really depends on so many factors. Let’s face it. If somebody really is in a closet and the door’s closed, and there’s no light coming underneath the crack of the door, they’re really in total darkness. But, in that case, you might as well be doing a radio show, so you have to invent a way to make it believable by using some poetic license. Everybody takes a different approach.
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ERIC ROIZMAN: I am always learning. Every film is an education about how to act on the set, how to deal with other people in the crew, and, of course, how to move the camera in ways that help the story. It’s an endless list. My advice to someone who is stepping up to camera operator is to really pay attention to your director of photography and your director. Watch rehearsals like a hawk. Know where your actors are going to be. Know what the scene is about, so you know who to go with if you have to make a choice

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ICG: There is so much hype today about how technology is or will be changing everything about the art and craft of filmmaking. What is the most important advance that you’ve seen in technology?

OWEN ROIZMAN: I personally think that the biggest advance was the invention of the VCR, laserdiscs, and DVDs. They allow you the opportunityto study hundreds of films and learn more about the art and craft, because it’s a lot easier to run something back and forth at home on a DVD or a tape or a laserdisc than it is to go watch a film in the theater… and studying an art form is how you learn. The more you can study the better off you are. As far as the equipment goes, today’s lenses are and films are a little faster, the lights are a little smaller and cooler, but you still have to know when and how touse them to tell stories. They’re just tools, that’s all. It’s like a painter being given a different palette, a different brush or a different mixture of the colors. You still have to blend it all together and use them. I remember when we were shooting The Black Marble (1980), we had an interior scene in a very dimly-lit church in Los Angeles. The camera was on a balcony looking down on the action. I wasn’t allowed to rig lights, and we were using a 30mm anamorphic lens for the establishing shot. The film speed was 100 and it was a T-3 lens. I had the crew hide Chinese lanterns in the four corners of the church interior, but I was still getting a very low reading on my light meter. However, I decided not to push the film because I felt the scene needed rich black, velvet tones without a hint of grain. With all my experience I was worried about the results. We shot on a Friday, and I spent the whole weekend thinking that my career was finished. I was going to get fired on Monday. But, the dailies were gorgeous. It was probably one of the most beautiful scenes I’ve ever shot. We have new films, new lenses and other new technologies today, but in that same situation, I’d still have to trust my instincts and understand the craft. Those Chinese lanterns, as weak as they were, worked out great. If you just pointed the camera and shot, it wouldn’t be the same.

ERIC ROIZMAN: I think that’s a great point about DVDs being the most important new technology for cinematographers. Today, it is easy for someone like me to study a film 100 times frame by frame. I was watching Tora! Tora! Tora! Recently. There’s a scene where a general is in a room talking to the other generals, and the dolly moves were just so beautiful, so subtle and thought out. It must have taken such choreography between the dolly grip, cinematographer and operator…especially considering the size and heft of the equipment they were using at that time. It’s great to be able to watch a scene like that and really study it.

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OWEN ROIZMAN: There’s no secret to success and there are no shortcuts. It requires hard work. That’s the best way. I’ve always professed that in order to master the art, you have to learn the craft. The analogy I always use is the painter. The painter sits down at a blank canvas, has a great idea of what he wants to paint. If he doesn’t know how to apply the paints to the canvas, nothing is going to happen. So, he has to know technically how to paint before he can satisfy his artistic instincts. It’s the same with filmmaking. You have to know how to do it before you can do it. You can’t just like imagine it and it happens. It’s not magic…but it can be magical when it is done well.