Deceased--Bruce Surtees

Bruce Surtees, right, with Clint Eastwood, during the filming of High Plains Drifter.

Bruce Surtees
July 23rd, 1937 to February 23rd, 2012

"Bruce Surtees obituary"

Oscar-nominated cinematographer who worked on Lenny, Dirty Harry and The Beguiled

by

Chris Wiegand

February 27th, 2012

The Guardian

The American cinematographer Bruce Surtees, who has died aged 74, became known as "the prince of darkness" for his muted and often lugubrious style of lighting. However, while Surtees was well-suited to the nocturnal street scenes of Dirty Harry (1971), the Rembrandt-esque arrangements of The Beguiled (1971) and the claustrophobic interiors of Escape from Alcatraz (1979), all directed by Don Siegel, he was also at home with the wide open spaces of the western Joe Kidd (1972) and the surfing movie Big Wednesday (1978).

His deceptively simple black-and-white scheme for Lenny (1974), Bob Fosse's semi-documentary biopic of the comedian Lenny Bruce, earned Surtees an Oscar nomination. The film's compelling stand-up sequences owe almost as much to the expert lighting of the nightclub as they do to Dustin Hoffman's performance. As Hoffman paces the stage, chased by his own shadow, the light captures wisps of cigarette smoke and almost carries the smell of bourbon.

Cinematography was the Surtees family trade. Bruce was born in Los Angeles, where his father, Robert, was starting out as a camera assistant and operator. Robert had worked regularly with the acclaimed cinematographer Hal Mohr, and chose Mohr for one of Bruce's middle names. When Bruce was a teenager, Robert hit his stride as a director of photography, winning his first Oscar for King Solomon's Mines (1950).

Bruce attended the Art Centre College of Design in Pasadena, gained experience as a technician for Disney and assisted his father on films including The Hallelujah Trail (1965). He had proved to be a reliable camera operator – memorably capturing a motorcycle chase in Coogan's Bluff (1968) – and Siegel gave him the chance to graduate to the role of cinematographer on his US civil war film The Beguiled. In his autobiography, A Siegel Film, the director remembered Surtees's response to this offer: "Bruce's face became flushed, his breathing heavy … Tears appeared in his eyes and he spoke with great difficulty." Surtees rose to the technical challenges of The Beguiled, which starred Clint Eastwood as an injured soldier recuperating in a house full of women whom he seduces.

While many mainstream cinematographers employ three or more principal sources of light in a set-up, Surtees experimented with fewer and used them at lower levels. He achieved increased depth and contrast in the process, as well as creating stronger shadows. For one sequence in The Beguiled, he relied on a solitary bulb to replicate candlelight. Siegel was thrilled: "We didn't care that it was black, that it wouldn't show up on a television screen when the studio sold the picture to some network in a couple of years. Screw them. We liked it. It was exciting."

Surtees's drab palette complemented The Beguiled's gothic tone, Louisiana locations and the montage of sepia war photographs used in its title sequence. The film was a box-office disappointment but ensured his lengthy collaboration with Siegel and Eastwood. In Dirty Harry, a deserted sports stadium was eerily lit and shrouded in mist for the scene in which Eastwood's cop confronts the serial killer Scorpio. Eastwood's directorial debut, Play Misty for Me (1971), was shot around Carmel, California, where the star later became mayor and Surtees's own family also settled. His breezy location photography – including scenes at the Monterey jazz festival – matched the star's freewheeling role as Dave, a late-night DJ, but he introduced heavier shadows as Dave is threatened by his jilted lover. The film was made for a modest cost with a small crew and Surtees's efficiency was valued by Eastwood, who has always prided himself on bringing in films on time and under budget.

For Eastwood's High Plains Drifter (1973), influenced by the star's spaghetti westerns, Surtees favoured a wide aperture to ensure as much light as possible was captured in the Eastern Sierra setting of California. In the opening and closing sequences, he achieved a spectral light as Eastwood's mysterious stranger appears and disappears amid the shimmering desert haze. Eastwood's later westerns The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) and Pale Rider (1985) were shot in autumn, with Surtees exploiting the softer light and low sun. On Escape from Alcatraz, his last film with Siegel, the minimal lighting matched the grey and blue prison uniforms. After Pale Rider, he was replaced as Eastwood's regular cinematographer by his former camera operator Jack Green.

Throughout the 70s and 80s, Surtees lit leading men such as Gene Hackman (in the noirish Night Moves), John Wayne (in his final role, in The Shootist) and Laurence Olivier (in the much-derided epic Inchon). Major actors were not always pleased with the prospect of languishing in Surtees's signature shadows, but the glossy, bright lighting he provided for Risky Business (co-photographed with Reynaldo Villalobos, 1983) and Beverly Hills Cop (1984) enhanced two of the decade's biggest box-office stars, Tom Cruise and Eddie Murphy. In his later years, Surtees could still be relied upon to give an extra polish to middling material such as The Crush (1993), Corrina, Corrina (1994) and the television film Dash and Lilly (1999), the last of which brought him an Emmy nomination.

Surtees is survived by his wife, Carol.

"Bruce Surtees, Oscar-Nominated Cinematographer, Dies at 74"

by

Margalit Fox

February 28th, 2012

The New York Times

Bruce Surtees, an Oscar-nominated cinematographer known as the Prince of Darkness for his skill at summoning sharply etched figures from the inky depths of prisons, nightclubs and other inhospitably lighted places, died on Thursday in Carmel, Calif. He was 74.

The cause was complications of diabetes, his wife, Carol, said.

Known in particular for his long association with Clint Eastwood, Mr. Surtees (pronounced sur-TEEZ) shot more than a dozen films in which Mr. Eastwood starred. Many of these were also directed by Mr. Eastwood, including “Play Misty for Me” (1971), his first feature as a director; “High Plains Drifter” (1973); “The Outlaw Josey Wales” (1976); and “Sudden Impact” (1983), the fourth Dirty Harry movie.

Mr. Surtees dealt in shadows. Through his nuanced, often minimal use of lighting on the set, he meticulously conjured the stark contrast of lights and darks on the screen that he and his directors often sought.

“He was fearless,” Mr. Eastwood said in a telephone interview on Tuesday. “He wasn’t afraid to give you sketchy lighting if you asked for it. He didn’t believe in flat light or just bright, ‘Rexall drugstore’ lighting, which a lot of times you can get if you get somebody that isn’t very imaginative.”

Mr. Surtees’s earliest work as a cinematographer was for the director Don Siegel, for whom he shot “Dirty Harry” (1971) and “Escape From Alcatraz” (1979), both starring Mr. Eastwood, and “The Shootist” (1976), starring John Wayne.

He had previously been a camera operator whose work included Mr. Siegel’s pictures “Coogan’s Bluff” (1968) and “Two Mules for Sister Sara” (1970) before he was named the cinematographer on “The Beguiled” (1971), a Civil War drama directed by Mr. Siegel and starring Mr. Eastwood and Geraldine Page.

Mr. Surtees earned an Academy Award nomination for his work on “Lenny” (1974), a biopic about Lenny Bruce starring Dustin Hoffman that was shot in black and white at the request of its director, Bob Fosse. In Mr. Surtees’s hands, the finished film looked like a living photograph by Weegee. (The Oscar went to Fred Koenekamp and Joseph Biroc for “The Towering Inferno.”)

Cinematography was part of Mr. Surtees’s genetic endowment. His father, Robert Surtees, was a cinematographer who won Oscars for “King Solomon’s Mines” (1950), “The Bad and the Beautiful” (1952) and “Ben-Hur” (1959). The younger Mr. Surtees, born in Los Angeles on Aug. 3, 1937, was named Bruce Mohr Powell Surtees in honor of his father’s mentor Hal Mohr, also an esteemed cinematographer.

Bruce Surtees studied at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif., and began working as a cameraman under his father.

Mr. Surtees’s first marriage, to Judy Rucker, as she is now known, ended in divorce. Besides his wife, the former Carol Buby, whom he married in 1979 in Seoul while on location for “Inchon” (1981), directed by Terence Young and starring Laurence Olivier, he is survived by a daughter from his first marriage, Suzanne Surtees; a brother, Tom; and a sister, Nancy.

His other films include “Blume in Love” (1973), directed by Paul Mazursky; “Night Moves” (1975), directed by Arthur Penn; “Leadbelly” (1976), directed by Gordon Parks; and “Beverly Hills Cop” (1984), directed by Martin Brest.

Mr. Surtees, who lived in Carmel, was also the cinematographer for “White Dog,” Samuel Fuller’s controversial film about a dog trained to attack black people. Made in 1982, it was not officially released — on DVD — until 2008 because of the studio’s fears that it was inflammatory. (The film, which stars Kristy McNichol, Paul Winfield and Burl Ives, is ardently anti-racist.)

In the 1990s and afterward Mr. Surtees shot several television movies, including “Dash and Lilly” (1999), starring Sam Shepard and Judy Davis as Dashiell Hammett and Lillian Hellman, for which he received an Emmy nomination.

Mr. Surtees brought to his work not only an impeccable eye but also something directors found just as valuable: a gift for frugal improvisation.

“He was perfect for me, because we didn’t have very big budgets in those days,” Mr. Eastwood said on Tuesday, recalling his early directorial outings. “He’d make dollies by towing a blanket across the floor with the cameraman sitting on it.”

Mr. Surtees’s jury-rigged dollies worked spectacularly well, Mr. Eastwood said, provided the floor was smooth enough.

Bruce Surtees [Wikipedia]

Celluloid vs digital...it's economics

"Oscars: Cinematography nominees discuss film versus digital"

Janusz Kaminski shot 'War Horse' on film; Jeff Cronenweth used digital for 'Dragon Tattoo.' As technology changes, cinematographers adjust to new realities.

by

Mark Olsen

February 19th, 2012

Los Angeles Times

This year's Oscar nominees for cinematography present a particularly varied cross-section of contemporary filmmaking at a time when the very infrastructure of how movies are made and seen is in transition. Consider: 35-millimeter film prints are being phased out in favor of digital projection. Consumer still cameras can be used to shoot high-definition digital video. Video on demand is becoming a popular viewing option. Even the venerable Eastman Kodak, which produces the film stock on which many movies are made, recently filed for bankruptcy protection.

The Scandinavian-modern "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" was shot with digital cameras; the World War I-set"War Horse" was shot on film."Hugo" was shot in digital 3-D to portray 1931 Paris, while"The Artist" was shot on color film, then transferred to black-and-white to evoke the end of the silent film era in Hollywood."The Tree of Life" used footage shot both on film and digital and integrates nature photography into its storytelling. (That three-on-film, two-on-digital split is likely an approximation of Hollywood production overall, though changes are evolving rapidly.)

As this moment of transition challenges distributors, exhibitors and even audiences, cinematographers are on the front lines of those responding to the changes. Many of them recognize just what a unique window this particular time presents.

"I think this is a wonderful time for a cinematographer," said Emmanuel Lubezki, who shot "The Tree of Life" and is a four-time previous nominee. "You can have 65-millimeter, 35, 16 and so on, and then you have all the range of incredible digital cameras that are not like film but allow you to create wonderful images."

The only vocal anti-digitalist among this year's nominees is Janusz Kaminski, nominated for Steven Spielberg's "War Horse." The Polish-born Kaminski won Oscars for Spielberg's"Schindler's List" and"Saving Private Ryan," and though he recently shot in digital for the first time while working on a commercial, he decried digital as a harbinger of "the death of the cinematographer." "Generally speaking, I don't have respect for digital media just yet," he added.

His concern is that the cinematographer is no longer allowed to fully control the image as other technicians become a larger part of the process and that digital monitors create a laissez-faire attitude on-set toward image-making. "If you see the image on the digital screen I think people become lazy, they get satisfied with just seeing the image, they're not going for visual panache, not getting the story through metaphors," he said. "With film there is still mystery."

In the finale of "War Horse," a soldier returns home. Shooting outdoors in rural England against a vibrant setting sun with heavy use of filters to create an otherworldly glow that envelopes everyone in the scene, Kaminski suspected that audiences would likely assume the effect was achieved in post-production.

The nominated films have a distinct perspective into the past and cinema itself. "Hugo" deals directly with film preservation in its story line involving the silent filmmaker Georges Méliès. "The Artist" also invokes film history. "Dragon Tattoo" and "Tree of Life" both deal with memories and the ties of the past, while "War Horse" purposefully captures the spirit of classical filmmaking.

"It's a very intriguing group of nominees," said Stephen Pizzello, executive editor of American Cinematographer magazine. "These particular filmmakers all show how cinematic thinking can be extended with the help of modern tools, whether that means digital cameras, camera-movement systems such as the Technocrane or Steadicam, or postproduction techniques. The shaping of a solid movie still demands good 'movie thinking,' especially in terms of how new technologies are applied to the creative process."

For the look of "The Artist," a black-and-white, essentially dialogue-free film, French cinematographer Guillaume Schiffman referred to "the souvenir," the feeling of watching an old movie more than specifically wanting to directly make a film in an old style. Schiffman shot on color film stock that was timed to black-and-white in post-production because he found that he could get a broader range of gray tones in the image than if he shot on black-and-white stock (a not uncommon technique). He shot at 22 frames-per-second rather than the current standard 24 to lightly evoke the sense of watching older films.

Schiffman had previously worked with writer-director Michel Hazanavicius and star Jean Dujardin on two '60s-era spy spoofs. The method used to research and prepare those films was similar to the one used to create "The Artist," paying respect to older films without feeling trapped by them.

"We see a lot of movies, we talk a lot, we try to see the codes," Schiffman explained of the playful creativity behind their working methods, "the cutting, the lighting, the framing, the acting, and then we get all that in our minds and as soon as we start to really shoot we say, let's forget about it. We know how it should look and how they should act, let's find our own way to tell the story."

In shooting "Hugo" for director Martin Scorsese, cinematographer Robert Richardson — winner of Oscars for "The Aviator" and "JFK" — worked for the first time both with a digital camera and in 3-D. To re-create the films of Méliès in a breathtaking sequence within "Hugo," Richardson at first tried locking two old-fashioned hand-cranked cameras together, but found the only way to get the desired effect was with current cutting-edge digital systems. Throughout shooting, Richardson found himself particularly taken with how 3-D, often thought of as a tool simply for spectacular action, could be used to vividly express and bring forward emotion and the actor's performance.

"It's akin to entering into a new relationship. You don't know the boundaries," Richardson said in a professorial air of working with new formats. "It's vastly more technical than an emotional entrance, but what you find as you tap into the technical you become more accustomed to it. 3-D is in many ways the bastard child, we don't want to look at it as if it can be an art form. And I think it can be seen as something vastly superior emotionally."

Jeff Cronenweth stepped onto the set of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" on just a few days notice, answering the call of his frequent collaborator, director David Fincher, to replace Swedish cinematographer Fredrik Bäckar a few weeks into the shoot. Cronenweth, who received an Oscar nomination last year for his work on Fincher's "The Social Network," was able to get up to speed quickly by seeing all the previously shot footage online before arriving on location in Sweden.

Cronenweth, son of cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth, with whom he has worked on many projects, also worked on seven films with Swedish cameraman Sven Nykvist. Once in Sweden to shoot "Dragon Tattoo," Cronenweth immediately recognized the soft light conditions that Nykvist had always spoken of. In particular, he found shooting the film's star, Rooney Mara, in extremely low light levels remarkable as her pale skin popped out of the darkness, an effect heightened by shooting in digital.

"I think that choice is going to go away as film gets harder to get, harder to deal with, more expensive," Cronenweth said. "And don't get me wrong, I'm a huge supporter of film and I wish it would never go away. I wish I could shoot everything on film and then project it digital and have the most control and the best of both worlds."

Lubezki, the charming, Mexican-born cinematographer of "The Tree of Life," described how director Terrence Malick wanted to be as free as possible while shooting his powerful evocation of family, at once startlingly specific and mystically universal. Usually shooting with only available light, using hand-held cameras and at times allowing the camera to continue to run as scenes take shape are all frequent descriptions of digital productions, but Lubezki still found film the better option overall than digital.

"In a movie like Terry's it would have been catastrophic," Lubezki said of shooting only with digital. "We were trying to hold information in the highlights in the brightest clouds close to the sun and in the dark shadows of a dress in the foreground. Digital cannot do that. It will be able to, probably in a couple of years, but it cannot do it right now."

Forces outside aesthetic considerations of cinematographers likely will make the main decision for them sometime in the next handful of years. Even the issue of digital preservation and migration — having to do in part with the speed at which technologies now become obsolete — has become part of the conversation as the transition is underway.

"It's going to be less of a debate," Cronenweth added. "In all fairness, we're at the infancy stage of digital cinema."


In praise of celluloid

Celluloid film stock...an art characteristic in itself

"Oscar" science

Oscar will be here soon [February 22nd] and it is interesting to note the huge anount of physics and chemistry involved in the production of motion pictures. Probably 99% of the movie goers could care less about the technical side of making movies but without the sciences there would be no cinema entertainment.

Does the name Iain Neil sound familiar--probably not. But Iain Neil has won more Oscars than anyone else in the Scientific and Technical Academy Awards category with his work involving Panavision and optics. [Incidentally, recipients are awarded their prize long before the actual "Oscar" presentation and they don't really get an "Oscar" but a plaque.] His claim to fame was the development of a zoom lens [Panavision Primo Macro Zoom] that would enable the camera to keep in focus short and long focal length scenes in one movement.

Here is an audio interview with NPR's Scott Simon:

"Lens Advance Wins Academy Award/Cameras Now Can Zoom from Stem to Stern"

When you think about the Academy Awards, you probably envision the glint and glitter of Oscar night when actors, directors, screenwriters, cinematographers, and others are honored. Yet one set of Oscar presentations is little known: The Scientific and Technical Academy Awards were presented this year on 4 March. SPIE member Iain Neil received his 10th Scientific and Technical Academy Award, a record, at this year's ceremonies, held in Beverly Hills, CA.

"It's a record for the Sci-Tech for an individual," Neil remarks. "I'm sure many companies have won 20 or 30."

In the past, companies rather than individuals often received the awards. "The Sci-Tech committee in more recent history has tried to identify individuals as opposed to companies," explains Rich Miller, the Awards Administration Director of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. "In the last 10 or 12 years, the committee has made major strides to give the awards to the people who actually did it."

Neil, who works for Panavision (Woodland Hills, CA), was a recipient of a Scientific and Engineering Award for the electronic design of the Panavision Millennium XL Camera System.

Four members of the Panavision design team received the Scientific and Engineering Award for the Millennium XL Camera system: Al Mayer Sr. and Al Mayer Jr. were recognized for the mechanical design, Neil was honored for the optical design, and Brian Dang was cited for the electronic design.

The Millennium XL brings the full uncompromised performance of larger, heavy-duty cameras to cameras in the lightest weight category while providing ruggedness and advanced features previously expected only in specialized or effects cameras.

"Usually I work with lenses," Neil says. "In this case, it was the optics within the camera."
Much of Neil's work centered around the viewfinder optics. "It's a little bit different, so it's nice to get an award for something I don't normally work on," he says.

All 10 of Neil's Academy Awards have been received with Panavision, where he currently serves as executive vice-president of research and development and optics as well as chief technical officer. Neil started his Panavision career about 14 years ago as the vice president of optics. Three years ago, Panavision moved its headquarters from Tarzana, CA to Woodland Hills.

Prior to joining Panavision, Neil had spent two years at Ernst Leitz Canada Ltd. (now a unit of Raytheon Systems Co; Midland, Ontario) and eight years at Barr and Stroud (now Pilkington Optronics; Glasgow, Scotland).

And of course one remembers Stanley Kubrick's Doctor Strangelove, Lolita, A Clockwork Orange, Eyes Wide Shut, etc. Well, there is one in the collection that most people don't remember: Barry Lyndon which was a surprise film in the fact that despite historical evidence dictating that long "costume drama" films are usually boring, Barry Lyndon was fast paced, entertaining, and employed a very special camera lens that enabled photography by candle light. And, it did win the 1975 Oscar for the "Best Picture". The lens in the spotlight [only three exist] is the Carl Zeiss Oberkochen 50mm f/0.7 [two stops faster than the f1.4]. Step back to the semi-darkages of motion picture lenses and film stock of the 1970's and understand that the fastest lens at that time was a Carl Zeiss 50mm f/1.4 and the fastest 35mm motion picture film had an emulsion speed of 100 ISO--both too slow for what Kubrick wanted to do for those interior candle lit scenes. Creativity ruled and the emphasis was placed on a new lens design rather than fuss with poor quality faster film emulsions. This is where NASA comes into the picture for NASA was using the Carl Zeiss Planar 50mm f/0.7 via the Hassablad for the Apollo program. Kubrick borrowed two of the lenses and adapted them to a special camera for the low light scenes. The light readings were still low for the shooting so Kubrick pushed the film speed a full f-stop to 200 ISO and let the film laboratory make up the difference.

Incidentally, the Carl Zeiss 50mm f/0.7 has been used in other Oscar winning "Best Picture" movies: Schindler's List [1993], The English Patient [1996], and Shakespeare In Love [1998].


Persistence of vision