American Cinematographer (July 1999) p.103-105
Short Takes
BIG WILLIE GOES WEST
By Stephanie Argy
While planning the music video for Will Smith's "Wild Wild West," the rapping
actor's title cut for the soundtrack of the feature film of the same name,
director Paul Hunter took cinematographer Thomas Kloss into a huge soundstage
filled with pieces of sets from the Warner Bros. Movie (see full coverage
beginning on page 36). "Paul introduced me to the project and to Will Smith,
and then we started talking about what we would try to achieve," remembers
Kloss. "The immediate question was, 'What are the technical obstacles"'"
Their mission was to create a flashy, feature-like look on a music-video
schedule and budget. Kloss offers, "I think the biggest challenge for us was to
understand the scope of the project and to explain what we thought we needed in
order to perform at that level."
By music-video standard, the scope of the eight-minute-long clip was
enormous, requiring a 14-day shooting schedule to capture Smith in his James T.
West character, singing, dancing, and rescuing damsel-in-distress Rita Escobar
(Salma Hayek, re-creating her role from the feature film) from a variety of
perils.
Though the "West" video relies heavily upon Barry Sonnenfeld's movie for its
content, Hunter and Kloss sought to lend the video an identity and look of its
own, rather than slavishly imitate the motion picture. After studying director
of photography Michael Ballhaus, ASC's work in the movie, Kloss decided to
strive for a markedly different visual style. The only actual matching between
the movie and the video was the recreation of four of the film's main sets.
Even before the opening notes of Will Smith's gun-slinging, desperado rap,
the video opens with an intimate, nighttime bedroom sequence between Smith and
Hayek, which is set in a small, rustic log cabin. Within this romantic,
candlelit scene, we witness the diabolical shenanigans of West's arch-nemesis,
the evil Dr. Arliss Loveless, as he has the alluring Hayek kidnapped from their
warm love-nest.
Breaking into the song, the camera then rushes toward Smith sanding amid
Warner Bros. Backlot Western town – which is completely engulfed in flames – as
he performs the opening verse. Illuminated in warm ¾ frontal firelight, framed
in front of saturated yellow-orange flames with hints of deep-blue moonlight
rimming the rapper, the imagery is slightly more stylized than that of its
feature-film cousin. The video's look features crushed blacks, crisp glowing
whites, and luminous colors, which were accentuated with the aid of colorist
Stefan Sonnenfeld of Company 3 in Santa Monica, California.
Next, the production moved on stage to shoot in a huge greenhouse-like
structure that served as the home base for Loveless. This set was used for
addition performance by Smith (featuring rapping companions Dru Hill and Kool
Moe Dee) as well as for a showdown between Loveless and West.
Finally, the cast and crew finished up their work in a cavernous theater in
Hollywood, where the production staged a lavish, Western-saloon-style party
sequence. Kloss details, "There we shot a whole dance sequence, and the party
scene featuring cameos by various people [including Stevie Wonder as the piano
player]. Also, this served as the segue for the battle between West and
Loveless as the villain sends a big chandelier crashing to the dance floor."
Lighting the enormous sets was a test for the cinematographer. While the
shots were on the same scale as scenes in the feature, the video crew had to do
them with less money and crew members than their feature counterparts. As Kloss
notes, however, understanding and working within limitations is a big part of
cinematography. "You have to learn to fit the size and scope of the project to
your [available resources], not what you want," he says.
Because Kloss and his gaffer, Norm Harris, were under so much time pressure,
they decided to keep things as flexible as possible by using either six-lights,
nine-lights or Dinos. "Those were all interchangeable bulbs," says Kloss. "You
could rig a light and say, 'I'm a stop under or a stop over,' and then click a
couple of switches on or off. With other lights, you can't do that."
Kloss added a bit of smoke to the mix, an approach that enabled him to create
rich, dramatic lighting with a wider spread, while eliminating the need to hang
20 lights or re-rig things constantly. "Often, we lit a shot with four nine-
lights, and then supplemented the illumination with single bulbs off the ground
-– such as Par 64 cans – wherever we needed a bit more exposure. Still, the
basic lighting was provided by our Maxis with nine-lights that had narrow
dichroic bulbs."
Kloss generally used nine-lights aimed through 12' x 12' grid cloths to
create some fill and a very soft look. "I would say [to the crew], 'Go two
stops under or a stop-and-a-half under, just don't overlight them.'" Another of
his tricks to keep things moving quickly and easily was to keep everything on
wheels. "I had the grips rig all of the equipment to be rollable so it wouldn't
take as long to reset things." This tactic proved particularly helpful for
shooting reverse angles of shots. "We could basically just roll everything
behind the camera again," he explains.
That kind of adaptability was crucial on this particular video. "We never
tried to get into complicated rigging situations," he says. "We had our sets
pre-lit and pre-rigged, and almost everything else beyond that was flexible
lighting. We had one light – a nine-light on a Condor – that served as our
emergency light. It could reach anywhere, and we could put it wherever it was
needed. Everything else was pretty much on rollers at ground level."
Kloss says that he tried to light the actors from the top and from behind.
"I didn't want to light them from the camera, but I still wanted to make them
look good. We tried to backlight them, or side-backlight them, and then add
just a very soft frontal fill light. I thought that looked good on Will, and it
made the video very rich-looking."
The cinematographer says he never worried about the differences between the
various cast members' skin tones. "I didn't mind the skin-tone difference
onscreen," he says. "If I shoot Salma Hayek next to Will Smith, I don't want
Will to look as bright as Salma anyways. I'm much more concerned about being
able to read their eyes. I don't care if Will goes a little dark next to Salma,
as long as I can see his eyes and the expression on his face."
Kloss adds that he avoided using lens diffusion, particularly on Smith. "In
my basic photographic approach, I try not to use an diffusion. Diffusion
filters make more sense when you are doing film postproduction, as opposed to
video postproduction. Video post gives you the many more options in terms of
softening, sharpening and manipulating the image." He also points out that
using lens diffusion is not the same as softening the light. "It's confusing if
you think you can make the light softer by shooting with diffusion filters.
Those are two separate issues."
Kloss says that he used long lenses only on extreme close-ups, preferring to
stay with wide lenses that would show off the full scope of the sets. "We tried
to portray the spaces," he offers. "We tried to do them justice by shooting
extremely wide and giving the audience a sense of where the whole video took
place. In my opinion, the music video is also a kind of commercial for the
movie, so I wanted to give the audience a strong visual taste of the feature's
various environments."
The lens he used most was the 14mm from the new Cooke series. "The
photography in this video is a very good example of what the Cooke lenses stand
for; they help to create really rich blacks and strong contrast, and they allow
you to read into all of the various shades. The [Kodak Vision 500T] 5279 film
stock also helps that kind of photography a lot, and it was the only stock we
used."
In his approach to lighting, Kloss prefers to have room to experiment and
find the right strategy for the task at hand. "I sometimes feel very restricted
if the lighting becomes too specific and too rigid," he says. "I personally
need to rough things in – to get a take on the scene and a sense of whether the
lighting is the way I want it to be, or to decide whether the source is too big
or small. I take my indications from my first try at something, and I may rough
something in for maybe 10 minutes. I'll set up a six-light or a nine-light and
look at it on the left or the right or from behind the actors, and then get an
idea on how it looks. Then I might say, 'Okay, that's a good approach – now
what else does the scene need?' At that point we'll get a bit more detailed with
the lighting."
Kloss says that the scale of the "Wild Wild West" video never struck him until
the job was finished – which, he admits, was probably for the best. "It's good
that it doesn't dawn on me that these projects are so big until they're done,"
he says. "If you suddenly sense the scope of what you're doing while you're in
the midst of things, it can be very intimidating. For me it is necessary to be
ignorant of those things on a certain level, because that allows me to go into
the job without so much fear."
He concludes that it's equally important to understand the vision of the
director. "You want to start it clean and try to focus on what the director
wants," he says. "The boundaries are given by the director or the producer. If
the project is wide enough in their imagination, then you'll have a wide canvas
to paint on."
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