Visions of Light: LIGHTING…THE Star Essay

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Eventually, prior commitments elsewhere forced Almendros himself to leave and Haskell Wexler completed the film. Wexler, a veteran of the studio system and in particular a disciple of pioneering cinematographer Conrad Hall, took a more pragmatic approach to the project. Although he was reluctant to betray Almendros' vision of the way Days of Heaven should look, he was willing to explore alternative methods for achieving that look, and so filled out the gorgeous but fragmentary existing footage with more conventional shots filtered to match.

In doing so, Wexler followed in the studio tradition that allowed generations of filmmakers to portray the little world of the sound stage in such a way that it not only resembles the outside world but also appears to surpass it in scale or grandeur. Almendros had shifted the responsibility (and the budget) of the filmic project to the staging of authentic situations that could then be documented under ideal circumstances; Wexler knew that the only important things were what the camerea saw and what made it into the can.

Focusing on the technique of "day for night" (as explored in the earlier sequence on Conrad Hall's body of work) is a good way to encapsulate the essential difference between the two approaches. Almendros waited for his hour, while Wexler shot whenever he could and adapted his shooting environment to get the effects he wanted. In a similar way, studio cinematographers had brilliantly fought technical and budget constraints to give filmgoers the illusion that brightly lit sequences were happening at night -- or for that matter, that black-and-white images reflected the chromatic universe.

Now, of course, the digital effects environment (itself a creation of the blockbuster-driven evolution of the film industry glimpsed in Visions of Light's post-Jaws sequences) may make such distinctions meaningless.

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In theory, James Cameron now has the ability to remake Days of Heaven or compose a 3-D sequel entirely within the CGI studio, completely alienated from any dependence on natural lighting conditions at all. Still, while such a production could very well emulate the "magic hour" textures of the original film, it is unclear whether it could do so without the example of Almendros' archival footage to follow. Wexler utilized his own more analog techniques brilliantly to match his shots to the magic hour and finish the film, but without the accidents of nature and a photographer nimble enough to capture them, there would have been nothing to match.

Questions like this bring us full circle to the function of cinema and, more immediately where Visions of Light is concerned, the function of the cinematographer. As illusionists, cinematographers built Hollywood but are now in danger of being replaced by CGI compositors as arbiters of what makes it onto a frame of digital "film." As documentarians, cinematographers will likely always be necessary for ensuring that action, performers, and scenery are recorded coherently and in such a way that larger objectives (story, emotional impact, atmosphere) are served. The fact that Visions of Light was produced as a showcase for then-novel HDTV formats underlines just how important the distinction is, how the motion picture industry continues to evolve, and how crucial it is to document, embrace, and learn from the technical achievements of past generations.

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