American cinematographer (Jan-Dec 1963)

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At your dealer, or order direct from MILLER PROFESSIONAL EQUIPMENT 1619 NO. CHEROKEE HOLLYWOOD 28, CALIF. PHONE: HOLLYWOOD 7-8189 ‘MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY’ Continued from Page 91 highly-touted “peaceful" South Pacific was anything but calm and the ship pitched and rolled continuously. There was constant wind and paralyzing storms, one of which flooded the island, washing out roads and isolating crew members so they could not get to the shooting area for several days. After three weeks of “impossible” shooting weather, the company returned to photograph, ironically enough., storm secpiences on the sound stage. The storm, a climactic sequence in the film, presented its own array of photographic problems. It supposedly raged over several days and nights, calling for a variety of lighting schemes and camera approaches. A full-scale model of the “Bounty,” complete with sails, was set up on rockers inside one of the largest M-G-M sound stages, against a huge gray cyclorama. Gigan¬ tic dump-chutes were installed to send tons of water crashing down on the ship’s deck, to simulate the effect of stormy seas — washing sailors overhoard and, incidentally, injuring sev¬ eral stunt men in the process. Giant wind machines blew solid sheets of wa¬ ter along the deck to enhance the storm effects. To simulate the luminous overcast of the approaching storm, Surtees be¬ gan the photography of this sequence with an overall soft light, then dark¬ ened the scene as the storm developed. Then, as the storm hit and water began to crash down on the deck, he dropped the light level on the backdrop, letting the “sky” go leaden gray and increased the contrast of the light for a harsh dramatic effect. Night sequences and a driving snow storm were shot next. Through it all Surtees was faced with the problems of not being able to get back far enough with the camera to get a real long shot of the ship and also in lighting the scenes so they would cut easily in the editing with actual location shots filmed at sea. Actually, the sailing model of the “Bounty” which journeyed to Tahiti was one of four full-scale replicas built for the picture. Another was built on a stage for the storm sequence. A third, with full deck gear and sails, was built on the M-G-M backlot as part of the huge exterior set duplicating the wharves of Portsmouth, England prior to the departure of the historic vessel. The fourth full-scale mockup was a cutaway model of the below-deeks in¬ teriors of the ship, built on rockers so that the roll of the sea could be simu¬ lated. One of the problems of shooting the interiors arose from the fact that the Ultra-Panavision anamorphic lens used to shoot the sequences covered an angle of 138 degrees. Photographed with such an extreme wide-angle lens, ship cabins of normal dimensions would have appeared vast on the screen. Therefore, the sets actually had to be cut down and foreshortened to make them look authentically small. To fur¬ ther the illusion of cramped space the ceilings were set so low that the actors had to stoop to walk around. Now the one major remaining problem was where to put the lights, camera and hordes of people called for in some of the scenes. Because the real ship when at sea rocked noticeably, this movement had to be matched in scenes where charac¬ ters are shown below decks in the cabins. Usually such an effect is pro¬ duced by building the interior mockup in such a way that it will accommodate a camera crew. Then the ship, placed on rockers, is made to swing inde¬ pendently of the camera. In this case, however, the spread of the wide-angle lens required that the side walls of the cabins remain in place, which meant that there was no room for a camera crane. To solve this dilemma a camera platform was suspended by chains from the girders at the top of the stage so the camera could be suspended freely down through the lights affixed to the set. This worked well enough, except that each new set-up meant re-banging the camera platform, a slow and pains¬ taking process. Because the ship’s cabins were so small, the rocking of the boat made the camera appear to be moving from one wall to the other. With the wideangle lens exaggerating the movement, Surtees reasoned that there was danger of audiences watching the filmed re¬ sult on a large theatre screen becoming seasick. Over the protests of observers, the movement of the rocking mechan¬ ism was reduced and more precisely controlled to match the camera angle used for each individual shot. For ex¬ ample, in the long shots a rather ex¬ treme degree of movement could be used. In the matching closeups, how¬ ever, the movement had to be reduced considerably. While the company was constantly fighting overcast skies in shooting se¬ quences which called for fine weather, there was one scene in which this prob 114 AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER, FEBRUARY, 1963