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MillimeterDon Burgess, Cinematographer
Dec 1, 2000 12:00 PM, Jon Silberg
By the time Don Burgess, ASC, was hired to shoot Robert Zemeckis's groundbreaking epic Forrest Gump, the cinematographer had been working in the business for 15 years. His experience shooting indie features and A-list second unit had given him a wealth of knowledge and the confidence to shoot a major motion picture, but a relatively closed union had worked against that dream.
When Zemeckis, who had been impressed with Burgess's second-unit work on two of his Back to the Future films, asked the cinematographer to do first unit on Gump, a major cinematic collaboration was formed. The two worked together again on Contact, What Lies Beneath, and most recently Castaway. "It takes a director of that caliber to help you make a step like I did," says Burgess. "Studios never want a cameraman on a movie like Forrest Gump if he hasn't already shot a movie of that scope. The director needs to have enough clout to say, `This is how it's going to be.'"
Forrest Gump wasn't just a big expensive production with a lot of locations, it was also at the cusp of a new movement in filmmaking. The subtle use of digital compositing and CGI, now commonplace in features, was still something very new at that point.
Innovative as Gump was visually, neither Zemeckis nor Burgess had any desire on their next outing to travel in the trail they'd helped blaze. "The technology has been different on every picture I've done since then," says Burgess. "For example, we shot a lot of VistaVision plates in 65mm at the time, but that's become less necessary as digital technology has become more a part of the whole process. I hardly used VistaVision for Castaway's effects shots at all."
Although the Zemeckis/Burgess collaboration has produced stunning shots that leave the audience wondering, for Burgess, those bits of film aren't necessarily the most challenging to create. "Everybody talks about the big gags," he says. "But it's all the subtlety of the little things you can do in cinematography that really takes sleight of hand."
He explains that many scenes in last summer's thriller What Lies Beneath were cut together using both location footage and sound stage footage with model sets and forced perspective. One scene, set in a bathroom, was actually shot in seven differently constructed sets, each of which was designed to provide a slightly different perspective and allow a specific set of camera moves. "It can be tricky shooting things like that so they cut together seamlessly," Burgess says. "Nobody notices that kind of thing - they don't go `wow!' - but as far as I'm concerned that's some of my best stuff."
Castaway presented its own set of unique challenges. The first portion of the film builds to a frenetic pace as Tom Hanks's character races around maniacally, trying to balance home life and business pressures.
"We were using Steadicam, remote heads, all kinds of things to keep up that sense of movement," Burgess says. The pace builds to a crescendo when Hanks's character is involved in a plane crash. Then, suddenly, everything shifts gears completely as we watch him try to survive stranded on a deserted island. "The camera comes to a screeching halt. At this point everything is designed to convey the character's monotony, his sense of isolation. We were on sticks with the head locked off wherever possible. It was such a different style, especially for a Bob Zemeckis film."
Burgess has worked with other directors since Gump and is in pre-production with Sam Raimi on Spiderman. But he will likely always have a special feeling about his work with Zemeckis. "He does more visually and he's more experimental with camera movement than most directors," Burgess says. "He chooses a more complex way to do just about everything and that's why I like working with him. He takes storytelling to a higher level."
Continue the discussion on “Crosstalk” the Millimeter Forum.
