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Millimetercinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond
Oct 1, 1998 12:00 PM, Matt Cheplic
"American schools don't seem to concentrate much on art," observes Hungarian cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond. When asked why so many legendary DPs hail from Europe, he answers: "There are great American-born cinematographers. But in Europe, everyone is brought up knowing something about art. When you're in school, they take you to museums, they teach you about different art forms, so it's a different upbringing."
If anyone needs an argument for art education, just look to The Deer Hunter, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and any one of the many other renowned features shot by the seasoned DP. Then, of course, there is Zsigmond's ASC Award, the Emmy Award, the Cable ACE Award, the British Academy Award, and eight Academy nominations.
But despite a reputation for high-profile, big-budget work, Zsigmond is most excited by his latest project, Dancing About Architecture, a multi-layered relationship picture by young writer and director Willard Carroll. "Nowadays, everyone's making high-budget movies," he says, "and it was so nice to do a low-budget movie. It was so different than the films I've done in the past five, six, eight years."
Zsigmond dispels the myth that a lower budget means cutting corners. "It's low money, but every penny goes into the film. With a high budget, many times that money's not on the screen; it goes into producers, actors, other things. I can even use equipment I couldn't use on big-budget films-things like technocranes."
He also points to the good planning of Carroll, who oversaw an efficient 41-day shooting schedule. "I shot everything at the right time of day. It was planned out; we rehearsed. The director also knew everything he wanted to shoot. That's also unusual because, today, the industry is loaded with newcomers from rock videos or from who knows where, and they don't know their job. Carroll knew everything-every single shot. So we used up all the time to get the shots he needed."
Such foresight is especially impressive when one notes that Dancing-starring Gillian Anderson, Ellen Burstyn, Sean Connery, Madeleine Stowe, and other notables-is actually five stories in one. For Zsigmond, this meant establishing a different look for each subplot. "That was exciting, that we shot five movies in one. We basically did that with different lighting: more shadows, harsher light, silhouettes. For more romantic moods, I often went back and lit something in an old, traditional style, by using a lot of rim lights, for example."
Lighting is his biggest industry pet peeve, and he laments that most young producers do not comprehend it. "They don't understand why it takes time. We have all these new high-speed lenses and high-speed film, which they think lets us shoot immediately. They think lighting is a luxury, so we get less and less time to do our job. Some producers don't understand that shooting darkness takes more time than shooting light. To do something like film noir-that took time to light."
Zsigmond is also perplexed by some cameramen's attitudes toward lighting. In his estimation, even if they have the know-how, they do not always demonstrate it. "With many films today, there's no mood to them. Many newer cameramen don't have the experience we had. We had slow film, slow lenses-we had to know how to light to make it look real. Today's cameramen can shoot real without the lighting. And it looks real. But the question is: Do we want it to look real or look poetic?"
Whatever Zsigmond does to concoct his own personal poetry, he has netted some important fans. Steven Spielberg, Brian DePalma, and Robert Altman have each employed him at least twice. And while he has shot films for numerous other household names, it is Spielberg for whom Zsigmond has a special admiration. (He also filmed the director's debut, Sugarland Express.)
"He's great because he's an improviser. You never knew what he was going to try to do. His ideas came right on the set, and we'd have to swing with it. It's almost like being a musician. You have to work harder, but the joy of improvising is great when it works."
Continue the discussion on “Crosstalk” the Millimeter Forum.