Painting with Shadows and Light

In the first installment of a new series I've decided to call "Painting with Shadows and Light", I'm going to share with you some of my favorite cinematographers.

Commonly known as the Director's best friend, the Cinematographer -- also knows as the Director of Photography (or DP for short) -- plays one of the most crucial roles on the film crew. A cinematographer paints his celluloid landscape with shadows, light, and filters to fill the frame for the director. What he or she accomplishes "in camera" can make or break the overall look and feel of the final product that is eventually projected on a movie theater screen near you.

When I first began my love affair with movies and filmmaking, one of the first names I started to recognize (outside of the big names, like Steven Spielberg) was a name associated with many of the films I grew up watching as a child throughout the 1980s. That name was Dean Cundey.

Dean Cundey in Back to the Future Part III

Dean Cundey became a prominent go-to DP in Hollywood in the 1970s and 1980s after his exemplary work on John Carpenter's Halloween. His innovative techniques and his usage of the panaglide camera (or steadicam as it is more commonly known), made the film standout among the other horror films of the day, leading to its box office success.

[Please be advised if you watch the clip below, that there is brief nudity and violence after the 2:50 mark.]

Dean Cundey's knowledge and understanding of the steadicam gave him and Carpenter the tools to incorporate the smooth movement as Michael Myer's POV, providing the audiences with a completely fresh take on what could have easily been just your normal run-of-the-mill genre-entry horror film. Instead, it revitalized the genre and catapulted Cundey's career to work with some of the "greats" of the 1980s.

Cundey's proficiency behind the camera allowed him to slowly
reveal Myer's face with a blue light from complete darkness.

By 1982, Cundey had worked on a dozen more films, including three more with John Carpenter: The Fog, Escape from New York, and The Thing. His thoughtful usage of lighting provided him with the ability to creatively think in advance on set about the images that went in front of the camera before filming began. These choices would free him up from having to spend countless hours later correcting it in post production. That sort of mindset is practically all but forgotten in the new digital era of filmmaking here in the 21st Century (this eventuality and more are further explored in the documentary, Side by Side).

Cundey treats The Fog as its own character, back-lighting it and what it brings, all while
dressing the frame with candle light and a blue fill-light to bounce off the open door
behind the character in the foreground, creating greater contrast.

In 1984, Dean Cundey had joined forces with up-and-coming director Robert Zemeckis. Within an eight year time-span, the two would collaborate on six films including, Romancing the Stone, Back to the Future (and its two sequels), and Death Becomes Her.

In Romancing the Stone, Cundey takes advantage of a diopter lens filter, which allows objects in
the foreground (Kathleen Turner) and the background (hungry alligators with a glossy mud sheen)
to be in focus at the same time, conveying to the audience a heightened level of suspense.

In Back to the Future, Cundey incorporated one of his signature camera moves, using a slow-gliding frame to tell one of the most brilliant film openings ever made, at least in my opinion. (I go into much greater detail regarding this opening scene here.) In the clip below, notice the how crisp the imagery is, and how every reflective surface -- especially anything silver -- just pops up off of the screen like it's still brand new off the showroom floor.

His vibrant and striking photography finally culminated in an Academy Award Nomination in 1988 for his work on Who Framed Roger Rabbit. To create just the animation alone, over 85,000 hand-inked and painted cels were developed and composited with live-action backdrops, live-action characters, and hand-animated tone mattes (for shading) and cast shadows using optical film printers. No computers were used in this process [from IMDb].

Cundey had to seamlessly blend in cell-drawn animated images on top of previously
filmed footage shot months earlier in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but was still able to
maintain the noir look and feel of the film.

Dean Cundey soon became synonymous with big budget visual effects movies, resulting in his fantastic work on Steven Spielberg's next two films, Hook in 1991 and the box office juggernaut Jurassic Park, in 1993.

Cundey worked with SFX greats Dennis Muren (Star Wars Trilogy) and
Stan Winston (T2, Aliens) to help bring dinosaurs back to life in Jurassic Park.

His last notable achievement came in 1995, working along side Ron Howard with Apollo 13. It too was a critical and box office success. Cleverly nostalgic in its visual style, the film harks back to a more traditional Hollywood movie, told with great clarity and remarkable technical detail.

Fusing stock footage with filmed footage and CGI, Cundey helped re-create
a very authentic-looking Apollo 13.

Although he's still working in the industry today (involved with more than two dozen projects in the last twenty years), it seems as though his finest years, or at least the most inspired and inventive, may be behind him. As I struggle to put together words of appreciation for his work -- images that are permanently burned in my brain from childhood enjoyment, as well as ones he helped create that influenced and molded my love of cinema -- I believe his own words serve him best to close out this minor tribute to film industry legend:

"For me, the special satisfaction in being a director of photography -- you might even call it my private ego trip -- is knowing that the work I do will live on after I'm gone. Most people have jobs in which the work disappears after they have performed it. I'm very fortunate to work in a profession which has lasting value. It gives me a unique form of immortality. It certainly isn't comparable to the immortality of great artists like Leonardo Da Vinci or Michelangelo. But in a small way, it means future generations can discover my work -- and know that, at this point in time, I was here."

Okay, I think I've geeked out enough for the both of us in one day.