Dean
Semler – Action Man
Cinematographers are not just technicians: they are storytellers, just as much as writers or directors. John Seale (this site’s cinematographer patron) has said “every shot should tell a story” and as Dean Semler, one of Australia’s most venerable cameramen- now one of Hollywood’s too- spoke to us, he made his points and answered questions by telling stories. It was December 2003, and he was speaking at a Popcorn Taxi event at the Valhalla Cinema, Sydney, all about his life and work.
Dean Semler’s body of work is heavy on the action, giving us some of the hardest-hitting, best known action films of the last 25 years: Mad Max 2, Waterworld, Dances With Wolves… Macho stuff, and there’s a lot of macho in him. When he’s listening to a question, he will concentrate, not smiling, fixing you in a gaze as intense and unwavering as a laser beam. Combined with his big bearlike build and grey hair and that no-bullshit broad Aussie accent, the package is pretty intimidating. You feel like if you asked him something stupid, he would deck you there and then.
Beginnings (1964-1974)
But it wasn’t always so. Dean had no inkling about doing cinematography as a career back when he was a kid. All he had was a little still camera. The first moving pictures he shot were on 2 rolls of Super-8 film, before getting a job as a Channel 9 news cameraman in Adelaide. He was sent out with simple instructions- just get coverage- and took pride in shooting 3 news stories per hundred foot reel, which forced in-camera editing and discipline. Soon he felt like he could play his favourite camera “like a flute”.
He had no film school: just a mentor, Pat McEwen(?)- recently died- who nurtured him through the early years, and he was always out there doing it. He showed us his earliest film work- a black & white piece but a pretty cool subject- the local press conference for The Beatles, from 1964. Then a music clip straight from the kitsch file: remember Ernie Sigley’s cover version of “Yesterday” from 1966? No, probably not.
He did work for the Department of Health, and had 9 years at Film Australia, including going to New Guinea for several docos on the mountain tribes, which provided wonderful training. Further mentorship was gained at Film Australia through his work with Arch Nicholson, who used to push Dean toward excellence by asking “Would you want to see your credit over this shot?” (In 1980, Arch was one of several judges at the National Youth Film Festival, where this author won a prize for “The Supersleuths”- a short film on our comedy page. Small industry!)
1974 saw the release of “A Steam Train Passes”, which was probably Dean’s most accomplished short. It’s regarded as a minor classic these days: 21 minutes’ worth of steam train charging through the frozen mountains of New South Wales from Sydney to Bathurst, put to music without voice-over or words. The musical score by George Dreyfus is also a beauty, and so is the green streamlined loco itself, built in 1943, the year Semler was born. Incidentally, the guys kept their bacon & eggs warm on top of the engine.
“It was a wonderful experience,” says Dean. “We had this beautiful toy to play with for 10 days.” As cinematographer, he often went hand-held with no assistant, simply racking the focus himself. Film Australia productions weren’t usually profitable, but “A Steam Train Passes” has paid for itself in library footage since. So a lot of people saw it, and it got him work outside of Film Australia.
He began his work on full-length films at this point, but a part of him looks back nostalgically. He says: “I seem to get involved in very large movies, but miss the purity of the early days.” Still, he’d really just begun…
Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981)
While shooting “Hoodwink” (1981), Dean got a call from Byron Kennedy and George Miller. They were crewing up the sequel to their 1979 cult hit Mad Max. He expected to meet a coupla guys in T-shirts and sneakers, but they were dressed in suits and bow ties. Byron was tall, and it was very businesslike. He had a deadly serious interview with George, who asked Dean’s favourite cinematographer. Dean said Don McAlpine, who he’d worked with in the past. He got the job, and as he readily admits, it was the luckiest break of his career.
It was a very carefully planned movie: George is a great planner. Some directors say their storyboards are just a guide, while others stick to them religiously, and George is one of those. Paradoxically, it was also George who introduced Dean to violent wild camera movements. Once he came by and kicked the tripod, just to add a jerk. (You’ll see an example of this when the oil refinery explodes.)
They were no less inventive with sound: Byron had said “this’ll be a soundtrack you can feel.” Indeed, the soundtrack for reels 9 & 10 (the truck chase) is still preserved as one of the greatest early Dolby Stereo soundtracks (with a rumoured 110 separate tracks going into its production).
We were shown the second half of the famous truck chase. “Holds up well, doesn’t it, 20 years later?” Dean crows. Still, they were working economically: “If you don’t see road- if it’s just against sky- we’re just shooting the actors in a static vehicle, with a wind machine, shake rattle & roll added. Simple!”
The “Ned Kelly” is a neat little gizmo for picking up close views of crashes which Dean and his crew have developed: a metal football into which they put the camera. They drop it in a truck tyre, where it sits like an egg in an egg cup. (It resembles the helmet Ned Kelly wore, therefore the name.) Even if a car hits it, it bounces: the film will be safe. It only costs $100. The American equivalent is a “crash box” which does the same thing but is much more expensive. Four years later, on “Mad Max 3: Beyond Thunderdome” (1985), Angry Anderson’s car bullseyed one at the end of a jump and they wrote off a camera. Ned Kellies are tough, but they’re not indestructible!
For the climactic tanker crash, they let the professional truck driver (Dennis Williams) roll it himself. He had rolled a truck before in a real accident, so he knew how it should feel, and how to do it. They had 5 cameras rolling on the stunt. The truck rolled, there’s this pile of red dust. George rushed in (because as well as being director, he was also the set doctor). Dennis took off his dust goggles and looked up raccoon-like, and plaintively asked “Can I have a bacon roll now?”
On their final night in Broken Hill, they still needed that shot with the bikers looking at the rolled tanker before riding away. The sun was already down and Dean only had 100 ASA film, but by using a fast lens and pushing it up in the lab, he was able to get it. It looks a bit soft in the film but it works- indeed, the semi-darkness helps highlight the fires down the road. So trust your instincts!
Every week somebody mentions Mad Max 2 to him. In America, where it was released as “The Road Warrior”, it’s his biggest claim to fame. He once got done for speeding in Montana, doing 90 in a 55 zone: “Road was good, car was good, there was no other traffic, you know…” The cop noticed the accent and asked whether Dean had had anything to do with The Road Warrior. Dean said “Yes, I was the cinematographer on that movie.” So the cop just asked for Dean to sign his autograph on the ticket, and let him off!
Some years later, during the making of “We Were Soldiers”, he got done in California doing 85 mph. He told the cop about The Road Warrior: “You know, that movie with Mel Gibson? I was D.O.P. on that. I’m actually driving to the set to see him now…” The cop simply looked at him briefly and went back to writing the ticket. California, man… they hear it every day.
Undercover (1983)
“Mad Max 2”, “Undercover” and “Dances With Wolves” are the three productions Dean names as his favourites: “If I made no other film, I’d still be happy.” Undercover is the film that might surprise you from that list. A quirky Aussie period drama, it portrays the early history of the Berlei bra & girdle company, which was started by Australian Fred R. Burley and his brother back in 1929, and went on to become an international empire. It’s a story about corsets!
Razorback (1983)
Razorback returned Dean Semler to the outback for some more rip-snorting action, with the story of a monstrous feral boar. It earned him fans in the strangest places. He was in a motel room in Coober Pedy when Annie, his wife, said “ Steven Spielberg’s on the phone.” Don’t be ridiculous, he thought, but it was true: he’d just seen “Razorback” and liked it very much. “That was the phone call of my life.” (As it happens, just two weeks ago, he bumped into Spielberg again, in an L.A. supermarket. They were both just buying carrots or some such thing. They had a chat about what they thought of this and that.)
Some years later, Dean was working in the U.S. with a tough Hell’s Angels film crew. He discovered they were all huge “Razorback” fans. They screened the movie in his honour and even put a pig’s head in his bag. “We would’ve put it in your bed,” one told him later, “but we didn’t think your wife would appreciate it.”
Dances with Wolves (1990)
Dean left Australia for America in 1986. After doing several pictures, he achieved his greatest glory with “Dances With Wolves”. Nature helped him do the job: it was a beautiful location. They shot the film in South Dakota and thereabouts, from Autumn through Winter.
Kevin Costner, the director, liked to play music over the rushes, drawn from CD’s in his personal collection of 60 film scores. “The Man From Snowy River” and “Lonesome Dove” (a miniseries Dean had shot) were two of his favourites. Kevin says: “If you leave a picture up too long, it’ll start running down the wall. You have to use some music to nail it back up again.” He also put music over the hair & makeup tests for the Indians & himself & other actors, and people had tears running down their faces watching it back, it was so moving. Other directors set the mood in similar ways: “Peter Weir uses music on his set all the time.”
Kevin wanted to ride with the buffalo bareback while shooting a rifle, and did. At one point he fell off, but got right back on up. He took big physical risks. If this had been a studio picture, he probably wouldn’t have been allowed.
They had 9 cameras rolling on the stampede, including a Ned Kelly and a Steadicam running on a vehicle over untested ground, with the buffalo moving at 20 to 30 miles an hour around them. The Americans also had backup equipment- something we don’t usually have in Australia- and Dean was on an arri-vehicle(?), zooming in amongst them. (Kevin called it “Scrotum-cam” because it had a big brown bag that hung down at the front.) A 2nd unit got additional stampede shots, including animatronic buffaloes: they’re the ones getting speared and shot. On watching the footage back, Kevin said “Ah yes, this is Mad Max.” And he was right.
Dean never had “Dances With Wolves” criticised till he went to a cattle station in Central Australia, where an Aussie stockman said “I’ve got a bone to pick with you.” It’s that the buffalo all had ear tags. Dean admitted this was true, and you can see ‘em if you look for them in the scene.
Dean has never been short of work, but after winning his “Dances” Oscar, the offers really started coming. It was massively important- more than he realised at the time- “and heavens, it was 12 or 13 years ago!” But it puts you in a whole new category. He didn’t want to go to the ceremony, and was very nervous beforehand, but it turned out to be a magnificent occasion. “There I was sitting with Vittorio Storaro, Allen Daviau and Gordon Willis- this line-up of the best cameramen in the world- and I was this little boy from Renmark in amongst them!”
- Reported by David Williams, December 2003