Dean
Semler – Action Man (continued from
page 1)
There’s a beautiful shot in “The Power of One” (1991) with a donkey and cart silhouetted against the red sky, and a family of elephants moving majestically behind them. It reeks of Africa, where the film itself was shot, but what you’d never pick unless Dean Semler told you was the donkey was in fact a cardboard cutout, with a tail they moved by pulling on a string. Nice simple improv: Dean is proud of stuff like that. There was precious little of it three years later…
Waterworld (1994)
Someone asked if he could tell they’d lost the plot while shooting “Waterworld”, which was really just a rip-off of Mad Max, and which ran wildly overschedule and overbudget, topping $200 million back when that was an unprecedented amount. “Well,” Dean replied, a bit surprised at the tone of the question, “I certainly thought I knew what I was doing!” But he did relate the story of the “grappling hook shot”, which probably cost as much as 2 years’ work at Film Australia, and lasted for all of two thirds of a second on screen.
What was needed was a shot to show Kevin Costner’s character attaching a grappling hook to the landing gear of Dennis Hopper’s plane as it took off from the deck of a burning ship. Dean first suggested they could cover it with a close-up looking up at the underside of the static plane, shoot some smoke past it, shaking it a bit (Mad Max 2 style) to indicate movement, and have the actor run in from out of shot and click the grappling hook on. But then the director (Kevin Reynolds) asked “Wouldn’t it look more spectacular if we were mounted under the plane, looking back through the landing gear at the whole burning deck, and the actor ran up to the camera?” Well, yes it would, Dean responded. But in order to run this heavy rig they built containing the camera and the undercarriage up the burning deck, the entire deck needed to be reinforced, you needed extras, pyrotechnics- all these elements costing tens of thousands of dollars- and while it certainly looked spectacular, once the editing was done it was reduced to just the moment of “ker-chink” when grappling hook goes over axle. You hardly notice it. That’s the kind of shoot it was.
For Dean himself, it was “a very challenging shoot”. He did the same kind of risk-taking as he had on Mad Max 2 in terms of getting shots late in the day, only much more expensively. The light was going on a huge rig of effects out at sea but Dean got committed, and because he had fast film he was able to shoot it with all of his cameras. Indeed, the explosions look better because of the relative darkness around them. Nevertheless, he’ll call “light” if he has to: “I’ve only lost the light a couple of times, but when it’s gone it’s gone.”
After teaching a seminar at the University of Hawaii, 4 students were expelled for shooting a porno movie in the parking lot. “But that had nothing to do with me!” the man protests.
We Were Soldiers (2001)
“We Were Soldiers” was filmed in the USA, north of L.A. It was based on the memoir of Harold Moore, a tough Vietnam vet who’d survived many battles. By the time the film came out, he was working as a security guard at the World Trade Center. He got a lot of people out on September 11th, but was killed when the building collapsed. So this retired soldier, now well in his 70s, was finally killed in action…
“We Were Soldiers” had its action scenes storyboarded, which is usual, but the rest of the film was not. Storyboards are useful things for showing every crew department what’s required. These days pre-vis animatics are also used, which actually move.
Dean shot the whole thing on 800 ASA stock. He’s a great believer in using faster film instead of piling on more lights, same as another of his Oscar-winning countrymen: “Johnny Seale shot The English Patient on all 500 ASA stock.” He shot a great deal through the telephoto lens, which gives you lots of movement, energy, sense of action. Plus he went for depth of field, which makes you less romanticised (you’d usually try to show the background out of focus behind the star) and seems more like a documentary.
To get in close to a napalm explosion, you put your cameras in there under fire blankets, behind some lens-protecting glass. “Magic hour” is a lovely time to roll: it makes your fire and explosions look even better.
The smell of napalm/gasoline, the sound of M-16s etc. really affected the Vietnam veterans on the set. And as if that weren’t enough, the great FX guy Joe Lombardi, who had done Apocalypse Now and many other classic films, and who by now was in his 80s, actually died during production. His ashes were placed on top of the biggest explosion, and detonated by his son.
On Mad Max 2, George & Byron said you can match anything in action- light matching was no problem: sometimes the sun’s right, sometimes left, sometimes high, sometimes low, sometimes overcast… If you’ve gotta hang around for light, those films will never get made. (These days digital intermediates also enable some correction, changing selective parts of a shot in post-production.) You can even get away with changing light in drama too, if you’re more careful. Nevertheless, “We Were Soldiers” was a light-matching nightmare- such changeable weather on the location- and no time in the schedule to wait for the light. But he managed to pull it together in post.
The finished work is very powerful emotionally, especially for vets. One tough New York critic couldn’t talk to his wife about it for 2 days. Dean himself is reduced to a blubbering wreck, helped along by the fact that his daughter comes in at the end as a journalist, followed by the crew who’ve been loyal to him for 15 years in the credits.
Comedies & Musicals
You mightn’t expect this, but Dean’s into comedies and musicals too. His advice to a guy planning a musical: “take a look at the classic musicals. Chicago’s not a bad place to start.” Backlighting, multiple cameras, your lenses- all need to be considered. “Good on ya for making a musical,” he adds. He himself owns the rights to remake Guys ‘n’ Dolls.
Dean has worked with Billy Crystal (on City Slickers), Eddie Murphy (on Nutty Professor II) and Jim Carey (on Bruce Almighty), and comments “comedies don’t win Oscars for lighting but what wonderful human beings to work with!”
A Collaborative Art
Some directors will plan out their visuals in fine detail, leaving a cinematographer little to add. They can see the whole film in their heads. There are others who are more on story and drama with the actors. Picture-wise they’ll have some ideas for great shots, but other than that they’ll say “Well, there’s the scene. You cover it.” When it comes to action- something Dean’s done lots of- directors often simply let him set it up. Dean doesn’t mind which way it’s done- although he probably prefers the latter way, contributing more- but it’s a collaborative art and he can work either way.
Does Dean have any input into editing? No. He comes back after editing and times (colour grades) the film. So his job has 3 parts:
(1) Preparation (with the director)
(2) Shooting
(3) Grading (now done digitally on, like, a $10 million Photoshop)
These days Dean no longer operates the camera. “Dances With Wolves” was the last time he did. (“Maybe I should do it again!”) In any case, he couldn’t do it all himself because he works with lots of multi-camera set-ups, both on action and quite often on dialogue scenes.
I asked is it true that while American cinematographers throw a tent over the scene and start lighting it regardless of the weather, Aussie cameramen look at the sky and work out how to use it. Dean absolutely agreed. “I know Johnny Seale did it with Witness” (used natural light only). People ask him “What is it about Aussie cameramen?” He thinks it has to do with flexibility and that great old Aussie quality of unflappability.
He’s been lucky enough to work out where that culture still runs thick. He remembers one job he had deep in the outback of Queensland (“phenomenal sunsets!”) where a bloke told him “Remember the Great Flood in the Bible? We got about 5 millimetres of that.” It was so dry they’d closed 2 lanes of the swimming pool, that sort of thing. After working all day in the dust, someone told him “You look like you need a Four X, mate!” He thought they were talking about film stock! (XXXX is a beer, for you non-Queensland readers.) The point is, they’re laid back and not fazed by anything. That’s the right attitude to have.
xXx, The Alamo & Beyond
We saw a clip from “xXx” (2001), in which some flawless “head replacement” CGI work turned the stuntman into the star. You had Vin Diesel's face on a stuntman’s body leaping his motorcycle through explosions. “You see wildness of cameras, lotsa good stuntmen and lotsa good work,” Dean enthused, but as soon as it finished he quipped: “Anybody got any questions about all that nonsense? I wanna show Undercover again…”
What he showed us instead was a trailer for “The Alamo”. Looks good- a pity it’s still stuck in post. “Johnny Seale has Cold Mountain coming out, Russell Boyd has Master and Commander, so I wanted to be up against my fellow Aussie cameramen this year.” Oh well, he’s going to have to wait.
Still, he was lucky on “xXx”: he was able to take his 15 crew over to Eastern Europe- usually a cameraman only gets to take 1 or 2. His key people were focus-pullers and operators. He’s found it hard to find good gaffers and operators in the U.S… went through several but has now found ones he’s happy with. Nevertheless he’d love to work back home again: “Gee, the crews here are great- and with so many major films that have been here since I left, they’re now technologically as good as anywhere, and even better with that great Aussie attitude”. He’ll be getting his chance once The Alamo’s out of the way. “Stealth”- his very next project- is going to be shooting in Sydney.
Altogether, Dean has shot no less than 40 films, with 38 on Kodak stock. (This evening’s moderator, who had worked with Dean a lot, was also from Kodak.) But there was a particular project where Phil Noyce was leaning toward using Fuji. They did some tests, but there just wasn’t much between them. Dean was driving through Japan when he fell underneath the shadow of a blimp, and when he looked up, there was “FUJI” emblazoned on it in huge letters, like a giant message from fate- so he decided on using Fuji for that film. Yes, fate has always played a role in this man’s life.
The final question Dean was asked was what he thought was the most difficult part of filmmaking, and he quoted Woody Allen: “It’s putting the little holes down the side of the film.”
In what may have been fate, after the session, this author found himself sitting on the bus with Ian Dunlop, the director of some of those early New Guinea documentaries. “Dean hasn’t changed since I knew him,” he said. “He’s still down-to-earth, up for anything, nothing pretentious about him.”
“But isn’t it wonderful,” added his wife, “what he’s done on the world stage?”
I completely agreed. Not too bad for a little boy from Renmark.
- Reported by David Williams, December 2003