an old but interesting article i found this morning

Originally written for FILM & VIDEO magazine, 1990
Bill Butler, Asc, On Shooting Graffiti Bridge with Prince

-----

Bill Butler, ASC, thought he had done it all. He studied electronics at the University of Iowa, helped design and install TV production studios at WGN, in Chicago, won a local Emmy for electronic photography, and earned two film Emmys for shooting TV movies: Raid on Entebbe and A Streetcar Named Desire. He also received an Oscar nomination for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

You can probably count the directors of photography who have hit as many home runs at the box-office on the fingers of one hand. Butler shot seven feature films which topped $100 million in box-office revenues including Jaws, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Rocky II, III and IV, Stripes and Grease, one of the most successful musicals of all time.
But, don't get the idea that he's just a BIG PICTURE guy. Butler shot Francis Ford Coppola's two early films, Rain People and The Conversation, and Billy Friedkin's first feature, Good Times, to name a few of his experiences with first-time directors. Other new directors included Steven Spielberg on Jaws and Milos Forman on One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest as well as such veterans as Mike Nichols on Biloxi Blues.

With all of that behind him, Butler thought there would be no more surprises in his career. But, that was before his agent called last Spring and said Prince wanted him to come to Minneapolis to shoot Graffiti Bridge. Nothing and everything he had done before prepared him for Prince and Graffiti Bridge.

Let's start with the fact that Graffiti Bridge is not a long rock video, though its heart and soul are music and dance numbers, 18 in all. There's also a story with dialogue, relationships and emotional content.

"Like any musical, the story is abstract," Butler said. "There is a built-in audience, but Prince's fans are going to bring expectations to the theatre. They have seen him in rock videos which use slow motion, optical composites, solarization, and every visual trick in the book."

Butler knew he had to satisfy high expectations for visual content. But, he also wanted to bring something new to the rock video look: he wanted to give it the texture and feel of a movie. Butler wanted to create an illusion that lulled the audience into temporarily suspending their sense of reality. That was essential if they were going to accept the screen personna of Prince as a character in a movie.

He had to achieve this within the artistic boundaries and production realities Prince defined for the film.

"Prince had a look in mind," said Butler. "He likes dimly-lit images. There is also a style of photography that he likes. He calls it guerrilla movie-making, where the cast and camera operators have maximum freedom to interpret scenes as they are shooting."

Production was done in the house that Prince built, Paisley Park Studios. There were elaborate sets for nightclub and street scenes; all pre-lit from overhead grids, computer-controlled from a console. They are concert lights, ordinarily used for live shows.

"I don't think anyone has ever used this type of lighting in a movie," Butler said. "You can dim the intensity, move and focus beams, create patterns like the dappled effects of sunlight filtering through the leaves on trees, alter colors, and turn lights on and off with split-second timing."

All of these factors were in place when Butler arrived on the scene. Another cameraman had started the film. But for one reason or another, things didn't click between
Prince and him. And, it was Prince's movie. He conceived the story, wrote the music, directed and starred in Graffiti Bridge.

Butler had to hit the ground running; working with a mainly local crew, except for his gaffer. During his first days at Paisley Park, Butler had two urgent goals to achieve. First, he wanted to establish instant rapport with the crew, and quickly discover who could do what, who needed instruction, and who he had to work around in various circumstances.

"You need to have everyone on your side," he said. "You can't afford to have an enemy in your crew. And, you need to keep everyone moving in the same direction. If you have a lot of hollering, finger pointing and bad vibes on a set, it is going to translate to the movie."
Butler spoke individually with every crewmember. He let them know what he expected, and showed them the same respect he wanted in return.

"Some of them weren't as experienced as Hollywood crew members, but they gave me a tremendous amount of enthusiasm, effort and desire," Butler said. "If you respect your crew, they'll usually take pride in their work and give you the support you need."

Butler also had to develop instant rapport with Sallid, the choreographer who does Prince's live shows. "He was choreographing musical numbers for a presidium arch," Butler said. "That's basically a two dimensional look, from edge to edge, or from front to backstage. That's the basis for the way chorus lines are choreographed in live theatre, where the audience is always seated in front of the stage."

It's different with movies because the use of the camera and lens can alter the visual perspective of the audience. Instead of being passive spectators, by altering their point of view, the audience can be drawn right into the film as invisible participants.

In order to do that, Butler wanted scenes choreographed from a triangular perspective. "It's like shooting down a funnel," Butler explained. "Your field of view gets narrower as the action gets closer to the lens, and it widens as it gets further away."

Once the choreographer was thinking that way, Butler was able to create the illusion of depth and space, which added a whole new dimension to the film. It became a movie instead of a film of a series of rock videos.

After those things were accomplished, Butler said, it was simply a matter of solving a lot of small problems day by day. One of the challenges was adapting to Prince's passion for guerrilla movie-making. On the song and dance numbers, for example, there were always four or five cameras roving, on dolly tracks, hand-held and with Steadicam operators. All of the cameras were ARRIs with long and short zoom lenses and video taps.

Under the best of conditions, complex multi-camera scenes are never a picnic. The cameraman always has to make some compromises since sidelight for a camera shooting from one direction is front or backlight for cameras covering other points of view. Yet, footage from the various cameras has to intercut seamlessly.

Butler is a practically peerless master of this type of multi-camera photography. Each of the Rocky films he shot was built on the foundation of breathtaking boxing matches. Butler shot those scenes with as many as eight cameras. Each scene was as precisely choreographed as a ballet.

Every move, each action and reaction was plotted, rehearsed and executed with drill team precision. Butler planned accordingly and charted coverage from every conceivable angle and point of view without compromising the quality of light. By Rocky IV, he was shooting spectacular fight scenes in a single day. That was significant because of the enormous energy that Sylvester Stallone and his on-screen opponents poured into these scenes.

But, the focus was on two highly disciplined actors who perfectly executed everything from the delivery of jarring punches, to the glint in Rocky's eyes.

Graffiti Bridge was a totally different type of a challenge. Prince played a central role, but there were many other performers singing, dancing, playing musical instruments, and generally sharing the spotlight. Even the audiences at nightclub scenes were integral to the story.

"Everything was scripted and organized, but there was a lot of spontaneity and improvising," Butler said. "There were rehearsals, but these were rarely at the same level of energy and intensity as the actual shoots."

Butler was basically photographing performers rather than actors. He couldn't count on people hitting marks. Instead of the performers playing to the cameras, he made the cameras play to them.

Most scenes were shot twice, with all of the cameras rolling simultaneously. Sets were pre-lit to provide for planned camera movements. However, Butler always had to be prepared for the unexpected. That was where Prince's style of guerrilla movie-making came into play

The cast improvised the same way they would if they were either performing or in the audience at a club. Take one was rarely exactly the same as the rehearsal, and take two usually varied from the first shoot. Camera operators were encouraged to be spontaneous.
"If they saw something great happening, they went for it," Butler said. "The second take wasn't usually exactly the same as the first one. They would usually go for a different angle or view."

Instead of trying to control the operators, Butler trusted their judgment, while he concentrated on lighting for proper exposure, avoiding unnatural shadows, and creating a texture and mood that fit the scene. He worked in concert with the dimmerboard operator, making real-time adjustments to compensate for ad-libbing by the cast and operators.
That requires an extraordinary ability to pre-visualize in real-time. Most cinematographers will tell you their work is part art and part craft. Artistic ability is something you are born with; it's instinctive. Butler adds an interesting twist to that definition. He defines instincts as ingrained knowledge that you aren't aware of having.

"From experience, you know how a certain film will react when it is exposed to a particular kind of light focused through a specific lens," he said. "You might not think of it in those specific terms on a conscious level, but instinctively you know how a scene will look if you shoot it a certain way."

Graffiti Bridge was shot entirely with Eastman EXR color negative film 5296. The film has a recommended exposure index of 500 in 3200 K light. "It's a big improvement," said Butler. "Because of the T-Grain emulsion, we were able to work with less light and still obtain very crisp image quality. It's a better tool because it served our artistic needs."

The operators used zoom lenses during the complex multi-camera scenes mainly for variable focus, so they could make quick size changes. That helped maintain the rapid pacing of photography. Obviously, it would have been impossible to stop for a lens change every time an operator wanted to change the space he or she was covering. The ability to use zoom lenses for variable focus gave them the flexibility they needed for Prince's style of guerrilla movie-making.

This defined the minimum camera stops at T-4 on the longer lenses, and T-3 to 3.2 on the shorter zooms. That range of stop allowed Butler to pull deep focuses on scenes that featured large numbers of players in club and street scene environments. Depth of field was crucial if he was going to maintain an aura of reality.

"I don't ordinarily measure footcandles," Butler said. "I light for the stop I need. We were able to do some very delicate lighting with the 'fast' film. We used various combinations of steam, dry ice and smoke to diffuse and spread light. Our light levels were generally very low, and never too bright. Bright light tends to flatten out and that gives you uninteresting images. Even with the use of multiple cameras, we were able to create interesting shadows."
Butler said that the TV monitors coming off of the video taps were a useful tool. They allowed Prince and Butler to preview composition, and judge the quality and direction of light. The contrast on the TV monitors is very different than the actual images recorded on film. But Butler was able to translate the images on the monitor into film images in his mind's eye.

One of the more interesting challenges was creating the illusion of daylight on sound stages. In one big street scene, Butler had to place his lights far back from the field of coverage. This usually flattens the look, but Butler used mainly backlight, which is softer and closely emulates the effect of shooting during the magic hour.

There was a night exterior shot at a practical location in an alley. That footage had to be intercut with film shot on a set replicating the alley. Butler glamorized the look of the location to match the stage work with the angle of light and steam (which doesn't dissipate as fast as smoke in exteriors). It was supposed to be a cold weather scene, which justified steam coming out of vents in the alley.

"My job as a cinematographer is always to interpret the vision of the director, and to translate that into moving images," Butler said. "Prince had some well-defined ideas. He didn't want a TV rock video look. He wanted more of a realistic feeling, but he didn't want it to be ordinary."

There's a suggestion of surrealism, which gives the movie kind of a dream-like quality, but not so much that it distracts the audience. Butler manufactured some interesting colors by mixing odd combinations of gels and lights, i.e., an HMI light with cool temperatures used with a warm-colored gel, and visa versa.

Butler noted that Prince gave him creative latitude to vary the look with some brightly-lit musical numbers, even though his preference is for darker images. Butler did some very subtle modeling with light on closer-in shots of Prince to take advantage of the architecture of his face.

"I try to think of every frame being an individual portrait," Butler said.

Negative processing was done by Astro labs in Chicago.

"I worked with them before on Child's Play, so there was good rapport," Butler said. "That's vital. You just have to be on the same wavelength with the color timer. You have to be able to communicate. A lot of this comes down to semantics. You say you want a darker look. What does that mean? How dark? Does that mean you can barely see. The same thing is true of the relationship between the director and the cinematographer. You have to get to the bottom of things and ask why."

Butler noted that many members of the cast were black. Prince said he wanted to see faces. That left a wide range of possibilities for interpretation. Did Prince want to barely see faces in club or night exterior scenes, or did he want them lit like portraits, or something in between?

Magic only happens on a film like this when the director and cameraman are in tune. It was an exciting movie because every day brought fresh opportunities for Butler to light and shoot something in a different way.

"The basic truth of this art form is that you aren't always in total control," Butler said. "It's like trying to lasso and tame a wild horse. There's an element of unpredictability. We like to think that we can always predict what will happen. But the variables are infinite. You have to be willing to take some chances."

wow!.cool article.and i learned about movie making too!

Wow. You almost get the feeling from this article that we're talking about a good movie. Then you remeber it's Graffiti Bridge. Then the pain returns....

Jazz said:

Come on, it wasn't all bad was it?
I can still watch it for the Time's parts!

yamomma said:

thank you for posting this article. I'm really into it.
[This message was edited Fri Jun 18 8:01:38 2004 by ufoclub]

Cool article, thanks. Shame Prince totally destroyed this man's hard work during editing.

almost makes me want 2 watch it right now..but i'll wait for the dvd i hate watching vhs these days