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Interview with Ray Stella, SOC
From "Roger Rabbit" to "Jurassic
Park"
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SOC: We've
always appreciated seeing the SOC after your name on the credits.
Stella: I
enjoy that. I try to get it on all my shows. It's nice, and I
like to see it there. It's a proud organization to be associated
with.
SOC: Some
of the pictures you've done have been rather remarkable. You've
worked with Director of Photography Dean Cundey, ASC for quite
a while.
Stella: I've
worked with Dean Cundey since 1972. I was barely an assistant
then. I had done some 16mm films. When I answered an ad. I saw
in the trades asking for a DP and operator. Dean saw the ad and
we met up and got the film together. We've been together ever
since that little short subject film. I knew Dean had something
on the ball, so I was going to stick around, if I possibly could.
SOC: Did you assist primarily?
Stella: I assisted at first
for about eight years and Dean operated, because they were non-union
low budgets. That's how we came up in the business. I always
operated the "B" camera. From early on I got a lot of experience
operating. In '75, we got on a show where Dean was the Director
of Photography and I was the operator. We were able to get on
the producers Experience Roster from that picture.
In 1978, we met up with John Carpenter and
did "Halloween" which made a ton of money. We followed that with
"The Fog" which also made a lot of money. When Carpenter
did "Escape From New York," he wanted to go union. Since
we were already on the roster and had a good track record with
him, we were able to do the picture. We got in the union on that
film; actually, in February, 1981.
SOC: You haven't done anything
but A-Class films since?
Stella: Pretty much. We moved
up pretty good. You know, Dean's very knowledgeable and one of
the top five cameramen in the business. We have just been going
along. Knock on wood. Clyde Bryan has been assistant cameraman
with us for fifteen years.
SOC: One of your big features
was "Romancing the Stone" wasn't it?
Stella: Well, you know I didn't
do "Romancing the Stone." We just needed a break from each
other. Dean went down to Mexico on "Romancing..." and
I went to Hawaii for ten months and did "Magnum PI." We
came back together on "Back to the Future I." I went back
on the "A" camera, and then I shot about five to six weeks of
second unit.
SOC: That was really the start
of your special effects career.
Stella: It basically was.
Yeah. That's when we started using the Camera-Remote head. We
put it on a Tulip crane. Bob Zemeckis directed. He is one for
concept shots. Bob was setting up some pretty good-looking stuff.
So, I cut my teeth on a remote head on that picture, which is
interesting, because you're at a monitor. It's a little different,
because you're not attached to the camera. It takes a little
getting used to. But once you do, it's fantastic. You can get
the camera into places where you couldn't get a normal crane,
camera operator and assistant. We did some really nice stuff
with Zemeckis.
SOC: You ended up doing "Back
to the Future" I, II and III?
Stella: Yes. It was a lot
of fun. It was in those pictures we started using a lot of motion
control.
SOC: Extensively with the
cars? You did a lot of flying cars.
Stella: A lot of flying cars
in "II".
SOC: Is that where you learned
how to frame empty space?
Stella: Yeah, basically.
SOC: You're the king of empty
space.
Stella: Yeah, the king of
empty space. Especially in "Roger Rabbit," that was kind
of rough. Your instincts tell you to compose one way but all
the subject is not there, so you have to visualize what the animators
are going to put in. The old adage, you can't frame for air,
is kind of a sarcasm. But I found out, you actually can, which
was, at first, fairly rough. Then you get used to it, like anything.
SOC: It must be rough giving
a Rabbit a haircut when you can't find him in the picture?
Stella: The animators help
a lot on something like that. Because what we used in "Roger..."
was a rubber puppet. We would rehearse and someone would carry
him through the frame. We'd get a reference for lighting with
that also. We'd run them through the frame and shoot film so
the animators could see where the light fell on Roger.
SOC: So you'd actually shoot
the puppet?
Stella: We'd actually shoot
the puppet as a lighting reference, and we'd rehearse with it
so I'd know basically where to put the frame. If they were going
to stretch him, or if his ears were going to be up or down in
a certain situation, then I'd know how high to frame above Bob
Hoskins, who played opposite Roger.
SOC: Bob Hoskins must have
been wonderful to work with.
Stella: Bob's a great guy.
Bob was really a trooper and he was always there. Technically
he's very good, he works with you.
SOC: He must have helped you
visualize the character.
Stella: It's not easy to do
what Bob did. I don't know if he was really given the credit
he deserves. That's hard to do, acting with something that's
not there. Bob Zemeckis did a fantastic job, too. His directing
was just incredible.
SOC: Were there any anecdotes
that came your way because of not having anything there? You
can't really bump the head of the actor.
Stella: Well, that's a good
situation. If you tend to be a little short at one point, the
animators will draw the ears a little shorter or if you're a
little high, they'll stretch the cartoon character for you.
ILM naturally did all the effects and they
use VistaVision. They had made two VistaVision, Vistaflex cameras,
especially for ILM, and a blimp. The cameras are fairly large
and, you know, the mags run sideways. The blimp was huge. The
eyepiece stuck up above the blimp. I was so far from the eyepiece
with my hands to the wheels that I couldn't do anything more
than a ninety-degree pan.
Nevertheless, Bob Zemeckis would set up shots
that required 180 to 270 degree pans. When this happened, Ian
Kelly, the video technician, would set me up a little four-inch
video assist monitor right next to the eyepiece. Suddenly, I
could do anything. I just got used to watching this little four-inch
monitor. I could go anywhere I wanted to, I could climb over
the dolly. I did a lot of it right on the monitor, I hardly used
the eyepiece at all. I'd have to look through the eyepiece to
make sure we didn't have unwanted stuff in the frame. Once you
have your perimeters, just go for it. We had some really nice
moves with it.
SOC: Taylor, my little two
year old son's favorite film is "Roger Rabbit." He's just
watches the cartoon section over and over again. Eventually he
started watching the live action. He got to the point where he
followed the whole movie. I loved the first scene where you came
off the refrigerator with the Technicolor blimp camera.
Stella: You know, I'm on that
camera, that's me in the background. They dressed me up in a
blue suit and cut my hair and slicked it down and put me in the
film.
SOC: Then you went on to do
II and III of "Back to the Future?"
Stella: After "Roger...,"
we actually did "Big Business," which was with Bette Midler
and Lily Tomlin and used a lot of motion control. We graduated
from stepper motors on a gear head where you could pan and tilt
to putting stepper motors on a dolly, so we could dolly, pan
and tilt at the same time.
In the old days, they'd lock off a camera,
like in "Parent Trap," the Hayley Mills movie, with two
of her appearing in the same frame. They'd lock off the camera,
keeping it completely steady. They wouldn't touch it. They'd
walk Hayley through one side of the frame and then cut, redress
her and walk her through the other side of the frame. So, when
they'd composite these two shots together they'd be completely
registered. We got to where we'd use the motion control, run
it through a computer, computerizing all the moves. I would do
the first pass and then the computer would take over and run
the camera. So, we could do dolly, pans and tilts all in motion
control.
SOC: You used that extensively
in "Back to the Future III?"
Stella: Yeah, we used that
extensively in those movies.
SOC: Didn't Michael J. Fox
play his whole family, his brother and sister?
Stella: Yes. This made for
some interesting effects.
SOC: Did you have stand-ins
for him to play off?
Stella: On the B-side of the
shot, we always had someone in there he could relate to, and
I could frame to them. They are there when you photograph, because
that's not the side you're using. Then you redress the characters
from the A-side, put them in the B-side and then put the stand-ins
back in the A-side. You just have to be careful they don't cross
the line. Even in instances when they did cross the line it looked
good. It doesn't look so much like a cheat, but it costs a little
more money, because they had to rotoscope the part of the actor
that crossed over into the other side.
SOC: You just came off "Jurassic
Park" didn't you?
Stella: Right, and as you
know, it's doing quite a bit of business. Four hundred million
dollars in the states alone in two months so far.
SOC: Here, you were working
more with real puppets, and things that were actually in the
frame.
Stella: In "Jurassic Park,"
Stan Winston and his group did the mechanical stuff. They were
fantastic. The show is mixed with mechanical and computer graphic
dinosaurs, and it's hard to tell the difference.
Those dinosaurs in "Jurassic..." are
so real. Our first test we saw was when they first get onto the
island and the doctor takes the two scientists out to show them
the brontosaurus eating some leaves off the top of a tall Eucalyptus
tree. It was just unbelievable. We all just clapped and cheered
at the dailies, it all looked so real. It's really something
what they can do nowadays with these computers.
SOC: You were doing the framing,
weren't you?
Stella: Right. This was also
with VistaVision, and a whole group of ILM people were there
marking. They set up markers for all their mathematical computations.
SOC: The top of the trees
were real?
Stella: Oh, the trees are
all real. It's just the dinosaur and the articulated tree branches
that aren't. Then they even drew in some leaves falling in this
particular scene. After he picks a couple off, a couple of leaves
fall, which really helps the believability. Just those little
added things.
SOC: Going from "Roger Rabbit"
to the Dinosaurs, did you learn something different?
Stella: "Roger Rabbit"
wasn't computerized. "Roger..." was all animated. So it
was hand-drawn frame-by-frame, old Disney cartoon work. Which
is very tedious and time consuming. Nowadays they do it by computer,
which is quicker.
SOC: But for you it's the
same. You still have to keep the space, or the faith?
Stella: Same thing, same thing.
Frame it for the air and maintain the space.
SOC: In the sequences around
the car, when the dinosaurs are so close to the kids they breathe
on them. Are they there or not there?
Stella: Most of that stuff
is all mechanical. We had a beautiful T Rex, we had actually
three parts of a T Rex. We had from the belly up all the way
to the head with the hands. Then we had a tail part and we had
the feet. They have to get into the back of it and make it move.
In one situation, we shot from behind the T
Rex, and you see his back feet stepping into a puddle. Well,
that's one part of the creature, and then the other part would
be a separate entity. You'd just have to put the camera in a
spot to where you don't see the gap.
SOC: What about the big chase
in the jeep?
Stella: The big chase in the
jeep is CG, and it's hard to tell. I was in the back of a golf
cart, is on a stage, and I'm following Jeff Goldblum as he's
running from the T Rex, leaving air and space for them to draw
in the T Rex with the computer.
SOC: Was there a lot of advice
given to you about just how large this creature, finally animated,
would be?
Stella: Oh, sure. Because
all the ILM people are there making sure with all the mathematical
computations, measuring everything, so you'd how high it's going
to be and how much head room you need. That was a great sequence.
That was fantastic. "Jurassic Park" was a special film.
SOC: Did you shoot mostly
in Kauai?
Stella: No, we only shot three
weeks in Kauai. We lost one day because of the hurricane. We
were very lucky it was only one day. We were there and got caught
in it and we couldn't get out for two days.
SOC: Was it frightening?
Stella: It wasn't too frightening
for us, because we were in a big hotel and the banquet rooms
were down below. We were fine on the western side of Kauai, but
the Island was devastated. We went out once the eye hit us. It's
relatively calm in the eye. We surveyed the area where our equipment
trucks were. It seems like practically every tree was snapped
about five feet off the ground and taken twenty, thirty yards
away, stopped in a windshield of a car or a truck. With 180 mile
an hour winds, it was unreal.
SOC: How do you like working
with Steven Spielberg? We've heard how difficult he can be, but
he seems to have taken to you. He took you over to Poland.
Stella: He asked me personally
to go over to Poland with him. I like Steven. He's kind of hard
to get used to. "Hook" was our first full length feature
with him, which was a little hectic because they ran over by
a couple of months, and working with Robin and Dustin wasn't
easy. A lot of rewrites were happening, and he was a fairly impatient
person on that film. He works really fast, which I don't mind
a bit. I like to work fast, it makes the day go by in a hurry.
SOC: He doesn't let go of
the camera does he?
Stella: He does. He learned
to trust me a lot. It was hard to come by at first. I proved
myself to him, and after "Hook," "Jurassic Park" came
up and I was ready for him. We got along really well on "Jurassic...".
We're pretty good friends and then after "Jurassic..." he
asked me to go to Poland on "Schindler's List." Which by
the way, is going to be an incredible film. We shot it in black
and white. It's going to be three hours.
SOC: That's a serious movie.
Stella: This is a very serious
movie. His most serious film yet. I had to get back to normal
composition.
SOC: It must have been a challenge
for you.
Stella: The challenge was
I hand-held forty percent of the movie. Steven liked that look.
We had a Steadicam with us, and I did a shot or two, but it started
looking too smooth. We were using an Arri 535 on "Schindler's
List," and he ended up liking the look better, the little bit
of a rough documentary look as opposed to a smooth polished feature-type
style.
SOC: And you shot Black and
White?
Stella: Black and white is
really interesting and not many people get to use it. I think
a lot of cinematographers would like to, but films nowadays don't
call for it and it doesn't bring in the money. People like color.
SOC: Even Spielberg had a
tough time getting the money to do it.
Stella: Yeah. I think Steven's
been trying to get the money for this show for about six years.
It was on-budget and on-schedule, perfect.
SOC: Who was the DP?
Stella: The DP was Janusz
Kaminski. He came out of Poland in 1980 and went to Chicago Film
School. When he was in Poland he shot some black and white films
which Steven saw and he liked his work.
SOC: You're about to do another
picture with him, aren't you?
Stella: Yes, I'm about to
do a thing called "Tall Tales" for Disney which starts
shortly. September tenth or twelfth, in Colorado, Arizona, the
Redwoods and also here in town.
SOC: Right now you're working
on "The Flintstones." You had the opportunity to work with
Elizabeth Taylor.
Stella: Elizabeth Taylor is
really a gas. She's a total professional and fun to work with.
She's a legend in her own time. She's a really nice person. I'm
proud to be able to say I worked with her. She plays Fred Flintstone's
mother-in-law. Wilma's mother. She's a real pill, like most mother-in-laws.
John Goodman plays Fred, Rick Moranis as Barney, Elizabeth Perkins
as Wilma and Rosie O'Donnell as Betty. I think everyone of them
was perfectly cast. They're all doing a great job and they are
a lot of fun to work with.
SOC: Doing "The Flintstones" must
be really therapeutic after Poland.
Stella: Steven and I both
were doing probably the most serious film we will have ever done,
and then coming on to a cartoon helps. "Schindler..." was
very emotional. The most emotional thing I've ever done, probably
ever will do.
SOC: Was it hard operating,
because of the emotion? Did you get caught up in it?
Stella: Yeah, you get caught
up in it a little bit. Physically, it was a little hard because
it was forty percent hand held. At first it's always a little
hard but then you get used to it, like anything, and it gets
easier and easier. I actually really enjoyed hand-holding the
camera that much. Not many guys get to do it, unless you're doing
a documentary, which I used to do. I've done a few around the
world for a World Hunger Organization in the early part of my
career back in the mid-seventies. But to be able to do this on
a big scale feature with Steven, was very enjoyable.
Hand-held, the operator gets a lot more creative.
You become part of the action, once they let you loose in a scene.
We had thirty thousand extras on this film. We had eighteen hundred
in one day, and they start letting you loose, and you start blocking
scenes with a lot of extras around you, and it gets interesting.
SOC: Did Steven want to hand-hold?
Stella: No, Steven never hand-holds.
It's kinda nice in that situation, I didn't have to fight him
for the camera.
SOC: Did he feel kind of tenuous
letting you go like that?
Stella: I'm sure he did a
little bit. He complimented me a couple of times on how nice
my work was. It was a confidence booster when he asked me personally
to go to Poland with him.
The story is a Nazi businessman back in occupied
Germany who became friends with a lot of the SS officers. He
bought a enamel factory to use Jewish slave labor to keep them
out of harm's way. He was able to do this, and paid dearly. He
spent all the money he made, keeping people busy and out of the
death camps.
A couple of years after he started the enamel
factory, he bought another factory in Czechoslovakia which was
an arms factory. He made arms for the German Army and he also
got to employ a lot more Jewish labor. As a result, he saved
around 1, 200 Jews during the holocaust, and now because of his
heroics there are four or five thousand people.
At the end of the film, there was a reunion.
They brought 100 to 150 survivors and their relatives over to
Jerusalem. It was interesting, and I got to talk to a few of
them that actually knew Schindler. Schindler is dead now, he
died in '68, I believe. There are very few of them that don't
well up with tears when they start talking about him. It's just
like it happened yesterday to them.
SOC: They carry these memories
with them? It sounds like doing "Schindler's List" really
changed you.
Stella: Yes, it was really
something. I think it changed us all.
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