Conversations With Contemporary Cinematographers

The Eye Behind The Lens Jacqueline B Frost

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Conversations with Contemporary
Cinematographers

Packed with gems of wisdom from the current ‘masters of light’, this collection
of conversations with twenty leading contemporary cinematographers provides
invaluable insight into the art and craft of cinematography.
Jacqueline Frost’s interviews provide unprecedented insight into the role
as cinematographers discuss selecting projects, the conceptual and creative
thinking that goes into devising a visual strategy, working with the script,
collaborating with leading directors such as Martin Scorcese, Spike Lee, and
Ava DuVernay, the impact of changing technology, and offer advice for
aspiring cinematographers.
Interviews include Maryse Alberti, John Bailey, Robert Elswit, Kirsten
Johnson, Kira Kelly, Ellen Kuras, Edward Lachman, Matthew Libatique,
John Lindley, Seamus McGarvey, Reed Morano, Polly Morgan, Rachel
Morrison, Rodrigo Prieto, Cynthia Pusheck, Harris Savides, Nancy Schrieber,
John Seale, Sandi Sissel, Dante Spinotti, Salvatore Totino, Amy Vincent and
Mandy Walker.
Filled with valuable information and advice for aspiring cinematographers,
directors, and flmmakers, this is essential reading for anyone interested in the
art and craft of cinematography.

Jacqueline B. Frost has been an educator in flm production, cinematography

and flm history for thirty years. She has continued to produce and photograph
flms that have screened in flm festivals worldwide throughout her academic
career. She is currently a Professor at California State University, Fullerton
where she teaches Cinematography, Documentary production and the
Language of Film. Frost is currently cinematographer and co-producer on a
feature length documentary and she is the author of Cinematography for Directors.
Conversations with
Contemporary
Cinematographers
The Eye Behind the Lens

Jacqueline B. Frost
First published 2021
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2021 Jacqueline B. Frost
The right of Jacqueline B. Frost to be identifed as author of this work
has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identifcation and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978-0-367-36262-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-36263-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-34498-5 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
Contents

Acknowledgements vii
Introduction viii

1 Maryse Alberti, ASC: Collateral Beauty, Creed, The Wrestler 1

2 John Bailey, ASC: Ordinary People, In the Line of Fire,

The Greatest 15

3 Robert Elswit, ASC: There Will Be Blood, The Bourne Legacy, Salt 35

4 Kirsten Johnson, ASC: Fahrenheit 9/11, Cameraperson, Trapped 53

5 Kira Kelly, ASC: Queen Sugar, 13th, Self Made 71

6 Ellen Kuras, ASC: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Blow,

Bamboozled 85

7 Edward Lachman, ASC: Dark Waters, Carol, Erin Brockovich 105

8 Matthew Libatique, ASC: A Star Is Born, Black Swan, Venom 125

9 John Lindley, ASC: Reservation Road, You’ve Got Mail,

Pleasantville 145

10 Seamus McGarvey, ASC, BSC: The Greatest Showman,

Atonement, The Hours 163

11 Reed Morano, ASC: The Handmaid’s Tale, I Think We’re

Alone Now, The Godmother 179
vi Contents
12 Polly Morgan, ASC, BSC: A Quiet Place II, Lucy in the Sky,
Legion 197

13 Rachel Morrison, ASC: Mudbound, Black Panther, Seberg 215

14 Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC: The Irishman, Brokeback

Mountain, The Wolf of Wall Street 231

15 Cynthia Pusheck, ASC: CSI Miami, Good Girls Revolt,

Brother and Sisters 251

16 Harris Savides, ASC: Zodiac, American Gangster, Milk 271

17 Nancy Schreiber, ASC: Mapplethorpe, Motherhood, The Nines 289

18 John Seale, ASC, ACS: The Tourist, City of Angels, The

English Patient 305

19 Sandi Sissel, ASC, ACS: Master and Commander, Salaam

Bombay, Mother Teresa 323

20 Dante Spinotti, ASC, AIC: Public Enemies, Red Dragon,

Wonder Boys 337

21 Salvatore Totino, ASC, AIC: Everest, The Da Vinci Code,

Frost/Nixon 353

22 Amy Vincent, ASC: Footloose, Eves Bayou, Hustle and Flow 375

23 Mandy Walker, ASC, ACS: Mulan, Hidden Figures, Australia 391

Index 405
Acknowledgements

There is no way I could have created this book without the support of the cin-
ematographers who agreed to speak with me! It was an absolute pleasure speak-
ing with everyone. Thank you so much, Maryse Alberti, John Bailey, Robert
Elswit, Kirsten Johnson, Kira Kelly, Ellen Kuras, Edward Lachman, Matthew
Libatique, John Lindley, Seamus McGarvey, Polly Morgan, Reed Morano,
Rachel Morrison, Rodrigo Prieto, Cynthia Pusheck, John Seale, Sandi Sissel,
Dante Spinotti, Salvatore Totino, Amy Vincent and Mandy Walker.
Thank you to Mick Hubris-Cherrier and Gustavo Mercado for encourag-
ing me to go to Routledge to propose this book.
Thank you to Sarah Pickles at Routledge for your understanding, patience
and support while I slipped past my deadline.
Last, I have to thank my family for enduring my absences while zooming
and writing this book nonstop since January!!
Introduction

I love the light, color and magic of cinematography. So, of course I love speak-
ing with cinematographers, which is why I wanted to create this book. My
own background in fne arts, art history, photography and cinema is a common
bond I found with each cinematographer I spoke with. The power of images
to convey emotion and transport us to another time and place is a connection
we shared.
I began interviewing cinematographers in 2007 for my frst book,
Cinematography for Directors; A Guide to Creative Collaboration. While listening
and transcribing the interviews, it was like I was getting master sessions in
cinematography. But for that particular book, I was only using quotes. The
frst edition of Cinematography for Directors came out in 2009. But I continued
to collect interviews with cinematographers whose work I admired and who
would speak with me over the next few years, with an interview book in mind.
All of those early interviews were conducted in person, either at the cinema-
tographers’ homes or in coffee shops.
I proposed the interview book to another publisher, and it was accepted,
but my mother’s diagnosis of dementia and caretaking set me off track for a
while. By the time I had pulled all the interviews together, many aspects of
the industry had changed, especially with digital image capture replacing flm.
I felt like I had a responsibility to share the voices of these cinematographers
who had kindly taken the time to speak with me be heard. I began updating
some of the existing interviews while continuing to gather new ones. I revis-
ited all of the interviews in 2019 while I was working on the second edition of
Cinematography for Directors.
With a shift in the industry, more women cinematographers were becoming
visible and working on bigger flms, so I was able to add more women’s voices
into the mix. My intention was to create an equal balance of both female and
male cinematographer voices, which I have not seen done before. I updated all
of the existing interviews and set my sights on new cinematographers to speak
with, primarily women.
During the early months of 2020, I visited both Kirsten Johnson and Ed
Lachman in person in New York City. But once the COVID quarantine came,
I could no longer visit anyone. I began interviewing Directors of Photography
 Introduction ix
(DPs) online, starting with Cynthia Pusheck. I continued doing updates with
Sandi Sissel, Dante Spinotti, Matty Libatique, Ellen Kuras, Nancy Schrieber,
Sal Totino and Amy Vincent. I expanded my reach to include zoom interviews
with Rachel Morrison, Mandy Walker, Polly Morgan, Maryse Alberti, Kira
Kelly and Reed Morano. Zoom and the COVID quarantine enabled me to
gather a collection of interviews that would have been extremely diffcult, if
not impossible, to acquire at any other time, because in normal circumstances
all of the DPs would have been busy working!
With the earlier interviews more focused on the Director/DP relationship,
I wanted to expand the conversation to include how each cinematographer got
started on their paths toward the careers they are currently in. I also wanted to
include how each DP manages career and family and provide advice for aspir-
ing cinematographers. There are some technical issues discussed and numerous
aesthetic ones. I have included DPs who primarily work in television or docu-
mentary as well as narrative feature flms.
The common bond I found with this incredible group of artists I have spo-
ken with is their love of telling stories, through images or still photography.
They all have a driving passion that has brought them to a level of achievement
that has opened numerous doors for their careers to fourish. Being a cinema-
tographer is a lifestyle choice, it is not an easy job and involves long hours and
lots of time away from home family. To be a cinematographer, you must have
a passion to create the images that tell stories.
I am very happy with the collection of interviews I have had the privilege
to gather in this book that I hope you will fnd as insightful and educational
as I have.
Jacqui
Maryse Alberti, ASC
1 Maryse Alberti, ASC

Maryse Alberti knew there was much more for her to explore in the world
than her little village in the South of France had to offer. At a young age, she
made the decision to come to New York where she worked as an au pair.
Having a TV in her room for the frst time exposed her to numerous late-
night classic flms, where she began her discovery of cinema. But the suburbs
of New Rochelle could not hold her. She decided to explore the United
States, where she traveled for three years with an instamatic camera in hand,
documenting her adventures. She returned to New York, and a friend gave
her a Nikon 35mm single-lens refex camera (SLR) camera. She learned the
basics of photography and began shooting stills for the rock n’ roll scene and
downtown arts. She was exposed to set life from shooting stills for X-rated
movies where she met students from NYU and Columbia. Her networking
lead her into the evolving independent flm scene. She worked on numerous
flm sets in various crew positions before working her way to becoming the
Assistant Camera on Vortex (1982), a punk-noir flm photographed by Steven
Fierberg, ASC.
Her unexpected big break came after she photographed the documentary
H-2 Worker for Stephanie Black. The flm went to Sundance winning the
Grand Jury Prize. In 1991, she was the cinematographer for Todd Haynes’
Poison, which also won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize. She photographed
Crumb for Terry Zwigoff (1994) and she was the cinematographer for Todd
Solondz’s Happiness (1998) and Todd Haynes’ Velvet Goldmine (1998).
She received her frst Sundance Award in Cinematography for the doc-
umentary H-2 Worker (1990). She won her second Sundance Award in
Cinematography for her work on the documentary Crumb (1995). She won
The Independent Spirit Award in Cinematography for Velvet Goldmine (1999)
and was nominated for her work on We Don’t Live Here Anymore (2004) and
took home the Independent Spirit Award again for The Wrestler in 2009. She
was also nominated for a Primetime Emmy for her work on All Aboard Rosie’s
Family Cruise (2006).
Highlights of her narrative credits include working with Ron Howard
on Hillbilly Elegy (2020), Chappaquiddick (2017), We Don’t Live Here Anymore
(2014) and Stone (2010), John Curan on Collateral Beauty (2016), David Frankel
2 Maryse Alberti, ASC
on Creed (2015), Ryan Coogler on Freeheld (2015), Peter Sollett on The Visit
(2015), M. Night Shyamalan on The Wrestler (2008), Darren Aronofsky on
Tape (2001), and Richard Linklater on Joe Gould’s Secret (2000) with Stanly
Tucci.
In terms of her documentary work, she has an equally impressive list of cred-
its including her frequent collaborations with Michael Apted on The Incident at
Ogala (1992), Moving the Mountain (1994), Me and Isaac Newton (1999) and The
Power of the Game (2007) and with Alex Gibney on Eron: The Smartest Guys in
the Room (2005), Taxi to the Dark Side (2007), Gonzo (2008), Carsen Jack and the
United States of Money (2010), Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer (2010),
Dear Governor Cuomo (2012), We Steal Secrets (2013) and Mr. Dynamite: The
Rise of James Brown (2014). She photographed Love, Marilyn (2012) and A Good
Job: Stories of the FDNY (2014) with Liz Garbus and West of Memphis (2012)
with Amy Berg and worked with many others.
Maryse continues to create an impressive body of work in both narrative
feature flms and in documentary flms. She has also worked in television and
has photographed many commercials. She shows no signs of slowing down and
is one of the pioneering female cinematographers to successfully manage her
career while also raising her son. In speaking with her it was obvious that her
enthusiasm for living, for travel and adventure are what drives and motivates
her to continue to perfect her craft.

What made you decide to leave France and move to

New York?
I come from the deep South of France, and as a kid, I used to look at the
hitchhikers on the side of the road and wonder where they were going. I
wanted to get out of my little town and America, at that point, was the fur-
thest away that I could think of. England was too close; Australia was not
even part of my consciousness. It was the beginning of the 1970s, and I had
discovered Jimi Hendrix, who for me, was like an alien god, because there
were no Black people in my little town. I loved Hendrix’s music, although
I didn’t really understand the lyrics. I decided that I would go to America to
meet Jimi Hendrix. But really, I just wanted to get out of my little village. I
convinced my parents, who were in the process of separating, to send me as
an au pair to New York. I frst arrived in New Rochelle, but I didn’t stay very
long. I took care of three kids, and thank god I didn’t kill anybody, because
they put me in charge of a seven-year-old, four-year-old and a two-year-old,
and I was only 19!

How did you become interested in working in flm?

In New Rochelle, I had a little blue television in my room and there was a
TV in the kitchen. To me there were TVs everywhere because I didn’t grow
 Maryse Alberti, ASC 3
up with a TV. My grandmother was the frst one to have a TV on the block, I
was probably 12 at the time, and once a week, people on the block would go
to her house to watch Au theater Ce soir, (To the Theater Tonight), which was
the reporting of a play.
I only went to the movies twice before I left for the States; the frst movie
I saw was The Duel by Steven Spielberg. I didn’t know who Steven Spielberg
was of course, but it blew my mind. I haven’t seen it since, but it’s in my brain
forever. It’s a story about this guy who is driving his car across country and
there’s a truck behind him, a truck that passes him, then he passes the truck,
and then it’s a duel between him and the truck. You see him, but you never see
the driver of the truck. It was amazing, just that experience. Then, right before
I came to the states, I took a plane to Paris to stay with a distant cousin and she
took me to see Howard and Maude in the theater. I thought that was an amaz-
ing story. So when I came to New Rochelle, I would watch The Late Show
movies at night. Black and white movies. I really fell in love with movies, but
I never ever thought, that I could make them. I didn’t really understand how
people were making them. You know what I mean? It is like my uncles ask-
ing me now, “What do you do?” I say, “Well, it’s like what you see on TV.
Someone is there on the camera. That’s what I do.” But it’s still not very clear.
I never really planned to become a cinematographer, but all of these things in
my life brought me here.

How did you start working in New York City?

When I left New Rochelle, I came to New York City. I had a boyfriend who
introduced me to this woman, and I moved in and took care of her little girl
and it was great. New York was great.
I stayed there for a year and then I decided I wanted to take off and go see
the big United States. I traveled for three years, North on 95 and back South
with a stop in the Virgin Islands. I took pictures as a tourist and I kind of liked
that. I worked in theaters. I did a lot of things to survive, but there was a com-
fort in photography, I always liked it.
When I came back to New York, a boyfriend gave me his Nikon camera.
So, I started to take a lot of pictures. I worked for the New York Rocker maga-
zine which was kind of the bastard child of Rolling Stone. The New York Rocker
died, but I still have a lot of pictures of Iggy Pop and Wendy Williams. I did
a lot of the clubs, My Kansas City and The Mud Club and The Ramon. But
I had to work in a restaurant too, because taking pictures was fun, but getting
paid was a whole other story.
I met this guy who was a neighbor, and he gave me a Super-8mm camera,
so then I discovered motion! I made little movies with my friends, the girls on
the bike, in the woods. But this guy, he was a director of photography (DP)
and encouraged me; he said I had a good eye. Then I got a 16mm camera and
I went back to France because my mother was getting remarried. I made a little
movie about that part of France. My mother was kind of a character and the
4 Maryse Alberti, ASC
whole thing about France and the church. It’s a short but was actually quite
good.

So, you were getting your own self-taught training, frst in

photography, then with Super 8 and 16mm flm, making
your own movies. How did you start shooting flms
for others?
Stephanie Black, who is a documentary flmmaker, had seen my little flm and
connected to it. She was starting a movie called H2-Workers about the Jamaican
farm workers, who worked in slave camp in Florida. She asked me to shoot it,
whatever that meant, so I went with her. The frst week we borrowed a cam-
era and we were kind of crazy; we got arrested because we were trespassing,
we walked into these huge barracks full of 500 Jamaican workers who were
wondering what we were doing there. But Stephanie was amazing. She made
the flm, and it went to Sundance, so I went to Sundance, not really know-
ing what Sundance was at the time, but I was invited, and I knew I could ski.
At the awards ceremony, the frst award was cinematography, and I heard my
name and I totally freaked out. The movie won best cinematography and best
documentary, which was amazing.

This movie is really what got your career as a

cinematographer going right?
Yes, I did a good job on my frst documentary. Next thing, I’m on the map. It was
quite extraordinary. Stephanie Black remains one of my friends to this day. Then
I connected with Todd Haynes and Christine Vachon, who had this company,
and I shot a short flm for Todd, that was a fction flm, so a different approach.
Then Todd did a little flm, Dottie Gets Spanked which was fun, followed by
Poison which I did with him. Poison was a really interesting flm, and it got a lot of
attention, because there was one section of the flm where there were gay men in
jail, and the flm had been partially funded by the National Endowment for the
Arts (NEA). I think a religious, right-wing group ended up protesting it, so the
flm got press and was talked about, and I was associated with that. So again, I got
on the map. I maintained a collaboration with Todd, but I didn’t do Safe because
I was pregnant. But then I did do Velvet Goldmine with him.

You got into the New York indie scene at a very interesting
time, and you got started with documentary. Now you’re
doing these big-budget, Hollywood studio flms. Are there
any sacrifces you feel you have had to make along the way?
I have a son and I quickly realized that when you do a movie, you are out of
life for at least three months, sometimes four. When I did Velvet Goldmine, I
was able to keep going because I had a partner who made room for me. Then
 Maryse Alberti, ASC 5
we took turns. I was asked to shoot Boys Don’t Cry and American Psycho, but it
was my time to be home, so I couldn’t do them. But I do have a great relation-
ship with my son. There is no regret.
I did ten documentaries with Alex Gibney and we still talk about working
together. I’ve been so lucky to have worked with him. I love the guy and
we’ve had some amazing adventures. So, I have done a lot of documentary
work. When I was doing them, I might go away for two or three weeks. So,
it worked out and Scott, my son’s dad, stayed home at the beginning. When
Marley was a little bit older, he started to work in television in New York. So,
he was always home while I was roaming the world. But we found a balance,
we gave each other the time to go out into the world and do our work and
then be home to take care of our son. But it was not always easy. I saw a lot of
women who were in the business, who had a husband with a regular job, and
he couldn’t leave because then he loses a job. I was lucky because Scott is a
sound man. So, he could not take work and still go back to work, it was good
to have that kind of partnership where you could do that. Also, understanding
the hours, if I said that I’d be home by 9:00 p.m. but oops, the day goes longer.
For a while, before Marley was born, we worked on documentaries together a
lot. Then when my son went to college, it was like, “Okay, here I go.”

What was your experience in documentary like?

When I started to work with Alex Gibney or with Michael Apted, I did the
whole flm, so you brought your crew. Now, there’s more of a tendency that
if you go somewhere you get a local crew. Then the cameras changed, forever.
I shot with my little Aaton which would allow me to sit and wait in my corner
until they forgot I was there. But then, the world of digital came, so I did a
lot of movies with the Varicam, but still on the shoulder with my eye in the
viewfnder, I’m old school. I always liked that connection with the camera.
Then the Canon 6300 came aboard. Canon really pushed that camera, but it
was like a box. I started not to like the digital cameras.
My last documentary adventure with Alex Gibney was when he was doing a
series for Netfix, he said, “look, I’m going to Australia in the Northern Territory
to spend time with the Martu Tribe, going kangaroo and iguana hunting. You
want to come?” Of course, I want to come. So, I went there, and it was amaz-
ing. I went kangaroo hunting which great story, we slept in a little tent with
scorpions coming in the morning. So, I have to say, I truly miss the adventure of
documentary. I miss going into those worlds. I spent a week with the Dalai Lama
in his compound, in Dharamshala walking with him on my arm.

That’s amazing.
When am I going to do that again? Probably never. I miss the crazy things I’ve
done for documentary. Although every time I did a doc, I would think, “Okay,
now I’m going to go fnd a movie, so I can make sunshine when it’s raining
6 Maryse Alberti, ASC
outside. We have control.” But I have to say, right now I don’t miss the shooting.
I have been so lucky to work on great docs, to have amazing adventures in every
corner of the world. I’ve spent time with Gorbachev, the King of Spain, Lance
Armstrong. I did the Tour de France from the inside, in a car. I feel really lucky.
But now the challenge is still in narrative movies, with every movie I have
learned something, I’m challenged with something. That’s what I want in life.
A challenge and to keep on learning.

Yes, it is an ongoing learning process. But were there

any obstacles that you faced along the way of your career
that derailed you?
Yes, I went through that. At the beginning, some guys, not all, but some men like
if I would ask the gaffer, “What kind of tool do you like to use with that?” Don’t
worry, I’ll take care of it. I got a lot of, “don’t worry little lady, I’ll take care of it.”
The frst movie I did, The Zebrahead, a small studio movie, I always remember
the producer asking me, are you going to be able to take care of the big lights?
And part of me went, “Is he really asking me that? Should I be sarcastic?” How do
I answer that? And I said, “Well, actually I don’t touch the big lights. I just have
big men pick them up and I tell them where to put them.” Everybody cracked
a smile and went on. At the beginning, a couple of times, I had to go to the
bathroom and have a good cry. It’s funny when the “Me Too Movement” came
along, I was saying, “Oh, I never really experienced that.” But in fact, I really did.
There was a commercial director who I like, and he was good. I did a lot of
work with him. But he was always making sexual jokes. In front of everybody,
even me, he was telling jokes with a lot of sexual innuendos. Then he started to
push me a little bit. We walk, a little push. Okay, whoa, whoa. Then one day
he tripped me on purpose and laughed. Then I lost it. I was like, “What the
fuck?” Really loud. I could be hurt. What is that about? One of the producers
told me it was about his power. So, I didn’t want to work with him again. But
once in a great while, there is still a frst Artistic Director (AD) who talks to
me in a way that makes me think, “Would he talk to me like that if I was a six
foot guy, with a bigger name than me?” No, he would not.
But I have to say that 99.8% of crews now are respectful of women DPs.
Ron Howard was kind of surprised, because I’m kind of short. I’m fve, four.
I’m not big. But I run a crew, mostly male, and they listen to me and respect
me. So, I think now we are in such a better place for young women. I think for
women DPs, it’s easier now but for women directors, I’m not so sure.

You have worked with very interesting directors.

Can you talk a little bit about your recent experience with
Ron Howard?
Such a nice guy, love him, had some great laughs with him. I enjoyed work-
ing with Ron because he’s very much a collaborator. He’s well prepared, he
 Maryse Alberti, ASC 7
comes on the set holding his clipboard with all of his notes. We had worked a
lot in prep, so it was a great experience, one of the best as well as being a lot
of fun. Plus, we were working only ten-hour days, which was a change, so I
wasn’t tired. That movie was such a great experience, and it was a really good
script. I love telling a story that matters with fabulous actors like Amy Adams
and Glenn Close, wow.

How do you like to collaborate with the director? What

attributes draw you to want to work with someone?
What I want is for the director to be the captain of the ship. I want the direc-
tor to be prepared, to be respectful of me, of my crew. Ideally, it’s great when
a director is also a collaborator. I want a director to really know how to do
their job.
I loved working with Ryan Coogler on Creed, he’s so smart and such a
good collaborator. We were a good team. It was a great experience that I got
to shoot that flm.
I’ve done a couple of movies with John Curran, who I would do a movie
with any time because I really like working with him.
Once, quite a long time ago. I quit a flm within the frst ten days of pre-
production. Because I felt, “Whoa, this director, this producer, I don’t think I
want to spend four months with them. That’s for sure.” The movie turned out
to be a disaster anyway.

Some directors are very into their storyboards and others

are more spontaneous, how do you like to work?
Todd Haynes makes beautiful little storyboards; he gave me some really great
images to work from. Darren (Aronofsky) did not use storyboards on The
Wrestler, which I think it was a very specifc adventure for me. But there
was an idea that we stuck to. It was more of a fuid way to follow Mickey,
but Darren was there to hold Mickey in the boundaries sometimes. Ron
(Howard) told me he doesn’t do storyboards, but we do spend time together
looking at the script, taking notes, and discussing ideas. In the morning,
he comes to the set to talk about key moments that he wants to get. Ron
always shoots with two cameras, which was a great learning experience for
me. I have resisted shooting with two cameras for a long time. But I totally
embraced it.
We do a lot of coverage and fnd things that were not on the list, or things
that were not in my head. In advance, we talk about specifc moods. When I
frst talked to Ron on the phone, there were three time periods in the flm.
I frst told him, one handheld, one on the Steadicam, the other on dollies;
then, we fne-tuned that approach. With colors, I work with the production
designer and we came up with a more saturated look. So, I showed Ron a lot
of tests.
8 Maryse Alberti, ASC
Do you have a specifc way you like to prepare for a flm?
I read the script, a few times. Then read whatever books or references the
director is giving me. I always fnd my own references as well. I like to spend
time in bookstores, looking at books from whatever time period the story
takes place in. I also like to look at photography books. For Ron’s flm, I
clicked on one image that was through the foliage of a naked young boy.
I connected very much with that image in one part of the script. So, I told
Ron, look at this image and let’s do that for this scene. He said, okay, so
I worked with the production designer who brought in trees and foliage.
That’s the beauty of doing a big budget movie. You can bring trees and
foliage!
I like to immerse myself in the story, in the time period. Then I think
it’s important to spend a lot of time with the director, for different reasons.
Because it’s their artwork, it’s their flm, and they are the author, you have to
respect that. So, when shit happens on the set, and it does happen, you want
to be a team so you can fnd solutions. It’s important to feel comfortable with
the director and not be intimidated. Because we are all making this movie
together!

What kind of projects are you attracted to? What themes

speak to you?
I’m attracted to edgy things. If you look at Happiness, it’s so weird. I had an
agent at the time who told me, “Don’t do this movie.” I said, “Why not? I
want to do this movie.” The agent said, “Are you joking? It’s about pedo-
philia.” I said, “Okay, but I don’t think the movie is supporting this.” The
agent said, “Don’t do this movie.” But I just said, “No, I want to do it.” So,
I did, and the movie is great. Not for everybody. I think my son saw it just a
couple of years ago and he’s 26 now. He saw it and said, “Mom, that was a
weird movie.”
So, I read the script, sometimes I know right away if it’s boring or not for
me. But I’ve always gone with my frst impression of the script. I know some
cinematographers go with the director. That clicked in with me at this point in
my career, I want to go with the director who I connect with, but I’ve always
focused on the script.
Like The Wrestler, it was a good script, but not really a fantastic script. But
I was interested in working with Darren Aronofsky, of course. What made
the flm was Mickey Rourke. Darren always wanted him for the role, but the
studio didn’t want him. So, Darren went back to the budget to cut it down so
he could get him, and my rate was cut in half, but I stayed on.
It was about the flmmaking. I think Darren had this idea of always fol-
lowing the characters, always those very long takes. He came with the idea of
one lens and I tested different lenses, and we stayed with it. We committed
 Maryse Alberti, ASC 9
to it. That made the flm with Mickey Rourke, who really became The
Wrestler.

Have you made any choices that turned out not to be

the best for you? Any regrets?
I think I’ve missed a few, maybe one good one that I said no to and after it
came out, I was like, “Wow, what did I miss?” But in general, I’ve had no
regrets. I’ve made a few mistakes. Because every movie, especially now that
I’m in the realm of bigger budget, not huge but $35 to 45, you can hire really
good crews, people with great experience. And you learn from those people
and they make you be better. For me to go back now to a $5 million budget
with a crew who is in the process of learning, like we all had to do, working
with limited tools, limited time, I feel I’ve done that. It’s not just about my
rate. But I want to work in a structure where I can be the best I can be. You
have access to new tools, lighting with LEDs.
For me it has been an evolution from documentaries to indies to bigger
budget movies. But hopefully I’m going to keep on fnding those good movies
with bigger budgets and content that you can feel good about.

What if you were offered a big budget Marvel movie of

a comic book type of flm?
I was offered a series like that. I read the frst three scripts and I was going
to make a lot of money and I would be in Atlanta, which I love. But I said,
“I can’t do that.” I still have to have some kind of passion to fnd ideas and
energy. I can do it for two weeks on commercials. I’ve sold my soul to the
company store. But for four months? I know people who do one for the bank
and one for you. I read the frst three scripts and I just passed.

For flms that you’ve done, they haven’t had too

many visual effects. You’re not shooting a lot of green
screen, are you?
There was an article about the way movies might be done more in stages.
The technology has been kind of amazing where you can create a whole
environment with LED panels. Like Parasite, which I love. The whole sec-
ond story of the house outside was blue screen. None of the street was down
the street. There’s just a little piece of the street, the rest is blue screen,
because they didn’t fnd the right location. The whole environment, where
they go down the stairs and go into the basement where the husband is, is
virtual. It was really interesting to see that. Blue screen and green screen are
not something that I like to do because I prefer to light and to deal with
the world. I’m sure that comes from my documentary background, but that
10 Maryse Alberti, ASC
might be something that we are going to be doing more of in the very near
future.

What makes you decide on a format? Do you decide that

on your own or with a director?
Usually with the director, some let you decide, which is not always my
favorite. I prefer to have a collaborator, someone who has strong ideas and a
visual sense. For the format, we talk about what is the story? I have more of an
affnity with the long width angle, 2.35. But it would be interesting to work
in 1.33. This is not something that I would want to do, but if the director felt
really strongly, then I would embrace that challenge to work in the square.
But I’m more attracted in general, even in my artwork, to a longer rectangle.

Do you do artwork? Or you’re talking about what

you’re attracted to?
I’ve always done artwork, less in the last few years. Photography that I’ve
shown in galleries.
Always with multiple images. I’m not sure if it’s really great, but it is fun to
do. I use my iPhone a lot. I also have a Sony camera. I did the safari on my own
where I spent a week in Maasai territory. I went to Cambodia with a smaller
camera and then I did a trip with my son. We went to Zhangjiajie Park in
China, the park that inspired Avatar. It was amazing. I decided on that trip not
to take the camera, because then we were going to Barakai and I wanted just
a little backpack, to travel light.That’s why I shot everything with the iPhone,
which was great until you want to blow it up.A little bit, but not too much.
I hiked in the Sahara for ten days and I just brought the little Lumix cam-
era. It was great. It was in my pocket. I took amazing pictures. That was not a
photo trip, it was an adventure trip, so it was the right choice.

How did you feel about the shift to shooting digitally?

You mentioned it having to let go of your Aaton.
I’m not a purist. When we did The Wrestler, Darren and I talked about shooting
in S16mm, and I think that was the right choice. For me to go back to flm
now, it will have to be special, like a road movie. But not just to go back to
flm for the sake of flm. Once in a while, I see a movie and all I was seeing was
the grain crawling up the wall.
If I was doing Lawrence of Arabia, I might go to flm. But I like the digi-
tal world. I like also the communication with the director. There’s no more
“Trust me, it’s not too dark,” or “Trust me, it’s not too bright.” Here it is.
I like that and I’m happy with the image. The world of digital is great. The
images can be beautiful.
 Maryse Alberti, ASC 11
I still think it’s good for flm students to learn flm, because you learn light-
ing better with flm, you learn contrast.

Do you shoot more tests when you are shooting digitally

than you did with flm?
I do shoot more tests in digital, because in digital you have to test the cam-
eras. When in flm, the Arri versus the Panavision versus Movie cam, that
was kind of a choice. But in digital, the camera matters for the picture you’re
going to get. For example, with the Sony, Venice, because Ron’s flm is
Netfix, it had to be 4K. I could not choose the Alexa, which is ridiculous.
They let you use any shit camera you want, as long as it’s 4K, but not the
Alexa because it’s 3.2K. But now ARRIFLEX is making a new LF ALEXA
that will be like 8K. But it was too big because we were doing a lot of
handheld.

It’s interesting they wouldn’t let you use ALEXA. It seems

to be the camera of choice by a lot of cinematographers.
Yes. It’s beautiful. I mean, if you look at the way it captures skin tone. It’s
really a beautiful camera.

There are many younger women cinematographers working

today who are on set, pregnant, can you talk about your
experiences?
Being pregnant is not a disease. You can work and make clear decisions while
being pregnant, maybe you can’t carry a heavy camera. But I think now that
the door is open, it will stay open and that’s fne.
I remember a long time ago when I was pregnant, 27 years ago. I was shoot-
ing a commercial with Michael Apted. We were in a conference room with all
these guys I was meeting for the frst time. People used to mistake my name as
a man’s, Maurice. So, I was wearing overalls and I was clearly pregnant. First,
they say, “Oh, she’s a woman! This is a woman cinematographer.” Then they
said, “Whoa she is really pregnant.” And Michael says with his dry British
humor, “Well, let’s all get to work before my cinematographer gives birth on
the table.” But then it went fne. But each one of us has to make choices. I do
think there is more pressure on women. Men historically, traditionally, in most
cultures, have been the ones going to work and the women stay home and take
care of the kids. It might be also baked in our DNA. You want to take care of
the babies. But then it’s actually the choice of every woman and their partner.
When do you go back to work? How much time do you spend away from
your family? You have to fnd what works for you.
12 Maryse Alberti, ASC
What happened for me was, that I thought I was going to give birth and
give that baby to my husband and go back to work. I gave birth and it totally
blew my mind the love that I felt for my son, and I didn’t want to go back to
work. The frst year I barely worked, a little bit, but not much. I do think, you
can have it all. There’s 24 hours in a day and you have to decide how you want
to spend that time. You have to make your own choices.

Do you have any advice to share with aspiring

cinematographers regarding the balance of work and
home life?
Our business is very long hours. When you’re working, you have your phone
on in case of emergency. But when you’re on the flm set, that’s where you
are. It’s kind of a Buddhist attitude, which I’m a student of. You are there.
You’re working. When you are home with your kids, that’s where you are.
When you are home, don’t spend your time on the phone with the producer.
That time at home is for your family. I really tried to do that and it has worked.
Sometimes I made the choices not to work, not to take the project because it
was fun to be home, or I felt like I needed to be home. Find a way that works
best for you and your partner. But your kids are only going to be two years
old once, or fve years old once and you don’t want to miss those moments.
I always remember Bob Richardson, who I admire as a cinematographer,
had written an article for American Cinematographer. He was on a flm set in
Morocco and they had to flm until Christmas and then he went home just for
two days and then went back to work, and I was really touched when he said,
“I love making movies, but it is at a cost. My daughter is eight years old and
I think I basically only spent three years with her.” So, you have to decide.
My son is one of the best two people in my life. I love to travel with him
and he is a friend of mine. I have no regrets. My career might be in a different
place, but my career where it is now is good, and I have a great relationship
with my son.

Do you have any advice for young cinematographers

starting out?
At the beginning, shoot a lot because at some point you have to choose care-
fully because you can do a great job on an okay movie. But no one is going
to know you. But if you do a good job on a great movie, that’s it, you’re on
the map.
I was thinking about something Glenn Close said at the end of the flm
I just shot with Ron (The Hillbilly Elegy). It was the last day and a wrap and
everybody’s hugging, she said she just wants to be with a nice group of people
she has fun with. I like that. I want to be with a nice group of people I have
fun with on a project that I can feel proud of.
John Bailey, ASC
2 John Bailey, ASC

John Bailey selects a flm based on his instincts, the script and the director. He
is drawn to character-driven stories. He has a great admiration for the written
word. He has frequently been attracted to family dramas and romantic com-
edies, although he has also stepped into the action, suspense and horror genres.
John began his career as an assistant and quickly worked his way up to
becoming a cinematographer shooting numerous Academy Award-winning
flms. There is a naturalistic quality to his lighting style that has inspired numer-
ous cinematographers working today.
John has worked with an impressive list of directors including Robert
Redford, Paul Schrader, Lawrence Kasdan, John Schlesinger, Stanley Jaffe,
Norman Mailer, Robert Benton, James L. Brooks, Michael Apted, Callie
Khorui, Donald Petrie, Ken Kwapis, John Krasinski, Phil Alden Robinson,
Shana Feste and others. Despite his acclaim and experience, he also enjoys cul-
tivating new relationships with young, often frst-time writer/directors.
His credits are vast, beginning in the early 1970s, but he seems to have
really hit his stride in the 1980s starting with the Academy Award-winning
flm Ordinary People, which was followed by American Gigolo, Honky Tonk
Freeway, Cat People, That Championship Season, Without a Trace, Racing with the
Moon, Mishima, Crossroads, Brighton Beach Memoirs, Light of Day, Swimming to
Cambodia, Tough Guys Don’t Dance, Vibes and Accidental Tourist.
In the 1990s, he shot Hollywood Mavericks, My Blue Heaven, A Brief History of
Time, Groundhog Day, In the Line of Fire, Extreme Measures, As Good As It Gets,
Living Out Loud, The Out of Towners, Forever Mine and For Love of the Game.
In the 2000s, he began with the documentary Michael Jordon to the Max and
followed with Antitrust, Nsync: Bigger than Life, The Anniversary Party, The Kid
Stays in the Picture, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, How to Lose a Guy in
Ten Days, Digital Babylon, Searching for Michael Cimino, Incident at Loch Ness,
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Must Love Dogs, The Producer, The Architect,
License to Wed, Mad Money, Over her Dead Body, The Greatest, Brief Interviews
with Hideous Men and He’s Just Not That Into You.
From 2010 to 2020, he photographed When In Rome, Ramona and Beezus,
Country Strong, Big Miracle, The Way, Way Back, A.C.O.D, Snake and Mongoose,
16 John Bailey, ASC
The Angriest Man in Brooklyn, The Forger, A Walk in the Woods, Burn Your Maps,
An Actor Prepares, Phil and 10 Tricks.
John has been happily married to the esteemed flm editor Carol Littleton
since 1972. As a long-time fan of his work such as Ordinary People and The
Big Chill, both of which I had written papers about in flm school, I felt like
a privileged student listening to a Professor Emeritus discussing the numerous
flms he photographed as I interviewed him.

What made you want to be a cinematographer?

I went to USC when they frst started the graduate program, I think it was
1965. Gradually, I found my way behind the camera when I realized that the
language of flm was the image. So, along with my classmate Caleb Deschanel,
I began to concentrate more on cinematography. Everyone else wanted to
direct so we ended up shooting a lot of flms. The cinematography teacher was
a wonderful documentary, newsy kind of guy named Gene Peterson. Lighting
was not his forte, but he loved camera and he got me very excited about it.
I apprenticed as I went up through the ranks of cinematography. I got into
the union in 1969 and crewed on small 16mm educational flms as a dolly grip.
I worked for an educational company that was contracted to do work for the
BBC whenever they came to town. They interviewed Hollywood flmmakers
and celebrities, so I was actually holding the microphone for interviews with
John Ford, George Cukor, Alfred Hitchcock, John Wayne and Henry Fonda.
It was kind of amazing because even at that time they were all legendary. I
remember sitting at the feet of John Ford holding a shotgun microphone. The
BBC interviewer was a real Oxbridge kind of guy and you could tell that Ford
hated him. Ford had one eye with a patch over it and he was giving this inter-
viewer monosyllabic answers and being very curmudgeonly. The interviewer
continued to hoist himself on his own petard by getting more Oxbridge and
pretentious; when fnally Ford stopped listening and looked down at me with
his one eye as I was holding a microphone and said, “young man what is that
thing on your face?” I replied, Mr. Ford, I’m growing a mustache. He said,
“Don’t.” (laughs).
But what sealed my fate as a cinematographer occurred one afternoon at the
Regent Theater in Westwood. I saw a flm called The Conformist, which abso-
lutely knocked me out. It was not just the cinematography by Vittorio Storaro,
but the music, the editing, the movement of the camera, the lighting, the
production design and the way that the whole sense of European politics and
culture was subsumed into this intimate story of a man losing his soul. I’d seen
a lot of French New Wave flms as well as Fellini and Antonioni, but there
was something about that flm (The Conformist) and its absolute, complete and
perfect blending of all the elements that go into a flm. I sat there and thought,
I’m going to watch this again. Right before the flm started playing the second
time, I phoned Jim Dickson, who was a very eminent commercial cameraman
at the time, and I said, “Jimmy, I’m here in this theater in Westwood and I’ve
 John Bailey, ASC 17
just seen the most amazing flm you’ve got to come down and see it.” And he
said, “John I’m just getting ready to have dinner.” I said, “Eat fast and come
down and see it. I’ll wait for you and we’ll see the last show.” I went back in
and watched it a second time. When I came out of the theater, he was wait-
ing for me and I went back in and watched it a third time with him! That day
changed my life.
A few years later, I fnally met Vittorio Storaro when he came to Hollywood
and subsequently, we became good friends. Although I never worked with
Bertolucci, I did work with the production designer of The Conformist, Nando
Scarfotti. I ended up working on four flms with him. So, The Conformist was
the turning point that made me decide to devote my life to cinematography.

As a cinematographer what is it that attracts you to a

project creatively?
I know everybody says this, but it’s absolutely true, it’s all about the script. I
don’t do action flms, science fction or special effects movies. I abhor flms that
deal with what I consider to be gratuitous violence. So, that leaves you with
character and story, which is sort of the bedrock of what all drama is about in
theater. I read a screenplay the frst time only for the content. I deliberately try
not to think about it at all visually. I see if there is a character or a couple of
characters that hook me into the story. I look for compelling characters and a
sense of momentum and urgency in the work.
I’m highly attracted to the issues, problems and turmoil of the nuclear fam-
ily in flms like Ordinary People, The Accidental Tourist, Nobody’s Fool or The
Greatest. Beyond that, any kind of relationship story attracts me. I’ve done
some flms with very strange relationships, if you think of a flm like Cat People,
which I did with Paul Schrader, it’s about a brother and sister, so you could
say it’s a family drama but it’s a weird one. Or The Anniversary Party, which is
about a group of friends that are close like family or The Big Chill is another
one, in fact my wife, Carol (Littleton) and I refer to The Anniversary Party as
“The Little Chill.”

What attributes do you like a director to possess?

I’m very attracted to a frst-time director that by defnition is the author of
the script and has a clear vision into the material because they have created it.
For me, that’s the most compelling thing. I don’t expect anything more of a
frst-time director than an understanding of the screenplay, the characters, the
development, the intertwining of and evolution of the relationships and fnally,
how it resolves itself. There have been a couple of times when I’ve worked
with frst-time directors who were also producers such as Stanley Jaffee or
Mark Turtletaub.
Robert Redford did not write the screenplay for Ordinary People but he
defnitely had a clear vision of it. There are times when the frst-time director
18 John Bailey, ASC
may not be the writer of the script but does have some experiential fulcrum
to be able to articulate his vision of the material. For me, Robert Redford was
the quintessential example of that. This is a man who worked very carefully
with Alvin Sargent the screenwriter in developing Ordinary People. Every day
of the shoot he had a focused intensity and clarity of what he wanted. It was
almost breathtaking at times. It was the closest I’ve ever felt that a director was
almost living the script as we were doing it. I never had a chance to talk to
Bob about it, but I feel like there were elements in that story that converged
or refracted off of elements of his own personal story. Ordinary People seems to
be in an odd way the closest thing I have ever done that is timeless. When I do
events at flm schools, invariably someone will say that Ordinary People is what
made them interested in flm or it’s a flm that has been the most meaningful
or in the case of Shana Feste, The Greatest, the screenplay parallels a lot of the
elements of Ordinary People because it’s about dealing with a crisis in the family
over the death of a son. The particulars are different, the resolution is differ-
ent, but Shana was very clear when I frst met with her and my ears perked
up when she said, “I just want you to know that Ordinary People is one of my
favorite flms, it’s been the most infuential flm I’ve seen in terms of writing
the screenplay for The Greatest.” I’ve had all kinds of people tell me that that
Ordinary People spoke to them. For me even, it’s a flm that I continue to refer-
ence for myself.

I think Ordinary People is the perfect orchestration of

classical direction where Redford gets amazing
performances from the actors and the cinematography
subtly underscores it. Like those wide shots that just
slowly and gently push in, add to that the production
design that is so muted; it’s just a perfect combination
of all of the elements working together.
That became very clear to me, especially after I did American Gigolo, which was
all about style. But Richard Gere’s character was about veneer, so it was about
the superfcial qualities of the lifestyle. The story of the flm is the discovery
through the crisis of his soul and getting beyond that. Paul Schrader and I
decided we needed to make a flm that had high style in it. Then to follow up
a stylized flm with the challenges of Ordinary People, which was very intimate
and takes place mainly in interiors. There are scenes in the house and the psy-
chiatrist’s offce and there isn’t much more in the movie. It was very important
for me to fnd a style that did not intrude or try to establish its own persona,
yet underscored the drama of the flm, as a contributing element. There were
things that Redford and I discussed that subtly gave a visual design and progres-
sion to the flm. This was only my third flm as a cinematographer, but that
flm became a template for how I would approach flms from then on. That’s
why I keep referencing it, not in any obvious way in terms of technique or
style, but in terms of process.
 John Bailey, ASC 19
Once you’ve read a script a couple of times and decide
that you want to do it, how would you prepare for the
flm?
There have been a few flms where I’ve done what I think Storaro does on
almost every picture. I’ve written a three or four-page outline regarding the
stylistic approach with references to one or two scenes. Much of that comes
out of rehearsals if you have the opportunity to have rehearsals with the actors
in the physical space where you are going to be shooting. Then it’s all real,
you’ve got real people in a real space and you can think about the reality of it
and not some abstract notion of wouldn’t it be cool if we did this?
That’s the progression I do in terms of looking at the script and I always
carefully read over the next day’s work so I go in knowing what the location
of the set is going to look like. Usually, I make some notes, a rough or general
shot outline that I write on a piece of paper and put in my pocket. I may use
it as a reference, but I don’t show it to the director.
Since most of the flms that I do are so actor oriented it’s a futile gesture to
make up a shot list because you don’t know how you are going to shoot the
scene until you stage it. Then you have an idea based on the architecture of the
space, but you can’t know exactly unless you want to treat the actors like pieces
of furniture. Some actors really need that, so it can be helpful. Ken Kwapis has
an instinctive sense of knowing when an actor is going to be more comfortable
and more expansive by having a guideline of what to do.
I like to have a game plan of my own before the actor’s positions are marked
on the foor. But it’s a delicate situation, because in an ideal world the blocking
is the director’s domain.
As a cinematographer, the greatest challenges and opportunities for me have
nothing to do with what people think a cinematographer does; the lighting,
the movement of the camera, the composition. It’s really about how to defne
and interpret that dialog with the director so that it is both collaboration and a
realization of the director’s vision. That’s always a very tricky thing because as
a result of the French New Wave, which my generation was greatly infuenced
by, we developed this myth that the director by defnition has a vision.

What you’re saying is that if the director does have a

vision, it’s easier to interpret into cinematic language?
Yes, assuming that the director is also verbal. Even though my business is creat-
ing images. I came to flm school as a graduate student with an undergraduate
major in literature. The written word and the spoken word are paramount to
me. That’s why most of the movies I do are dialog-driven flms.

What would make you want to pass on a project?

I have done both an action and horror flm and in both of those experiences
I thought I could work with the director and supersede the limitations of the
20 John Bailey, ASC
genre. Well I couldn’t, and he couldn’t either. It was very frustrating, and I
found myself in situations that I never wanted to be in where I ended up say-
ing “I fnd this revolting.” It’s not that I have antipathy towards any genre. Cat
People was by defnition a horror flm, but it was a very sophisticated one. You
could say In the Line of Fire is an action flm, but it’s a thinking man’s action
flm because it’s really about the metaphysical duel between a man who has an
insistent and unquenchable life force even though his embers are burning low
and a man who is a total nihilist.
I like all kinds of genres in principle. But I will certainly not do a flm
that is gratuitously violent especially if it involves violence towards women or
children.
Many years ago, I wrote an article about this in the DGA magazine; this
was about the time that Natural Born Killers came out. There was a whole
raft of movies that were coming out as well as the early generations of very
sophisticated and very violent video games. After Columbine, there was a huge
internal dialog within the flm industry about violence in movies. Also, the
government started to get in on the act and there were a lot of very eminent
flmmakers, producers and directors who said, “We just refect the condition
of the society; we don’t contribute to its debasement.” Which I felt was an
incredibly subversive and mendacious position to take given the whole notion
of what Columbine was about and how it so clearly tracked back to identi-
fying with violence in a couple of movies. I’ve always been very concerned
about that. Even though Carol and I don’t have children, I feel a global kind
of responsibility to not be a part of the flmmaking world that puts violent
images out there for impressionable minds or people who are mentally unsta-
ble or compromised. I don’t want to be part of a flm that creates a seductive
fantasy of harming people. Especially women. My agents don’t even send me
stuff like that. I don’t ask them to flter out a whole lot. But (Wayne and Pete
my wonderful agents) would never send me anything that they think I would
fnd offensive.

You have worked with an interesting group of

directors, Lawrence Kasdan, Ken Kwapis, Paul
Schrader, Robert Redford, do you fnd that each one
approaches their preparation for a flm differently?
There are directors I’ve worked with who will storyboard almost the entire
flm. But one of the things I’ve found is that a lot of times those storyboards
will actually give them a vision that they don’t develop out of the script. These
are directors who are not as word oriented. I don’t mean this as a value judg-
ment, but they are more visual, so they will take the script and deconstruct the
scene and either work with a storyboard artist or sketch themselves to break
it up into visual elements that they can then atomize, then create a nucleus.
That’s just how they create their vision, they don’t do it directly from the
words. That’s fne, we all have our different ways of working and I feel that
 John Bailey, ASC 21
part of my job is to be fexible enough to accommodate the vision or non-
vision of whatever the particular comfort zone of the director is.
Some directors like to prepare very carefully. If a scene requires the coor-
dination of moving vehicles, stunts, special effects or green screen, it needs to
be storyboarded because so many departments have to be brought in to coor-
dinate. But those are the only scenes that I feel compelled to have storyboards
for. The whole issue of storyboarding is very interesting. I fnd them of very
limited use, but I did a flm with Sam Rami, the Kevin Costner baseball flm
For Love of the Game and Sam storyboarded huge sections of that flm. Sam
actually had two storyboard artists working sometimes together and sometimes
on completely separate storyboards and he would then take elements that he
liked from both storyboard artists and have what he called a “storyboard bake
off.” I think he still does that, works with two storyboard artists who know
each other and know going into the project that they will be working in
opposition to each other; but that’s the way Sam works and it’s essential to
his style.
I’ve also done entire flms without a single storyboard. We didn’t story-
board anything on The Greatest. I don’t think we storyboarded anything on
Ordinary People. The only thing I remember is Mr. Redford drew a picture of
the lanes of a bowling alley on a paper napkin when he was trying to explain
a shot to me. I had that napkin for a long time and eventually it disappeared,
and I don’t know what happened to it (laughs). But he could draw what he
wanted to; we just did not do a lot of storyboards. He may remember differ-
ently than me, but I don’t remember storyboards. For example, the opening
sequence in Ordinary People with the montage of the fall seasons was not even
a scripted sequence.
What I have found is that every director I have ever worked with is absolutely
different. Their ways of working and personalities are different. For me, that’s
one of the great things about being a cinematographer, I get to be uniquely
involved in the best part of production, the shooting and also experience the
personalities and collaborative visions of a wide range of personalities. My sense
is that most directors could never be cinematographers. I am not making a value
judgment, because most of them do not have the personality type where they can
be like a chameleon. Part of what it takes to be a signature director, an auteur, is
a strong personal vision and ego. It’s not that cinematographers don’t have egos,
but our ego has to be worked within the collaboration of other people’s egos.

The opening sequence of Ordinary People is brilliant

when you realize the serene lake you are looking
at is the cause of the tragedy. It’s a classic montage
establishing sequence that shows the audience this
beautiful town where horrible things shouldn’t happen.
I was back in Lake Forrest for preproduction in early October right as the
leaves were starting to turn, and I said to Bob, “Why don’t I just go out with
22 John Bailey, ASC
Jimmy Glennon, the camera operator and shoot some of these things, just steal
them because they are beautiful shots and maybe you can use them somehow
to bridge sequences or something like that.” He and Jeff Kanew (the editor)
created the title sequence out of those shots and it’s a beautiful introduction to
the flm; but it was not scripted.

Have you ever worked with a director who brings

you photographs, postcards, paintings or pictures
of paintings as visual references to represent the
look of a flm? Or have you used any of these
things to communicate with a director?
There are certain painters who are real touchstones for cinematographers;
Rembrandt, Hopper, Vermeer, those are the three big ones. Caravaggio for
Storaro, for Nestor Alemendros, it was George De La Tour. One of the key
painters who has always been important for me is Mark Rothko, because I love
those colors on a set. A lot of what we see other than the actors’ faces are the
walls of interiors, so what do the walls look like? Mark Rothko was preemi-
nent, nobody had the ability to create a sense of depth on a fat canvas through
just color as he did and the work was laborious; it was layer upon layer and
then the scraping, it was agonizing. But his colors and textures are some of the
most exciting I’ve ever seen in painting.
Some directors have brought me books of paintings or some photographs,
but not very many. More likely it tends to come from the production designer
who may already have presented them to the director in terms of a color pal-
ette or the use of space, especially if you are building sets.
There have been a number of flms where I’ve shown directors and produc-
tion designers paintings that I thought were very important. There are twenti-
eth -century European modernist photographers, Bauhaus oriented, Germans
and Hungarians whose sense of composition was a very strong element in their
photographs. They have always been infuential to me because I consider the
composition of a shot as having the same weight as the lighting or image size.
This is why I love the anamorphic aspect ratio so much because you have so
much more compositional area to evaluate.

Do you prefer the anamorphic format to Super 35mm?

I like anamorphic over Super 35mm for a couple of reasons. One is that there
is a great history and tradition to anamorphic that existed for decades before
Super 35mm came along. It’s a flm format where you can take the negative
and contact print it with another piece of flm and make a real release print.
Super 35 uses the full frame, including the soundtrack area, so you can’t get a
print directly from the negative. I love anamorphic because there’s no waste
in the frame. Like with 16mm, you use the entire vertical frame, so you have
40% more information in that frame than you do in a 2:40 aspect ratio in Super
 John Bailey, ASC 23
35mm. I like a very highly resolved image. This is the reason I don’t like to do
DIs (digital intermediates).
I love the anamorphic aspect ratio although it has not always been easy to
work with because Panavision went through a period when they didn’t keep
up with their technology on improving anamorphic systems. Panavision was an
anamorphic camera system for a decade before they ever had spherical lenses.
For the frst decade, if you shot Panavision you shot anamorphic. It began as an
alternative to 20th Century Fox’s Cinemascope process. There was that kind
of a history that was also very appealing to me, the history of anamorphic flm
making; also there’s the fact that you photograph an image and you squeeze
it together on the captured negative and then you un-squeeze it when you’re
projecting it, it’s sort of wonderfully perverse in a way (laughs).
But Panavision basically neglected the format for a decade while their
energy went into developing a high defnition Sony camera, the “Panavised”
Sony 900 that they did for George Lucas and the Star Wars Trilogy which I
think was a terrible mistake.
I started in on them through my good friend at Panavision, Phil Radin after
In the Line of Fire to develop new anamorphic systems, especially a zoom that
was fast and resolved enough that you could use it in interiors. The only viable
anamorphic zoom lens that they had was a T4.5 lens and you couldn’t shoot
at a 4.5 because it was so out of focus around the edges and nobody is going
to light an interior set to a 6.3 T-stop. I started talking to them in 1994 and
ten years later they fnally developed a short range anamorphic high speed lens
for me, a 40–80-mm T2.8 which I used for the frst time on Sisterhood of the
Traveling Pants and then a couple years later I went back to them and said it
would really be great if you could develop another lens more like a portrait
telephoto lens and they were able to develop a 70–200-mm T3.5, which is a
little slower but still viable. I have those two lenses and the frst time I used
the 70–200-mm was on He’s Just Not That Into You. Now the lenses are going
out often and it has revitalized the anamorphic aspect ratio and a lot of young
cinematographers are getting very interested. Panavision built thirty-fve of the
40–80mms and they are rented all the time, they’re building the 70–200-mms,
I think they have seven to ten of them now and along with that they have
developed a new generation of prime lenses they call the G series. Anamorphic
has suddenly become very hot. Which is great, I’m very happy. There are
probably some flms that I would not feel the anamorphic aspect ratio would
be the right one for, but there are very few. I’ve shot enough flms with it and
I feel very comfortable with it.

Do you ever choose to shoot standard 1:85?

I do, but it’s been a long time. I actually convinced Jim Brooks to shoot
anamorphic for As Good As It Gets, but when I suggested it, he said I don’t
know, I come out of TV, I’ve never done anamorphic and I said, “Well, The
Accidental Tourist was the frst flm I did in anamorphic and it’s essentially a
24 John Bailey, ASC
three character drama and most of the scenes only involve two people.” I
suggested we look at it together. I had a print sent over and we went into
a projection room over at Sony and fve minutes into the screening he says,
“John that’s not anamorphic it’s 1:85.” I said, “No it’s anamorphic,” and he
insists it’s 1:85, so I call back to the projection booth to bring the side mats in
to 1:85. So, the projectionist closed it in and cut off the sides of the picture and
I said “Jim that’s 1:85.” “Oh really? Open up back up to anamorphic.” Then
he agreed to do the flm in anamorphic. But a week before we started shoot-
ing, he changed his mind and said, “I don’t know, I’ve never used it, it’s a lot
of space out there beyond the actors and I don’t know what to do with the
space.” I said, “Well Jim, that’s my job I’ll fgure it out, I think it would keep
the flm from being claustrophobic.” But he couldn’t wrap his mind around it,
just couldn’t do it, so we shot it 1:85. I really appreciate this dilemma. There
are many cinematographers who are ambivalent about shooting anamorphic.
To me, that was one of my great lost discussions, because I really think As Good
As It Gets would have looked better and would have had more breathing room
to it if it had been in anamorphic.

Can you talk about your preference for formats?

I did a short with the Genesis and two small features with the Sony 900. I also
shot two features shooting with my little Panasonic DVX 100s, which have
a one-third-inch chip, and for one of them we did a 35mm flm out from it.
It’s not that I’m against any particular format, I’ve shot in Super 16mm, I’ve
shot in Super 35mm. We did Silverado on Super 35mm before they called it
Super 35mm. At the time it was called Super Techniscope, because of the old
Techniscope two perf systems that the Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns were
done on. It was essentially a two perf spherical system blown up vertically to
four perf anamorphic. My frst experience with it was the very frst industry
flm I did as a camera assistant Two Lane Blacktop, Monty Hellman’s flm. We
shot that in classic Techniscope. When John Alcott developed what he called
Super Techniscope, opening up that soundtrack area, at that time it was all flm
answer printing. I talked with Larry Kasdan about using it for Silverado because
I wanted it to be a very American western. I said, “We’re going to be out
there in Santa Fe, New Mexico shooting in the dead of winter, we may not
always have much depth of feld and it would be a shame not to have expan-
sive deep focus for a flm dealing with that kind of beautiful landscape. Super
Techniscope would give it to us, and besides, it would be a great homage to
Sergio Leone. That fnal shoot out at the end between Brian Dennehy and
Kevin Kline is a homage to Leone’s great shoot outs at the end of The Good,
Bad and the Ugly or For a Few Dollars More.
I love anamorphic, it is my preferred format most of the time because I
feel that even with intimate dramas it’s not claustrophobic, it provides a sense
of space around the actors that allows the physical space they are in to also
be alive. It also gives them the ability to move around the frame a lot more
 John Bailey, ASC 25
without having to pan the camera back and forth. Especially if you are deal-
ing with a very stylized and controlled frame, you can hold the frame and let
them move.
There’s a very obscure flm which I think everybody who reads this book
should try to fnd, very interesting black and white flm that Tony Richardson
did in the mid 1960s called Mademoiselle with Jeanne Moreau from a Jean Genet
story about a schoolteacher in a small village in provincial France. She’s a very
disturbed character and she essentially tries to destroy the livelihood of the vil-
lage, she poisons wells, she poisons cattle, she sets fre to the buildings, it’s
very Jean Genet. I think David Watkins was the cinematographer. They started
shooting the flm as a normal flm, anamorphic controlled pans, dollies and they
were a week and a half or two weeks in and they realized they had not been
moving the camera much because of the anamorphic controls. They decided to
do the flm without any movement of the camera at all, so they went back and
started over. When you look at this flm, which is in glorious black and white
with very deep, rich lighting, there is not a single pan, tilt, dolly move or zoom
in the flm. I have talked to people who have seen it and when I mention this,
they are incredulous. For me as a cinematographer, I don’t know how anybody
could watch more than ten minutes of this flm and not notice there is some-
thing very strongly stylistic going on. For me, that flm is one of the flms that
truly illustrates how dynamic and yet static an anamorphic frame can be. How
much movement you can have within the frame without actually moving the
camera. So, that’s yet another reason why I love this format so much.

Do you think there is a preconceived look to lighting for

particular genre flms?
I don’t think you could light a romantic comedy to look like Touch of Evil,
with either the focal length of the lenses or the low camera angles. Can you
imagine shooting your leading lady in a romantic comedy like the opening
shot of Touch of Evil where Orson Welles introduces the character Quinlan
with that low wide angle close up when he steps out of the car (laughs).
Romantic comedies do have a restricted lighting palette, so you can’t push
it too much. How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days is within the limitations of what
you can do with a romantic comedy. I don’t subscribe to the theory that just
because it’s a romantic comedy it has to be lit fat and I don’t think most of
How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days is lit fat. I try to light pretty much the way I
would light a drama. The worst romantic comedies are the ones that are so
high key and fltered that they look like fantasies. Even though Romantic
comedies are sort of fantasies, I think that we like to believe that they work
on the fringes of credible behavior and that it would be possible for all of us to
fnd a partner in the real world that approximated the way romantic comedies
tend to resolve themselves. That’s the kind of idea behind what I try to do in
lighting romantic comedies. But do I love when I can sneak something in that
pushes at the edge of the genre just a little bit.
26 John Bailey, ASC
What about lighting based in realism?
You have to be careful with realism because what you think of as realism could
start to look very stylized. A key exponent of that is my good friend Roger
Deakins who sometimes will actually light a scene very realistically, but it looks
incredibly stylized because of the way flm captures it. It’s really kind of a sty-
listic thing he does where he’ll have somebody in a bedroom or on a sofa with
a table lamp next to them and the lamp will be lit and it will be casting a little
bit of light on the actor but basically lighting the wall behind and he shoots it
in such a way that the actor sitting in front of the lamp is actually silhouetted.
It’s a signature thing you see in a lot of his work where the actor will be three
feet from the lamp and they are very dark but the wall is lit. Have you ever
noticed that? It’s bold and beautiful.

Yes, there’s a scene like that in No Country for Old Men.

He does it a lot, it’s in Doubt and it’s very realistic but he’s using the real practi-
cal light as a key. Of course, it’s not strong enough at that distance to give full
exposure to the actor.There are things like that which can be lit very realisti-
cally but don’t look that way at all because of the way flm captures the light.

Can you talk about the difference between the

use of a dolly and the use of Steadicam?
I think the Steadicam has been tremendously overused. A lot of the time it’s
used in such a way that it places a burden on the Steadicam operator to fnd a
way to photograph the scene. A director and/or cinematographer who doesn’t
want to or doesn’t seem able to really block a scene will have the actor’s
kind of move around with incredible spontaneous freedom and just have the
Steadicam operator move around and adjust to capture whatever happens. But
this can be a very deliberate aesthetic too and can work very well when it’s
more planned. For example, one way the Steadicam was used is in a way that
seems nominally spontaneous but is highly controlled. If you look at the way
Gus Van Sant uses the Steadicam in Elephant or in Gerry, which has these long,
long shots of actors moving through the desert before they get lost and there’s
this high energy and the Steadicam is just moving with them and around them.
You would have to have a crew of ffty grips to lay that much dolly track. It’s
beautiful but they look like dolly shots until they break the axis, and you realize
it’s a Steadicam shot, beautifully done.
Sometimes, it’s used for a bravura effect. That happened when it frst came
out. You can tell when certain flms were made by the use of a new piece of
equipment. When wide use of Steadicam came in during the late 70s through
the mid 80s, there were flms that had the obligatory fve-minute Steadicam
shot such as the opening shot of Bonfre of the Vanities, which is a bravura shot
in a lot of ways.
 John Bailey, ASC 27
Do you think that it’s exploiting the use of the Steadicam?
Yes, which every flmmaker has a right to do. Marty Scorsese did it in that
scene in Goodfellas in the kitchen and it turned out to be really beautiful, it
really worked as a whole expositional thing, it was dramatic. It’s a great tool,
although I tend to use it sparingly and I don’t think it’s a substitute for a dolly.
Most of the time when you come to the end of a Steadicam move, the opera-
tor can’t hold it absolutely steady on a static frame, so you have to cut out of
it pretty quickly into conventional coverage. One of the things that can cause
a disjunction for me is the fact that the Steadicam shot tends to be done on
the wider lenses and then you cut into longer lenses for the coverage. Whereas
if you were shooting it on a dolly, you would probably use a longer lens and
the transition between the focal length of the dolly and the coverage would be
less noticeable. It’s antithetical for what the Steadicam was created for, to use
it with long lenses.

But the Steadicam can go where a dolly can’t.

Yes exactly. There are a tremendous number of uses for it such as following
people upstairs. We did it on Cat People, which was shot in 1983, people were
using it then although it was pretty new at the time. But it’s not a substitute
for a dolly, it’s just a great tool. Don’t get me wrong I do love Steadicam, but
with anamorphic I tend to work on the dolly more and use the Steadicam
only when it’s necessary. For example, on The Greatest we basically used the
Steadicam for a scene when Pierce Brosnan throws Susan Sarandon, his wife,
into the ocean and these rip tide breakers are pulling at them and we wanted
the camera to be right in there with them as they are being tumbled about by
the waves and the sand. Jim McCalkey is a very fne Steadicam operator from
New York who shot the scene, and he was right out in there in the surf, I
don’t know how he held his ground, but it was a beautiful shot. We didn’t
have time to do much coverage; it was the end of the day and we essentially
did the entire scene in one continuous shot but then jump cut it and broke it
up in such a way that it had several cutting points but he got the entire shot in
one take. This was good because the actors didn’t want to have to go back in
the cold water.

Do you think that flm is going to remain a viable format

to work in?
The frst thing I think of is archival. Real longevity: is flm going to last, yes?
Film will last if it is properly stored and taken care of, we know that. Especially
if you do YCM1 separation masters, we know that we are talking about more
than a century at least. If flm negative is improperly stored, especially color
flm, it is subject to all kinds of problems, none of which I think are anywhere
near as inevitable as the problems that will be facing us in the near future with
28 John Bailey, ASC
the degradation and instability of digital materials. The studios, the producers,
directors and I’m sorry to say a lot of my colleagues have got their heads in the
sand regarding the problems that are facing us. The motion picture academy
“Sci-Tech” committee did a 74-page paper called “The Digital Dilemma.”
It’s all about the problems of archiving digital materials, especially digital inter-
mediates as being the frontline version of the fnished flm. If they decide
to go back in and cut that negative, how few flms will there be that have
made enough box offce revenue that somebody would be willing to rescan
the original negative when they discover the problems of lack of stability and
degradation of digital masters? The Academy Committee has said that digital
intermediate materials should be “migrated” to new formats every fve years.
Because formats are changing all the time as we know from the history of video
that within the last forty years many different formats have become obsolete.
In audio, there were 8 track or open reel cassettes. But it’s worse on video
materials because there have been so many different formats and the machines
that can play them back have been lost, so the materials get lost, and if these
are not migrated to the new formats every fve to seven years, they are going
to be lost.
But even more crucial as this report indicates is that they tend to start to get
corrupted and disappear, like if you are watching a HDTV image and it starts
to break up, you don’t get snow, it just breaks up in clumps. That is going to
be happening to digital Intermediate masters very soon. Then you’ve lost what
is your negative. Okay so if you’ve done a flm out negative, that’s fne because
it becomes your new master, it’s like a dupe in a way, but most of the flms
that have been done on DIs have been done at 2k resolution which means that
your flm negative made from your digital intermediate has the resolution of
2k from the DI, when we know that original negative motion picture flm that
has been properly shot with good lenses has at least 6k resolution. So now what
you’ve done is created a flm negative that has less than half the resolution of
your original principal photography and that’s the best thing you are going to
have in the archive.
I think it’s a huge problem. A lot of people have buried their heads in the sand
about it because it’s so much fun to go into the digital suite and play around with
the machines. Do a power window on the wall, brings face up that’s a little dark,
or lighten the whole scene, change the color of the sky, intensify the clouds, all
this stuff that we’ve been doing for a long time for home video mastering. It’s
great, I love it, but a couple of things happen. One is that the price you are pay-
ing is that you don’t have a real flm negative anymore at full resolution.
The other thing that’s happening and I notice it more and more is that peo-
ple are falling in love with re-lighting and re-balancing their flm in the digital
suite. The parallel I like to make is to certain actors who either can’t or have a
hard time doing automated dialog replacement (ADR); they’ve created a per-
formance that’s organic and in the moment when they were doing the scene
and you ask them to go back six months later and loop and redo it. You can
 John Bailey, ASC 29
get away with lines on somebody’s back, but it is very hard to get the lighting
to strike a second time.
My own feeling is that this is happening to cinematography too.
Cinematographers are going back, and they are overworking the images they
have created, so they are all starting to look alike. I look at some of these skies,
I look at the walls, and I see the same thing happening in scene after scene or
sometimes in flm after flm. There is starting to be a cookie cutter look to
these flms that are being done with DIs and also with all due respect to the
great colorists who are working in these digital suites, they did not create the
images, they are working in kind of a scientifc technical basis. With respect to
whatever artist impulses they have, they didn’t create those images in a context,
so the cinematographer is working in collaboration or trying to mediate with
a person who is reworking their work supposedly under their infuence or
guidelines, but it’s not the same thing.
Every time I have been in a digital suite, and I have been with some very
gifted people, I somehow feel that much more removed from having control
of my work in a way that I don’t have when I’m doing a flm answer print
with a color timer. Now maybe it’s because that’s the way I’ve done it for forty
years, but I don’t think so, and people say, “oh that’s just because that’s the way
you used to do it and you can’t get used to it.”
I consider myself to be an open person who has no preconceived notion of
any technology that comes into the business, but I am also very worried and
wary that every piece of equipment and technology that I’ve seen since I was
an assistant camera (AC) has a disproportionate effect for a short period of time.
The problem with DIs is that they are not going to go away. All these people
who have done this excessive work and created these 2k DIs and are doing all
their flms on DIs are hoisting themselves on their own petard without even
realizing the long-term consequences of it.
It became very clear to me when Ken (Kwapis) and I started to answer print
He’s Just Not That Into You how blind and oblivious the studios are. New Line
promised, after extensive discussions with several of the executives about why
we should do He’s Just Not That Into You anamorphic, it’s an ensemble piece,
blah, blah, blah and since we’re shooting anamorphic and we’ll have a negative
that has the capability of an 8–10k resolution in digital terms. Ken and I wanted
to fnish the flm on flm (photochemically). They gave us permission. Cut
to eight months later, we’re getting ready to cut the negative and the person
who was head of post-production refused to let us do it and gave all kinds of
reasons regarding some bogus lawsuit saying, “you have to have a DI it is now
our policy.” I said, “But you promised” and the reply was “I don’t care that’s
just not the way it is now.” Ken tried to prevail and talked to other people but
essentially what happened on that is a flm that did not need it and for which
we had not prepared for it at all, a flm whose only visual effect was a little
green screen insert of a cell phone screen had to have a DI. This is an anamo-
rphic flm, so we pleaded to at least be able to do a 4k DI but got nowhere. I
30 John Bailey, ASC
shot an anamorphic flm with 8k of resolution and it was answer printed and
released as a 2k DI.
Executives in the DI suites have no inkling of the long-term consequences
of this. Almost all of the movies now being released by the Hollywood studios
and international flms are doing it now too. They are all being released off
of digital intermediates. If those flms don’t earn a lot of money at the time of
their release or if they are not stored properly or change hands as one studio
sells its library to another, what will happen to the original camera negative?
These DIs have to be stored under the most rigid temperature and humidity
conditions or they start to fall apart very quickly.
To properly archive, store and migrate the digital intermediate for maxi-
mum protection costs about $175,000.00 per year for a 4k DI. Now how long
do you think they are going to pay for this stuff? The DIs are going to start to
de-stabilize and then you are going to be left with a 2k negative from a video
master and that is going to be the history of American flm from 2000 to when-
ever they decide to wake up.

That is completely frightening especially in the light

of the proven stability of archiving flm negatives.
This has become my mission, talking to young flmmakers and students. To
tell them they don’t have to do a DI. I was very happy to go to Sundance with
both The Greatest and Brief Interviews with Hideous Men which were both done
for under $3 million and we did flm capture and flm fnishing, no DI. They
had a budget of $250k on The Greatest for the DI and I said we’re not going to
have a single digital effect or green screen shot in this movie, it’s like Ordinary
People, why do you want to do a DI? And they said, “oh well isn’t that what
everybody does now?” I told them you don’t need to do it, take that $250,000.
And put it into the movie.

If the cost of a DI is about $250,000.00 what is

the cost of completely photo chemically?
About $60,000.00, ideally you would go through fewer answer prints with a
DI, but if you have a really good photochemical timer, and they are disappear-
ing, there are fewer and fewer of them, but with a really good photo chemical
timer I have found that I can get an almost locked timed answer print on three
or four prints at the max. I’ve also found that flms I’ve had to do from the
DI, and the DIs are a lot more consistent now in terms of the look up tables
(LUT) and everything and then do the flm out and have the flm out actually
correspond to the DI, they are a lot better than they used to be but you still
go through three or four prints. But you tweak the flm print anyway. I don’t
know anybody that’s had a flm out negative from a DI and says that’s it lets go
to release; that just doesn’t happen.
 John Bailey, ASC 31
Are you saying that the process isn’t saving any money?
It’s not saving anything because you still answer print. Now of course the
studios are looking forward to the days of D Cinema when they can eliminate
flm prints completely and they can use hard drives or satellite transmission
directly into the cinemas, because then they don’t have to pay the $2000.00
or whatever per print cost, no transportation costs, they think they won’t have
piracy as bad, but of course that’s not going to be true. So, that’s my rant about
digital intermediates. Sadly, it’s only a few years before flm prints for new
releases disappear completely.

How early did you start shooting digitally?

Many years ago, I ventured into the then still new area of digital flmmaking
with The Anniversary Party. Digital HD was still recent enough that the only
viable camera was the Sony 900, a re-confgured electronic news gathering
(ENG) camera—and it was beyond our budget means to rent it, so we opted
for Phase Alternating Line (PAL) format with the Sony 580. Since then, I
have photographed movies in many digital formats, all the while maintaining
my love for the ever-improving technology of 35mm motion picture flm.
Recently, I photographed four consecutive features, all low budget and on
short schedules, with the Arri Alexa HD digital camera at ProRes confgura-
tion, a lower resolving format than the Alexa is capable of achieving. I had
concluded on the basis of tests that for intimate, character-driven stories with-
out elaborate visual effects that ProRes compared favorably to the Alexa’s full
resolution with a Codex.
The Alexa is for me, and for many of my colleagues, the frst video camera
that felt and looks like a flm camera. But it is still not a flm camera; it’s mode
of capture and imaging characteristics are different from flm, regardless of how
digital video evolves.
I am eager next to shoot a movie using the full Alexa sensor with the new
1.3 anamorphic squeeze lenses. It will produce a 2.40 aspect ratio—which is
for me the most desired format. I had felt somewhat constrained composition-
ally with the 1.78 native aspect ratio of the early Alexa.
Most people feel we are in the twilight of the flm era and several of my
distinguished peers have abandoned 35mm flm completely. I have spoken and
written extensively about the continuing viability of flm even as many of us
also adopt digital video. One system does not invalidate the other, just as oil
or acrylic paints do not invalidate watercolors and pastels. But that apparently
is not how the purely market-driven forces of the industry would seem to
have it. So, it is up to the creative community to have the will to choose the
medium they prefer for any given movie. I am not sure how passionate that
will is, especially among younger cinematographers who may regard the one-
day delay between camera exposure and flm development as an unacceptable
gap.
32 John Bailey, ASC
For me, that one day is a small price to pay so that the images we create
will not be subject to digital decay and loss, what some have called “digital
nitrate.” Film is by defnition self-archiving. I recently supervised a new 4K
re-mastering of Groundhog Day at Sony Color works with colorist John Dunn.
The scan from the original 35mm flm negative was so clean and crisp—and
we both agreed that the negative still contains more than 4K information.
Imagine the situation for the past decade’s movies that, regardless of flm
or video capture are locked into a 2K digital intermediate—this at a time
when the studios are proclaiming imminent 4K home video and television.
How many of these movies that were not box offce smashes will be deemed
proftable enough to rescan the original negative? And how many of them
captured on digital video, including some I have photographed, will be forever
locked into a rapidly obsolescing format? I think we will have some real disap-
pointments in the coming years. Our lust for new technology at any price has
marched us backward in image creation.
But as Paul Schrader wrote a few years back, “Cinema is dead.” The idea of
movies as an art form exists mainly and still forcefully, in foreign flms. We in
the United States seem to regard our movies as an ever more disposable prod-
uct. The large number of movies in this past year’s foreign flms Oscar consid-
eration proved that 35mm flm is still a very desirable medium. And many of
our most prestigious Hollywood flms are still electing for flm capture. Film
or digital video, or both together, it is a fascinating time to be making motion
pictures.

Note
1 YCM is a separation master where yellow, cyan and magenta elements are stored as B
&W flm negative reels, then printed using RGB light where the red affects the cyan dye,
the green affects the magenta dye and the blue affects the yellow dye.
Robert Elswit, ASC
3 Robert Elswit, ASC

Robert was born in Los Angeles and fell in love with classic black and white
movies at a young age. With the studios just a stone’s throw from where he
grew up, it was only natural that he would fnd himself a part of the motion
picture industry in his hometown. He went to USC Film School after a stint
in the theater department at UCLA and found his calling behind the camera.
He is best known for his long-time collaboration with director Paul Thomas
Anderson. The two worked on six flms together starting with Hard Eight
(1996), Boogie Nights (1997), Magnolia (1999), Punch Drunk Love (2002), There
Will Be Blood (2007) and Inherent Vice (2014). Robert won the Academy Award
for Best Cinematography for his work on There Will Be Blood.
Robert has also worked with George Clooney on Suburbicon (2017) and was
nominated for an Oscar for his work on Good Night and Good Luck in (2005),
also directed by Clooney. Other frequent collaborations include his work with
Tony Gilroy on Michael Clayton (2007), Duplicity (2009) and Bourne Legacy
(2012).
His collaboration with Dan Gilroy includes Velvet Buzzsaw (2019), Roman
J. Israel (2017) and Nightcrawler (2014). Robert worked with Stephan Gaghan
on Gold (2016) and Syrianna (2005).
His work on big budget action flms such as Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation
(2015) directed by Christopher McQuarrie and Mission Impossible: Ghost
Protocol (2011) directed by Brad Bird are notable contributions to the action
genre series.
His body of work reveals that he is drawn to a theme of action, suspense
and thrillers, which require more dramatic, high contrast lighting with oppor-
tunities to explore darker color palettes. Working in the genre of drama or
thriller, Robert photographed both The Town for Ben Affeck and Salt for
Phillip Noyce in 2010.
Going back to the 1990s, Robert worked with Curtis Hanson on The Hand
Rocks the Cradle (1992) and The River Wild (1994). He was Joel Schumacher’s
cinematographer on Bad Infuence (1990) and 8mm (1999). Robert also shot
three flms for Stephen Gyllenhaal including Paris Trout (1991), Waterland
(1992) and A Dangerous Woman (1993).
36 Robert Elswit, ASC
One of Robert’s earlier collaborations was the classic The Sure Thing with
Rob Reiner in 1985. That same year, he also shot the iconic Desert Hearts
directed by Donna Dietch; both are the only two flms he shot that fall into
romantic comedy. During the 1980s, Robert photographed several television
movies before he began his work with feature flms in 1982.
Showing no signs of slowing down, he recently worked with Judd Apatow
on The King of Staten Island (2020).

How did you know you wanted to be a cinematographer?

I wanted to be a cinematographer since I was a kid. I grew up watching old
black and white movies from the 1930s and 1940s on television. It was astonish-
ing to me that movies that were supposed to take place all over the world, were
actually all made within fve to ten miles from where I lived. I grew up halfway
between MGM and 20th Century Fox in Los Angeles. Even as a kid, I was
struck by the compelling style of black and white cinematography of that era.
The monochromatic high key black and white lighting had a striking, graphic
style that I found engaging. The frst time I went to a movie theater, I ended
up seeing movies that were in comedies or movies for kids shot in Technicolor.
But those black and white movies on television were far more interesting to
me. I remember one extraordinary flm called Black Magic with Orson Wells.
He didn’t direct it. It was actually made in Italy. But it was so visually stimulat-
ing that it piqued my interest in learning more about flm. The days before the
Internet, DVDs or VHS, the only place you saw old movies was on television.
So, I would stay up late and watch them with my family. Luckily for me, I came
from a family that saw show business as a legitimate way of making a living.
I found myself interested in theater in high school and ended up going into
the theater program at UCLA. The production and lighting design wasn’t as
extraordinary as it is now and I saw no future in it for me. I ended up transfer-
ring to USC and went into their undergraduate flm program. At USC, they
were less concerned about personal expression and more interested in creating
a production experience, where at the end of it, you might not end up with a
movie that worked but you learned what the process was. It was so much more
process oriented, which drove people crazy, but it was all about learning the col-
laborative process of working in crews, which actually made me happy. It made
writers and directors a little nuts because it tended to create content that was well
intentioned but pedantic, academic and uninspired. Anybody who is truly a crea-
tive director or writer would have a very diffcult time at USC going through the
flm program in my day, because it tended to stife anything out of the ordinary.

So, your interest in lighting came partially from theater

and partially from old movies. But were you interested
in still photography?
I never did any still photography. I became fascinated by theater in high school
because I had a great theater teacher. What was a revelation to me was the
 Robert Elswit,ASC 37
idea of an ensemble theater and theatrical storytelling, and the way the light
and scenery play such a signifcant part of it all. I loved the sense of family and
camaraderie in the theater. It was a very romantic way to make a living and
I was quite obsessed with that for a while. But I soon discovered there were
people far more capable, talented and skilled than I was at building sets and
doing lighting design.
There was no regional theater at the time, and I found that there was a way
I could actually earn a living in the movie business. Photography and lighting
were something I was drawn to at a young age, but not really set design. I felt
more connected to photography and lighting for movies.

What attracts you to a project creatively?

I’m intrigued by scripts that are about something I fnd personally compelling.
If I fnd the story intriguing and I can imagine creating a world that’s unique
and unusual, or an extraordinary event takes place or remarkable human beings
move through it, then I’ll do it. Reading a script is not always easy, because
oftentimes, they don’t read as well. It’s much better if you could actually sit
down with the person who wrote it or sit down with the director who wants
to make it. But it always starts with the script. I’ve taken things I probably
shouldn’t have taken, and I’ve made some mistakes, not because they weren’t
good flms, but because they just weren’t something I understood as well as
I should have. I’ve been on flms where I really haven’t helped. Where I’ve
made it worse and I think I have a better sense of that now.

Is there any specifc genre you are attracted to?

I can’t imagine doing something terribly silly. What’s always fun for cinema-
tographers to do and I put the word in quotation marks is “dramatic lighting.”
It’s always about contrast. In those kinds of movies, you are usually asked to
create an environment that you fnd visually compelling, and the secret is not
to call attention to itself at the same time. It’s all about lighting and creating an
environment that feels dramatic without being theatrical.

Do you have any particular infuences in your work, either

through paintings or photography?
I’m infuenced by the work of the people that I admired when I was in flm
school. Primarily, the edgy on-location New York-based movies from the
1970s that changed the flm industry. At that time, the studios weren’t sit-
ting there looking over their shoulders when Owen Roizman shot The French
Connection or The Taking of Pelham 123. It was that ffteen-year period of time
when those great Woody Allen movies, like Annie Hall and Manhattan, or
Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and of course Coppola’s The Godfather flms were made.
It seemed like American cinema was being re-invented. The visual style in
color movies was fnally becoming as expressive and as interesting as it had
38 Robert Elswit, ASC
been in black and white flms of the 30s, 40s and 50s, and that was exciting.
I don’t think color flms up to that point worked as well. They tended to be
overlit, theatrical looking, self-conscious, although they were glossy and won-
derful in their own way. But there was this remarkable time period “when
flms became adult.” It coincided with the lifting of censorship, so the content
in movies suddenly changed and started to deal with adult themes in very
graphic ways. There were strong language and sexuality and much more vio-
lence. Those flmmakers had found a visual language that was fresh, exciting
and marketable and they found it in New York way before they did in LA. I
just thought that was amazing.
The other part of New York flmmaking which is so unique is that the city
becomes a strong character. Woody Allen movies were very much this way,
you have the actors, and you have the city. They take you to a place that really
does feel unique; I don’t think that any other place in the states does the same
thing. It just has a character all of its own. Filmmakers from this time period
really exploited New York in a way that was just marvelous. I grew up in Santa
Monica at the beach, maybe that’s why I fnd it so captivating.
For me, a movie like Michael Clayton is a real homage to the movies that
haven’t been made in twenty or thirty years. It’s not appropriate for every flm
but it was right for this one. Tony Gilroy and I both looked at a bunch of those
New York flms from the 1970s as a reference for Michael Clayton.

What attributes do you like when you are working with

a director?
Everybody’s different and cinematographers have to be able to work with a
variety of personalities. Ideally, you hope to work with someone who really
knows what they want, so you can work with a director without imposing
something on them that they don’t understand or might be unhappy with
later.
As I’ve gotten older something I’ve realized more clearly is that what
directors do is much harder than I used to think it was. Often, with a direc-
tor’s frst or second movie, their career is on the line. There is a very short
window of time where you can fail as a flm director. Every day on set the
director is faced with endless decisions about everything and making the
right ones or even coming close can be really diffcult. (Tony) Gilroy said to
me once that one of the most diffcult things a director has to know is when
to say, “that’s all I need from this setup, let’s go on to the next.” That is the
scariest moment for him, because he knows he’s never going to get back
there again.
We all work for directors and you have to make that commitment; if you
can’t, you’re on the wrong movie. I had to learn that. It wasn’t about protect-
ing my work or doing things to make my peers impressed. All those things just
have to go away at some point.
 Robert Elswit,ASC 39
When you’re preparing for a movie what kind of
notes do you make for yourself on the script?
My notes are actually a bunch of questions. When I interview for a movie and
I’ve read the script a few times, I write down a lot of questions for the director,
mostly basic ideas about storytelling. I get to more specifc questions later, but
initially I ask whose point of view are we experiencing? Later, if I got the job,
I will narrow it down to very specifc questions about each scene, moment
by moment throughout the whole movie, so I can understand the purpose of
every single scene. What is the dramatic representation and how is it supposed
to feel?
I try to understand what the director’s intent is before anything else.
Sometimes I don’t have time, but on most flms, I like to go through the whole
script and talk about what’s going on in each scene. Some directors don’t have
the patience for that. But Tony Gilroy and Paul Thomas Anderson enjoy the
process because they really wanted me to understand their intentions. They
know that when I get on set, I’m going to end up making a decision that is best
for the flm because I really understand it. As Paul (Thomas Anderson) would
say or Tony (Gilroy) might say, they want “life to break out at some point.”
You have to understand what the real intent is, especially if it is a director who
has also written the script. They understand the story in a way that’s different
than a director who is interpreting a screenplay. A writer/director might be
more wedded to certain things, so story structure or ideas about the purpose
of scenes takes on a different meaning when the director is also the writer. But
all directors at some point have to make a decision in every scene, what is the
purpose of that scene and how to tell it. Once we go through the script in a
careful way, then I can present ideas about “what if it felt like this or what if
it felt like that?”
Then there is getting into the specifcs of creating a visual style. Pulling
pictures out of magazines, references to art works, you look at other people’s
movies. It’s a great way to start a dialog and depending on how experienced
or sophisticated the director’s ideas are about pictorial style, you can end up
fashioning an approach that works for them. Tony Gilroy and Paul Thomas
Anderson are very sophisticated, they have hundreds of movies and all sorts of
references. Tony Gilroy might have a story idea and say, “I think it should look
like this even though it doesn’t look very good.” Whereas Paul Anderson says,
“I just want it to look good.”

Why would you pass on a project? Why would you pass

after meeting a director?
The only way I am going to meet with somebody is if I really thought I was
going to do the flm. I would never go into a meeting with a director think-
ing, “I’m probably not going to do this, I’m just going to meet with them.”
I’ve never passed on something where I’ve met with somebody, but they have
Other documents randomly have
different content
and I was told that the Miao-tzŭ, although extensive cultivators of the
poppy, do not themselves smoke the drug.
An-shun is approached through a long valley, which
contracts as the city is neared. At the eastern end, AN SHUN-FU.
the road, which is lined with memorial stone
archways, ascends a gentle slope—the graveyard of the town—to the
walls. From the gate we looked down into a broad street, crowded with
people engaged in business. On stalls at either side, goods of all kinds
were plentifully displayed, and the shops behind them were large and
apparently prosperous. Ponies laden with salt jostled us in the gateway,
and I found, on enquiry, that An-shun is supplied with this necessity of
life by way of the Yung-ning River, which enters the Yang-tsze at the
district city of Na-chi, and is the most important trade highway to
Western Kuei-chow. This route, which I followed in 1883, will be found
described in a subsequent chapter.
The main roads of China are each divided into stages, only one of
which can, with convenience and comfort to the traveller, be
accomplished in a day. The plan which I followed was invariably as
follows. Rising at daybreak, I had a cup of coffee or tea, pushed on to
the first hamlet or village, where we all breakfasted, travelled till noon
when we lunched at the most convenient spot, and arrived at the end
of the stage about four or five o’clock in the afternoon. Inns were not
always available during the day, and at our first halting place after
leaving An-shun, we took possession of a house which we shared with
a couple of carriers, who seemed to prefer a whiff of the opium pipe to
eating. On one occasion only, as far as I can recollect, was I refused
temporary lodgment, the inmates, as a rule, being only too willing to
shelter us for a few cash. As a matter of fact, they had little to fear, for
they had nothing to steal.
Chên-ning Chou, which was the end of the stage on the 10th of May, is
a poor city, built on a hill slope, and consists of one decent street and a
number of dilapidated thoroughfares. It lies at the western end of a
valley, which was filled with yellow wheat and barley, submerged
paddy-land, and poppy-fields. Our landlord told me that, previous to
the rebellion, the walls sheltered from seven to eight thousand families,
now, however, reduced to a thousand. A mile to the west of Chên-ning
we came upon a cave close to the highroad. It was formed of a single
limestone dome, which has been converted into a temple. To us it
presented the appearance of a poorhouse, for our entrance aroused a
crowd of squalid beggars, who had taken up their quarters in its cool
shade. They did not look as if they had a very close acquaintance with
the clear, limpid stream which flows through it and enters a limestone
hill fifty yards beyond. We were no longer the only travellers going
west; a number of men were carrying silver to Yün-nan to purchase
opium. The value of the drug, its small bulk and superiority, enable it to
be carried across the province of Kuei-chow to Hunan and other
provinces at a profit.
The Pai-shui, or “White Water” river, spanned by a
stone bridge of five arches at the eastern end of the THE PAI-SHUI
RIVER.
village of Huang-kuo-shu, goes south to join the
northern section of the Canton or West River. It is a shallow stream
thirty yards in breadth and forms a beautiful waterfall in the rear of the
village, creeping leisurely over the brown rocks and falling about a
hundred feet. In the temple of the “Dragon Prince” we spread our mid-
day meal, having had to fast since daybreak, the hamlets on the road
west of Chên-ning being unable to supply us even with a single egg. A
series of weary ascents and descents ultimately landed us in the small
village of P’o-kung, which had recently been the scene of a
conflagration. Ten days before our arrival it was all but consumed, and
the inhabitants were huddled together amidst its charred remains, still
wanting in courage or in funds to re-erect their homes.
Is there no level ground anywhere in the province of Kuei-chow? This
was the question that suggested itself to me as I gained the ridge that
rises to the west of P’o-kung. The answer lay ahead. Waves of conical
hills and mountain ranges beyond seemed to block the passage to Yün-
nan. Down and up, and down again, brought us to a valley, extending
for miles, at the far end of which rests the prosperous city of Lang-t’ai
T’ing, famous for the superiority of its opium. Some miles from its walls
we were met by two escorts, one sent by the Sub-prefect, the other by
the Colonel. As we approached, they dropped on their knees and bade
me welcome. The military escort, which was composed of five soldiers
armed with matchlocks and four with banners, had evidently taken
advantage of their excursion to do a little shooting. One man had
bagged half a dozen pigeons, and a bird of about the same size with a
perfect yellow plumage, which I failed to recognize. As every one is
aware, the Chinese do many things in a way the exact reverse of what
we consider right and proper. How should a soldier carry his musket? Is
it easier to carry the stock or the barrel over the shoulder? My escort
preferred to handle the barrel.
On arrival at Lang-t’ai, the Colonel, to whom I sent a message of
thanks for his foresight and precaution, pressed me to stay and witness
a review that was to be held in a couple of days; but the comparatively
cool weather, and the fact that I had already seen enough of his
soldiers and their little ways, decided me to decline the kind invitation.
Lang-t’ai lies low, and by the eastern approach nothing is visible but a
part of the wall, the town itself being obscured by dense foliage. A
thick mist concealed everything from view as we left the following
morning. After struggling for two hours among the hills that overlook
the city on the north-west, we cleared the mist and entered a coal
district where the miners were hard at work. A splendid view was
obtained from the Wang-shan temple on the ridge where we
breakfasted; the Lang-wang Shan, the highest mountain in the
province, towered on our right. Under the summit, which is of bare
rock, there is a cave—the “Cave of the Spirits”—which has a very wide
reputation, and, as a consequence, is much visited by devotees. As we
passed, pilgrims were burning joss-paper far below it. Half-way down
on the western side we were overtaken by a terrific thunderstorm,
which continued far into the night. When we reached the grass-
covered plain that lies below, I took refuge in my chair; but the violent
gusts of wind, which accompanied the sheets of descending water,
soon wrenched off the rain covers and exposed us to the full blast of
the storm.
Wet to the skin we entered the village of Mao-k’ou,
which consists of one street, with numerous gardens THE VILLAGE OF
MAO-K’OU.
surrounded by hedges of cactus, on the left bank of
a stream fifty yards in breadth, which issues from a gorge a few
hundred yards above the village. Here there was no resisting the
appeal for a day’s rest which was at once made to me. A carrier’s
luggage is of the lightest possible description; the single suit of clothes
in which he stands is, as a rule, all that he possesses, and when that is
reduced to a pulp, it has to be washed and dried before he can again
venture out.
I spent the morning of our day of rest on the pebbly strand of the Mao-
k’ou river, which goes south to swell the upper waters of the north
branch of the West River, in the province of Kwang-si. Numerous fossils
are to be found here, and I purchased three different specimens from
the landlord of our inn. The current of the river is very rapid.
On leaving Mao-k’ou on the following morning, we ascended its left
bank five hundred yards before attempting the crossing; our boats did
not reach the right bank until we were opposite the village. An
undulating upland stretches westward, covered with rank wild grass,
affording excellent cover for game, which was plentiful. Pheasants
crowed all round us, and took wing when we approached too close. In
the middle of this grassy waste we were caught up by a caravan of
twenty ponies, laden with bamboo hats, on their way from Kuei-yang
to Yün-nan Fu. They were strong, hardy little animals, game to the
very last. Each had a load of three hundred and sixty hats; and I
found, when I afterwards saw them turned loose to graze, that not one
had a whole back. One poor beast was a pitiful sight; it had a sore at
least a foot long, and down almost to its ribs. The flies, attracted by
the smell in a temperature of 90° F., rendered its life miserable, and I
offered to buy it at a reasonable price and put it out of agony, but the
owner was devoid of the least spark of humanity and would not listen
to my entreaties. He even grumbled loudly when I made him take off
half the load and distribute it amongst the others. The greed of the
ordinary Chinese leaves little room for kindness to man’s humbler
assistants. An instance occurs to me at the moment. I once visited the
Great Wall, and, as visitors do, hired a donkey to carry me up the
rough Nan-k’ou Pass. I had not proceeded far when a horrid stench
assailed my nostrils; its continuance baffled me until a sudden lurch of
the saddle revealed a sickening sight. Needless to say, I walked the
rest of the way.
Towards the western end of the grassy upland, the fir and the oak are
dotted about and relieve the monotony of the barren undulations,
which are succeeded by a coal-producing valley and two mountain
ranges following closely on each other, being separated by only a few
rice fields. The village of Kuan-tzŭ-yao, which lies behind the ranges,
marks the boundary of the bare, uncultivated hills. A reddish tilled soil
now covers immense carboniferous deposits. If my reader is as tired of
hearing of these uninteresting mountain ranges as I was in crossing
them, he will be relieved to know that the plateau of Yün-nan will soon
be reached.
A journey of three days and a half from Kuan-tzŭ-yao
along cultivated valleys, and including two more THE YÜN-NAN
FRONTIER.
ascents and descents, brought us early in the
afternoon of the 20th of May to the Yün-nan frontier. During this time
two new crops put in an appearance—buckwheat and oats. I saw, too,
a new method of manuring the fields. For some days I had been
puzzled to account for the peculiar growth of certain trees whose
branches were very short, and for which I could obtain no satisfactory
explanation; but all at once I came upon a peasant hacking off the
branches, and another ploughing them into the rice fields. A barren
waste leads up to the frontier town of Shên-ching-kuan, where we
were received with the usual Chinese salute of three guns. Stopping for
a rest, I discovered that the little town possesses, besides its two
memorial archways, four stone lions, two facing Kuei-chow, with
imitation scales to represent the rainy character of that province, and
two facing west, with imitation scales and dust, indicating the rainy as
well as the windy reputation of Yün-nan.
My Ssŭ-ch’uan followers entertained a wholesome dread of the latter
province. For some days they had been talking of the miseries that
they would have to endure in the matter of food and lodging, and they
had come to the conclusion that the only possible reason that could
have tempted me to travel in that remote region was to chih Yün-nan
k’u, or partake of the bitterness of Yün-nan. Often did they discuss, in
my hearing, the motive which led me to question everybody and
everything, and transfer the answers to my note-book; but all they
seemed able to arrive at was that I was not doing it for nothing.
The excitement of entering a new province raised the spirits of my
bearers, who hurried me along the red sandy road, which slopes past
several nullahs to a plain only partly cultivated, because liable to
inundation. Could it be possible? It seemed almost too good to be true.
Lumbering towards us came a couple of bullocks, dragging an apology
for a cart behind them. The faces of my men were a study; with one or
two exceptions, they had never seen this method of transport, and
they stood and gazed at this thing on wheels, which, proud as they
were of their province, was not in use among their Ssŭ-ch’uan hills.
Rude though the vehicle was, it was a welcome innovation, for it
presaged better roads and a level country. Two low, thick wooden
wheels, joined together by a ponderous beam, supported a small
platform of planks encircled by a framework about two feet in height,
while a single short shaft projected from the platform in front.
P’ing-i Hsien, the first district city across the Yün-nan frontier, is built
on the south face of a low hill overlooking an extensive well-watered
plain, which was covered with wheat, nigh unto harvest, and poppies.
It is a great wheat country, and the district is one of the chief feeders
of the provincial capital. Oats, too, were growing on the hills which
bound the plain on the eastern side; but there was a decided want of
straw, for the stalks had only shot a couple of inches above ground.
Less than a mile beyond the city we came upon the
cave mentioned by Margary in his journal. Lighting EXPLORING A
CAVE.
our lamps, we explored it for a few hundred yards in
a straight line, from its mouth to the point where it branches off to the
right. In the far interior, huge stalactites hung from the roof. The utter
silence of the cavern, broken only by our stumbling over the rough
floor, and the weird appearance of the contorted limestone lighted up
by our dim lamps, did not tempt us to tarry in the dank and cheerless
atmosphere. It had thundered and rained heavily over-night; and,
about a mile and a half to the west of the cave, the high-road was
blocked by a deep, raging torrent, twenty yards in breadth. My
followers, always intent upon a rest, advocated a return to P’ing-i, until
the violence of the torrent had abated; but to this I would not listen.
Fortunately, a native of the place soon came upon the scene, and
mildly suggested that there was a path across some hills farther east.
Scouting the statement, they clamoured all the more for a return to dry
quarters. Seeing, however, that he was in earnest, I resolved to try the
hills, and told my men to follow me or remain where they were till able
to ford the torrent. As the rain increased in violence and the
atmosphere became sensibly colder, they agreed to accompany me,
stating, at the same time, their firm conviction that we were going on a
fool’s errand. The native proved to be right, however, for we found an
excellent pathway, and from the ridge overlooking the other side of the
plain I tried to make out the raging stream that had just baffled us. It
was nowhere to be seen, and I soon learned that we had already
crossed it by a natural bridge, for it entered a cavern only a few
hundred yards from the high-road, the entrance being concealed by a
bend in the hills. This adventure cost us our breakfast, as it was noon
ere we reached the first hamlet. These underground rivers are very
numerous in Kuei-chow and Yün-nan; the composition of the rocks,
which are of lime and sandstone, facilitates the drainage of the valleys
and plains, which would otherwise be converted into lakes.
In the hills to the west of the plain, coal is found in abundance, the
interstices in the walls of the houses being frequently filled with black
lumps instead of stone. The villagers told us that snow falls in winter,
and that the climate is exceedingly cold. On the bare treeless highlands
beyond, potatoes, buckwheat, oats, and a little poppy, were being
cultivated.
As a rule, a Chinese has little to gain by showing civility to a foreigner,
be he official, merchant, or missionary; and courtesy, even of the
barest description, is thoroughly appreciated in a land where stone-
throwing, mobbing, and threatening are too often indulged in with
impunity. The marked attention paid to us at Pai-shui, the end of the
first stage from P’ing-i Hsien, was a very pleasant surprise. The small
local officials, with an escort, met me some miles from their village,
and hurried on to receive me at the gate. A Taotai, who had been
travelling in my company on his way to Western Yün-nan, and with
whom I had afterwards a pleasant chat about those terrible Kuei-chow
roads and our struggles to get the best inns, had just preceded me,
and taken up his quarters in the official rest-house; but a comfortable
room was quickly procured for me, the authorities, much against my
will, having gone the length of ejecting a number of occupiers. As we
left early next morning, the authorities awaited us at the opposite gate
of their once-walled village, to speed us on our way. It would greatly
lessen the misery of travelling in China if such courtesy were more
frequently forthcoming.
The people in the neighbourhood of Pai-shui are very
much afflicted with goître, especially the women, and THE
TRANSPORTATION
the idea is prevalent among them that the impurities OF COPPER.
contained in the salt which they consume is the
cause of the malady. Here we came across a consignment of red
copper for the metropolis, transported on the backs of nearly four
hundred mules and ponies from the mines of Tung-ch’uan Fu to Pe-sê
T’ing, the head of navigation of the West River, in the province of
Kwang-si. It seemed a roundabout way of sending copper north, but I
was informed that on one occasion, when shipments used to be
despatched by way of the Yang-tsze, a great storm arose and
overwhelmed more than a hundred junks and their cargoes. I heard
afterwards that peculation had probably more to do with the loss than
a storm.
The city of Chan-i Chou, fifteen miles to the west of Pai-shui, lies in the
north of an immense plain, famous throughout Western China as the
breeding ground of the sturdy Yün-nan pony. Brood mares and their
foals were grazing on the large grass fields, which occupied no mean
part of the plain. A stream, spanned by a good three-arched stone
bridge, flows south past the east gate of the city on its way to join the
northern branch of the West River. It was at one time a section of the
route by which lead was carried from the north of Yün-nan to Tonquin.
Consignments were conveyed by boat from Chan-i Chou to Ma-kai, a
place fifty miles to the south, and thence overland to Mêng-tzŭ Hsien,
on the head waters of the Song-koi, now the residence of a French
Consul.
Rain descended in torrents during the night of our stay in Chan-i, and
the dawn of the 23rd of May was not accompanied by the usual
movements and noises that betokened an early start. On the contrary,
I was soon waited upon by a deputation, which begged me, on
account of the rains, to defer my departure for a day; but the fact that
I was almost in the presence of my goal compelled me to resist their
demand. After two hours spent in arguing, we trooped sullenly out of
the city. The plain, which on the previous afternoon was bright with its
golden crops of wheat and barley, was now cold and cheerless; the
road was one mass of mud in which we sank to the knees; a great part
of the surrounding country was under water; and the rain fell in sheets.
The hamlets in the neighbourhood were poor in the extreme. Stopping
for breakfast, we borrowed a room and despatched a youngster to
forage for a table and eggs. The way in which these people live is
astounding: they occupy rooms begrimed with smoke—chimneys are
considered superfluous—willingly sharing them with dogs, pigs, fowls,
and insect pests.
The unceasing downpour obliged us to abandon the idea of completing
a day’s stage, which we broke at the market town of Mien-tien, having
accomplished only twelve miles, or half the distance necessary to
ensure decent accommodation. We were quartered in a loft over a
stable, where a dozen ponies, unable like ourselves to proceed farther,
were installed.
As the morrow was the anniversary of Her Majesty’s
Birthday, I determined to secure a good dinner for QUEEN’S
BIRTHDAY
the occasion; my tinned provisions had long since DINNER.
given out, and I was entirely dependent on local
supplies. I succeeded in purchasing a fowl and a few potatoes, which
we carried with us over the plain of yellow-ochre soil which lies
between Chan-i and Ma-lung Chou.
At the latter city, I experienced very considerable civility at the hands
of the chief civil official, who paid me a visit, and, being a native of
Ch’ung-k’ing, plied me with many questions regarding his Ssŭ-ch’uan
home. He also added considerably to our larder, which was now in a
very prosperous condition indeed. He complained of the poverty of his
jurisdiction, stating that the people over whom he ruled were nearly all
poor immigrants from Ssŭ-ch’uan, who, owing to the barrenness of the
soil, could hardly earn enough to keep clothes on their backs.
We halted for the night at a hamlet ten miles from Ma-lung, where we
secured a single room for our whole party. After I had had a corner of
it partitioned off by a mat, the cooking of the dinner commenced; but,
there being no chimney, the interior soon became so thick as to
necessitate a removal into the fresh air. A table was brought and
placed outside a back door, and the meal spread under Heaven’s starry
vault. Here my little dog and I thoroughly enjoyed ourselves; and even
now, after the lapse of some years, I have very pleasant memories of
that sumptuous dinner, probably because I took special care in the
catering. If there is a bitterness in the memory, it is that the little,
fearless, faithful, intelligent, amusing sharer of that repast, the
companion of all my travels, is no more.
The inquisitiveness of the Chinese is hard to bear with equanimity. I sat
down to breakfast the following morning in what I took to be an
uninhabited house, for it consisted of two gables and a roof without a
stick of furniture. The necessary chair and table we had, as usual,
borrowed. No sooner was the cloth spread, than all the goîtred old
women of the village trooped in, each carrying a tub of old garments
steeped in water, and proceeded in the most matter of fact way to
wash. The splashing and watching were endurable; but when one of
them proceeded to light a fire on the floor, I felt that we had reached
the last straw, and bundled them out without ceremony, tubs and all.
They looked upon the climax as a good joke.
Following the road over weary red highlands only partly cultivated, we
sighted, on the afternoon of the 26th of May, a large sheet of water,
which, as we approached, we found to be swarming with wild duck. At
Yang-lin, which is built on the south-western margin of the Sung-ming
Lake, we occupied a room in a new inn, and were regaled with
excellent fish from the clear water we had just passed. How easy it is
for a Chinese official to show his contempt for a foreigner. On the way
to Yang-lin, I was provided with an escort in the shape of a small boy
of thirteen, wearing a sword nearly as long as himself, who turned out
to be fonder of bird-nesting than of affording protection and
assistance!
A broad stone road, in excellent repair, leads from
Yang-lin to the rim of the plain in which lies the A GLORIOUS
VIEW.
capital of Yün-nan. Half-way we caught a glimpse of
a lake to the south-west; but it was not till the rim was reached that
the glorious expanse of water, backed by a mountain range, burst upon
our view. The city itself was still concealed by the north-eastern
continuation of the rim, which juts into the plain, dotted with houses
and trees. Yün-nan Fu lies near the northern shore of the Lake; and,
after descending the low rim, we followed the road westward for a
short distance, then turned due north, and, after a couple of miles,
struck the south-eastern corner of the wall. No escort met us; no
attention was paid to us, beyond a demand for my card, as we entered
the south gate.
 CHAPTER IV.
THROUGH NORTH-EASTERN YÜN-NAN TO THE YANG-TSZE.
The city of Yün-nan Fu—P’u-êrh tea—Opium-smoking chair-
bearers and personal care—Exposure of robbers’ heads—
Chinese school—Rainbow superstition—Entertainment at
Tung-ch’uan Fu—A successful ruse—Stopped by a mountain
torrent—Lodged in a byre—On the banks of the Niu-lan
River—The Chao-t’ung plain and its lakes—Stories of Lolo
bloodshed—Down from the plain—Narrow escape of a porter
—Back to Ssŭ-ch’uan—Descent of the Nan-kuang River—
Down the Yang-tsze to Ch’ung-k’ing.
Yün-nan Fu is a walled city, over three miles in circuit, 6420 feet above
the level of the sea and at a short distance from the north-eastern
shore of the lake, with which it was formerly connected by a canal. The
southern half of the square is thickly populated, while the northern half
consists of swamp and vegetable gardens. The city was shorn of its
ancient glory by the outbreak of the Mohammedan rebellion, which
raged for years round it and in the northern part of the province. The
old and extensive suburbs are gradually being rebuilt from their ruins.
Outside the south gate (there are six gates) there is now a long street
of depôts for the salt, which comes from the wells to the north-west.
The city itself is kept decidedly clean; bullock carts daily go round and
collect the garbage from the streets, which are fairly broad for a
Chinese town. What strikes the traveller most, in passing through these
streets thronged with well-dressed and evidently well-to-do foot-
passengers, is the large admixture of non-Chinese features. Here
Mohammedans, Chinese, Shans, and Lolos, and mixtures of these
races, jostle each other in the market place and in the daily business of
the world.
During my two days’ stay in the city, I received every
possible kindness at the hands of the members of COURTESY OF
MISSIONARIES.
the two missionary bodies at work there—Les
Missions Etrangères de Paris and the China Inland Mission. At the
handsome palace of the French Bishop, I met a Father from Ta-li Fu,
who gave me such a glowing account of Western Yün-nan, that I at
once made up my mind to visit that part of the province on a future
occasion, a resolution which I was fortunately able to carry out.
The good Bishop handed me a letter which he had just received from
Mr. Colquhoun, from P’u-êrh Fu, stating that his funds were all but
exhausted, and requesting a loan to enable him to proceed from Ta-li,
whither he was bound, to Bhamo. I at once arranged with the Bishop
to despatch a messenger with sixty taels of silver; but Mr. Colquhoun
succeeded in obtaining funds from the China Inland Mission at Ta-li,
and, ere my messenger reached that city, he and his companion, Mr.
Wahab, had left on their westward journey.
To speak of Yün-nan Fu without a reference to the famous tea, for
which it is the entrepôt, would be a serious omission. P’u-êrh tea, so
named from the department in which it is widely grown, is the leaf of
the Camellia thea Link., and for purposes of transit is steamed and
made up into cakes, which find their way to the remotest parts of the
Empire. Much of the leaf, however, is brought to the city of P’u-êrh
from the Shan States, beyond the southern frontier of Yün-nan. It
varies in price, according to quality, from tenpence to one shilling and
fivepence a pound; but the cost of overland transit is so great as to
virtually exclude it from the foreign market.
The lake, known in books as the Tien Ch’ih, and colloquially as the
K’un-ming—the name of the district in which the city of Yün-nan is
situated—is a fine expanse of water, said to be seventy miles long, and
in some places to attain a breadth of twenty miles. These figures are,
however, very much exaggerated. The lake drains into the Yang-tsze,
an artificial channel having been cut, to prevent flooding, from a point
on its south-western shore to the river which flows past An-ning Chow,
a city to the west of the provincial capital. Junks and passenger boats
of fair size navigate the lake between the cities and villages that lie on
and near its shores. In 1883 it was my own fate to be a passenger on
its waters.
At Yün-nan Fu a number of trade routes converge and connect it with
the Yang-tsze, Burmah, the Song-koi, and the West River; but I will not
dwell upon them now. They will be found discussed at some length in
Chapter XII., which is specially devoted to the trade of Western and
South-Western China.
I had now reached the place which I had fixed upon as my farthest
point, and, having attained the object of my journey, I resolved to
strike the Yang-tsze at Hsü-chou Fu, following in the main the route
traversed six years before by the Grosvenor Mission on its way to Yün-
nan Fu to enquire into the death of Margary. With an au revoir to the
city on the morning of the 31st of May, we began to retrace our steps
to Yang-lin, where the Kuei-yang and Hsü-chou roads to Yün-nan Fu
meet. For some days previous to our arrival in the provincial capital,
rain had considerably interfered with our progress, nor, when we
proceeded to return to Yang-lin, did the province belie its reputation.
It was during one of these downpours that an
incident occurred which deserves a passing notice. A PRUDENT
CHAIR-BEARER.
Several of my followers were opium smokers, and
one of my bearers had contracted a great craving for the drug. He was
somewhat disreputable in appearance, but a willing worker. His
baggage consisted of the clothes on his back and a small bundle,
containing his opium pipe and the necessary paraphernalia for
smoking. I observed when leaving Yün-nan Fu that the bundle had
assumed larger dimensions; but certain speculations which I had made
as to its contents were soon proved to be erroneous and altogether
wide of the mark.
A few miles to the west of Yang-lin, a halt was called for a rest and the
cakes on a roadside stall were quickly bought up and devoured. Sitting
apart on the edge of the stone road the opium smoker thus addressed
another of my bearers:—“How is it that you are all eating and drinking,
and I haven’t a single cash to follow your example?” The other put his
thumb to his mouth and, pretending to inhale, pronounced the single
word “Opium,” at which the smoker smiled and was silent. Next day we
were suddenly overtaken by a sharp rainstorm, and, when the other
bearers were searching for shelter, the smoker solemnly produced his
bundle and, gravely undoing the cover, unfolded and donned a first-
class waterproof coat which he had wisely purchased in the capital.
The astonishment visible on their faces, and the look of triumph in
which the smoker indulged, were a study. The latter, notwithstanding
his misfortune, had more respect for his back than his belly.
An immense plain, beautifully irrigated, stretches north from Yang-lin;
and, as we passed through it northwards on the 2nd of June, it was
teeming with life. The numerous villages, nestling among trees which
dot the plain, had sent forth their able-bodied men and women to
pluck up the paddy shoots from the nurseries, make them into bundles,
and carry them to the submerged rice-fields, where they were being
planted out in rows. Truly a happy, sunny picture. Not cloudless,
however; for what are those high upright posts with balance beams
near their tops, which occur at somewhat regular intervals along the
plain? They are intended for suspending cages containing the heads of
highwaymen, who waylay travellers and traders and rob and murder
without mercy. Nor were the cages all empty. Two ghastly heads
adorned the entrance to the village, which sheltered us at the end of
the first stage from Yang-lin.
In the northern part of the plain, which is stony and unsuitable for rice
and which ultimately merges in the red-soiled uplands already so
familiar in the west of Kuei-chow and the east of Yün-nan, the potato
was growing abundantly between rows of withered poppy stems.
Yellow wheat and barley were being plucked up by the roots, for not
even the sickle was here in use. Patches of buckwheat and oats
completed the cultivation. Much of the land, however, was covered with
wild grass, on which herds of swine, goats, sheep, ponies, and oxen
were feeding. The whole country, from the immediate north of Yang-lin
to the southern edge of the large plain, wherein lies the prefectural city
of Tung-ch’uan Fu, may be described as a series of valleys barred by
red uplands, mountain ranges stretching away to the west to the Yang-
tsze and the home of the Lolo. The road is frequently the bed of a
mountain torrent, which has to be crossed and re-crossed many times
a day.
The people along the route seemed to entertain
the greatest distrust of us; small wonder, when INSECURITY AND
DISTRUST.
robberies are of such frequent occurrence. They
even refused us house-room for our meals, which had often to be
spread in the shade of a pine tree. At one village we borrowed the
public school-room, an act which, I fear, gave a half-holiday to the
scholars who, five in number, divided their attention for a time
between writing their characters and watching the frolics of my dog.
The master himself disappeared, and the scholars were not slow to
follow his example, each, however, preparatory to leaving, carefully
depositing his books, paper, pens, and ink in his own basket hanging
from a bamboo partition in the room. A sixth basket was for the
discarded written characters.
It was just before entering this village that I was witness of a
curious superstition. We were caught in a drizzle, and, as the shower
clouds with a vivid rainbow approached us, my followers covered
their mouths with their hats, fearful of the poisonous vapour which,
they said are given forth by rainbows. I laughed at their superstition,
and, as luck would have it, was seized, a few hundred yards beyond,
with a sudden fit of vomiting. I received no sympathy, and my
sickness gave strength to their theory.
The city of Tung-ch’uan lies five miles from the edge of the plain,
down the west of which, through one of the most fertile fields of
Western China, flows the I-li River on its way to join the Yang-tsze.
The plain was one mass of green tints, from the light green of the
paddy in the nurseries to the dark green of the more matured shoots
in the fields. The town, which is nearly eight hundred feet above the
Yün-nan Fu plain, is not at all imposing, consisting, as it does, of one
main street; but the hills to the west impart to it its reputation of
being one of the wealthiest prefectures of the province. They contain
the most celebrated copper mines in the Empire.
A French Father, who resided here, welcomed me as if I had been a
compatriot, and insisted on my spending the whole of the 8th of
June in his company. He had a regular battery of rifles and fowling
pieces, and turned out to be a keen sportsman. He had a stable of
two splendid ponies, on whose backs we spent nearly the whole day
careering through the Tung-ch’uan plain. None but those who have
spent years in solitude in a strange land can realize what it is to
meet a fellow European. China was entirely forgotten in the
discussions of French and British politics, and it was with the
greatest difficulty that I could tear myself away from his kind
hospitality on the following morning. All honour to men of surpassing
ability who give up their lives for heart-breaking work in China!
On entering the hills which bound the Tung-ch’uan
plain on the north, and which were almost devoid A SUCCESSFUL
RUSE.
of human habitations, we were overtaken by a
rainstorm, which continued throughout the day, and compelled us to
abandon the hope of reaching the end of the stage that night. The
road was soon reduced to a mass of pulp, bordering yawning
chasms, whose circumvention by chairs was a source of difficulty
and delay. The roof of the room in which we huddled together, in the
wretched hamlet of Pan-pien-ch’ing, leaked at every tile, and
necessitated the erection of a tent with our india-rubber sheeting.
My troubles were only beginning, however, for, the rain still
continuing on the following morning, my men refused to stir. My
appeal that they were daily nearing Ssŭ-ch’uan, and that they had
just rested a whole day in Tung-ch’uan, moved them not; and,
seeing that the limit of concessions for their convenience had been
reached, I took up the small iron box containing my supply of silver,
and, calling my dog, set out alone. Plodding through a shallow
mountain torrent, which now occupied the valley, I proceeded until I
was out of sight of the hamlet, when I sat down upon a rock to wait
the issue of events. The ruse was thoroughly successful; in half an
hour the whole caravan turned up in the sullenest of tempers.
As luck would have it, our difficulties were just beginning. The
torrent was soon blocked by hills, its waters obliterated the high-
road, and we had to take to the hills on the left before it could be
regained. We had not proceeded a mile, after a late breakfast, when
we found the road effectually cut off by a raging torrent thirty yards
in breadth and reaching above the waist. A whole hour was wasted
in trying to find a shallow crossing, but in vain. The village of
“Natural Bridge” (what a mockery!) lay on the left bank, and we
called in eight of its most able-bodied to strip and assist in carrying
our chairs across.
The sensation of fording was not a pleasant one. Twelve men with
hands joined shouldered my chair, which rocked about like a boat in
a stormy sea, now up, now down, as this or that man was washed
off his feet. One of my servant’s bearers was carried away for a
distance of thirty yards, and was ultimately rescued more dead than
alive by a cordon of men from the opposite bank. Several strings of
cash which he had round his neck acted as an anchor to his head,
and it was only when they disappeared in the current that he was
able to regain his footing. Another who attempted to cross with the
assistance of a pole had also to be dragged ashore.
On a ridge five miles beyond is the hamlet of
Liang-shui-ching, which, as the name implies, is CHINESE
HOSPITALITY.
provided with a splendid well of cold, clear water.
Here the inhabitants had turned the middle of the road into a
kitchen, where sundry messes were being cooked for hungry
wayfarers. Sitting round a stove, presided over by a buxom young
lady, my followers regained their good humour in recounting the
adventures of the day; and, when a complaint was raised because
salt was not forthcoming, the beauty laughingly told them that
travellers by this route did not care for salt!
It is a trite but true saying, that misfortunes never come singly.
Owing to the numerous delays that had occurred during the day, it
was late in the afternoon before we reached the hamlet of Shan-hu-
shu, where, notwithstanding its uninviting appearance, we found it
necessary to put up for the night. There was no inn, and every room
was already occupied by its legitimate owners. The quest seemed
hopeless when I stepped into a mud hut of two rooms, one tenanted
by a crowd of natives, the other by a couple of cows and a pig. After
a considerable expenditure of argument and less money, we induced
the owners to remove and fraternize with their cattle for the night,
and hand over the byre for our accommodation. The pig was the
only one who offered any serious objection; his gruntings over-night
and attacks on the intervening door somewhat disturbed our
slumbers, while sundry squeals told me that my men found his
familiarities too pronounced.
Trade had now begun to assume formidable dimensions; hundreds
of ponies, mules, and donkeys, laden with native cottons from the
central provinces and salt from Ssŭ-ch’uan, were daily hurrying
southwards, while P’u-êrh tea and lead kept us company. It was no
great surprise to us, when crossing the cultivated hills to the north of
Shan-hu-shu, to come upon carcases of beasts of burden that had
succumbed to the hardships of the route. Strong as these little
ponies are, there comes a time when they are tried beyond their
strength by their merciless drivers, and fall down never to rise again.
The delays that occurred during the first day north
of Tung-ch’uan, threw our marches into utter CHAIN BRIDGE
OVER THE NIU-
confusion; instead of striking the Niu-lan River on LAN.
the 11th June and resting for the night on its left
bank, we were compelled by darkness to stop at the hamlet of Tu-
kê-t’ang, where I occupied an underground mud chamber, certainly
not an improvement on the byre of the previous night. This was our
consolation after a march of thirty miles, begun at four o’clock in the
morning and continued till dark. Part of the road was exceedingly
precipitous, and had to be accomplished on all fours. Loud were the
lamentations of my followers when we attained the ridge overlooking
the Niu-lan River; the road zigzagged down a deep precipitous valley
strewn with huge boulders, while opposite rose an equally steep
range of mountains, which had to be overcome during the day. The
Niu-lan rushed north-west, hurrying to the Yang-tsze between two
steep mountain ranges, which are connected at the village of
Chiang-ti, where we would fain have tarried for the day and gazed
into the roaring torrent from the windows of a promising inn, by the
chain bridge of “Eternal Peace.” Ten rows of iron rods linked together
are built into twenty yards of solid masonry at either end of the
bridge and into stone piers, one distant twelve yards from the
Chiang-ti, the other twenty yards from the opposite shore, leaving a
central span of thirty-five yards. Planks placed on the chains formed
a roadway four yards in breadth, and slight iron supports were
suspended on either side from a row of thick linked rods stretched
over stone supports erected on the piers. Thankful were we for the
rest-houses that dotted the opposite bank, which proved the
steepest and most difficult ascent we had yet encountered; and
grateful we were for the beverage compounded of water and brown
sugar exposed to allay the thirst of weary wanderers. Talk of
railways by this route—as well talk of railways to the moon! Both are
equally feasible.
To compensate man and beast for their struggles on the banks of
the Niu-lan, a spring of deliciously cold water gushes from the
highest ridge that separates the river from the Chao-t’ung plain. It
rises out of an extensive coal-field. Beyond the spring a glimpse of
the plain, with several sheets of water, is obtained, and eagerly did
we commence the descent, which is comparatively easy. The city of
Chao-t’ung Fu, which is 6580 feet above the level of the sea, lies
nearly twenty miles from the southern edge of the plain, which
ultimately stretches westward and is bounded eight miles to the
north of the city by low hills. Flourishing villages dotted the plain,
and the city itself showed signs of being a great trade centre. Traffic
was no longer confined to man and beast, for the level ground had
called the cart into requisition. To reach the city with greater
despatch we engaged a number of small skiffs and crossed a large
lake—shallow, and, to judge from dykes appearing here and there,
occupying former paddy land. These lakes are numerous, and well
stocked with fish.
The hills to the north of the plain are inhabited chiefly by Lolos, who
have not a very honourable reputation. Stories of bloodshed and
robbery committed by them poured from the lips of the villagers who
dwelt by the roadside, and an idea that I entertained of spending a
day with this degenerate branch of the tribe had to be abandoned.
There would appear to be some foundation for these roadside
statements; villages, and even single residences, were provided with
watch-towers and refuges, and ammunition in the shape of stones
was piled on the battlements to resist attacks.
The descent from the Chao-t’ung plain commences in earnest thirty
miles to the north of the city. In company with a caravan, consisting
of one hundred ponies laden with P’u-êrh tea and tin, we zigzagged
in a dense fog down the northern face of the plateau, over a stone
road, rendered all but impassable by over-night rain. In many places
it skirts deep chasms, down which mountain torrents were leaping
and roaring. On the edge of one of these a carrier narrowly escaped
destruction; he lost his footing, and was just in the act of falling over
with his load, when I succeeded in grasping the end of his carrying
pole and dragging him back to the pathway.
On the afternoon of the 15th of June, we entered
the sub-prefectural city of Ta-kuan T’ing, which is CITY OF TA-KUAN
T’ING.
barely 3000 feet below the plateau. The tinkling of
many bells, issuing from the inns which we passed on the way to our
hostel, announced that several caravans had already taken up their
quarters for the night. These bells are fixed in rows on broad leather
straps, which run over the necks and down the breasts of the pack
animals. In some caravans, only the leader is provided with such a
circlet. The head waters of the Hêng River, which we had struck
soon after our steep descent, flow northwards to the west of the
city; but, the current being very rapid and the bed strewn with
boulders, navigation is out of the question. Another descent of 2500
feet had to be made before boat traffic commenced, the river
meantime being considerably augmented by an affluent from the
west.
The road, which was execrable, follows the banks of the river to the
market-town of Lao-ya-t’an, or Lao-wa-t’an, which lies on the right
bank, and is the point of junction of the two trade routes from Hsü-
chou Fu, in Ssŭ-ch’uan, to Yün-nan Fu, by way of the Hêng and
Nan-kuang Rivers, which enter the Yang-tsze, the one to the west
and the other to the east of the former city, respectively. Lao-wa-t’an
is entered over a fine suspension bridge, the road following for
about sixty miles the left bank of the river through scenery of
considerable grandeur, resembling at some spots, though on a less
magnificent scale, the gorges of the mighty river it helps to swell.
Four, instead of two, suspension chains divide the bridge into a like
number of alley-ways, each of sufficient breadth to admit of the
passage of a single chair only. As the Grosvenor Mission had
followed the land route, by the banks of the Hêng River from the
Yang-tsze to Lao-wa-t’an, I resolved to strike east, cross the Yün-
nan-Ssŭ-ch’uan frontier and descend the Nan-kuang River. Only one
range now lay between us and Ssŭ-ch’uan, and from the summit we
looked north-east on range after range of mountains, which, happily
for us, we had not to cross.
My men, who for the last few days had been
unable to procure rice, and had subsisted for the RETURN TO
CH’UNG K’ING.
most part on bean-curd, rejoiced to find
themselves in a valley of their own province where paddy, maize,
tobacco, hemp, and beans were well advanced, where silk was being
reeled and tea-plantations abounded. A streamlet flows north-east
down the valley, and following its course for two days, we found
ourselves on the 24th of June in the village of Huang-shui-k’ou,
where we soon engaged a long empty cargo boat; and, shipping our
whole caravan, sped down the Nan-kuang River. On its upper course
it is confined by rocky hills, some eight hundred feet in height, and
little wooded, while huge boulders coop up its waters and cause
numerous rapids, down which our craft, guided by stern and bow
sweeps, dashed four and five feet at a bound. In its lower course the
country opens out, and the boulders and rapids disappear. A bed of
rocks, over which the river falls, obstructs navigation within a few
hundred yards of its mouth, and we landed on the 25th at the
market town of Nan-kuang on its left bank, whence the river derives
its name. Had my followers known how to cheer they would have
made the welkin ring, when, just beyond Nan-kuang, the mighty
Yang-tsze in full flood burst upon us. For the present their work was
done; and, instead of carrying, they were now to be carried back to
their homes in Ch’ung-k’ing. Crossing in boats to Hsü-chou Fu, which
lies on the north bank at the junction of the Chin-sha Chiang—the
upper waters of the Yang-tsze—and the Min river, we at once
proceeded to hire a large travelling boat, and at 1 p.m. the following
day we were gliding eastwards to Ch’ung-k’ing, which we reached on
the evening of the 28th of June after an absence of sixty-eight days.
 CHAPTER V.
FROM CH’UNG-K’ING TO THE CAPITAL OF SSŬ-CH’UAN.
Fu-t’ou-kuan—The country and its products—Chinese New
Year—Charcoal from bracken—Ramie fibre and grass-cloth
—Down a tributary of the T’o—The T’o and its commercial
importance—The salt wells of Tsŭ-liu-ching—Sugar and
Safflower—The Chêng-tu plain—Beggars—The capital of
Ssŭ-ch’uan.
In February, 1883, I found myself at liberty to carry out the
resolution which I had made to visit Ta-li Fu and the west of Yün-
nan—all that remained for me to do was to decide what route I
should follow. Mr. Baber’s admirable description of that part of
Western Ssŭ-ch’uan which he had explored, induced me to
endeavour to penetrate Yün-nan through the valley of Chien-ch’ang,
and accomplish the journey which Baron von Richthofen had
attempted, but, owing to an unfortunate accident, had been
compelled to relinquish. As a preliminary to the execution of this
scheme, it was necessary to reach Chêng-tu, the capital of Ssŭ-
ch’uan, and the present chapter will be devoted to a description of
the products and industries of the country lying between Ch’ung-
k’ing and that city.
My caravan was, owing to the length of the proposed journey,
somewhat larger than on the previous expedition. There was one
pack animal which, however, succumbed to the hardships of the
route.
The small walled town of Fu-t’ou-kuan, some four
miles to the west of Ch’ung-k’ing, is perched on the FU-T’OU KUAN.
sandstone shoulders of the peninsula which divides
the Yang-tsze from its northern tributary, the Chia-ling. Midway, and
near the entrance to the village of Hsin-p’ai-fang, is a large
Mohammedan cemetery, sloping towards the left bank of the Great
River. In Ch’ung-k’ing, the followers of the Prophet are reckoned by
thousands, and it is to their presence that the foreign resident owes
one or two of the daily luxuries—in more civilized parts of the world
they would be called the necessities—of life. With the exception of a
spacious temple, erected in honour of the Goddess of Sericulture,
with extensive grounds crowded with mulberry trees, just inside the
west gate, Fu-t’ou-kuan has little to boast of in the way of
architecture; but outside the gate a number of fine memorial stone
portals arch the roadway, which is also edged at short intervals with
stone tablets recounting the virtues of deceased officials, and acts of
filial affection.
To the west of Fu-t’ou-kuan the country is somewhat broken; low
hills alternate with plains dotted with farm-houses, nestling amid
clumps of bamboo—a proof that here at least there is security for life
and property. Nor are villages and market-towns wanting. The latter
frequently vie with walled cities in commercial importance. In the
plains, wheat, beans, rape, poppy, and peas were growing
luxuriantly, while many plots of paddy land were submerged in
preparation for the summer sowing. The hill-sides were also covered
with beans, which seem to thrive well on a scanty soil. The low,
umbrageous wood-oil tree was likewise scattered thickly on the
rocky ground. Beneath the huge, dark-green, spreading banyans by
the road-side, houses and restaurants spring, mushroom-like, and
invite the traveller to tarry for a moment and enjoy their cool shade.
As pack animals are usually turned loose to forage for themselves,
the peasantry, whose lands adjoin the high-road, have hit upon a
novel plan to prevent their depredations. Wheat and beans were
thickly sprinkled with feathers, which, as might naturally be
supposed, are not a pleasant sauce.
For some days at the Chinese New Year, business of every
description comes to an absolute stand-still; houses and shops are
shut, and in semi-darkness the inmates eat, drink, and make merry.
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