My Time With Shatner

 

That's not click bait. 

Early in my career I had the opportunity to work as studio camera operator on a public television series, and for one episode William Shatner was the guest star.

After I leaving commercial radio in the middle 1970s, I'd managed to transition to television production.  My first gig was on the studio camera crew for a regional PBS education television operation called the Nebraska ETV Network, housed in a  massive and state-of-the art production facility on the east campus of the University of Nebraska.

As a regional feeder hub for national public television, NETV contributed original programming to the Corporation for Public Television and its distribution arm PBS.  A couple years after starting work there, I found myself one of the studio camera operators for a spoken-word poetry series, eventually known as “Anyone for Tennyson?” 

Produced by a New York company called Great Amwell, the executive producers were William Perry and Jane Iredale. These two forged an agreement with NETV brass Jack McBride and Ron Hull and soon our four production studios and post-production facilities became a factory producing three seasons... sixty half-hour, prime time PBS episodes ... covering the works of over three hundred poets.

The production was multi-camera-studio, using three, sometimes four large studio cameras rolled about on wheeled dollies with signals fed into a main control room where the show was switched using a large console with a sea of buttons and fader handles.  Some of these “Tennyson” episodes were shot live-to-tape in front of a studio audience following a couple days of rehearsal.  For other episodes we taped closed-set in smaller chunks, over two or three days, and later edited segments into their finished half-hour format.  Decades later I'd transition into a career as Director of Photography for films and commercials, which was more of the traditional narrative, single-camera "Hollywood type” of production.

Television studio cameras at the time weighed about two-hundred pounds, had small black-and-white video screens on the backside used as viewfinders and came with headsets so the director, housed next door in a control room, could call out shots while watching monitors and giving instructions over intercom without actors... or studio audience... hearing the command chatter.  The cameras themselves were always called out by number... one, two, three, sometimes four... from left to right.  One and Three served as “wing” cameras with the middle camera, always Camera Two, dedicated to covering your guest star. 

Putting poetry on television can be a tricky thing.  A poem is born on the written page, yet it flourishes when read aloud, but only if that performer should be skilled enough. Otherwise it's more painful than a kindergarten dance recital.  Recordings of such mundane verbal expression go back to the earliest wax cylinder recordings of Thomas Edison and his plodding recitation of “Mary Had A Little Lamb.”  Shakespeare's plays also begin as script on a page, but simply putting a camera in front of stage performers can be a bit of a crap shoot.  Without adaptation, using a visual medium to express a written one can result in truly poor television.

To address all this the executive producers decided to cast a dedicated quartet of experienced stage actors for this series.  Cynthia Herman, Jill Tanner and George Backman auditioned successfully, with Paul Hecht rounding out the quartet for season one.  But for season two, his role was played by Norman Snow.  Come season three, the fourth member was one Victor Bevine.
 

So in reality, it became more a Poetry Trio of three featured cast members, with that fourth slot a doomed and dispensable position.  The crew came to think of it in the cursed “Red Shirt” context where some random Starfleet security personnel rarely survived beyond the second act... a minor character, always wearing the red uniform, who'd be killed off before the end... to apply that classic Star Trek series trope. 

Producers also hedged their bets on this poetry series by adding guest stars in every third or fourth episode.  Eventually we saw Cyril Ritchard, Claire Bloom, Richard Kiley, Ruby Dee, Will Geer, Henry Fonda, Valerie Harper, Vincent Price, and during season two, Darrin McGavin, Fred Gwynne, and Captain Kirk himself, William Shatner.  The program theme for Shatner's appearance was “A Poetic Portrait Gallery.”

For this episode I was assigned as operator for Camera Two, the middle camera which would primarily cover our guest star.  This was 1977 and I'd been at the studio three years. Yes, I'd been a fan of the original series “Star Trek” when it first aired from 1966 until 1969.  NBC then cancelled the show after it's third season, a year before my high school graduation.  Now, only eight years later, here I was on the day when William Shatner himself walked into our cavernous Studio One. 

There was really nothing otherwise special about the moment.  The studio worker bees, finishing up some lighting and helping to dress the set, heard the studio's door creak and the show's director Marshall Jamison strolled in, escorting Mr. Shatner for a walk through of the studio set.  For this episode the scenic design was a rather stark, minimalist interpretation of an art gallery, with sections of white gallery wall interrupted by gaps of black studio nothingness. The plan was to change out framed artwork on the wall panels as different poetry themes were addressed by actors.  Numerous potted plants rounded out the “art museum” motif.

The director and Shatner spoke quietly during their look-see, Marshall explaining and Shatner nodding. Of course the crew took notice, our quick glances sizing up our guest for the week.  Marshall Jamison was a towering man, perhaps six-three or six-four, a veteran of both Broadway and the Golden Age of live network television, having directed "U.S. Steel Hour" and "That Was The Week That Was".  Beside him, Shatner seemed diminutive, smaller in person than a die-hard Trekker might expect.  I immediately considered Quartet member George Backman, quite lanky and tall. Such height discrepancies were bound to create interesting staging and blocking challenges for Jamison (one trick he would use that week was to keep Backman seated whenever sharing a scene with Shatner).

There is an unspoken etiquette that one learns on a studio set, namely that name actors and stars are to be respected.  They aren't there because they're looking to make friends... there because it is a job, one for which they've gained some mastery of the skill sets.  As with many occupations, a level of attention and concentration is required when you work, lest you screw things up. The better actors can make it look all so easy and natural, but do not mistake easy for easy-going or accessible.  Although our director and the executive producers were invited to call him “Bill,” for myself I was only comfortable addressing him as “Mr. Shatner” and then only when necessary.  Forty years later, as I'm writing this, I will reference him by last name for literary convenience.

Appearing on “Anyone For Tennyson?” was perhaps not the shiniest career point for Shatner. Coming eight years after the “Star Trek” cancellation, but a full five years before his ABC series “T. J. Hooker” in 1982, his defining role as Captain Kirk now seemed to haunt the man, always following behind him like some shadowy pup, no matter what career turn he took or what audition he entered.  Our first day, when one of the studio engineers within earshot happened to let the phrase “beam me up” slip out, a noticeable chill flashed through the set.  The studio crew quickly picked up that any mention of the expression “Captain James T.” would be off limits.  Shatner himself would later refer to these years as “that period” when role offers were few and he'd been attending sci-fi and Trek fan conventions, along with roles in "Big Bad Mama", "Kingdom of the Spiders" and "Horror at 37,000 Feet".  Not to mention occasional celebrity spots on daytime TV game show "$10,000 Pyramid".  Things would however start looking up; just two years after this Tennyson gig Shatner returned to his original role for Paramount's big screen reboot "Star Trek: The Motion Picture", released in 1979.

The centerpiece of this particular “Anyone For Tennyson?” episode was selections from the 1915 “Spoon River Anthology” by Edgar Lee Masters.  It's a collection of free verse short poems comprising fictional epitaphs of departed town residents as imagined by Masters.  Each of the cast would have turns at the more famous short verses, staged with a few simple set elements for mood...  a gnarled tree branch here, or a stylized tombstone there.  Lighting cues helped establish some visual tone for each.

It may not be widely known, but when first starting out, Shatner had been a member of the Canadian National Repertory Theatre in Ottawa where he trained as a classical Shakespearean actor.  The words of Shakespeare and performance of poetry are both about cadence, beat, and timing.  Although teleprompters grace every camera, they're only a crutch just showing the words of the script.  Nothing about pacing, pausing, phrasing.  One simply can't mark-up the teleprompter script to show those nuances.  It takes preparation and practice.  Shatner arrived on our set prepared. 

From what I remember, recording stopped more often for technical gaffes and sound problems than for any performance issues. With only three members of the Quartet working on this episode, not four... it was almost as if Mr. Shatner's presence was the only additional factor needed to fully round out this ensemble. Cast members Cynthia, Jill and George seemed just a bit more “on” working with an important guest star.  Same could be said for the studio camera crew, too. 

With multiple live cameras, this type of television production isn't just about pointing your camera at the right actor.  Operators are, by necessity, an extension of the director because the director is locked up in another room watching camera feeds on video monitors.  In the studio, you must be aware of what all the cameras are covering all the time.  If the director calls for three different closeups, all three cameras have to quickly match up framing or the cutting looks sloppy.  Today, robotics can fill this point-and-focus role, but back then the director depended on each camera operator to give creative input.  For myself, every angle counted. You made choices about framing, or adding subtle dolly movement during a scene, or even what lens height to pick. And that's the one that would get me into trouble.

During rehearsal for his “Deacon Taylor” recitation, concerning a prominent church member secretly fighting alcoholism, I'd framed a low angle up on Shatner as The Deacon.  In the biz we call this a “power angle” and it seemed to help define the perspective of a congregation member looking up to Deacon Taylor in a pulpit.  At one point there was a line in the shooting script where this character reaches out to grab a wine bottle placed prominently in the frame, a hand prop difficult to see from a higher camera angle.

The control room signed off on my composition and we began prepping for a run through for lines. In my viewfinder I saw Shatner frowning just a bit, holding his pose, staring right through my lens directly to me. Slowly, subtly, he motioned with his hand, a gentle little “up up up” lift with his palm.  Something's off.  I step out from behind my camera: 

    “Something?” I ask. 

    “Up,” he motions, as if to say “bring the lens up.”

Strange, I think to myself.  But I comply, unlock the pedestal column and bring it up a couple inches but Shatner quickly waives off my attempt at correction.

    “Not enough, higher” he gestures.

I try another lift but my once dramatic power angle is diluted to the point of ineffectiveness and my efforts at supporting the context of the frame disintegrate like an Enterprise crew member caught in some faulty transporter beam. Quietly, I step forward beside my lens and gently ask why this low angle is discomforting. 

Shatner pauses.  He looks me in the eye.  Quick glance left and right, sees no one else watching. Then he raises his hand but this time with eyes locked to mine and his fingers up, he taps the underside of his own chin, a mime to silently suggest:

    “This.  Double chin.”

He pats the underside of his jaw again for emphasis.  His message is:

    “Help me out a bit here.”

Ah, vanity. And my lesson learned.  Always make the star feel good, at least about himself.  To be honest, with the strong dramatic studio lighting the whole staging was so shadowed that I hadn't seen the cause of his concern, unfounded or not, but it was a bother and distraction that he didn't need. I nodded in reply.

My solution was to pull back, moving the lens away and compensating for the wider frame by zooming tighter and using a longer focal length.  The result was additional distance from the lens which seemed to appease Shatner because now the upward angle appeared less severe.  The director, watching my camera feed in the control room, either didn't see or didn't mind the adjustment.  We rehearsed once and shot the scene.

As I write this little anecdote about William Shatner after four long decades, I'm struck by how clear the moment remains.  It's one small career lesson that helped form my larger philosophy as a cameraman and director of photography.  Because for each of us, there will be tiny details that matter. Within all the various filmmaking crafts including acting, those details will be different but the weight of their importance remains. Here was a man, an actor, someone I'd watched on a national television series not that many years before, trying now to get me to give just a little.  As though somehow that Kirk from my high school youth was now negotiating with me for a small cosmetic consideration, made necessary by the unfortunate natural conspiracy of time and dermal elasticity and gamma rays and the relentless tug of gravity. 

In that television studio, at that moment, I had a chance to help an actor's performance just a bit rather than be another hindrance upon it.  And for Mr. Shatner, it was...

Face... the primal frontier.

Coffee With Jordan Cronenweth

Jordan Cronenweth, ASC

The new motion picture release of Blade Runner 2049 is out in theaters now, and it's got me thinking a lot about the 1982 original directed by Ridley Scott and famously photographed by the late cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth, ASC (his credits include Rattle and Hum, Peggy Sue Got Married, Altered States, Zandy’s Bride, Brewster McCloud). 

Which also has me remembering the time, many decades ago, when I had the chance to spend two days on the same film crew with Mr. Cronenweth. 

I was a working member of the Colorado film community during the middle 1980’s and started out as the video assist technician. “Video Assist” was infamously pioneered by the late filmmaker Jerry Lewis to facilitate both directing himself and performing in the same movie. The process involved a small black-and-white video camera mounted onto the body of the 35mm movie camera. Since motion picture film required overnight processing and printing before anyone could see the actual image, it became standard practice to rely on this low-resolution television signal from a “tap” on the film camera’s viewfinder. Such a poor electronic proxy was adequate to review actors’ performances or rough check framing and composition, but that was about it.

Photo: John Brawley

My job as the “video assist operator” was to hook everything up, string the cables around the set and make sure all the various TV screens worked, including a feed to a separate corral for account execs, client reps, visitors and other bigwigs with their own TV monitor. It let the various elite visitors see what was going down without looking over the cameraman’s shoulder or disturbing the director. Whenever the film camera moved to a new set-up, I was first to untether the video electronics from the cinematographer’s Panavision or Arriflex camera, pull all my wires out of the way, move to the next set-up and then (at the very last moment) reconnect everything so those executive hanger-ons in the peanut gallery had something to look at again.

Photo: Ogilvy / Mather for Maxwell House

Mine was a minor technical contribution to be sure, but it allowed me to stand beside a number of famous Hollywood cameramen who would earn good money between big features by shooting high end commercials for network television. One sponsor was Maxwell House, which for several years during the middle 1980s ran the ad campaign featuring fictional Hal and Duke. 

The high concept revolved around a young photographer wandering across country with his faithful golden lab retriever. The director on these commercials was Leslie Dektor for the Ogilvy and Mather agency, and one of their shoots brought Hal, Duke, and the Maxwell House production team to Colorado. Cinematographer for this spot was none other than Jordan Cronenweth, who only a couple years earlier had lensed the original and now iconic Blade Runner.

Photo: Ogilvy / Mather for Maxwell House

Somewhere outside Aspen, the agency’s storyboards would find Hal (in reality, the LA soap actor Rick Gates) and his dog Duke (portrayed by Tramp from the famous animal trainer Frank Inn) visiting a mountain log cabin bathed in early light of dawn. Morning sunshine, of course, always means coffee time.  As the cinematographer Cronenweth brought most of his camera package and crew from Hollywood but trucks of lighting, grip and support gear were hired out of near by Denver. I was on roster to wrangle video assist set-ups for the two day filming schedule. Since the lights and support were “local” the chief lighting technician was an experienced Colorado veteran who owned a notable lighting services corporation that famously served the Rocky Mountain film industry. We’ll call him “Ken”.

Day One was all exterior shots involving just Hal and his dog, with Day Two booked for a mountain cabin interior where Hal and Duke would stop for a visit and savor the required cup, allowing for the prerequisite “that’s good coffee” ahh-ha tasting moment, wrapping with the traditional “hero shot” of a Maxwell House can placed by the fireplace. While the primary crew worked outdoors the first afternoon, Ken and team prerigged lights for the cabin’s interior. Early the second morning, I was there when Mr. Cronenweth first walked in to check the cabin lighting setup.

Cronenweth during that period was a giant among Hollywood cameramen, often referred to as “the cinematographer’s cinematographer”:

Photo: Warner Brothers Studios

This reputation was not lost on any of us local technicians and Ken had worked above and beyond coming up with a lighting set-up designed to impress this iconic director of photography... the cabin's interior sparkled with key and fill and back lighting.

Jordan stood and looked at the set up, taking it in, sizing up the photographic possibilities. After a long pause he suggested one light may not be needed and Ken’s crew took it away. “And that one, too” he said.  Slowly, gently, methodically Cronenweth whittled down the floods and fresnels, striking them all from the set. Finally, Jordan asked Ken to bring up one monster brute fixture... and position it outside of the cabin, shining in through the open door. By now, all of the first day’s pre lighting effort had been almost completely removed, a complicated and sophisticated pre-rig stripped nakedly down to this one giant arc fixture. 

 “Aim it on the cabin floor,” Cronenweth requested quietly.

Ken hesitated just a bit, confirming the request even as a couple grips moved to comply. “Really, on the floor?” Jordan nodded, and asked for a large piece of white foam board placed on the floor, bouncing the strong light beam upward from below the camera lens. Suddenly, the cabin’s interior fluttered to life. Make-believe sunlight perfectly evoked the mood of a mountain morning. It was simple, sublime and magical.

Commented Cronenweth almost as an aside, “Light doesn’t always need to come from above.” “Let’s shoot,” hollered the assistant director.

Photo: IEC, Jordan Cronenweth, 1935-1996

Jordan Cronenweth passed away in 1996 at the age of 61, a victim of Parkinson’s disease. But he’d given me one of several defining moments in my own eventual career arc toward Director of Photography. With that one light he redefined the compass direction our cabin set faced, to the east... because only that orientation would catch the nearly horizontal early rays of dawn. And he demonstrated the power of really paying attention to lighting's sources.  Though we may spend nearly all of the day with the sun high overhead, there are still transitory moments where nature handles things differently. Where the light doesn't always come from above.  He showed me the power of motivating your sources. 

But you must first be aware, and pay attention to your natural surrounding to notice this. And I got a chance to observe his approach to working with the crew, even if they were local hires. Witnessing him request and never demand. Learning about previsualization, how to see the composition first in your own mind and then work on the set with your team to paint that by adding light and shadow.

And how that just like a god, you can do it all with only using one light... if you know where to place it.

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