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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Boy, Interrupted and the Sumatran Monkey Trap

I’m sensitive to moments.  Special moments that carry significance and weight.  Bizarre moments almost unreal in their experiential influence.

Once on a movie set, I had a true out-of-body experience when a high-strung freelance make-up artist absolutely laid into me, verbally ripping a new one when I asked an innocent question regarding my lighting and how it was affecting the star’s makeup. Even as the verbal tirade progressed, my consciousness floated up above the stage floor and into the lighting grid where I found myself staring back down at the confrontation between me and that irate cosmetologist.

Photo: Lambert and Company

Such “special points in time” mark lessons or conceptual breakthroughs, those so-called “learning moments” too good to miss.  They need not be carefully structured and don’t always require a classroom.  Some of the best ones happen alone and in private, or at least when in some internal zen state where its impact blankets out all surrounding distractions.  I explicitly remember a few teaching moments from my own youth… why you never grab for a feral farm kitten or what happens when you stir acetone with a plastic milkshake spoon salvaged from some drive-in burger joint.
   
In my later years I instructed at the International Film and TV Workshops in Rockport, Maine; later at the Media Technology Institute in Golden, Colorado; and eventually as professor in the broadcasting program at Metropolitan State University of Denver. I know there are many different types of learners, and students who will do best within a specific approach to instruction.  Experiential learning is especially significant in the broadcasting field.

Although now retired, that’s why the following scene had such an impact upon me:

Photo: Whole Foods Market

Weekly shopping chores brought Lynne and me to our favorite local market, that natural and organic chain recently snapped up by online giant Amazon. The latent hunter-gatherer within enjoys these treks, where I can prowl produce and chart charcuterie. This store’s cheese section often has tasting bites available from small stainless steel dishes, with tongs for picking up the morsels without fingers.  It was there that I found myself second-in-line to try a bite of the Herve Mons Camembert. Directly in front of me in the tasting line was a small boy, perhaps first-grade, and a slightly older brother, both joining their mother in the grocery expedition. 

I’d actually run into this young tow-headed pair earlier in bulk foods, where the two youths grabbed a single plastic bag and busily filled it with scoops from each and every nut and chocolate bin in the section, while mother shopped elsewhere. Mentioning to these kids that each item was SKU’d and priced separately did briefly flit through my brain, but instead I elected to just observe.  When one morsel missed their bag and spilled to the floor, they were quick to snatch the treat and appeared ready to pop it directly into their mouths.  Instinctively, my brain stem evaluated application of the three-second rule, but instead I merely blurted aloud “nice catch, no waste” as they swallowed. They’ll learn later, I thought to myself.

Photo: Whole Foods Market

But, back to the present offering of cheese samples. Mom was some distance away, examining boxes of imported crackers and older brother was gleefully rearranging summer sausage price tags. Alone immediately in front of me, the youngest reached for a bite. Tightly clutched in his left hand was a large box of organic goldfish crackers, his selection for mom's shopping cart, and with his right hand he used the tongs to properly pinch one camembert cube.  But, you see, with both his hands occupied with clutching and holding, there’s no way to transfer the cheese from the tongs into his mouth.  I saw him pause.  This was going to be a learning moment, I thought. 

Instinctively, his right arm (with the captured morsel) started toward his mouth, which slightly opened but then closed again as his hand came to a stop.  I do give him credit, he’d been taught the sanitary pitfalls that come from eating with the serving utensil. But what to do?  He held the pale yellow bite, hesitating.  I watched, waiting to see how this crisis might resolve itself. I sensed his dilemma, the conundrum of the moment. Let go of the prized crackers to free up a receiving hand for the sample? Or forego the tasting altogether? 

In this moment, I flashed on the old tale of the Sumatran Monkey Trap.

Photo: SurprisinglyBrave.com

Common to many cultures (and centuries before Robert Pirsig repeated it in his tome on Zen and motorcycles) this fable describes catching monkeys without harming them. Basically, the process involves either a hollowed-out gourd or even a glass bottle, filled with nuts or sweets or other monkey goodies. The secret is the precise size of the hole in the gourd or the neck of the bottle. The baited container is chained down in a clearing and before long, curious monkeys appear. The boldest will slide their open hand down inside the bottle or gourd to grasp a handful of treats, but in clutching the prize their fist becomes too large to pull out of the container. Simian greed (a well known trait) prevents the animal from escaping because it refuses to drop the reward in order to pull it’s own hand out of the trap.

Photo: AZ Press

The monkey isn't incapable of learning from the experience, but the capture technique is so successful apes seldom get a second chance (although in Central America there's an old adage that translates roughly into “the experienced monkey doesn’t put his hand in a bottle.”)  But human children are active learners, able to set simple goals, to plan and revise. Cognitive development involves acquisition of perceptions regarding structure, numerical order and basic physics. Cognitive development requires remembering these outcomes to understand and solve future problems. 

Back to the emerging learning moment unfolding in front of me...  I could see him pause to process. You could almost hear the gears spinning in his monkey brain. He leaned back a bit, as though distancing himself from the puzzle might help. He was on the precipice of a primordial learning moment. His head cocked quizzically.  Silently, I connected and sent encouraging mental vibes. “Your choice will matter. You must decide, and in your decision comes self-actualization. Yes, little dude, yes!” 

And then… “Here honey, give me the box.” 

His mother steps in, dutifully saves the day, blindly rescues the child but hopelessly destroys the developmental moment.  Yet, I don’t blame mom.  Perhaps she just instinctively did what moms must do.  I applaud how she allowed what might have been a domestic chore to become instead an experiential field trip. And this was imported fromage he wanted to try, not an effing Velveeta brick. In context, her boys were actually quite well behaved in public.  

Photo: Capital City Pediatric Dentistry

But I was struck how hovering at a distance, holding back and silently observing from afar needs to be one of the parenting tools. Cognitive learning opportunities often come in moments of intellectual, if not physical, solitude. That’s when it’s both your decision and your consequence. The parental rescue of “here honey, always let me help” has its place... but like the glow of electronic device screens or the hysterical disclaimers from product warning labels on the most innocent of products... caution too can be sometimes overused.

That’s what I learned.

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