Michael Ballhaus, Cinematographer

Michael Ballhaus chuckles at the recollection of how his ongoing collaboration with Martin Scorsese began. What he calls "my big break in America" was supposed to involve shooting The Last Temptation of Christ for Scorsese in 1984. Of course, the film did not get made until 1987, so the German cinematographer and longtime DP for Rainer Werner Fassbinder hooked up with Scorsese on a low-budget alternative.

"Last Temptation got canceled in `84, and Marty had to start over with that project," Ballhaus recalls. "The producers of After Hours invited him to do that movie, but only if he could do it for four-million dollars. He called me, showed me his shot list, and asked if we could do it for that kind of money. I really wanted to work with him, so of course, I said yes. We captured 16 to 18 shots a day, and in 40 days, we filmed the entire thing. I turned out to be a good partnership because I was very experienced at shooting fast and for little money. I think that experience showed Marty that I could work fast and efficiently and still execute his vision."

By now, Ballhaus is something of an expert on Scorsese's vision. After shooting After Hours, the director hired him to shoot Last Temptation in `87, Goodfellas in `89, The Age of Innocence in `92, and currently, The Gangs of New York, due for a late 2001 release from Miramax.

Speaking with Millimeter from location in Rome the day before filming on Gangs began, Ballhaus reflected on segueing into that project after spending most of last year working for Robert Redford on The Legend of Bagger Vance, his second Redford film following Quiz Show in 1993.

"Redford is a great director, a genius when it comes to putting the right people together, the entire production team," he says. "He has this knack for only bringing in people who are completely in synch about making the same movie, and then he lets them go to work and gives them a lot of freedom. Scorsese's a more visual director. He has the whole movie in his head before we start, and he prepares more extensive shot lists than most directors. But he does give me complete freedom about technical matters - how to accomplish his vision. The shot list doesn't tell you what lens to use or how to light it. It deals more with rhythm and composition."

Ballhaus is expecting The Gangs of New York to offer technical challenges far different from what he experienced on Bagger Vance, even though both are period pieces. (Gangs is set in New York in the mid-1800s, while Bagger Vance is a golf story set in the early 1900s.)

"For Gangs, night lighting will almost exclusively be candles, torches, gas lamps, and so on," he explains. "It's a darker piece. For instance, I've been preparing a couple of scenes that take place in tunnels beneath Manhattan, and the main light for those scenes is just a couple of candles. For the first time, I'm using new Zeiss Ultra Prime lenses, which are sharper than lenses I've used in the past, and I'm going to shoot them wide open, really pushing the exposure. Our tests proved we could do it with just a few small lights behind the candles.

"Bagger Vance features huge, green lawns from the golf courses. The problem I had there was we didn't want the golf courses to resemble a tournament you might see on television. We wanted them to be richer, more historical looking, since this film is a period piece. So I told Robert I wanted to lose a little of the normal green you see with typical Kodak stock and try a Sepia filter on the camera - about a quarter Sepia. I used that for all shots of the golf courses, and that provided a different shade of green, a warmer, more antique look than TV images."