ICG Magazine
International Cinematographers Guild
August 2001

The Kids Aren't Alright

Steve Gainer Takes Snapshots of Feral Youth Running Amok in "Bully"

by John Pavlus

Director Larry Clark's first feature, Kids (1995), focused on promiscuity and drugs in the teen set and met with strong audience reaction - both pro and con. Some accused Clark of exploiting and dehumanizing his young characters while others praised him for creating an uncompromising cautionary tale. His new feature, Bully, explores similar themes by way of the true story of a group of Florida teenagers who haphazardly banded together to murder someone perceived as the local despot. Like his earlier effort, Bully takes a very stark, gritty look at youth whose lives consist of little more than pot-smoking, pill-popping and bed-hopping and, as such, seems designed to polarize popular opinion even further.

Bully is only Clark's third film - after Kids and the junkies-on-a-heist flick Another Day in Paradise (1998). But by the time production started on his directorial debut in 1994, he had already built a strong reputation as a still photographer with such books as Tulsa (1971) and Teenage Lust (1983) as well as numerous video exhibits.

The 58-year-old Clark has spent a lifetime behind a camera, first putting images on film even before cinematographer Steve Gainer was born. At age 15, Clark was forced into his mother's baby photography business. "People would bring their babies into our little studio," the director recalls, "and I had to make them look good. That was the job. So I was always aware of how to use cameras and light to make people look a certain way. I brought that to a lot of my early documentary photography.

Many documentary photographers are only interested in the action - what's taking place. I was also fascinated by how people look. When I made photographs, the people looked good. They almost looked like movie stars even though they were just ordinary people going about their lives."

In his movie work, Clark set about turning that concept on its head. "Since the action is essentially staged in a movie, I want to enhance the realism," the director explains. "I see it as fiction with a documentary feel - I'm trying to make everything and everybody look real. It was very important to me to find a DP who wanted to help me bring my vision to film. I've worked with some people who were used to a more Hollywood approach who would tell me, "There isn't enough light. You won't be able to get an image on film," which is absolute bulls**t. I've been using film for 40 years - I know how much light it takes to expose film.

But Steve [Gainer] wasn't stuck in this idea of doing things a certain way. He was very willing to listen and make his approach work with my ideas. He wanted to get into my head and learn what I wanted - that's why we worked together so well. Plus, he's very quick and technically amazing."

Though Steve Gainer has previously photographed more than 150 music videos, Bully is one of his first features of note. Previously, he shot some 12-day quickies for B-movie exploitation king Roger Corman and has since shot the made-for-TV Teenage Caveman for Clark. His career started quite by accident. As a young guitar player from Alabama, Gainer relocated first to New York and then L.A. in the late 1980's, wide-eyed and seeking fame and fortune as a musician. When neither reward arrived in a timely fashion, Gainer accepted a job as a PA for an infomercial producer. His goal was nothing loftier than a desire to live someplace more comfortable than his friend's sofa.

Between menial tasks, Gainer picked up an understanding of the company's cuts-only 3/4-inch off-line system. Soon, he was an "editor" and, as such, a persistent detractor of the job done by the videographer. "This stuff doesn't cut together," Gainer often complained to his superior. "So the producer said, 'Okay, if you're so smart, you shoot the next one.' No offense to videographers but it really wasn't rocket science. If it looked good in the monitor, I'd shoot it."

All this led to a new appreciation of movies and cinematography. "I was 27 years old and really watching movies seriously for the first time," says the now 38-year-old Gainer. "I wanted to make my video look like what I was seeing in these movies. I tried nets, filters and gels and it just wasn't happening. So I got a Bolex and started shooting film for the first time."

Soon after, he landed an internship in Paramount's camera department which, in turn, developed into a full-time job at the on-site processing plant. From there, sporadic opportunities arose for him to shoot projects for student filmmakers and for Corman.

He then enhanced his reputation shooting impressive music videos for directors like Marcos Siega and Dave Meyers, with such acts as Kid Rock, POD, Mya and Master P. The cinematographer's career was proceeding nicely - from both a financial and artistic perspective - when a friend informed him that Larry Clark needed someone to shoot his next feature. "I had no idea who Larry Clark was, so I looked him up on the internet," says Gainer, "and saw that original autographed copies of Tulsa were selling for more than $2500. That got my attention. When I saw some of his work, I thought it could be awesome to do a feature with a director who really understands photography."

After renting a video copy of Kids, Gainer recalls being "totally horrified" by the verite camera work. "It is extremely well-done documentary-style [by Eric Edwards]. So well done that I was convinced at certain times that I wasn't watching a movie. It was so unrehearsed and so real that I was blown away. This, I came to realize, is Larry's genius."

Over lunch, Clark laid out for Gainer some of the essential ideas that drive his work. The cinematographer remembers the blunt discussion quite well. "'Look,' he told me, I don't want to do any Hollywood lighting, I don't want some big soft light, a backlight and all that s**t.' First of all, we had a very tight shooting schedule and there are a lot of characters so we wouldn't have any time. And, if we did, he told me, 'I still hate that kind of lighting. Hollywood movies are overlit like mad.'"

Clearly, Gainer and Clark were coming from very different places aesthetically. From the time he first began watching film seriously, Gainer had dreamed of shooting lush, beautiful imagery. Clark meanwhile asked him to watch tough, gritty films like the Gary Oldman-directed Nil by Mouth (shot by Ron Fortunato) and John Cassavetes' The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (Frederick Elmes, ASC). "I really thought I shouldn't be doing this film," the cinematographer remembers. "This stuff was 'edgy' to say the least. It wasn't what I dreamed about when I thought about shooting features."

Before production commenced on Bully, Clark, the cast and some crew descended on Fort Lauderdale, Florida - the entire picture would be shot on the actual sites where the real events occurred. Clark was recovering from the shock of losing 10 days off the 40-day schedule when the producers yanked away another week, leaving him just 23 days to make the movie.

Gainer credits gaffer John Barr and AD Sholto Roeg (son of Nicholas Roeg) with making the rushed production come off. Still, 23 days is not much time to shoot any feature, much less one with an ensemble cast of eight characters often interacting within the same scene. "Fortunately, there was at least time to rehearse before shooting commenced," says Gainer. "Everybody came out early and we barbecued and became friends. We rehearsed scenes in mini-DV, which is something I advocate highly. Larry would let the actors just go wild and then he'd pull them back to where they needed to be. He had an amazing touch with that." Elaborates Clark, "When you're working with a lot of young actors - not all, but a lot of them - you have to calm them down. It's their nature to come out of the gate all hyped up and on fire and then you have to bring them down and have them do almost nothing which works a lot for film because everything in film is magnified so much already."

Gainer shot Bully with an Arri 535 ES and a complement of Zeiss Superspeeds ranging in focal length from 18mm to 100mm. The inclusion of wide-angle lenses represents Clark's openness to the cinematographer's input. "It's not my visual style to go so wide - I like to use longer lenses," Clark declares. "If a DP puts on a 35 millimeter lens, I look through the camera and ask for a 50. If he puts on a 50, I'll want an 85. My still photography lesson is this: you frame the image so the composition and every element is just how you want it. Then you take a step forward. That way you're a little closer, you have a less-perfect composition. You leave something out. Something happens when you're so intimate with your subjects. It's almost like eavesdropping - it makes for a shot that's very real, very beautiful, very realistic."

Initially, Gainer was less than enthused about applying the director's long lens approach. "I got a little frightened. We've got eight characters in a lot of scenes and no time to shoot proper coverage. I was able to show Larry wide-angle lenses - 25 millimeter and 18 millimeter - which he'd never conceived of using before. But he allowed me the freedom to build composition with them and he liked what he saw so we went with it."

The cinematographer also overcame another of Clark's objections by convincing him to keep the camera mounted on a jib arm rather than shoot most of Bully hand-held. Gainer's prowess with the tool allayed the director's protests that the mobile motions might lapse into MTV-style camera tricks. "I'd recently shot some shorts where I was experimenting with a technique I use on my music videos," the cinematographer remarks. "I leave the camera on this six-foot jib arm and I operate using a video headset [the PT01 by Optex, Westlake Village]. The jib arm has a Weaver Steadman head on it and the arm is on the dolly. It allows a lot of the freedom of handheld - I can move the camera or re-compose very quickly - but it's smoother."

According to Gainer, the lighting style of Bully had to be unobtrusive and, even more important, quick to set up. He made extensive use of KinoFlos and some small 1Ks and 2Ks with Chimeras for interiors. "The Pizza Hut we shot in was the Pizza Hut these kids really hung out in [to plan the murder]," he reveals. "It had these China hat type lights over each table and we'd just put a Photoflood in there and add a KinoFlo for a little bit of side light."

Scenes set inside people's houses allowed for slightly more elaborate setups, including the big bedroom belonging to Lisa (Rachel Miner) where her cohorts often sprawl out over a mattress. "We couldn't bring in big lights because you see so much of the room," Gainer continues. "It also wouldn't have been possible just to light from the practical lamps - they would have blown out near the units and things would get really dark a few feet away. So we built up some diffusion material and put a few Tweenies with little Chimeras behind it to bring up the ambient light. Then, the regular lamps fitted with 300-watt globes didn't have to light the whole room but they did provide a lot of illumination. If someone was sitting by a lamp, they're really lit by that lamp. It's exciting to be doing cinematography and not have to bring a 10K into the room. The way we lit the film also helped the performances. It felt the whole time like we were in somebody's room, not on a set."

To pull off this minimalist approach, Gainer needed a fast filmstock. He went straight for Kodak's 800-speed Vision emulsion (5289), which he'd fallen in love with while shooting second unit for Steven Poster, ASC on Donnie Darko (see ICG Magazine, Feb. 2001). "The opportunity to shoot Bully came up and he selflessly allowed me to go, even though we still had two weeks of shooting left. Before production began [on Darko], I was able to see all his film tests, exposure tests, make-up tests and everything. On that film, he was shooting the 89 and it just looked amazing. On Bully, I insisted on using it and I've been very happy with it."

Though nominally an 800-speed stock, Gainer consistently rated the 5289 at 500 for improved grain and contrast. "I've always been one to hit the negative a little harder, a little heavier so that I'm not locked into one set of printing lights," he explains. "I'm not Owen Roizman [ASC] or one of those other great cinematographers who knows exactly where they're putting the negative to print. I have 150 music videos behind me and I know exactly what I want to take to a telecine session, but I want some margin for error when it comes to printer lights." (The answer print, timed at CFI by Dana Ross, wound up, Gainer says, "right in the pocket, consistently in the high 20s to low 30s.")

The cinematographer shot most of Bully's interiors at a 2.8/4 split. For exteriors, he packed on a Polarizer and an N.9, which gave him a comfortable 5.6. Though 5289 is tungsten-balanced, Gainer never reached for the 85 filter. "Im very inspired by Roger Deakins [ASC] - I was incredibly moved by The Shawshank Redemption and I read that he shot a lot of exteriors for that with 5293 and no 85 filter. There's a hint of cyan hue in the shadows because there's no 85 in there and he left it a little cool in the timing. It looks phenomenal and it's something that I went for with the exteriors. I didn't want a warm look. The subject doesn't call for a warm look - the subject is disturbing and horrific."

The brutal bloodletting takes place when the neighborhood brute Bobby Kent (Nick Stahl) is lured out of town to a dark, secluded spot out in swamp country. Involving seven of his so-called friends, the horrid act - a mad mess of bludgeoning, stabbing and throat-slitting - occurs far from streetlights or other motivating light sources. Arguably, the effectiveness of Bully rests on this climactic sequence yet Gainer had no time to reposition lamps to capture multiple setups. "We were scheduled to have three nights to do the murder scene, everything leading up to it and the aftermath - that was pushing it," indicates Clark. "Then, we lost one night because rain. We lost the next night due to a production screw-up, leaving us just one night. We did 36 setups that one night, which is pure insanity."

The cinematographer deployed a 32-light rig mounted on a Condor, which was positioned primarily behind a murderous deed. That fixture functioned as a backlight and brought up the general ambience level. He then positioned a single Helium-filled balloon light from Lights Up, just enough to bring out the features of whoever appeared in the shot.

Given the often intense reaction to his frank snapshots of budding youth, Clark seems a bit weary of discussing the degree to which his signature shots of teenage sexuality - marked in Bully by longing pans of bare flesh - are seen as gratuitous. "These are the kind of questions that were asked when Kids came out," he bristles. "People said, 'This is so extreme, it's not real. This must be some old man's fantasy of teenagers and all this bulls**t.' But I'm just showing what reflects the time. Here it is more than five years since they said that about Kids and look at the number of school shootings, gang shootings and schoolyard blowjobs. I don't think anything is gratuitous these days. Sex is everywhere. Read the New York Times every day, that's all you've got to do."

Clark's next film, Ken Park (being shot and co-directed by Ed Lachman, ASC), is drawn from a script dating back to 1994 and also examines adolescent anguish. "Kids was originally one of five stories that I wanted Harmony Korine [writer/director of Gummo and Julien Donkey-Boy] to turn into a screenplay," the director points out. "I had thought of these five teenage characters based on my diaries, things I'd read and heard and some ideas about what happened to them. I gave them to Harmony and said, 'See if you can weave them into one screenplay.' It was too much for one screenplay - Kids is one of those stories, Ken Park is another. But I've only just now been able to finance and make it. Where Kids is about kids with no adult authority figures around, Ken Park is about parents and children - it's a very dark film."

Aware that Clark's work is controversial, Gainer fully expects some people to detest Bully. But he is not totally unsympathetic to those who might take offense. "Like Kids," the cinematographer says, "This will have some people who love it and some who hate it for what it shows. But this is about things that are true and really happening today. Roger Corman said to me personally that in the first 10 minutes of a movie 'You've got to kill somebody and you've got to show some breasts.' Well, he's the king of exploitation, but you now see murder, nudity and sex on prime-time network TV. Larry's approach may feel more like real life, but I don't know that you could say that it makes it morally reprehensible. I think you could argue the opposite is true."

Either way, cinematographer Steve Gainer now holds a different opinion of films like Chinese Bookie. What initially struck him as a lack of polish and style now appears beautiful in its realism and sense of immediacy. "We tried to bring some of that quality to Bully - it gives the film a certain power. The kids are sweaty and greasy - they're not pretty and perfect. That's not how those kids really looked and they don't deserve to look any better for the movie. I understand why Larry would become agitated with make-up people when they'd try to clean the actors up. Granted, it horrified me at times because again, in the back of my mind there's this grand hope that one day I'm going to do a feature that looks like A River Runs Through It [Philippe Rousselot, ASC]. But now I also have an appreciation for another way of telling a story on film."




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