Camera movement

built our mausoleum set in this small warehouse. And this warehouse had just gorgeous cement floors. They were brand new. And for a low budget picture like ours, it was really great because we were able to use our dolly. And you can see the floor there was so flat without laying any track. We were able to get a lot of movement in the picture moving around, something that's difficult for independent films on a budget.

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Trying to sort of distort reality and having this kid having these nightmares, you know, waking up in the middle of a graveyard and really deluding the audience and thinking they're still in his bedroom. And you pull back and you find out Rory has great pains to try to match everything. There's a couple of crew members of them. And there's Rory's posture from the poster. That's right. Yeah, they used that for the original key art in the domestic release.

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It was always a struggle to try to get some camera movement, because we couldn't afford to set up dolly track. And so consequently, a lot of this film, when you're outdoors, you'll find that we're handheld. And this is a shot which I'm particularly proud of. We shot it a number of times, just a handheld little shot, keeping some suspense, but not having to just be riveted down all the time. We were able to keep some movement. And you operated camera on this whole film, did you not? Yeah, absolutely. And at my own risk in a lot of spots.

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Francis Ford Coppola

way to kind of pull back to the old loyalties. Of course, Fredo has married some floozy wife who embarrasses him in front of all the guests by drinking too much and flirting with all the men. I mean, the family is really starting to break down in this period. Fredo's wife was played by Marianna Hill and looked beautiful in that extraordinary gown.

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Francis Ford Coppola

I very much enjoyed this section of the film, this historical setting, period setting, wonderful actor, great villain like Gastone Moschin. I thought imaginative shots and in terms of these big dolly shots through this wonderful Dean Tavelera set, telling the story in an interesting way, you know, how the neighborhood was owned by a local

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Francis Ford Coppola

I guess we were on a dolly on a building across, you know, either on track. In this case, the camera was on the dolly track. And maybe it was on a dolly track across from the building so we could move with it. Fanucci had a good costume. I like his costume here. These are, of course, the puppets.

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They had these great pieces, and we had it down in the studios. I remember we had to get the damn thing into the set with a crane. You know, it was one of those things you'd never, ever move.

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proved a challenge for Elaine Schreyeck as she remembers here. We used to go out each day either by helicopter or I have been out by sea and then got lifted up on that crane thing and dumped on the oil rig. It was fascinating. I had to sort of keep out of the way but the thing was that every time they were on the oil rig it was there but every time they went through a door it was going to be at Pinewood. So of course I was making them quite mad. Obviously I would see the film when I got back to England

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Nick Pinkerton

brought home the half-completed screenplay for Magnum Force to be eventually directed by Ted Post. We've got Thunderbolt and Red mixing it up on screen with some nice handheld work here.

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Nick Pinkerton

Next day, they went straight through from 7.30 a.m. to 7.30 p.m. Cimino says, all day long, all you heard was cut, print, next setup, cut, print, next setup. The minute the camera was on the head, on the floor, on the dolly, wherever the hell it was, we would do the shot. So, able to bang it out when called on. And now we've just cut from a bit of ribbing of Lightfoot to Mr. Warmth himself, Don Rickles, the ne plus ultra of insult comics.

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in a different form, but it is all happening at once. You can come in, Tommy. Don't be embarrassed. We did a lot of handheld work. We were shooting in natural locations, and they were virtually motel. A lot of them were just motel rooms. And the question of fitting people in, we just had no space for dollies. It was before the Steadicam.

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The operator was a wonderful man, Gordon Heyman. There's an extraordinary relationship between director and the operator. He is the eye, he's your eye, and I was very lucky. I've enjoyed working with him many, many times. He's an extraordinary operator, but on many occasions, even he couldn't get into the room with me at the same time and the actors. I had to operate myself on a lot of that handheld stuff.

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Francis Ford Coppola

beginning with words that I thought were very apt for the film that I was about to make, which was, I believe in America. And the idea being starting very close on this man's face. In those days when we made the film, this was high technology to be able to do a pullback so slow. I remember they brought this computerized zoom lens and they programmed it to pull back for, you know, whatever it was, three minutes.

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Dr. Gerd Naumann

And then, in stark contradiction, filmed with a handheld camera, are those pictures of the daily life of the camp, the deportation, the show of the naked prisoners.

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because of the television schedules back in the 60s and the 70s, were really quite short. And so Sargent knew what he wanted. He just would say, Owen, we're going to go do this. I want to push in like we saw that push in on Walter Matthau there. They do push-ins, pullbacks, pans, et cetera. And Roizman did not really complain about working with Sargent. They seemed to get along, and it seemed to work really, really well.

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