Director of photography Mauro Fiore helps award-winning cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, ASC make his directorial debut with LOST SOULS, a unique supernatural thriller.
After winning accolades for his work on Schindler’s List, Amistad and Saving Private Ryan (including two Academy Awards, as well as honors from the ASC, BSC and BAFTA), 40-year-old cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, ASC began looking for new professional hurdles. He got his wish when he was named director of New Line’s supernatural thriller Lost Souls. "I’ve always viewed cinematography as a way of directly supporting the story, not as a way of telling the story on its own," Kaminski explains. "Having now directed a movie, I believe that even more. A cinematographer is truly there to support the story. Growing up in Poland, I was always fascinated by movies. I was intrigued by the whole process of storytelling through a visual medium, but my general understanding of film was that there was a director, a story and a star. All of the other jobs such as production designer, cinematographer and composer were unspoken professions to me. In 1983, when I decided to go to film school at Columbia College in Chicago, I thought I was going to direct, because what else was there to do? However, once I learned more about what it took to make a movie, I fell in love with the camera."
That formative experience proved instrumental to Kaminski when he faced the realities of helming a major studio picture. "I recently read an article in which someone was saying that you don’t really have to go to film school to make movies," Kaminski relates. "That person also said that Citizen Kane was boring. In my opinion, it is necessary to get a formal film education in order to understand and learn the art of moviemaking. Going to film school for four years might be impossible for some people, but one should then perhaps take some extension courses at UCLA or USC, or attend one of the great workshops that the AFI conducts. It’s important to get that kind of exposure, because movie-making is not a skill that you’re born with you have to learn it. You can learn certain aspects of filmmaking by working on sets, but I think you’ll miss the film theory and history, which helps you understand why things are done a certain way. Once you understand the rules and traditions, you can go you own way.
"If I hadn’t gone to film school, the process of directing Lost Souls would have been much more difficult. I had studied screenwriting, production design, editing and directing. I cut film, created sound and did the mixing, so those processes were familiar. In fact, I was shocked at how similar the professional process is to what I’d done in school."
As a director of photography, Kaminski has worked with gifted directors, and surrounded himself with an enthusiastic and talented crew. This tight group of craftsmen has formed a strong family bond from picture to picture. Many of his crew members such as key grip Jim Kwiatkowski, first assistant Steve Meizler and electrician Marek Bojsza have worked on nearly all of Kaminski’s films. "One of the greatest talents some directors have is hiring the right people," he observes. "They surround themselves with the right people and then allow them to do their best work. I think Steven Spielberg is brilliant in that way."
In that regard, Kaminski didn’t hesitate to hire longtime friend and crew collaborator Mauro Fiore as his director of photography on Lost Souls. After moving to Los Angeles together in late 1980s, Fiore and Kaminski worked on low-budget film projects produced by Roger Corman. At the time, Kaminski was working as a gaffer and Fiore as a key grip, and the duo shared an apartment where they spent countless nights discussing movies and filmmaking techniques. When Kaminski became a director of photography, Fiore stepped into the gaffer’s role, and their teamwork culminated in the triumph of Schindler’s List.
Born in Italy, Fiore immigrated with his family to the United States in the early ’70s. He developed an interest in still photography at an early age. Soon after graduating high school, Fiore enrolled in the film program at Columbia College, where he met Kaminski and began collaborating with his new friend on school projects. After the duo had worked together for five years, Fiore decided to quit gaffing and focus full-time on becoming a cinematographer.
"I couldn’t imagine doing this film without Mauro and my crew," Kaminski attests. "Fortunately, Mauro has worked with my other crew people for years. He and my key grip, Jim Kwiatkowski, are friends from Chicago, and he’s known my first assistant, Steve Meizler, for more than 10 years. When Mauro stopped gaffing to become a cinemato-grapher, he was either operating for me [on The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn] or doing second unit on films like The Lost World and Amistad. Mauro had also done several independent films prior to Lost Souls, so it was not his first picture as the sole cinematographer. Of course, he’s my best friend, but I also felt that his style as a cinematographer was right for the story.
"I think Lost Souls was a very comfortable environment for Mauro to work in because he didn’t have to worry about the competence of the crew members," Kaminski adds. "He also knew that I wasn’t afraid of strong visuals. Because of that, he was immediately able to do the kind of work I think he always wanted to do. He could take chances, and I certainly encouraged him to do that."
Lost Souls follows Maya Larkin (Winona Ryder), a Catholic schoolteacher who survives demonic possession at an early age, and grows up to work with Father Lareaux (John Hurt), the priest who helped her survive the ordeal. When she helps Lareaux perform the exorcism of an institutionalized murderer, she is given somewhat veiled information about Satan’s plot to possess a man on his 33rd birthday. Decipher-ing the murderer’s message, Larkin discovers that Peter Kelson (Ben Chaplin), a man with little faith in religion, is destined to play host to the devil himself.
In designing a look for this horrific tale, Fiore and Kaminski discussed prior films of the genre, and elected to avoid what had been done so effectively in such films as The Exorcist (shot by Owen Roizman, ASC), The Omen (Gil Taylor, BSC), Jacob’s Ladder (Jeffery Kimball, ASC) and Angel Heart (Michael Seresin, BSC). Fiore explains, "After I’d read the script, Janusz told me that he wanted the film to be much more of a gritty, realistic drama than a stylized Gothic thriller. I read the script again and tried to figure out how I could participate in that regard. Janusz has a very different way of working than a lot of people do. It’s not so much based on preconceived ideas, and he doesn’t do a lot of theorizing. There’s a certain quality that happens instinctually on films that he’s able to capture. He follows his instincts at a given moment, rather than preconceiving what the experience should be. He’s more improvisational in his approach. Obviously, that’s a difficult thing to do in filmmaking."
"I wanted to create a certain kind of reality in terms of telling the story," Kaminski submits. "That applied to the actors’ performances, the environment the story was set in, the wardrobe, our decision to use the streets of New York and, of course, the lighting and production design. The whole thrust of the film depends on the audience believing the story. If the film was overly stylized, it wouldn’t seem real; it would be a fable. Although Lost Souls is a stylized movie, it is still reality-based, which will help viewers more readily accept the story as something that could possibly happen. Every aspect of the look was therefore designed to fulfill that kind of reality. Exorcisms do exist, so you could conceivably pass by someone who is possessed by the devil without even realizing it."
Adds Fiore, "Janusz and I looked at a lot of still photographs and images from magazines that we thought could work for the film. Surprisingly, the images I cut out were very similar to the ones Janusz had cut out. They all had a cool, grainy, slightly underexposed and desaturated look, so during preproduction we decided on that palette for the film. There are few warm tones just a few specific pieces of wardrobe over the sets. We went more into cooler tones, like blues and greens. We also played a lot with glossy paint so that we could add texture to a wall by shining a light on it and getting glare off of it. Every set was aged with varnish over the paint to give it an older feel."
During prep, Fiore performed three weeks of extensive exposure tests to dial in the project’s distinct look. "Janusz doesn’t like to look at tests that are just straightforward latitude or contrast tests," Fiore reveals. "Instead, we set up various situations with different types of lights and lighting. We experimented with neon lights, fluorescents, Kino Flos, China balls and large sources. Within that approach, we didn’t just look at latitude and contrast; we staged dolly moves, shot through objects and created a language for the film. We shot night exterior tests on the Sony lot, where we wet down the pavement and used rain, smoke, and people walking through the frame or toward the camera. We tried to keep the tests very close to what we might actually do in the film, and involved everyone in the process. The production designer [Garreth Stover] brought in various pieces of glass that he planned to use on the set.
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