Did you use any visual metaphors?
Schneider: Charlie is a very visual director. I'll give you an example. When we first meet Buddy in Mexico, his life is overcome with despair and he's been drinking himself silly. Later, in L.A., he wanders off through the streets of Hollywood, saddened by how it has changed. Dressed like a bum, he wanders into his old watering hole and orders up a martini for old times sake. He strikes up a conversation with the woman tending bar and soon learns that all the people he knew and cared about have died or moved on. He's at rock bottom so to speak, and nurses the martini like mother's milk. The Bob Jones character walks in and inspires him to move ahead with his life. He says, 'Let's get outta here,' all to the melody of 'Here's that Rainy Day' [an old Sinatra tune]. We designed a shot in which Buddy's half-full martini glass sits in-focus in the foreground as Buddy's 'soft' figure disappears through the bar door in the background. I loved that shot for how it visually suggested that Buddy has somehow left the drinking behind. No one has said a word about it, but the audience can see that drinking is not going to a problem for him anymore. Unfortunately, the shot didn't get used.
Is that difficult for you as a cinematographer?
Schneider: You get used to it. [He points at the monitor, which displays a shot of Buddy's home.] Look how cheesy that is. The walls are beige. It's colorless. It's very 1960s with that shag carpet and those ugly chairs. It tells you he can't afford prime real estate.
It looks like you were using a very wide-angle lens.
Schneider: I think it was 14mm. We shot almost everything with wide-angle lenses. One of my references was Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. Joe Sedelmaier mastered that look in his commercials — like the 'Where's the beef?' hamburger spots, with the characters at the top of the frame and the lens exaggerating them into caricatures.
Overton: Aaron and I did a lot of interesting things together during timing. In one scene, we stripped all of the cooler colors out and left the red tones. It has a sepia-like quality, with the reds standing out. It's kind of a period look done totally in post.
Why did you make the decision to get that look in telecine?
Schneider: Actually, I tried to alter the tone right on the film by making a lighting change, but it was a very complicated shot that had to be made quickly. I didn't get as dramatic a change in tone and color as I wanted. When I got into the telecine, I decided to play around with the idea of exaggerating some changes in tone. Tom and I came up with this idea together. Buddy is remembering a lady in a red coat during an earlier time in the same bar. Everything else is sepia. It made it much more poignant.
Overton: I'd like to say that every decision we made was premeditated, but frequently you try a bunch of things to find out what works. This was a trial-and-error process until we found the combination of elements that created the most dramatic images.
Schneider: In that particular bar scene, Buddy and Bob Jones are talking. There are about 60 seconds of dialogue and voice-over. The words describe a 20-year-old memory about what drove Buddy over the edge. I asked Charlie, 'What if instead of just talking about her, we come in over Buddy's shoulder and dissolve to a scene with him sitting in the same watering hole 20 years earlier, with the woman in the background? Then we could dissolve back to the bar with Buddy and Bob talking.' Doing that required a change in a few voice-over lines. Charlie spoke with Mark Frost, who gave us the lines. I then choreographed the shot.
As you get deeper into the show's story, it looks as if you're using lower camera angles. Is that an accurate impression? If so, why did you take that tack?
Schneider: I took my cues from the world Charlie was creating with the characters. At the beginning, the character of Bob Jones is very straightlaced and plain. The camera usually sees him from a high angle and wide point of view, which sort of belittles him. Later, we shoot him from lower, more heroic angles.
What are some things you learned while working with Tom on this program?
Schneider: I learned a lot from him about da Vinci's Power Windows. There's a scene where I wanted to cast the shot with a blue-green kind of ugly fluorescent vibe. But a platinum blonde was supposed to be part of the scene in a sort of Marilyn Monroe kind of way. We ended up putting a Power Window over her hair and saved the yellow-blonde in her hair as a striking contrast to the scenes over-all hue. It made her otherwise ordinary blonde hair stand out as a visual icon.
Overton: When you isolate a face or object in a window, you can change colors, contrast and other details. You can solve problems and fine-tune images."
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