from 1989 school boys into 1965 school boys.
It's a logistical support role for John.
So on a day like today with 160 people, it's mainly getting them ready and organised
so that they're on set on time and all in the right place.
Charles controls the floor and I do everything off the floor
to make sure the cast and extras are ready for when Charles wants them.
So we take the logistic stuff away from the director and he can be creative.
The crane shot is for, it's a sort of establishing shot for the first part of this scene.
It's the first time we've been in the dining hall
and so we reveal the whole of the dining hall in the first shot
and we drop down to our table and then we will run the dialogue of the scene as a master shot
which we then intercut with a whole series of closer shots of the individual actors.
My responsibility is to control the look of the picture I suppose,
the way it is photographed in very general terms.
I see my role as being to provide a space for actors essentially and make it look good.
You know the main component of any picture in my view and I know in John's view as well
is the performance and the way the actors relate to one another and deliver their lines
and convince people of their real characters.
My job is to put them into a visual context that works,
that is also believable, that looks as though they are in a dining hall,
they are in a classroom and nobody questions that their actor is performing on a stage.
I guess the production designer is one of the trio, the creative group
consists of the DOP and the director and the designer.
And between the three of us we set the atmosphere of the film,
the way it is going to look, the colour, the mood and that is basically the role.
It will stand by props, it is from the Latin for scapegoat or whipping boy.
So I do everything from hand out the chewing gum to as today cater for 200 people
and three or four pretend actors and thank you Mark, you have met Mark, he is very good.
Basically anything from the art department.
What all the people in the art department do well, I do badly but I do for all of them.
Basically the unit manager is responsible for the location that the film crew is working
so that the film crew can look at just coming into the location,
not having to worry about things like power, parking, liaison with the staff,
entrance to rooms etc. so that they can basically just come in and do the film that they need to do
without having to worry about the peripheral sort of activities.
So we generally just keep things rolling on the day,
liaison with catering and very importantly keep tea and coffee running hot and cold all day.
Ian, there are all these strange names associated with people on feature films like Gaffer.
What is a Gaffer?
Well Gaffer is basically in charge of the lighting department,
the head of the lighting department and then he is supported by his best boy,
which is another strange name and he is the second in charge in the lighting department
and then you have electricians and generator operators and so forth after that.
In the early days in Hollywood when most of the big studios were shooting,
the Gaffer was like the chief rigger because all the lamps were rigged
and the word Gaffer they say comes from the old sailing term
where the chief rigger of the sails was called a Gaffer.
I am the best boy and I am second in charge in the lighting department,
two IC in the lighting department under the Gaffer,
which means the Gaffer they see a set, they want to light a set,
the Gaffer talks to the DOP, director of photography.
The Gaffer then speaks to me and tells me where he wants all the lights
so then I pass it down the line to many people there on the crew in the lighting department
and I help rig the lights and light sets basically.
Well the key grip actually sets up the camera and the movement of the camera
and just setting up for each shot, make sure it's where the camera man wants it,
where the director wants it, that's basically what it is.
The clap loader is the second camera assistant and we load the film into the camera
and clap the wooden board, lug the gear around and keep the paperwork and all of that sort of thing.
What about the clapper, what does that do, just for people who don't know?
It's just a mark that enables the editors to sync up the sound and the image
and they're recorded separately, it's just a sync point for them.
I think that the sound man on a film set is there to gain raw materials
for the sound team later on to make a soundtrack out of.
That sound team is the sound editors and the sound mixers.
I'm here to get as much raw material as I can.
I've got priorities, I've got dialogue first, as clean as I can,
what we call spot effects or spotty's, which is any effect that the camera sees,
a glass on a table or a door slam, they're the natural ones of course,
atmospheres, that's the background, wherever we are in life, nothing is ever perfectly silent.
So, same with filming, we try and make it as silent as we can, that's almost impossible,
especially with a scene like this, as you've just heard,
trying to keep 160 extras silent while I get dialogue up front is pretty difficult.
What's this about?
Embling scored last night with lubera lips.
My role is to ensure that the continuity of action and dialogue, props, wardrobe, etc.
are going to allow the director to cut between shots where he would like to cut
and also to provide all the supporting paperwork for the editors
so that they've got some sort of format and also all the shots are logged
and all the information is there.
I guess I feel the responsibility quite a bit because if there is a major mistake
and we can't cut between shots or the dialogue is wrong in some way,
that means that basically a lot of money has gone down the drain
or we can't cut for performance and on a high performance film such as John's,
it is crucial to cut for performance because it's those moments with characters
that really make it a magical film.
Well, I'm very glad we finally had a chance to see what crew members actually do.
Well, it's time I think to get to the heart of the matter, the finished product.
Guilty by Suspicion was in competition in Cannes this year
and Robert De Niro was a hot favorite for best actor for this film.
Did he really deserve to win? Let's see him in action now.
I want you to make this picture for me, David.
But we got a problem.
I've got a board of directors in New York and as far as I'm concerned they can all go to hell.
I run this place and nobody tells me how to make movies.
But I got to listen to them.
When they tell me my movies won't get played because some guy running for Congress has a problem with Hollywood,
business is lousy, the theaters are empty, everybody's staying home to watch Milton Berle dressed up as a woman.
And now this.
What do you mean now this, Darryl?
Look, David, if you want to make this picture you're going to have to get yourself straightened out.
Guilty by Suspicion is the first film to deal exclusively with the shameful period of the Hollywood blacklist
since Martin Ritz The Front made in 1976 which starred Woody Allen.
French director Bertrand Tvernier, an authority on Hollywood, was originally to have directed this film
from a screenplay by Abraham Polonsky who was himself a blacklisted writer.
But it seems that even today a major studio, in this case Warner Brothers,
wasn't prepared for a film in which the central character was a communist.
And in Tvernier's film he would have been.
Warner's said no and Tvernier quit the project which was taken over by his producer, Erwin Winkler,
who had never directed a film before.
Now the character of David Merrill, a top director of the late 40s, is emphatically not a communist and never was.
But he gets caught up in the blacklist anyway.
Merrill is very well played by Robert De Niro and Guilty by Suspicion is fascinating
when it goes into the details of the blacklist, the phone calls that aren't returned,
the friendships disrupted, the betrayals and the loyalties.
But look, I've been dodging a subpoena for two days now.
So I'm going to dodge it permanently in London.
Is there anything I can do?
Which means that I'm going to abandon my creation and David here is going to complete it for me.
That is if he promises not to mess it up.
You're walking out on a three million dollar picture?
I'm getting a final cut, it cost me points.
And you're not cutting the picture? Come on Joe, you can't do this.
Can you please? It's a violation of your contract.
It's wrong.
It's not wrong Lenny.
If he gets served a subpoena, the studio will fire him and he won't be able to edit the film anyway.
So it's not wrong.
Would you mind taking the fifth...
You don't have to incriminate yourself.
I can't do that Lenny, I can't do it.
My lawyer said if I do that I can wind up in jail for contempt.
But you don't have anything to hide.
Mike, I'm a communist. I was a communist 20 years ago, I'm a communist now.
I don't want to hear that.
Well you've heard it.
I didn't hear anything. Did you hear anything?
I didn't hear anything.
So they make a marginal character, a communist.
Well there's a marvellous sequence in this film where we see Daryl F. Zellock, played by Ben Piazza,
watching what appear to be genuine rushes of gentlemen prefer blondes.
But that film was shot in 1953, not in 1951 as we're told here.
And if that sounds picky, well what's annoying about this film is that so much of it is simply inaccurate.
The real story, if it were told, would have been much more interesting.
And this is a very Hollywoodised version of that story.
Well as you saw, Martin Scorsese makes a brief but telling performance as a director obviously based on Joseph Lozey.
And the scenes of the Un-American Activities hearings, which climax the movie, look astonishingly like the real thing.
But in the end Guilty by Suspicion pulls far too many punches.
It's a nervous picture about an infamous period and it's a picture without the courage of its convictions.
Margaret.
I don't mind the things that you mind so much about it, but I think because of all those things that you talk about,
it never reaches an emotional pitch that you would expect from a film that's set against this highly dramatic background.
So there's never a catharsis with it, but it is an extremely good looking film.
I think De Niro is fabulous in it. I think he's really, really good. He's good in everything.
I don't think this is one of his best performances.
I think he's outstanding. I still think he's outstanding. I don't think he can do a thing wrong in front of a camera,
except a television camera, and then he can't talk. Have you noticed?
And we can.
Yes, all right. I'll shut up. But I'd give this one three out of five.
I'd give it two.
All right, what about Dorothy Nolan? Was she ever a Communist Party member?
She's dead.
That's not what I ask you, Mr Merrill. All you have to do is sit there and answer these questions.
Was Dorothy Nolan a member of the Communist Party, yes or no?
Don't you have an ounce of decency?
Mr Merrill, unfortunate as it may be, Dorothy Nolan was a known drunk, an unfit parent,
and on several occasions has been named to be a member of the Communist Party.
She was a good wife, a good mother, and she was responsible for her death.
On several occasions as being a member of the Communist Party.
She was falsely accused. She couldn't get work. She had no...
Her son was taken away from her all because of this committee, sir.
Dorothy Nolan killed herself, and the Communist Party twisted her mind.
In the name of ridding the world of Communism, you destroyed her life.
Was she or was she not a Communist?
Don't you have any shame? She's dead!
Looks familiar because of all the documentaries we've seen about those times.
Guilty by Suspicion opens tomorrow, by the way.
Well, the director of the film, Erwin Winkler, was a sort of elder statesman in Cannes,
even though this was his first film as director.
His experience in Hollywood stretches way back to when he was a male boy many years ago.
He was very interesting to talk to about this film and about Hollywood in general.
Well, I think it's always important to look at our freedoms and to look at...
Not only in America, but I think in every democratic country,
whether it's Australia or America, all of us that enjoy the freedom that we have in the West,
and now even some of the countries that were in the East,
those of us that enjoy democracy, we always find that there's always someone chipping away.
Somehow there's always someone out there that feels we have just a little bit too much freedom,
more than we really need, and that person is always ready to kind of take away a little bit here
and a little bit there, and I think what we have to do more than anything else
is be on guard against it and make sure that we don't let somebody take it away from us.
So there is that lesson that this film says. I mean, it's very simple to do a film,
and a guy, it's called up before a committee,
and he feels that he's not losing anything by betraying his own morality,
but the truth of the matter is those that have betrayed their morality over time
have never forgiven themselves for doing it.
The most famous, of course, is Kazan, who appeared as an informer
before the House Un-American Activities Committee,
and I think to this day has never lived it down, never really come to grips with it.
He made a brilliant defense of it.
I think On the Waterfront is probably the most brilliant defense of informer you could ever find.
The Brando character is basically a stool pigeon.
I mean, he finds all the reasons, and that's why,
and Schulberg, who wrote On the Waterfront, was also an informer.
So both of them, in this great collaboration, and On the Waterfront is one of my favorite films of all time,
made a great defense of it.
However, on personal grounds, on moral grounds,
I certainly can respect the film, but I can't respect what they did.
Irwin Winkler, one of Hollywood's top producers, turned director.
One of Australia's most successful directors is Gillian Armstrong.
After establishing her reputation in Australia with films like My Brilliant Career and Starstruck,
she worked in America on a couple of projects.
Her latest film is The Last Days of Shane New,
an Australian film which is one of the FFC Trust Fund projects that were funded last year.
We went on location to talk mainly to the actors.
I like intelligence scripts, whether they are box office successes or not.
There has to be something in it that interests me, and I think it's passion and intelligence.
It's really one of the best scripts I ever read.
It's a terrific part, and it's one that's got a lot of range.
It's funny, it's sad, it's moving.
Also, I hope it's finally optimistic.
It's a woman who's left by her husband for a younger woman,
and that's the problem for a lot of women in their middle years,
and it can be devastating, but this is not a film of someone being devastated.
She is very strong about that, and so therefore I think it's a film for people who are going along a path
and suddenly everything collapses, how they pick up the pieces and keep going, men as well as women.
Le plat de résistance.
Yes!
Smells fantastic.
The map, the map.
I'll get it.
Yum.
So, what are you going to do now that you're back home?
Fix up my room.
No, no, no. With your life?
I don't know. Go on the down-line, I suppose, until I can get things sorted out.
It's so subtle. The things that happen in it happen unexpectedly.
There's no clues, there's no lead-ups, there's no thinking that the audience is thick, which I really respect,
and it's shown in the way that things happen in real life.
They just occur, they don't have to be reasons or build-up to anything.
Things just happen. Tensions between people just happen.
Conflict just springs out of nowhere, and that's the way that it does happen in life.
You're already back? Where have you been?
None of your business.
He acts so simply, like I feel that I have a tendency to put all this rubbish on top of things.
Bruno does nothing, he does absolutely nothing, seemingly, and it's amazing to watch him.
He doesn't seem to be doing anything on the day, and then you look at him and rushes,
and you just think, oh, it has a flow, and it falls through,
and he can have fifteen different things go over his face in three seconds, where I could have, say, two,
and his face is just beautiful to watch on screen. It's just very exciting.
I have not worn the lotto. You have not had a proper haircut. There is no good.
How long should we get up? In one minute.
The thing about working with Gillian is that she's incredibly relaxed,
and she really enjoys making the film, the whole process of filmmaking.
And so that joy and that involvement for her is infectious, so everyone is very relaxed,
and it doesn't really feel as if we're actually working at all.
It feels very much a family, and particularly in this house, we've been very confined.
She's very nurturing. You feel she knows absolutely what she wants,
and yet it's not a difficult thing for her to get it from us,
because she has such a relaxation about her that you just feel, oh, yes, of course, that's how I'd like to do it, too.
And it's always fun. It's always easy, and she's lovely to work with. I've been really enjoying it.
The Last Days of Sheynew. That was on location, and we're looking forward to seeing the film again, I hope, later this year.
With one of my favourite European actors, Bruno Gantz, and a lot of favourite Australian ones, too.
Well, now, let's take a break while we look at the events that have been happening lately
that will interest film lovers.
At a stylish do earlier this week, the film industry gathered to hear the nominations
for the 1991 Film Institute Awards.
The awards were announced by Anne-Louise Lambert and John Hargraves.
Spotswood, directed by Mark Joffe, scooped the pool with nine nominations,
including Best Film, Screenplay, Performances, Cinematography, Editing and Design.
Proof garnered eight nominations for First Time Writer-Director Jocelyn Morehouse,
for Performances by Genevieve Pico, Hugo Weaving and Russell Crowe.
Also amongst the leaders in the field was Aya, directed by Solrin Hoas,
with eight nominations, including those for Performance, Cinematography, Music and Design.
Rolf De Gea's Dingo received seven nominations for Direction, for Performance,
as well as for Cinematography, Editing and Music.
Other films nominated include Jackie McKimmy's Waiting, John Rewane's Death in Brunswick,
Paul Cox's A Woman's Tale, Ian Pringle's Isabel Eberhardt and Esben Storm's Deadly.
One very sad note of the evening was the announcement of the death of Australian filmmaker Tom Hayden
at the age of 53 after a long illness.
Tom was a distinguished producer and director of documentary films
and was best known for his controversial feature-length film The Last Tasmanian.
The report on Film Victoria from the Victorian Public Bodies Review Committee
was tabled in Parliament early last month.
The report recommends that government appropriation to Filmvic be increased significantly,
quite a compliment in these financially strapped times,
to an organisation which had its budget cut from 3.4 million to 2.7 million this year.
The report indicated that this perhaps should not have happened.
Filmvic's reputation has been enhanced by the success of such features as Return Home,
Proof, Holidays on the River Yarra, The Big Steal and Death in Brunswick,
all of which were produced with its financial support.
And that's the news from the movie show this week.
Finally tonight we catch up with Dean Semmler, the Oscar winning cinematographer
who's currently in Africa shooting The Power of One for director John Avilsen.
Dean's a great raconteur and in his previous appearance on the movie show
he tended to concentrate on his work on dances with wolves.
But there's a lot more to the man than that.
And I saw Kevin the other night, he was very, very generously,
he said that he didn't want a daisy to do his picture.
I don't know what a daisy is, but it was long and hard and tough.
He needed someone, I think, with a bit of stamina
and I had a track record of doing desert pictures and jungle pictures
and like Dead Calm for instance, that wasn't a desert or a jungle picture,
but that in itself was a very long, difficult, logistical shoot.
And he wanted someone who he knew could stand up to it.
I guess if there's a choice between an interior and exterior picture
and the scripts were both very good, I mean I wouldn't ever do a bad exterior picture
in preference to a good interior picture, I mean that would be stupid.
But if the scripts are comparable, I would probably choose to do the exterior one.
I like being outside, I guess I was born in the country,
I spent the first 17 years of my life outside and I guess I just like it.
The problems are you have less control.
In a studio situation you've got total control.
You've got control over the light, which is my area,
you can control the light totally, you put the light in and it stays the same.
Nothing changes, you can change it if you want to to whatever you like.
You can put it in any direction you want, you can shoot 24 hours a day in there with total control.
Shooting exterior, you've got no control over the sun, the cloud, the wind,
the rain, the fog, all the elements, I mean anything can change at any time.
So you've got to be prepared to jump from one situation to another if you have to, if you get.
And it's always tough to make that decision first thing in the morning
and you're about to start shooting a scene that might be a three day shoot,
it might be a scene that's for instance three guys riding along on horseback
and they've got six or seven pages of dialogue in one location
and you might have two, say you've got two days to shoot it.
So you know you're going to be shooting from nine o'clock one morning
until five or six o'clock that afternoon when the sun goes.
So the sun starts over there and moves all the way across to there.
So you've got to be prepared to work with that.
You know the next day it could be cloudy.
You arrive on the set and the first day it might be cloudy,
but there might be a little bit of blue sky.
What do you do? Do you start shooting in sun, do you start shooting in cloud?
Because as soon as you commit, then you've got to shoot for the next two days in either sun or cloud.
So if you get cloud and you want sun, you have to create the sun with lights.
So there's a lot less control. It's harder generally.
I think it's better myself. I prefer working outside. I like working outside.
I don't mind...there's sort of an adrenaline thing that happens towards the end of the day
that you know light's going to be gone any minute.
And people tend to work faster around about the end of the day.
And there's lots of scenes that you do that we call it magic hour,
which is when the sun has set, the sun's gone, but it's not yet dark.
But it's light enough for a camera to record the landscape
and you just get a little bit of detail in the sky.
We call it magic hour.
And you've literally got, depending where in the world you are,
how far north or south of the equator, you've literally got maybe 20 minutes
to a half an hour at the most to shoot in.
And quite often you'll attempt to do scenes in that,
and I'll tell you what, they go real quickly.
There's not too much humming and harring.
But they're also dangerous because you can get yourself caught.
If you don't get the coverage done, if you don't get them done one day,
then you're committing to have to do it that timing in the next day.
I am mourning.
I think there's a piece, there's like a piece in the photography of Dances with Wolves,
like a tranquillity, like a scope that's big but gentle at the same time,
whereas young guns I think just had a roar or edge to it.
Both of them were shot without too many tricks.
They were both very straight, honest, clean pictures without filters on them.
The image is clear and there's no special colours, there's no special effects introduced.
There are a lot of foreign directors of photography working in America.
Is there an explanation for this?
I guess it's like Hollywood is the mecca, is the hub, is the centre of it all,
and I guess that's where these people are drawn to.
It's very much an international business.
It should be a total universal sharing of everybody.
I think it would be nice, but I think because Hollywood is like the centre of it,
and that's where all the energy starts from basically,
that's where people tend to go.
Well, that's our proud little Aussie, as he called himself on the 19th semilunar.
Now, what else is happening for filmgoers?
There's a retrospective of Peter Greenaway's work, including The Falls, at the Mandolin in Sydney.
A great chance to see all the features before the arrival of Prospero's books.
And on Sunday at the Hayden Orpheum Picture Palace,
you can see Abel Gonse's Napoleon with Carmine Coppola's score, played by organist Neil Jensen.
A Bastille Day treat for movie lovers.
Well, that was a rather different movie show tonight.
I hope you enjoyed it. Until next week, good night.
Well, at least you should have more of an idea of what those endless credits mean after tonight.
Enjoy your movie going. Good night.