(ME phos erage fromthe motion pcr fb Full Metal Jacket: Cynic’s Choice By Ron Magid Tr nas seen exactly thirty years since Stanley Kubrick's first “war movie,” Paths Of Glory, laid the foundation for his undisputed sta- tus asa world class filmmaker. The film is at times naively ideological, but full of power and passion in its belief that the common man is merely a pawn in the game of war. Now, on the thirtioth an- niversary of Paths Of Glory, Kubrick has presented us with what is arguably his most cynically Produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick Director of Photography, Douglas Milsome despairing, grim and disturbing film ever: Full Metal Jacket. The common man may sill be a pawn of the government's war machine, but this time around the price of obedience isn’t his life ~ although that may become forfeit = but his " Americar Cemeogspber Sener 987humanity. The ttle refers to a type of bullet commonly used in the Vietnam war, but it might also re- fect the icy documentary-like de- tachment that characterizes the films sardonic tone. Kubrick is definitely a team player, so it comes as no sur- prise that the man he chose to shoot Full Metal Jacket, Douglas Milsome, has been a participant on every one of his films beginning with A Clockwork Orange, where he served as the late John Alcott’s focus puller. Milsome quickly moved up through the ranks, b coming Alcott’s first assistant on The Shinirig.lt was on this film that he was allowed to shoot some first unit footage after Alcott left to work on another project. On his own after fifteen years with Alvott, Milsome has proved himself « worthy successor to his great men- tot, whose style and meticulous at tention to detail he tries to emulate. “I'd like to carry on where John stopped, actually,” he says, “I thought he was a great photographer and I learned a lot from him working with Stanley. [ use the Alcott System all the time now. He taught me how to use black and white Polaroids to mea- sure a great deal more than just exposure—it gives you the balance and allows you to go much higher orlowerthan the meter would oth- exwive indicate against film speed, The Polatoid film delineates very well between light and shade, and. also gives a tremendously good idea of how windows are going to look if they're over- or-underlt. The passing of John was such a blow to me that I've determined to tty to perpetuate what he was iry- ing to do. He lit like no other cam- ecaman, so effectively with little or 1o light. Most of his lighting went into one suitcase, and that’s what I like and it's what Stanley likes ee Although Kubrick's films take notoriously long to shoot, nothing is let to chance and much Cf that time is spent in pre-produc- tion with the cinematographer. “Although I was actually on the film for a year and a half,” Mil- some points out, "the shooting ac often brought in quite a bit earlier tually took a lot less time than than usual, not just to check the people believe, The actual shoot- equipment but to check every sin ing took just over six months anc gle aspect of every possible situa we had to shut down for some tion to the 1h degree. It involves twenty plus weeks due to injuries painstaking time for discussion and accidents. My period of pre- He's just as methodical in his prep production, however, was consid- ashe is in his shooting, Sometimes erably longer than most. There's _his prep takes as long as his shoot. always an awful lot to discuss with ing, often longer. He gives a new Stanley during pre-production be- meaning to the word ‘meticulous’ cause there's so much involved and the word ‘methodical’. As far with his films. They're always big as the lighting is concemed, that subjects, so the cinematographer is open to discussion. We build mox Opposite page: rent Jober (Mondew Modias) ‘ar fw dening the Tet oes, Let Comtoy iss Sonate it rig abs soquance is the bate for Foe hy Blow Seo 1987 Americas Gnexetogaghe 8‘aracks Right: Tho Iapless “Gomer pple D Ono) teas araan's fry. cls of our sets and discuss how to light them and then we do exten- sive testing. Nearly all of the equip- ment used by Milsome on Full Metal Jacket was owned by Kubrick, who maintains stores of the most up-to-date and advanced equipment available, For many of the large tracking shots that com. prise much of the film's action footage, a variety of cranes and Steadicam were employed. Pyi marily, Milsome used the Arri BL camera and Zeiss high speed lenses, For some extreme slow mo- tion effects, Kubrick purchased two of Doug Fries’ high speed cameras adapted from standard Mitchells, which were used in combination with numerous Nikon lenses, From its inception Kubrick and Milsome agreed that Full Metal Jacket should have the desaturated, grainy look of a docu= mentary. “We did that by using the hhigh speed Kodak 5284, which we rated at 800 ASA all the way through,” Milsome recalls. “It should've been 400, s0 we were pushing ita little bevond where it would've given us a really solid black. By pushing the film all the way, we were able to bring the fog level up, and there was a natural lean toward the milkier, less solid blacks and grays, which documen- tary film tends to have. The film helped us a lot in achieving that look, coupled with the fact that we Were working wide open. Even on days where it was fairly hazy but sunny, we used a lot of neutral density filters om the camera purely as a means of reducing the light transmission through the Jens, which took some of the con= trast out of the image and flattened ita little more. Also, we shot with- out an 85 correction filter for daylight, which gave us an extra %4 of a stop in hand. We pulled the blue out to make it look less cold, but we were able to correct for this color shift on the set, It just en abled us to get that litte extra half hour or hour's shooting at the end of the day: That extra bit of time can be crucial, Though Kubrick's films have lengthy schedules, i isnt be- cause he tends to work at a lei surely pace. Kubrick's demanding perfectionism is both a strain and an extremely rewarding attitude for those used to working with di rectors who expect less, Milsome explains: “I've aetually had a lot harder time working for a lot less talented people than Stanley: He's ‘a drain because he saps you dry, but he works damn hare himself and expects everybody else to. Sometimes it becomes a plod be ‘cause it's so slow and intricate, but he loves to do things quite differ % Amorim Geemaegeghar Sopot 87ently than what's ever been done before, You can’t really do that sort of thing off the top of your head, 50 you work very hard io get it to gether and make something differ ent which bears his mark. That can be a little overbearing and it tends tozap you and take up nearly all of your time. Sometimes the relatio, ship can et a litle strained be- cause you've got to be devoted to hom. You eat, drink and sleep the movie, and you're under contract to Stanley body and soul. But he allows you the time to get every thing absolutely right, which is ‘what [find so rewarding It is this insistenee on achieving perfection regardless of hhow many takes are necessary for which Kubrick is most infamous, "Stanley always has done many, many takes,” Milsome says, “but fact, the many takes are not just repetitions of the same thing, they are often building upon a theme or idea that can mature and develop into something quite extraordi- nary. The whole structure of the scene can actually change during the operation of filming it. Ako, Stanley gets a lot more out of his actors after he works with them a lot longer. I's especially vahuable in bringing out something in actors who may not be exactly up to the part, but Stanley works on them jolly hare until they produce the goods, That's why he's so good th actors: in the end, he'll re- hearse and rehearse them until they're word perfect, and when they've got the words perfect then the rest has te happen - they then have to act. The large number of takes are used mainly to get some- thing out of the actors that they're not willing to provide right away Of course, i's demanding on the crew as well, but its a lot harder for the actors than itis for us. Once you'vedone an eight or ten minute Scene a number of times, after take thirty or thirty-five, you're really into it” Milsome laughs. “Actually it doesn’t always go that many takes. There were occasions on Full Metal Jacket where we went a few more than twenty-five or thirty takes, but we usually didn’t average more than ten to fifteen takes, although sometimes we'd go back and reshoot certain scenes later Full Metal Jacket was shot entirely in England on sets ranging from 4 meticulously reconstructed Marine Corps. barracks to a blasted coke plant that served as the background to the Tet Offen- sive at the end of the film, The two part structure of the filmy necessi tated reereating, the Marine train ing camp at Parris Island in great detail for the basic training of the ‘grunts” that comprises the film's srucling first half, while the sec tnd half of the film had to look like Vietnam location footage. Sur prisingly, Kubrick found the ideal Tocation for both sets in three dif ferent locations in the Northeast London area, not more than thirty miles apart, Parris Island's training, camp was a real military base in Bassingbourne, the barracks were built at Enfield, and the vast rub ble and blasted buildings of the Tet Offensive were to be found in an. East London gasworks. Soe 67 s inside the practical barracks set Kubrick had constructed at Enfield, as Mil- some’s camera dollies along with Gny. Sgt. Hartman, played by Lee Ermey, as he indoctrinates the new “grunts” into the harsh, contyadic- tory realities of Marine Corp life Ermey, who is not an actor= he was actually the film's technical advisor and a real life drill instewc- tor= went through the sequence again and again, as Kubrick coached him on the precise inflec tons and mannerisms he wanted All told, there were twenty-five takes or so the first time around, Ermey suffered injury in a car acci- dent during shooting, after which ‘he'd improved no end as an ac tox!’ Milsome relates. “I think he polished up his part quite well, so we did that particular scene all again. It was well worth it becavise he was so much better” In order to accommodate Kubrick's proposed 360° shot, Mil- some had to place all of his light ing outside the set, where it streamed in like cold sunlight through the large windows on ei American Chamaragapar “Asia oar’ (Aone Bot) sa ‘tar into (aacticbonte ”” ther side of the barracks. Milsome hhad become accustomed to the di rector's need for total freedom on the set, and so emulated Alcott’s daytime interior look for the pal- aces of Barry Lyndon and the lobby of The Shininy’s Overlook Hotel ‘You can't restrict any- thing Stanley wants to do by hav- American Cremaagr ing a light source which shouldn't be in the shat in the way.” he con- dom of being able to go anywhere at any time, So we reproduced the look of sunlight streaming through the windows. The lighting was all totally outside - there were no ‘eter 1887 lamps inside anywhere except for the warm white deluxe daylight flourescent tubes in the overhead strips which were featured as a source light anyhow. So we just let the sunlight bleed in through the windows, which gave us a very natural single source light with @ very soft fill, roughly about 3:1 on the shadow side. For this effect, we ‘used the Par 600 watt lamps ~ each light has six 100 watt bulbs on it We put four of these lamps outside each of the seven windows in the set, so we had 24,000 watts bur: ing outside each window. We had them filtered through the Rosco plastic 216 fibre, which gave us a very nice soft warm look. We used a very old ‘moviola dolly with preumatic tires which we let down so they had only a minimal amount of air in them, Although the floor of the barracks set wasn’t that smooth, we were able to wheel the dolly about the floor because the faitly flat tives actually made the shot very smooth “The Louma crane was @ great to] to us,” he says. "We did a Tot of low angle tracking shots that tended with the camera soaring up into the sky as the troops were drilled. We had a remote hot head rig.we could operate from below 0 wwe didn’t have to actualy sit on the crane, We also mounted our camera on a Tulip crane with 2 Skycam extension, so we coud get ‘our lens over thirty feet up. We were able to use both types of crane rigs to create some really in teresting camera moves that en= hanced the training sequences. With this equipment, when they went over the obstacle course, we could go up with them, so there were quite a lot of shots of them climbing ropes and over barriers and things where we just followed them up. "Because we were using the Louma crane quite often, we decided to have the crane ready assembled on a track always,” Milstone continues. “Although the crane itself is not that heavy - about a thousand pounds -it does take some hoursto put together. We gota sixty seat coach, left the cab as it was, sawed the coachwork off and made the tear end into a thirty foot long tracking platform on which we laid our rails. Our crane was al ways completely assembled on this tracking coach, so we could drive it into any position within minutes, secure it with hydraulic jacks and be ready to do our shot very quickly.” The climax of the film's boot camp segment is carefully or chestrated in tio powerful and disturbing nighttime scenes in the barracks, where the harsh blue moonlight filtering in through the windows is in sharp contrast to Milsome’s warm pink daylight look. The first sequence consists of the ritual beating of Gomer Pyle by his fellow recruits after they are forced to do push-ups when Hart man discoversa donut in the over weight private’s trunk, The se- quence is ecrie and frightening, and Pyle's pain and horror are well served by Milsome’s objective photography and stylized lighting “We wanted to introduce a strong moonlight effect, which I think worked and gave a weird feeling to it all. I's similar to the blue light we used in the maze in The Shining. For this scene, we used an open Fresnel Brute, which gave us very sharp shadows, and four 10K HMMls, white flame with- Out condensers so they also cast very long and definite shadows The Brute was placed at one end, giving a much wider, brighter beam, and the other four windows were each lit by one of the 10K HMIs, We then put half blues over them fo give us a kind of Holly- ‘wood moonlight glow: Again, allot cour light came from outside, and we used polystyrene to bounce the light, or we bounced light from a 100° watt snooted Lowell off the ceiling just to reflect a ltele bit of white light into the shadow side. We had a key of F2, so we proba- bly had about .70 on the shadow side, which meant we were work Ing at roughly a 4:1 ratio That same combination of naturalism and stylization pays off handsoinely in the gruesome ci max of the film’s first half, wherein Pyle goes quietly mad after be coming a full-fledged Marine kill- ing machine, Eyes rolled back into his skull and glowing with a strange inner light, he turns his ti- fle - with its full metal jacket shells ~ first on an outraged Hart man and then on himself Sepanie 1987 Tae That scene was very powerful,” Milsome agrees “D‘Onafrio flashes what people are now referring to as the ‘Kubrick crazy stare’ Stanley has stare like that which is very pen trating and frightens the hell out of you sometimes~I gather he's America» Coeoatgeshr 18able to inject that into his actors as well. The light in D‘Onofrio’s eves was achieved quite naturally: the bathroom was tiled out quite white, so there was a massive amount of light coming back off ‘them onto his face, which helped. Again, the lighting was fairly straightforward. We had the same configuration as in the barracks, ‘except with 5Ks in this ease, placed four flights up shooting down through the bathroom window and throwing pattems on the wall and we introduced the blue cle ment again. The action part of the sequence didn’t take as much time as getting a performance. The pat tem of Pyle’s brain on the wall after he shoots himself didn’t take all that long to get right, and for Hiartmac’s death, Ermey just shot straight back - I think he’s been hit before, because he Bounced back well!” FESSIONAL a convenient way to era on the ground, in hits hard shell con- wfinder guard, this ghtweight security ite for information. Fade to black. When the lights come back on, we're on a sunlil street somewhere in Viet nam, following close on the heels of 2 voluptuous Vietnamese hooker as she propositions a cou ple of our boys. This shot typifies the style of the remainder of the file, as Milsome’ camera prowls through one vast urban landscape after another. "We sed the Louma crane to a large extent fon our exteriors,” Milsome says. We had no exterior light apart from daylight and we used that right up undil the eleventh hour. There was no day for night at al. We shot night for night lit by these Wendy lights, which each hold about two hundred bulbs. When hoisted up over a hundred feet on a cherry picker, they can light an enormous area from over two hun dred yards aay. They each took about 1200 amps, and ive could ac tually light an area of 400 square yards quite easily at a ight level of T14 Milsome also made use of a rather unusual dolly for many of the battle sequences: a camera car with its engine removed, “Stanley bought 4 Citreon Mahari, which proved to be quite useful” he re- calls. “It’s a very good, soft 5 of specialized lighting sl pnotographic industries. 2384, USA, pended tracking car, on which we mounted two cameras, We ripped the engine out of this one and pushed it along ~ it was fairly easy to push - and we did a lot of our tacking shots with that. We used it ‘on Barry Lundon todo many of our tracking shots across f worked much better than a dolly cking that fast, a dolly would have meant an unsteady picture, and [ don’t think a Chap- man crane could've tracked that fast with stability on a non-metal: lic surface, The car had an ex- tremely soft ride and we were able to push it quite fast, We often had about six people pushing, one steering and three or four The Tet Offensive, which compromises the primary focus of Full Metal Jacket's grim second half, began quite treacherously at dusk on a Vietnamese holiday, during which time both sides had | agreed there would be no fighting, Kubrick decided to stage the first wave of the offensive outside an American army base, where sol diers are holed up behind sand- bags in flimsy tents, This set, called “the hooches,” was built at Bas: singbourne, across from the camp that doubled as Parris Island, Mil some remembers the inherent dif ficulties in photographing hug scole special effects for this se quence: Choreographing ou san era movement was extremely important, otherwise we'd waste a lot of money on effects we wouldn't catch on film if we'd missed our mark, It became a question of rehearsing a numberof times to insure we got it right” ‘The lighting souree for the night for night sequence were four Wendy lights posted in different corners of the training camp, which greatly facilitated quick other. “If we wanted to change the dlrection in which we were shoot ing.” Milsome explains, “we'd just save one lamp and switch another cone on so wwe always had a moonlit backlight source illaminating the seene. Once the Wendy lights ace DREAM SCHOLE NOREA) ILA PRENC! FOXEIR VOvAGE LOVING Contac Promat Islands The Your St.Tin position, they’te a hell of a job to maneuver, especially on soft round, so having four saved us a reat deal of time we would have spent moving them about, which enabled us to get our night work done that much faster. The lamps, from over 250 yards away, were able to give us a fast 4 backlight fon the 94 Kodak film. We'd shoot al F2, which was about one stop under. It was quite enough, and the rest of our light we would fill using sheets of styrene. We black velveted the actual trucks and the jib arms the lights were on 50 you couldn't see them if we panned across them The last twenty minutes of Full Metal Jacket comprise Pri- vate Joker's “dark night of the sou" as he and his photographer Rafterman, played by Kevin Major Howatd, are caught in an ambush along with the platoon they've been assigned to cover. The pla toon leader has been killed, 0 leadership now falls to one of ANNOUNCING THE SONIC Now Lightweight Telescopic 3-Section, 12-Foot Joker's fellow “grunts” from boot camp, Cowboy (Arliss Howard), who is ill suited to the task of ne gotiating his way out of the deadly situation, The tension is evident as the recruits huddle in fear behind a blasted wall as buildings blaze hellishly around them: The final ambush se. quence was shot over several after- hnoons around the tow end of the day, when the exposure wedge was dropping away.” Milsome 1e- calls, ‘Itwas a good time to bee ase we were wide open so ™ re were wide op we sot the maximum effect from the flames. If you underexpose them, you don’t get the maximum effect This way, the flame looked so much brighter and had a glowing, quality, which was helped by the fact that they were all shot around magic hour-dusk time, We carried fon with our shooting from late af ternoon as it turned into evening, before it actually became night, for days, We were working with fast film and fast lenses at 1.4 going Microphone Boom Manufactured by Alan Gordon handarips Enterprises. Designed with clean eound in mind. This generation of Sur famnous mleraphone boom incorporates the latest ‘mechanical and electrical innovations, Lightweight and Easy to Use because of the newly signed sont oporaton hiiech twistlock cols. 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