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The Halls of Power: Tom Del Ruth

Tom Del Ruth, ASC lends an idealistic ambience to NBC’s critically acclaimed presidential drama “The West Wing.”

By JEAN OPPENHEIMER
American Cinematographer

If consistently high ratings and 18 Emmy nominations were any indication of political sentiment, Josiah Bartlet would easily walk off with next month's presidential election. But don't expect to see Bartlet's name on any ballots; the fictional chief executive of NBC's hit series The West Wing would have to be a write-in. That's a pity, because as conceived by Aaron Sorkin and played by Martin Sheen, Bartlet possesses all the gumption and moral strength we'd like to see in our real elected officials.

Cinematographer Thomas Del Ruth, ASC, who recently won an Emmy after picking up one of the show's 18 nominations this year, was among those who felt The West Wing had something important to say; he signed on first for the pilot and then for the series. For him, the show was less a fantasy take on government than simply a hopeful one a vision of what government could be. Thus, while the issues the program addresses are weighty and realistic, the drama's visual style is romantic. "This would have been an easy show to [place] into a reality format visually, which I had done with the pilot for ER," Del Ruth reflects during a break in filming on the Warner Bros. lot. "But I always felt this show was a presentation of an optimistic White House, a Camelot for the masses. To help sell that idea, we wanted a softer, veiled image that had a golden quality, as well as strong backlighting and contrast."

Lengthy Steadicam shots are a hallmark of the show, as are the pools of light and shadow through which the characters are constantly walking and talking. The dialogue and the ideas behind it come fast and furious. "In this show you have to listen to hear everything," notes Thomas Schlamme, who directed six of last year's episodes and serves as one of the show's three executive producers. "You also have to look to see everything."

Perhaps more than any other cinematographer, Del Ruth pioneered the use of the Steadicam in series television. The pilot of ER changed the way people thought about staging and shooting a weekly program. The ASC recognized Del Ruth's brilliant work on ER with two awards in 1995, one for the pilot and one for the episode "Day One." A year earlier he was nominated for the pilot of The X-Files; six years prior to that he picked up an ASC nomination for his work on the feature film Stand By Me. Del Ruth's work on The West Wing brought him his fifth ASC nomination and his third Emmy nomination, following Emmy nods for 1980's The Last Convertible and 1995's My Brother's Keeper. His feature credits include The Running Man, Look Who's Talking and The Mighty Ducks.

Lighting a 2 1/2-minute Steadi-cam shot that travels through a dozen rooms, around desks, under porticos, in one door of the Oval Office and out another while weaving past dozens of tables, chairs, plants and aides hustling down the corridors can't be easy. "Yes, the lighting is tricky," Del Ruth concedes, "but the most difficult thing was coming up with the original concept for how the White House should look, and then plotting out all of the instruments that would be needed. Gaffer Jeff Butters and I expended a tremendous amount of effort to come up with some sort of design for the lighting that would not only be efficient to work with, but also dramatically appropriate."

About 870 lights are pre-rigged, each one slaved to individual dimmers that can be brought up or down at any time. Many of the units are built right into the set, such as the Kino Flos wrapped in gels that are hidden in the columns of the Roosevelt Room. It's rare that the crew has to hang extra lights.

Del Ruth also employs special lamps on The West Wing that he calls "bat lights." These units are 6" high, 9" deep and range from 2' to 3' wide. They are covered with two layers of diffusion half grid and full grid and baffles, which direct the light. Inside each unit are eight 250-watt MR-16s. "The light is narrow and long, produces a very strong sense of source and is easily disguised," the cameraman says. "I have them on just about every set. They are very effective for providing backlight and back-crosses while the actors are moving through the sets. They can also be very bright if we need them to be; like all the other lamps, they're on a dimmer."

A walk through The West Wing's expansive set reveals 10' x 10' squares of bleached muslin stretched loosely across sections of the ceiling in a half-dozen rooms. These are used to provide room tone. "My particular belief is that natural room light emanates from more than just the sources, such as a fixture or a window," Del Ruth explains. "There is a scattered light that hits the white ceilings and creates a sense of roundness in the light. We do that photographically by using muslin ceilings. They are not designed to be photographed; they are designed only as ambient light sources. Above them we put space lights or coops or coffins or nooks to bring soft light down from the top of the set. It helps round out the contrast of the image."

According to Schlamme, Del Ruth was instrumental in the show's set design, deciding where to hang fluorescents, when to put in wall sconces, which windows should be kept open to facilitate lighting and whether to build lights into the set or hide them behind set decoration. Even though the entire building is connected, it was important that each room look visually different. "We use some deep blues in the fluorescents to characterize different parts of the White House working areas, to separate them from the white-lit areas we have just come from," Del Ruth notes. "It makes a nice complimentary palette when you're using a Steadicam and going through 15 rooms at one time. Each room can have its own feel and look, and it can be done fairly quickly because all of the lights are on dimmers."

The cinematographer notes that glass is frequently employed as either set dressing or as part of a room's design because of the specular qualities it gives off. "A single light source behind glass can create a kind of multitiered, multicolored image which is really very interesting," he observes. "Due to the facets of the crystals, one light will produce itself in a lot of different shapes and forms, so it looks like a number of different lights behind the glass." The look varies depending on the type of glass employed. The Situation Room, where the National Security Council meets, relies on only two light sources: 500-watt nook lights placed directly above the conference table, and a couple of fluorescents that can be glimpsed behind a glass wall separating the main room from a small antechamber. The overhead nooks are bounced into white cards that reflect the light back down through a grating built beneath the fixture itself. Sometimes the lights are colored, sometimes they have a deep blue quality and sometimes they are pure white and overexposed.

Television traditionally has been known as the "bright" medium; the set is bombarded with light on the theory that the audience has to be able to see everything on the screen. Many of today's producers, however, prefer to leave something to the viewer's imagination. According to Del Ruth, shadows not only serve to heighten the tension within a scene, but they also add to the composition within an individual frame. By accenting the black spaces with small shafts or splashes of light, a cameraman can subtly but effectively pull the viewer's eye to different areas of the frame.

Del Ruth doesn't hesitate to use gels to further enhance the look of The West Wing. The fluorescent fixtures behind the columns in the Roosevelt Room are wrapped in 1/2 to full CTO. Apricot-, rose- and russet-colored Rosco gels are used for sunsets and sunrises. Rosco chromes are placed on brass fixtures in the Mural Room, whose walls are covered by scenes from the Revolutionary War. Painted in cold, recessive greens, blues and blacks, the room has a somber, dignified quality that never changes, no matter which lights are added.

Two main sources illuminate the Mural Room: rows of 212s encased in Chinese lanterns and hidden in the ceiling, and four windows that line one side of the room. "There are about 35 Chinese lanterns, one foot in diameter, with 212s in them, all slaved individually to dimmers," says Del Ruth. "They are hung in the ceiling in an area that measures about 10 feet by 10 feet. The light from these lanterns is controlled by Duvetyn teasers. When they're turned on, the light goes in every direction.

"The Mural Room tends to be used when large groups of people, anywhere from a dozen to 30 or 40 individuals, gather," he continues. "When you have that many people, you essentially have to light from above. I don't use hard instruments on people's faces; instead, I use Chinese lanterns, which produce a nice, soft frontlight that's very pleasing to the women yet strong enough to give men a masculine quality. It creates a little bit of panda bear [shadow under the eyes], so we help the women out with some eyelight and just let the men go."

When shooting White House interiors, Del Ruth prefers to use soft lights on faces. However, once the show leaves the Camelot environs of the mansion and the reality of the world sets in, he switches to harder instruments. "Instead of employing 5-by-5 or 6-by-6 grid frames in front of the lighting instruments, I drop to Opal or 250 mounted on 2-by-2 frames or on the barn doors of the lights themselves. On occasion, I also use the Mole-Richardson T5s. At that point, you aren't concerned with the presentation of an idea or a theme; you are actually accessing and dramatizing scenes that have a certain harshness and reality."

The cinematographer uses Panavision Ultra Speed lenses to achieve the romanticized quality he wants inside the White House, and he also uses black netting behind the lens on every shot. Del Ruth says he discovered the nets by accident while perusing a fabric house in New York on a completely unrelated errand. "I saw this bulk netting made by the fashion industry that was wholesaled to the trade," he recalls. "It was a Dacron/Orlon combination not silk yet it had a very fine texture and an open weave without any burrs. It seemed that the diameter of the individual holes was large enough that it would have a minimal diffusion effect that was just enough to take the curse off the edges and get the practicals to sparkle, especially those units that had point sources.

"They wouldn't sell the material to me as an individual, but I have a photographic corporation and they were able to sell it to me based on that," he recalls. "So I bought 500 pairs of what they ultimately make into pantyhose. If anyone wears a size 16 and needs pantyhose, talk to me!"

A loyal user of Panavision equipment for 30 years, Del Ruth uses a Platinum as his A-camera and a Lightweight Millennium on the Steadicam rig; both are operated by Don Thorin, Jr. "The sensibilities required to operate an A-camera do not always translate to Steadicam operating," Del Ruth opines. "In terms of how the camera is utilized and manipulated, they are essentially two different mindsets: A-camera work involves fixed, beautiful compositions with fluid pans and dolly moves, while Steadicam shooting involves kinetic movement. It requires two different psychologies to operate successfully in each mode, and you don't often find one person who is excellent in both categories. We've been very fortunate with Don, who joined us midway through last season, and with a few other operators we've used."

The show's Steadicam shots require a tremendous amount of actor and atmosphere choreography, as well as camera manipulation. Although the results appear to be as smooth as silk on the screen, Del Ruth acknowledges that creating such complex moves can be like pulling teeth. "It usually takes us between 10 and 15 shots to finesse the camera and all of the atmosphere into one harmonious unit," he says. What impresses him, he says, is the terrific orchestration of the atmosphere by the assistant directors and the manipulation of the actors by the director. Del Ruth has high praise for his own team, which in addition to gaffer Butters includes key grip Marlin Hall and camera assistant Rick Tschudin.

The longest and most complicated Steadicam shot so far on The West Wing was four minutes long and took place at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. The operator was Dave Commides. Del Ruth recalls, "It started out on the dance floor, went into the lobby, through the top-floor kitchen area, down two flights of stairs into the bowels of the kitchen and through the cavernous kitchen, where food was being prepared for a banquet. We worked our way through that area, went down another flight of stairs to where the laundry facilities are, then proceeded into the catacombs, all the way through the base of the hotel and out into the parking lot, where we ended up in a motorcade. The shot involved more than 500 extras and nearly all of the major cast members, and it was all done in one seamless Steadicam shot.

"Each take required one magazine of film, and the actors had to pass off dialogue from one person to another. It required quite a bit of orchestration. It was about a five-page scene and took us half the night [to shoot]. Dave was walking backward at full speed for the entire shot; on take 13, he almost collapsed!"

The Technocrane is almost as ubiquitous on the set as the Steadicam, especially when the crew is shooting in the Oval Office. It's the crane of choice because it has a scope-able, hydraulically operated arm, which allows the base to stay fixed in one spot without having to make a chassis move. Furthermore, it is wonderfully compact. It folds into a relatively small package and can be driven through the set's numerous doorways, all of which are wide enough to accommodate it. Once in position, it can be set up pretty quickly.

The pilot for The West Wing was shot in 16mm a cost-saving measure in case the show didn't get picked up but Warner Bros. let Del Ruth use Kodak Vision 500T 7279. He loved the strong contrast. "I don't like a broad palette," he muses. "I like the highlights to be clipped and the shadows to go black. I don't often have the time to get that look in the lighting, so I have to rely on the stock to carry it."

When the series got picked up, it was to be shot in 35mm, but Warner Bros. insisted that Del Ruth use Kodak EXR 5298 stock instead of sticking with the 35mm equivalent of the Vision stock. It turned out to be an economic issue; all Warner Bros. television programs were shooting on 98. "I like 98, but it required me to use light to achieve a lot more of the contrast, rather than allowing the shot to just go," Del Ruth says. "I can move a lot faster with the Vision 500 because I don't have to manipulate the lighting to the same degree. Plus, it has a tighter grain structure and it transfers on a telecine quite beautifully."

About two-thirds of the way through the first season, Kodak experienced some problems with the 98 and Warner Bros. let all of its shows switch to the new Vision 500. Everybody was pleased with the look, and Warner Bros. decided to stick with it. When Del Ruth wants to keep the ASA down, he switches to EXR 5248 because he likes its slightly beefier quality and the way it accentuates colors. Most scenes in The West Wing showcase at least four to eight characters, and Del Ruth tries to work between a stop of T2.8 and T4 in order to get some depth of field.

The biggest change from last season to this one is that the two main sets have been moved onto one stage. Last year the cast and crew had to jump between two separate stages; actors would exit through a door that seemingly led to an adjacent room, but the adjacent room would actually be on a completely different stage. The scene would have to be picked up later in mid-shot, as it were. The new arrangement enables the production to shoot seamless "walking and talking" scenes.

Another nice byproduct of this is that the portico area outside the Oval Office has been both lengthened and widened. "Last year we had a minimal portico area and not much of a backdrop, so we only used it at night so you wouldn't see our lack of depth or set construction," recalls Del Ruth. "We were using lighting punctuations to give the portico some sort of a stylistic quality. I hung ECBs about every 10 feet, punching straight down to create very hot pools of light. ECBs are very strong, 150-watt lights, so when an actor walked underneath one, it had a tendency to illuminate him or her very brightly and then they'd fall off into blackness. The light pattern hitting the actors' heads as they walked gave an accentuated sense of motion."

Another improvement over last season is the show's new set of TransLites. Last year's frontlit backings succeeded to varying degrees, depending on how far away the camera was. Furthermore, there was no single TransLite behind the president's desk that worked for both day and night. "We had a forest backdrop during the day, but at night it became an apartment building," Del Ruth recalls with a laugh. "It isn't really noticeable, but if you carefully watch the backgrounds on the first 12 or so episodes, you'll find that a lot of them are mismatched."

This season, the production has a new series of photographed backings that are actual POVs from White House windows. The state-of-the-art backdrops are the result of a new, digital photographic process that is able to achieve a high resolution over a large image area. "The clarity is extraordinary in terms of how real it looks and its ability to handle detail," Del Ruth marvels.

The only thing the cinematographer says he would like to see changed is the format in which The West Wing is photographed. "The sets are designed not with height but with width," he notes. "It would add a lot to the element of composition if we could shoot 1.77:1 [instead of the normal 1.33:1 TV ratio] and release the program letterboxed. It would improve our storytelling methods, too.

"We tend to use a 29mm or a 35mm lens because we're stuck with the 1.33:1 ratio," he continues. "[Switching to 1.77:1] would save us setup time and coverage. We could stack two or three actors in one shot without having to go to individual singles, which is what we have to do in 1.33:1. As it stands now, we only get one-and-a-half or maybe two people in a raking shot; once we get beyond two, the shots get so wide, perspective-wise, that the image of the [third] person's head gets too small, and we lose the strength that's needed to tell a story on TV."

Asked if he has ever visited the real White House, Del Ruth notes that he's only viewed it from the outside. With a shrug, he adds, "My wife did the tour, but I've been told that our White House looks a lot nicer than the real one!"

Posted by MorganG at October 1, 2000 08:42 PM