Bartlet4America News Archive

Behind the Scenes at The West Wing with Cinematographer Tom Del Ruth, ASC

By BOB FISHER
Kodak.com

It isn't everyday that the lead story in The Wall Street Journal focuses on a new episodic TV show. The West Wing earned that distinction on September 14 in the opening lines of a story about the blurring of reality and entertainment. The story mentions that political pollster Patrick Caddell was onboard as a consultant to creator-writer Alan Sorkin (Sports Night). George magazine featured a photo spread on the series, which launched on NBC Television in September, including an interview with Rob Lowe, who plays a key supporting role, talking about memorable political conventions.

Cinematographer Tom Del Ruth, ASC, characterizes the program as a "dramedy" that puts a human face on the personalities in a fictional White House. Martin Sheen is cast in the role of President Josiah Bartlett.

Del Ruth has deep roots in Hollywood. His father was Roy Del Ruth, one of Hollywood's top directors from the 1920s through 1950s. "I was five or six years old when my father took me to visit a set with him for the first time," says Del Ruth. "I decided I wanted to be a cinematographer when I was 10. That's when I started taking pictures with a Kodak Brownie camera."

Del Ruth worked his way through the camera crew system, beginning as an assistant cameraman on The Sand Pebbles in 1966. He worked on Tobruk, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Tora, Tora, Tora, and other classic films. He shot his first feature in 1979, and has subsequently compiled some 70 credits (The Breakfast Club, The Running Man, etc.), including pilots and movies of the week (The X-Files, ER and Jag)."Television movies tend to be driven by the story and characters," he says. "I got into this business because I was interested in telling stories with images."

It is rare for Del Ruth to shoot an episodic series. He explains that while he was shooting the pilot for The West Wing for Warner Bros., the stories, dialogue and all-star cast proved to be an irresistible lure. The show is primarily filmed on magnificent sets emulating the Oval Office and other White House settings at Warner Bros. studio, in Burbank, with establishing shots involving actors photographed in the nation's capital and occasional forays to locations in Los Angeles. Following are excerpts of a conversation:

QUESTION: Is there an overall look or visual style?
DEL RUTH: It is very fast-paced. There is a feeling of urgency in the delivery of lines and a certain kinetic energy in the way people and cameras move. That feeling comes from proximity to the president. It stirs those emotions. I shot almost all scenes with the president in the pilot in amber gold light. It had a painterly, sunset quality. He is a fatherly figure with a bum leg that gives him a human quality, but he is surrounded by an aura of power.

QUESTION: The sets are impressive, but it has to be a huge lighting job.
DEL RUTH: We designed some lights specifically for this program. We refer to them as "Bat" lights. A Bat light is about ten inches high, eighteen inches deep and three feet wide, and it contains six of the new MR16 lamps that are 250 watts each. We put a light grid in front of it and control it with baffles. It produces a substantial amount of light in an interesting configuration. We have about 35 of these hanging on the sets. We have other overhead lights that emulate the patterns of windows on the sets. We have various other lights around the sets, all of them connected to a dimmer board which controls as many as 350 units at any one time. Our dimmer operator can make lighting changes accommodating characters and camera movement. That's important because of how we use a Steadicam for long shots moving through any number of rooms.

QUESTION: What's new about the MR16 lights?
DEL RUTH: One advantage is that they last for 250 hours without burning out, so we aren't taking the time to change bulbs once a day. The Bats are also made of aluminum so they dissipate heat. We use an additional 175 or so MR16 lamps hidden in niches around the sets. They produce a very hard, strong shaft of light that helps accentuate the movements of actors moving through rooms. The faster they walk, the more intense the light seems. It gives a tremendous sense of motion to a scene. When you couple that with our extensive use of the Steadicam, you get a very dynamic feeling.

QUESTION: The sets are important to create a sense of reality?
DEL RUTH: They tell you something about the characters. The Roosevelt room is one of my favorite sets because it's open and it has a real beautiful texture with oxblood-colored walls and slight salmon insets banded in white. It is a great environment for the meetings staged on this set. My gaffer, Jeff Butters, had the art department drill out the backs of columns in this room. He put in very small units that separate the columns from the walls. You get a sense of depth. We have an accent light that picks up Teddy Roosevelt's picture on horseback. With the dimmer board, it takes less then three minutes to bring a room up to shooting level.

QUESTION: Are you usually working with ensemble casts?
DEL RUTH: Sometimes, we've had up to 50 people at meetings or social events, and that's a lighting challenge with a Steadicam, because we are typically covering 360 degrees. That's why we light from above. We can control light and create contrast that lets the audience feel the rich ambience of the White House.

QUESTION: Are you shooting with one or multiple cameras?
DEL RUTH: Usually, we shoot with one camera. If we want a more isolated feeling with a longer lens quality, that calls for a dolly shot. If we want more fluid movement, we use the Steadicam. There is a voyeuristic quality in that we are letting the audience look behind the scenes at the private lives of people in the White House. There is nothing prurient, but you can see how human factors might affect crucial decisions.

QUESTION: So, it is a character-driven story?
DEL RUTH: Exactly. We are constantly developing the characters and giving the audience insights into who they are and how they relate.

QUESTION: How did you prepare to shoot the pilot and series?
DEL RUTH: When I read the script, I could feel the lighting because it was endemic in the word. The scripts don't say, this is a moody or dark sequence. But, the dialog is written in a way that tells you the mood. The White House settings can be elegant, but it can also be harsh. There are scenes, say in the press area, where the quality of light and the mood of the camera are sometimes quasi-documentary style.

QUESTION: Does the look change from week to week based on the story?
DEL RUTH: We try to keep a continuity within the White House depending on the storyline. There are changes in the direction and quality of light. You can't light a program like this MTV-style. People expect a certain elegance in the White House. We explore many different looks in other locations.

QUESTION: Is there signature lighting with the president or other characters?
DEL RUTH: I think you have to play the scene. If a scene puts the President in a heroic light, we subtly change the camera angle and lighting to reflect that. Other times, he isn't bathed in the most favorable light when elements of his personality come in conflict with those that are around him. Each scene has its own meter, tempo and style. We use composition, angles, lens choice, focus and colors to punctuate story points.

QUESTION: Can you give me an example?
DEL RUTH: In the pilot, there is a sequence where Rob Lowe's character discovers he had an affair with someone who turns out to be a prostitute. That's a serious problem for someone close to the President. There is a scene at sunset, where we brought a lot of heavy blue light (full CTB) through grids that invade the room. I attached full CTO orange gel to the bottom of the frame so that the hard light coming in underneath was very gold. The result is that the bottom part of the set was a warmish sunset and the top half was ice cold. As the scene developed, we slowly accentuated the blue, so is felt darker and colder as the character realized his predicament.

QUESTION: Do you think the audience reads these kinds of visual clues?
DEL RUTH: They may not see it, but they feel the mood, and it works in harmony with the actors and helps them find the mood.

QUESTION: How about your use of lenses?
DEL RUTH: We generally stay with a Panaflex Primo zoom, 24 and 50 mm, in most of the scenes in order to capture the depth of the sets. For particularly poignant moments in dialog we may come in a little tighter with longer lenses because that creates a different psychological tension. Like lighting, focal lengths are dictated by the scene. On the Steadicam, we use Ultraspeed lenses or a shorter zoom. There is a scene in an episode where an innuendo could fatally damage someone's reputation. The scene opens with a wide angle, fluid Steadicam shot that brings the characters into a room. The door is slammed and we go directly to a shot with a 250 mm lens, which compresses the characters so they seem like they are literally on top of each other. That dramatically heightens the tension and suggests a conspiracy between certain characters.

QUESTION: Are there spontaneous moments or is every shot totally planned?
DEL RUTH: With actors of this caliber, there are remarkably insightful, extemporaneous movements and delivery of lines. I watch and listen to the actors. It's a question of trust. They have to believe that you're not going to do anything that detracts from their performance or characters.

QUESTION: What about telecine transfer?
DEL RUTH: 4MC does the telecine work. They have done a remarkable job with dailies. They are dead-on most of the time with colors, density and contrast. We shot the pilot with the Kodak Vision 500-speed film, but are shooting the series with the older Eastman EXR 5298 film. It is also a 500-speed film, but it doesn't have the same tonal range. We shot the pilot mainly at stop T-4 to 4.5, because I rated the film for (an exposure index of) 600. I decided to over-expose the 5298 film, and rate it for 320 to keep the grain down. I'm consequently shooting everything about T-2.8 to 3.2. But, don't get me wrong-I'm satisfied with the look.

QUESTION: Are you composing for 16:9 screens?
DEL RUTH: We are composing for 4:3 and protecting the edges of the frame for HDTV. It's a nuisance because the sidelines have to be unoccupied space. Sometimes I'd like to have a light in closer to the sidelines or bring an actor into the frame from a tighter eyeline, but we can't do that and protect the sidelines at the same time.

QUESTION: Are there generally long moving shots or a lot of cuts?
DEL RUTH: We have shot as many as seven and eight pages in one shot without any cuts. We did a shot at the Biltmore Hotel, where we started in a crowded ballroom were the president has finished a speech. He exits and joins his party in the outer hallway. We travel through the hallway down a flight of steps, through the kitchen, down another flight of steps and through an underground tunnel to the motorcade in the alley behind the hotel. We covered several hundred yards weaving through obstacles with constant dialog. The camera operator, Dave Chameides, did a terrific job of picking up on the fluid moves in tune with the dialog.

QUESTION: Is a show like this just about entertainment?
DEL RUTH: I think television is a cultural force that embodies our hopes and aspirations and also the chinks in our armor. We hope The West Wing is entertaining, but we also believe it provides insights into important facets of our lives.

2000 EMMY Nominee - Cinematography for a Single-Camera Series

Winner:
Thomas A. Del Ruth, ASC
The West Wing
Pilot - NBC

Tom Del Ruth began his career as an assistant cameraman on The Sand Pebbles in 1966. He also worked in that role on Tobruk, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Tora, Tora, Tora, and other classic films. He shot his first feature in 1979, and has subsequently compiled some 70 credits (The Breakfast Club, The Running Man, Quicksilver,etc.), including pilots and movies of the week (The X-Files, ER and JAG).

"Television tends to be driven by the story and characters, " he says. "I got into this business because I was interested in telling stories with images. When I read the script for The West Wing pilot, I could feel the lighting because it was endemic in the words. The scripts don't say, 'this is a moody or dark sequence,' but the dialog is written in a way that tells you the mood."

In the nominated episode, the White House staff bustles with activity when it's learned that the president (Martin Sheen) injured himself during a bicycle accident.

"The White House setting can be elegant, but it can also be harsh. There are scenes, say in the press area, where the quality of light and the mood of the camera are sometimes quasi-documentary style. We try to keep continuity within the White House depending on the storyline. There are changes in the direction and quality of light but you can't light a program like this MTV-style. People expect a certain elegance in the White House."