Bartlet4America News Archive

To Tell the Truth: Allison Janney & Joe Lockhart

By ALEXANDRA STARR
New York Times Magazine

Before stepping down on Oct. 1, Joe Lockhart won praise for his straightforward performance as White House press secretary. Over the same period, Allison Janney won praise — and an Emmy — for her artful performance as C.J. Cregg, White House press secretary on NBC's "West Wing." Here, the two talk about watching each other work and the differences between their jobs.

Q: How has viewing each other's performance changed the way you each do your job?

Lockhart: I don't think it affected the way I did my job. The benefit of the show is that it has helped people see us as real people. It's kind of odd, because you needed fake people in order to do that.

Janney: We make you look good, huh?

Lockhart: Yeah, that's something I'm never going to forget. In the season premiere I saw a little bit of myself in the absolute look of disdain on C.J.'s face when a dumb question was asked. Maybe you can't learn that; you have to have it naturally. That was a pretty good dirty look. I liked it.

Janney: I think the show helps humanize politics. It's an opportunity to give the White House a kind of face lift.

Lockhart: We appreciate the plastic surgery. We need it.

Q: Is acting an important talent for a press secretary?

Lockhart: It's funny, because I don't know the first thing about acting.

Janney: Oh, no, Joe. You didn't do anything in high school or college?

Lockhart: Nothing. I had never stood up in front of people in my life.

Janney: It's interesting, because I feel comfortable standing up before people when I've memorized Aaron Sorkin's words. And yet to stand up and talk about something — even something that I know about — unscripted is so hard for me.

Lockhart: Aaron Sorkin writes beautiful words. I get a lot of words from people, but I don't always have 100 percent confidence about everything that's given to me. If you're a close watcher, that's reflected in how I deliver things. Sometimes I'm not certain we know everything we need to know, and I'll be less than definitive.

Janney: Mike McCurry said he used to be ignorant on purpose, so he didn't have to feel like he was lying. Do you do that, Joe?

Lockhart: No. This is not a criticism of Mike, but he had the job during the worst of the Monica stuff, but most everything that needed to be known was known by the time I got the job. During that period he said my job is to tell the truth slowly. I think he meant it was his job to make sure he was sure about things. Reporters get to be wrong every day. They do their best on deadline, they write what they think they know; the next day, as the story moves, they move with it. That doesn't work for people who speak for the government. I would rather be in Hollywood, where you can turn to the end of the script and say, hmm, this is how it ends.

Janney: In Washington last fall, when you let me step out there at that briefing, Helen Thomas actually came up to me afterward and gave me advice as if I really were the press secretary. She was like, your job is to tell the truth to the American people / that is your only job. I was taken aback.

Lockhart: Well, there's a whole mutual-fascination process going on when the "West Wing" people show up. You know, Rob Lowe is in the Roosevelt Room and 40 people find a reason to go take a look. I'm not just talking about just young women, I'm talking about senior staffers, male and female. And it's very cool to walk around and introduce Allison as the person who plays me on TV. That never happened before; that will never happen again.

Janney: What is going to happen if Bush gets in office? We're not going to get anywhere near the White House.

Lockhart: Oh, you guys are going to get canceled. And if you don't, they are going to pull your F.C.C. license.

Janney: We both went through the same thing in our first year on the job: out in public, people recognized us but they didn't know where from. They were like, were you at my cousin's wedding last week?

Lockhart: I said, tell them you went to the cousin's wedding, and that you danced. That really gets them. They get this soft look and they think, we must have — and I must have — been really drunk. He must have been there, because I was drunk and I was dancing!

Janney: Now, Joe, I have to tell you, people are like: "Hey C.J.! Hey C.J.!"

Lockhart: Yeah, what can I say? You've passed me by.

Janney: But I think that won't be the same anymore because of "West Wing." Everyone is going to know who everyone is in Washington.

Lockhart: Well, that was already happening to some extent, because of the impact of television on Washington and politics. So I think that "West Wing" accelerated that. You're going to get a lot of people now, young people, who want to get back into politics.

Janney: How do you feel being retired now? You haven't gotten nostalgic yet, have you?

Lockhart: It's interesting. I watched all of the stuff from Belgrade in a hotel room, with my feet up. And there was a part of me that wanted to be in the middle of it, and there was a part of me that said, glad that this is somebody else's issue. And I can just watch like most people can. It will just take some time.

West Wing-ing it: Allison Janney

Recent Emmy winner Allison Janney takes our reporter on a soul-searching journey from New York to California to D.C. and back again.

By MICHELE HATTY
USA Weekend

Allison Janney sees the bright side of life. This is a woman whose favorite memories include cabbing around Manhattan as a kid with her glamorous grandmother and who plays the snare drum during her family's impromptu jam sessions. This also is a woman who is finally getting noticed after 20 years of working steadily (if sometimes struggling) as an actress. But for the 6-foot-tall Janney, 39, who won the Outstanding Supporting Actress Emmy last month for her role as press secretary C.J. Cregg on NBC's political drama The West Wing (Wednesdays, 9 p.m. ET), the timing for this public praise is perfect. "I'm a late bloomer. Everything comes late for me," she says.

West Wing director Tommy Schlamme says Janney, who played memorable characters on the big screen in such films as The Ice Storm, American Beauty and Nurse Betty, is not typical TV. "She brings a quality more of us can relate to. She feels very real."

In addition to chatting about her height and her attitude toward life, Janney sang into the reporter's tape recorder and in a move antithetical to the recent wave of waif-thin actresses — finished off the reporter's blueberry pancakes. Definitely real.

Q: Was it tough to be tall growing up?

Yes. I never had a date till college. Most [guys] don't like their date to be taller than they are. My boyfriend is a good 5-11. Sometimes he wishes he were taller, and sometimes I do, too. But that's only because I have a closetful of high heels I never wear. I put them on and I go, "Ugh. I can't do that."

Q: You moved from New York to Los Angeles for The West Wing. Do you feel better about that now that the show's a hit?

I still don't feel settled. I thought I would by now. My boyfriend's in New York and just got a raise and a promotion, so he doesn't really feel like leaving his job. But I like the idea of buying a house [in Los Angeles] and having a yard and getting a dog and having a family. Which I have to do very quickly [laughs].

Q: So you want to have kids?

I had my first maternal instinct about a month ago. I started realizing I was looking at my friends' babies, not because they were cute but thinking I could be with one. Usually my maternal instincts have been toward having pets. If I could stomach the awful part of being a veterinarian, which involves sticking your hand up animals' behinds, I would be a vet.

Q: You're known to have a rockin' trailer on the set. Just what goes on in there?

I like to have a good time. I have a full bar in my trailer, which I got for my birthday last year. I love to dance. I love all kinds of music, from salsa to punk, acid rock. I always have music on, and candles. My trailer is the most fun to hang out in.

Q: I hear you're a board game fanatic.

I love them. I am convinced no one likes them as much as I do. With my family, I like to play Boggle. I like Monopoly and Parcheesi and Clue. We played Twister on my birthday.

Q: You must have an advantage in Twister!

I do. I totally do.

Q: The presidential election is in a few weeks, and The West Wing is entirely about politics...

I know. I don't know what influence we'll have. Probably none.

Q: Are you political?

No. I vote, but I grew up in a family where we didn't discuss politics. I didn't have a high opinion of politicians. I thought they all lied, and I didn't care.

Q: Does the press want to know too much of what goes on in the White House?

Yeah. They shouldn't know everything. Because if they did, everyone else would know everything, and that's not good strategy. If you elect people and they're good people, you have to trust them to do the things they need to do to run the country.

Q: With the Emmy in your pocket, what's next for you?

New York's Shakespeare in the Park. Mike Nichols is directing The Seagull, with Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline. I'm playing Masha in that this summer. But if Spielberg calls and wants me? Can you imagine me calling and saying [affecting a haughty voice], 'Mike, can't do your play; Spielberg wants me.' That would be a fun problem to have."

Gaffe Time

The ''West Wing'' season opener contains some flubs EW reports on the blunders you may not have spotted

by Joshua Rich
Entertainment Weekly

As the presidential election approaches, it appears that Al and Dubya aren't the only ones who need to get their facts straight. Take NBC's usually keen political drama "The West Wing": In the highly rated Oct. 4 season premiere, a flashback to three years ago showed White House aide Josh Lyman (Bradley Whitford) talking on a Verizon pay phone in New York City.

The catch? Verizon didn't operate any telephones on the streets of Gotham back then. In fact, until June of this year, Verizon (born of a merger between communication behemoths Bell Atlantic and GTE) didn't even exist.

The flubs don't end there. In another scene from the past -- in which press secretary C.J. Cregg (Allison Janney) gets fired from her job as a Hollywood publicist -- you can spy a copy of EW with "Shaft" star Samuel L. Jackson on the cover. We love a good plug, but don't they know that issue came out in June 2000? A spokesperson for the show said they never noticed the gaffes. Guess that's their attempt at spin control.

The West Wing: Leader of the Free World (Free TV, That Is)

By BERNARD WEINRAUB
The New York Times

HOLLYWOOD — Maybe it was the record nine Emmy awards "The West Wing" won last month. Perhaps it was NBC's heavy promotion of that drama series during the recent Olympics. Was it the nation's focus on the presidential election? Or does the idealistic country-lawyer persona of the fictional President Josiah Bartlet represent wish fulfillment on the part of the audience? (Bumper stickers spotted in Los Angeles read "Bartlet for President.")

Whatever the reason, "The West Wing," the hourlong NBC series about the Oval Office staff, has taken off in its second year: its two-hour premiere episode on Oct. 4 drew an unexpected 25 million viewers, propelling it into the top rank with "E.R.," which averaged 24.9 million viewers last year. Last season "The West Wing" ranked 30th among network shows and drew on average 14 million viewers.

Whether the series can maintain its momentum is unclear. After its next episode scheduled for broadcast tomorrow night, unless the American League playoffs require a seventh game NBC and Warner Brothers, the show's producer, will know if "The West Wing' has moved firmly into the category of lucrative, top-ranked shows like "E.R." and "Friends."

"It was a solid performer last year but not a breakout show," Alan Wurtzel, president for research at NBC, said of "The West Wing." "This year it has vaulted to the next level. We see no reason why it shouldn't continue."

Some television shows need time to to build audiences. Series as diverse as "Seinfeld," "Cheers," "Ally McBeal" and "The Practice" started gathering viewers only in their second years. But serious political dramas set in Washington have been rare on television and, for that matter, in movies. Recent political films like "The American President" (written by Aaron Sorkin, who created "The West Wing"), "Bulworth" and "Primary Colors" were box office disappointments. "The Contender," a new political thriller, was a deflating No. 5 at the box office last weekend, grossing $5.5 million.

Yet "The West Wing," essentially a fantasy about an idealized president and his staff, has unexpectedly touched a nerve. Perhaps its timing is perfect.

"It is a presidential year, and I think `West Wing' reminds us of the candidates and politicians we wish we could have," said Peter Roth, president of Warner Brothers Television.

President Bartlet, played by Martin Sheen, is a liberal New Hampshire Democrat and almost too good to be true: faithful to his wife, concerned for the poor and elderly, down to earth enough to cook chili for his staff, a gun control advocate and tough on terrorism.

"Martin Sheen keeps outpolling the two presidential candidates," said John Wells, a creator of NBC's "E.R." and one of the executive producers of "The West Wing," along with Mr. Sorkin and the show's director, Thomas Schlamme.

Still, the series's early success this season is probably not only a triumph of good timing and Emmy Awards. Numerous critics have applauded Mr. Sorkin's writing, Mr. Schlamme's directing and the actors who play White House officials: Allison Janney, John Spencer, Rob Lowe, Bradley Whitford and Richard Schiff.

At the same time NBC, whose West Coast president, Scott Sassa, helped initiate the series, has aggressively marketed the show. The network built the audience in recent months through reruns of the first season during the summer, when many people saw the show for the first time.

Mr. Sorkin, who writes virtually all the episodes although the show has a writing staff, said that the nine Emmy Awards, including the prize for best drama, stirred lavish publicity for "West Wing," especially after it defeated HBO's acclaimed Mafia series, "The Sopranos." And he ended last season with a cliffhanger, an assassination attempt against the president, further stirring interest.

"The momentum of word of mouth is what finally lit the fire," said Mr. Sorkin, who said he had planned the final episode's assassination attempt from the start of the series.

The show has been the most upscale series on network television, not only in terms of its writing and the issues it tackled but its audience. It is seen by more adults ages 18 to 49 who earn more than $100,000 a year than any other network series. But this season the audience is reaching beyond the elite.

"I don't think people like to be told they're dumb," said Mr. Sorkin. "The people who watch TV shows are at least as smart as the people who make them. The audience likes to feel that way. We're not patronizing the audience. We're not dumbing down the show in any way."

He added: "The show provides a certain wish fulfillment. Generally in popular culture our political leaders have been portrayed as dolts or Machiavellian or evil. On `West Wing' they're none of these."

The main criticism of the series has been that President Bartlet is almost too perfect, and that Mr. Sorkin's rat-a-tat writing style especially the White House staff dialogue is terse, often flip and makes many of the characters sound the same.

But Mr. Sorkin has met current and former White House officials and Washington journalists and has hired as advisers former White House aides like Dee Dee Myers, who worked as press secretary for President Clinton, and Marlin Fitzwater, spokesman for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush, who seek to give the show a patina of realism.

Lawrence O'Donnell Jr., a former top aide to Senator Daniel P. Moynihan of New York and one of the staff writers on "West Wing," said he was surprised by the show's success. "This is fundamentally an office show where nothing really happens on the screen," he said. "It probably violates every television convention. We don't have kids in an emergency ward or policemen shooting. If there's a space shuttle in trouble or an F.B.I. siege, it's off screen. You talk about it on screen. But the show just delivers the goods, week after week."

Mr. Sorkin himself began working on the series after doing research for "The American President" (1995), whose chief executive, played by Michael Douglas, was as politically liberal, funny, decent and honest as the Martin Sheen character.

In fact the series was almost delayed because the president was deemed too decent and forthright.

"We were in the middle of the Monica Lewinsky scandal," said Mr. Sassa of NBC. "People were skeptical about Washington. Was this the time to do the show?"

He said that David Nevins, an associate at NBC who is now at the Fox Broadcasting Company, argued that there was similar skepticism in the early 1990's about hospitals. And then came "E.R." with its heroic portrait of doctors and nurses.

By all accounts there have been no substantive disputes between the network and Mr. Sorkin over the political issues raised on "The West Wing" and the essentially liberal Democratic nature of the fictional president. Conservatives have offered scant criticism of the show, which seems to go out of its way to present all sides of issues ranging from school vouchers to the Middle East.

"All the network has asked us to do is present a very balanced view of an issue, to present both sides," said Mr. Wells. "The only issue we don't do that on is gun control. Frankly, no one involved in the program feels there is a logical reason for streets to be flooded with Saturday night specials and automatic weapons."

Mr. Schlamme, who also directed Mr. Sorkin's last series, "Sports Night," put it another way. "If you do a show about politics, people have to represent a certain political allegiance," he said. "If you do a show about cops, they have to shoot a gun; or a show about doctors, they have to save lives. You've got to be specific here. If you play it safe, there's not a chance the show would be successful."

Mr. Sorkin, 39, who first gained fame with his Broadway drama "A Few Good Men," said he worked six days a week, sometimes seven, starting at 6 a.m., writing scripts for the series in his office at Warner Brothers. He admitted he was a bit obsessed.

What makes the series unusual, he said, is that the personal lives of the White House staff are not as important as their jobs.

"Sure, we're interested in the guy getting the girl," but more important, "they're in the White House," he said. "And if we feel they're messing around and not applying attention to health care and other issues if we don't feel that first and foremost they are caring about us then the audience will turn on these characters so fast.

"You have to keep your eyes on dials and gauges of this show. These characters are in the White House. They're there for us. And I have to remember that."

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!"