Chock-fulla-looninuts
and how to make them
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all movie photos on this page © 1974 by Harrie Verstappen
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The Routine
Anyway. You sign the agreement, you get a script, a tentative shooting schedule and your first call-sheet and you walk onto a set. Many people are milling about, some of which you know, many of which not. You'll get to know them all right, not to worry. From then on, you're on your own.
The fact is, there are two people on the set with interests, be they so much analog to those of the rest of crew and cast (to wit: make a good and successful movie), constantly clashing with those of his fellow gypsies: the sound engineer and the still photographer. The sound engineer, because hardly anybody understands what he's doing. The still photographer, because making movies is really completely different from making stills. Both potentially are powerful pests.
Matter of fact, when you tell a sound technician for radio or music about working conditions in the movie industry, he gets pale and weak and has to sit down for a space. It is generally acknowledged to be the most difficult branch of that trade. Not so much has been written about stills, come to think of it, I never read anything about it, but the same applies. Well, I've been both. Apart from differences in technical requirements movies are at least supposed to make use of motion, while a still photographer is going out all the time to purposely forego this; an interesting challenge, true. The conflict is so heavy that I have been unable to get decent stills for my essentially one-man production Edgar Palm en Otrabanda myself—a real handicap in getting it shown.It gets so that you can read a script and mark the scenes with still potential. By the way, it's fascinating to look into other people's scripts and see what they have marked: prop man, set dresser, they all have different interests (which is why they are there in the first place). Naturally, in the course of production you run into surprises and other ones pop up to end up in the final set. I was very proud that I delivered a set of 40 stills, later reduced to 30. It's completely different now, you have to deliver many more to give every magazine a still that's "exclusive", mostly meaning just a different photograph of the same scene. I'm too old-fashioned for that, really: my training has been on 4"x5" cameras and I unavoidably still hate to waste a single shot.
So, skipping a lot, the set is dressed and lit, the actors are made-up and rehearsals start. To the uninitiated, all this is strongly like when you stir up an ants' nest and they all come tumbling out and seem to run about like mad. Well, it really is like that; there's a purpose behind those antics but it's hard to discern what exactly they're all at. Anyway, all the time you are just hanging around, watching the goings-on and trying to figure out how to make some sense of this mess.
Finally, the scene is shot, but you can't take your pictures in that stage. Apart from the shutter noise (for which some people use a sound-proofing blimp on their camera) that monstrous movie camera mostly occupies the best vantage point. Figures, but is not always true, so sometimes you can get away with making the still during rehearsals. Even then, you can't go backstage and blow a joint, as an actor may come up with a much better expression during the actual take, and you have to come back and try to catch it. After so many takes, the director decides it's in the can. This is the moment of truth: the actors relax, relieved because it's all over and done with, everybody starts milling around again, even killing the lights, and you have to roar out "STILLS!" to create your chance to work.
I'm not a very aggressive guy, but here is where you really need that ole adrenaline in your veins. Many great photographers just can't do this. The lights have to be switched back on, sometimes even adjusted. Often, the movie camera has to be moved out of the way. The actors have to be physically restrained from leaving the set (you may even have to drag 'em back) upon which they start exchanging the latest news on other actors, as is their wont and their main amusement. When you're finally in a position to start work, their concentration has all gone and you have to get them back into it. Not so easy, when behind your back director and cameraman are discussing the next scene at what sounds like the top of their voices. Experienced movie actors know the score and more or less resignedly cooperate; others you have real trouble with.
I used to throw them their lines to get the proper expression. Some got so good at this game that they, challenging themselves, went through the same expressions while continuing to exchange quite different pleasantries.
Especially Hugo Metsers and Bob Verstraete in Alicia did this extremely well. Anything to keep from getting bored. Rijk de Gooijer, on the other hand, while always willing and able to do a fine job, sometimes had to be gently reminded that his expression in the movie scene just shot really had been completely different. This never was any problem with him once he realized it.After a day's shooting, always exceeding ten hours and quite usually quite some more, you drove back home, routinely witnessing the most horrible accidents en route as a warning you were a fool to be doing this. Most of my colleagues could hit the sack then or even go out! fancy that, but I disappeared into the darkroom to develop the days' work, and often to print some up for the press or for use in next day's scene. I also made regular quality checks, finally resulting in the Frans Rasker Droste nurse series, which climaxed in the one taken on Schiphol Airport when we left for the Cannes Film Festival in the $corpio Dakota.
But I do know some photographers who just were unable to achieve this. They had to give up after delivering sets of stills with grinning and joking actors, no matter how sad a tear-jerker the film was.
It goes without saying that I kept striving continually for a good relationship with all actors—what do I say? with everybody on the set!
Then, after having snatched two to six hours of sleep, back in the saddle to find the new location, as explained on the call sheet. Not always easy to do, as I lived in the Hague and invariably the directions were based on a departure from Amsterdam. This went on for a couple of weeks; thankfully, my longest production has been Pastorale 1943, six weeks. Drove me out of my skull. You eat, drink and smoke that production all the time. Can't even look at another movie, which is not a matter of lacking time. It's just psychologically impossible.
Finally, it's all over and done with and you start crossing your fingers waiting to get paid. In the past three seconds I have thought of three jobs I never got paid for. ("So sue me"). There may be and probably are more, but who wants to remember?
A lot of those movies, as you may have noticed, contained a lot of sex. Not discussing the real pros like Willeke van Ammelrooij, Hugo Metsers and Sylvia Kristel, this tended to give me more trouble yet. Things people were quite prepared and ready to do for the movie camera they were not quite as anxious to go for with the stills. I never really understood why, but it can only have to do with the fact that you can hold a photograph in your hand and look at it for as long as you wish, while in the movie it just passes by and goes on to the next scene.Coming back to payment, this is where it gets heavy. I have been heavily underpaid all through my career, except for two years at CIBAF n.v., where I had a regular job. Not even counting inflation, I have never had so much money again as then in the mid 1960s; after six months there I bought a house and a 1958 Bel-Air, the biggest and thirstiest car Chevrolet ever made (mark: this was in Holland where the socialists Punish you for that). My main resentment is that movie producers paid me a salary that just barely took care of the needs of a 20-year old single guy driving an old Citroen 2CV around. Later I got some sound gigs in Curaçao for Dutch television, and they paid me a daily rate that was more than three times as high. And I only needed to appear in canvas shoes, jeans and a T-shirt as they took care of the equipment needed. Adding injury to insult, if the producers thought I needed some extra equipment, they were always ready and willing to go and rent it for me. I never did so because they wanted to rent inferior stuff like Nikon, while I had spoiled myself (and them) using Contax.If you want to put it this way, I won't deny it:
Photography is a much more impressive medium than movies.
And if you think is utter bull, I'll go along with that as well—happily.
For the last three productions, I had to fly over to Amsterdam. They never paid me for that, no way, mon! But when upon arrival I called the production office from Schiphol Airport, they told me to take a taxi, which in itself was 1% of my ticket cost already. So I finally dropped out of that scene.
However, I still will consider reasonably decent offers. . As tell me Rutger Hauer said, I'm the best, and knowing what I know, what is there left but to agree? But you can be your own judge of that: I offer abundant proof on these pages. If I say so myself, in all HAH! HOO HAH! modesty.
I got hooked good to this line of work
describing the means used: light, lens, camera, film
the psychology of the movie still
what makes a photograph look like a movie still
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