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British cinematographer Gilbert Taylor began his career at the end of the 40's, but it is really during the 60's that he acquired the glory and international prestige which he enjoys today. His first memorable works - to which he gave a recognizable personal style -, he carries them out under the direction of directors such as Richard Lester (A HARD DAY'S NIGHT, 1964), Stanley Kubrick (DR STRANGELOVE, 1964) and Roman Polanski (REPULSION, 1965 and CUL-DE-SAC, 1966). In the 70's, after having lighted a new film for Polanski (MACBETH, 1971) and the last of Alfred Hitchock's (FRENZY, 1972), Taylor gives up cinema until Richard Donner, then a young filmmaker, who admired Taylor's work and was about to film THE OMEN in England, takes contact with him. Taylor accepted his offer and made the film, which had a large success and allowed him to win the Best Photography of the Year Award from the British Society of Cinematographers.
Since this date, Taylor did not cease working on important productions during the years that followed. He was called by George Lucas (cf. "The photographic tastes of George Lucas") to film STAR WARS then, in 1979, he lighted George Pan Cosmatos' ESCAPE FROM ATHENA and John Badham's DRACULA. In 1980, he was chosen by Dino De Laurentiis to photograph the ambitious FLASH GORDON, which was worth to him a new nomination at the B.S.C. Award; it is therefore advisable not to be astonished that the Italian producer again called upon him for the needs of CONAN, THE BARBARIAN (1982), that John Milius was preparing in Spain.
Taylor and Milius could never agree on the "look" of the film. Taylor, like many other British cinematographers at the time, was trying out the diffusion technique and wished to give to the movie a filtered mood. Milius, on the contrary, did not want his film to be too good-looking, but rather rough, to match his main character. Moreover, Milius, who put a point of honor to work quickly, considered that Taylor's working methods were too slow and that it was a waste of time.
Such an amount of and so that, in spite of the great quality of the images of the only two sequences filmed by Taylor until there - the first 10 minutes, including the opening scenes with Jorge Sanz and Nadiuska and the Witch Wolf sequence -, Taylor was fired.(*) |
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To replace him, Milius hired Duke Callaghan, who, put aside two feature films for Sidney Pollack (JEREMIAH JOHNSON and YAKUZA, respectively in 1972 and 1975), had primarily worked for television. It is precisely the principal quality which Milius found in Callaghan, since the professionals of this medium are not characterized by their perfectionism, but rather by their skill to respect tight shooting schedules very often reduced to the bare minimum.
CONAN was filmed on the only emulsion available at the time, the Kodak 5247 of 125 ASA (the very first emulsions of 250 ASA with high sensitivity hardly had just made their appearance). Let us add to that that the anamorphic lenses Todd-AO used were quasi-obsolete, and it will be easily understood that the lighting of some of the large sets designed by Ron Cobb required enormous quantities of light. But Milius who, once more, did not wish to waste time with the installation of lightings, required from Callaghan that he uses push-development: the negative, under-exposed at the beginning (little lit, with the blacks dominating over the whites) is corrected during processing. Callaghan nevertheless rellied a little too much on this technique (in other words, he misused it) and the final result was a very grainy image, under-exposed and of bad quality at times. The problem did nothing but worsen when some of these defective shots had to be used for the optical effects, during which a generation of negative is lost, the quality of the image decreases and the grain of the image increases in a spectacular way.
Finally, CONAN opens on a photography of great beauty, during the scenes of youth of the hero, quasi idyllic and with a large concern for details, to degenerate thereafter into something harder, dirtier and sometimes brutal. Such as Milius wished it.
Nacho Aguilar. - Original text (in Spanish) here.
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MORE...
- (*) [Note from the translator: As the movie was not shot in continuity, one can't exactly state that Gil Taylor only filmed "the first 10 minutes" of CONAN. According to Cinefantastique Vol.12 #2/3, Taylor was there throughout the whole month of January 1981 - Duke Callaghan's first day of shooting being January the 26th. Hence, Taylor undoubtedly shot more footage than exteriors for the Cimmerian village and Wolf Witch sequences, including, without being exhaustive, parts of the Atlantean Crypt, War Yurt and Orgy Chamber scenes too. Add to this the fact that various "scenes filmed during the first weeks were forced to be reshot, because an improper, inferior film stock had been used", meaning that Callaghan most probably reshot segments of Taylor's footage...]
- A long interview of Gil Taylor divided into 4 parts (during which, unfortunately, he does not mention the filming of CONAN, THE BARBARIAN).
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