Published ICG Magazine, March 2003

CONRAD L. HALL, ASC:
MEMORIES ON FILM THAT WILL ENDURE FOREVER

"Cinematography is an infinitely subtle language…even more so than music or words…contrast is what makes moving images interesting, and the possibilities for creating shades of light and dark are endless… I light through the lens, the way painters work. I start each day with a clean slate, and build each scene one element at a time. There are no masters, only good learners because every picture is different. It's difficult expressing how I feel with words. I want my work to speak for me."

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Conrad L. Hall, ASC
1926-2003

	Hall Wins Oscar

Flashback to 1994. Conrad L. Hall, ASC was describing his reactions to a telephone call notifying him that his peers had chosen him to receive the American Society of Cinematographers Lifetime Achievement Award. Hall was following in the wake of such icons as George Folsey, Joe Biroc, Stanley Cortez, Charles Lang and Philip Lathrop. It hit him like a bolt of lightning coming out of a clear blue sky. The tribute was totally unexpected and completely overwhelming. He literally didn't know how to react.

"It took me a while to grasp that my colleagues believe I have made an impact on the history of cinema," he said. "Billions of people have seen and been influenced by movies in the short history of the industry. My peers say I have made a difference. That means more to me than winning an Oscar. Do you know what I am saying?"

It wasn't a rhetorical question. Hall couldn't quite grasp how he could receive a lifetime achievement award while his body of work was still evolving. He likened it to reviewing a movie that was still in production.

"I'm too young," he insisted. When would he be old enough? Hall pondered for several moments before asking, "How old is Jack Cardiff (BSC), 79-80?"

Cardiff was the recipient of the 1994 ASC International Achievement Award. "He's still shooting. I hope that I'm still shooting when I'm 80."

Hall was 76 year old when he died on January 4, 2003. His body of work included 31 narrative features. His efforts reaped Oscars for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in 1969 and American Beauty in 2000 and other nominations for Morituri, In Cold Blood, The Day of the Locust, The Professionals, A Civil Action, Searching for Bobby Fischer and Tequila Sunrise. That doesn't count Road to Perdition, since this magazine went to press before nominations were announced. He also earned ASC Outstanding Achievement Awards for Tequila Sunrise, Searching for Bobby Fischer and American Beauty.

Just to put that into perspective, approximately one out of every 80 to 100 eligible films is nominated for an Oscar each year. Hall was nominated almost one out of every three times he earned a feature film credit.

Hall's life story has a fairy tale quality. His father was James Norman Hall, an American amateur pilot who volunteered to help the French fight off the German onslaught before the United States entered the First World War. He was a captain in the Lafayette Escadrille and engaged in aerial duels with the legendary Red Baron. "My father was shot down once, but he went after him again," Hall related.

	Hall and Hanks

After the war, Hall and another American volunteer, Norman Nordorf, were commissioned to write the history of the Lafayette Escadrille. There were too many distractions at home, so they went to Papete, Tahiti, where they found a new world. James Norman Hall met and married the descendant of a marriage between an American-English sea captain and a Tahitian woman. Hall and Nordorf discovered stories in the island's history and folklore, which provided the foundation for their collaborations on such classic novels as Mutiny on the Bounty and Men Against the Sea.

Conrad L. Hall was born and raised in a cloistered, literary environment isolated from mainstream society. He never took a photograph and movies were an exotic concept on his island. When Hall was in his teens, his parents sent him to an exclusive prep school in Santa Barbara, California. A few years later, he enrolled at the University of Southern California with instructions from his father to find a career.

His father was a war hero who wrote classic novels. How could he possibly measure up? Hall tried journalism during his freshman year, but was discouraged by a "D" grade in a creative writing class.

He searched through the curriculum catalog beginning with A. When he got to C, Hall discovered the cinema department. He switched his field of study for "all the wrong reasons." Hall said he thought it would be an easy way to get through school. "I was also intrigued by the possibility of getting in on the ground floor of a relatively new art form," he said. "The movie industry was only 50 years old."

Sometimes timing is everything. The second world war had just ended. It was a time of change and hope for the future. The cinema department was led by Slavko Vorkapich, a Yugoslavian filmmaker who had migrated to Hollywood in 1922. Vorkapich was a writer/director whose specialty was storytelling with visual montages. In 1975, Ed Spiegel, one of Hall's classmates, spoke eloquently about Vorkapich's influence. He was disdainful of Hollywood films. The USC catalog called them "photo-plays," bowing to the influence of the Broadway playwrights who flowed into the industry after the introduction of sound during the late 1920s.

Spiegel noted that Vorkapich's ideas weren't universally accepted. He described him as "a purist, perhaps to a fault." Spiegel recalled that Vorkapich sent his students out to learn how to look at the world before they experimented with filmmaking. He taught them how to look for textures and motions in wavering fields of tall grass and to consider how they were affected on a visceral level. Vorkapich also encouraged his student to think in terms of shots rather than "the shot." He told his students that each shot was like a note in a melody, which gained meaning as the sequence played out.

"He (Vorkapich) was like a surrogate father to me," Hall observed. "He had the spirit and soul of an artist. He taught the principals of filmmaking as a visual language, and said the rest was up to us. I still recall the thrill of shooting my first film. It was 100 feet of 16 mm black-and-white film of a car coming up to a stop sign and driving off. I had to decide how to frame and light it. I knew how I wanted it to play, but you are never sure until you see the images on the screen. There was a sense of mystery and magic."

Hall also recalled taking classes with John Huston, who showed the students dailies from The Red Badge of Courage, Orson Welles and various other iconoclastic filmmakers, and urged the students to stretch their imaginations. Hall must have been paying attention. He won the first-ever ASC student film competition. His classmates included Richard Moore, ASC and Bill Fraker, ASC and other future collaborators.

The USC cinema program was compressed into two years during those days. Hall was barely 21 when he graduated. He quickly discovered that film school wasn't a free pass into the world of Hollywood filmmaking. In those days, aspiring cinematographers without relatives in the camera guild or other connections in the industry probably had a better chance of breaking out of jail than into the union.

Hall and two classmates, Jack Couffer and Maury Weinstein, organized Canyon Films. They produced industrial films, documentaries and low budget commercials. There was ample down-time when Hall could reflect at his leisure about how he wanted to spend his life. In 1956, the partners purchased a short story with the intention of producing an independent feature as a showcase for their talent. They collaborated on the script. Then the partners wrote director, producer and cinematographer on different slips of paper. They put the slips into a hat, and each of them drew one of the jobs.

	Hall and Mendes on Road to Perdition

Hall drew cinematographer. Technically, he didn't get to shoot the film. They hired a Guild cinematographer, and Hall was credited as visual consultant. The picture was released by United Artists under the title Running Target. Afterwards, Canyon Films was dissolved and Hall kept shooting industrial films and commercials, and many pick-up shots for studio films.

He was allowed to join the camera Guild as an assistant cameraman. During the next several years, Hall had opportunities to work with Ernie Haller, ASC, Floyd Crosby, ASC, Burnett Guffey, ASC, Robert Surtees, ASC, Ted McCord, ASC and other mainstream studio cinematographers. Those experiences leavened his thinking about the art and craft, and maybe more importantly, about how veteran cameramen handled relationships with their crews, directors, etc., and their ancillary responsibilities.

McCord upgraded Hall from first assistant to operator/ second unit cameraman on a TV series called Stoney Burke in 1962. When McCord got sick after the fourth episode, he recommended Hall as his replacement. Hall considered McCord an important mentor.

"He always wanted to give something to the story, to contribute to a way of seeing it that was special but still pertinent," Hall said. "He always wanted to be original and not reproduce something he had seen in a painting or in somebody else's work. I learned a lot (from McCord) about going to the edge with your knowledge of cinema, and trying to do something different or new. The cinematographers who preceeded my generation had the ability to record images that were almost surrealistic, with skin that glowed, focus that enhanced romantic scenes, and lighting that was always beautiful."

In 1963, Hall photographed The Outer Limits TV series. The following year, he filmed a television movie called The Ghost of Sierra de Cobra. Hall earned his first feature credit in 1965 for The Wild Seed, which was produced in 24 days on a $286,000 budget. It was a black-and-white film that required precise and sensitive lighting to create a sense of separation and a feeling of depth between foregrounds and backgrounds."I don't recall thinking much about camera movement or lighting," he said. "I remember thinking about getting it done."

He also shot Incubus and Morituri in 1964. Hall was already gaining recognition as a rising star in a new generation of cinematographers. However, he was also subject to the vagaries of human error. One of the biggest scenes in Morituri was a day-for-night-shot filmed on the open sea. There were 126 people, several boats and a helicopter in that scene. Hall decided to use a red, orthochromatic filter that was favored by McCord. His assistant accidentally put the wrong filter on the camera lens. They were three days deep into the scene when the lab told Hall there was "nothing on the film."

"Terror and depression are the only words that apply," he said. "Bill Abbott, who was in charge of visual effects at 20th Century-Fox, saved me. He noticed a faint image and made a high-contrast duplicate negative with a special orthochromatic film."

Hall earned his first Oscar nomination for Morituri. In 1966, his credits included Harper and also The Professionals. By then, he had assembled a crew for the ages, including Fraker, Jordan Cronenweth, ASC, and Bobby Byrne, ASC. It was his first collaboration with Richard Brooks and his second consecutive Oscar nomination.

Before they started shooting, Brooks bluntly cautioned Hall not to be tempted to help him direct, because it wasn't going to happen. There was only room for one director. It was the beginning of a beautiful relationship. They brought out the best in each other.

Hall added three more diverse and impressive credits the following year, Divorce American Style, Cool Hand Luke and In Cold Blood. Hall observed that darkness was the single most common point of conflict between cinematographers and studios. From the perspective of the moguls, the audience was paying to see Paul Newman's eyes. Hall believed it was okay if occasionally they just heard his voice and saw a silhouette if that told the story.

He trusted his instincts at the moment of photography. In Cool Hand Luke, Hall allowed rays of sunlight to ricochet off the inner glass element of his zoom lens. That created a flare which visually punctuated the misery of the mid-day heat. When he noticed a mirror image of the chain gang reflected in an impassive guard's sunglasses it became part of the story. Hall called it a "happy accident."

	Hall in a field on Road to Perdition

In Cold Blood netted Hall an Oscar nomination for the third consecutive year. The film was based on Truman Capote's frightening book about a couple of cold-blooded murderers and their victims. There is a haunting scene where one of the killers is in jail listening to the prison chaplain reading the bible in the dim glow of a small desk lamp. Light coming through a window enhanced the moody ambience.

The killer seems chillingly unemotional. During a rehearsal, a wind machine used to give movement to artificial rain blew mist onto the window. The water condensed and streamed down the glass like a veil of tears. While setting up the shot, Hall noticed that shadows from the raindrops on the window looked like tears rolling down the killer's face. He showed Brooks and the director immediately embraced the idea. The result was an unforgettable scene which amplified the emotional content of the story. It was another happy accident.

"Vorkapich taught us that you can tell stories with pictures," Hall explained. "If the soundtrack fails, there should still be a sense of what the story is about."

Hall was also teaching, but with his images rather than words. "Conrad Hall was one of the earliest influences on me and my career," said Owen Roizman, ASC. "I first noticed his work after he shot The Professionals. The nuances were wonderful. He had brilliant sensibilities and a passion for his work. He was the boldest and most outspoken cinematographer I ever met. When he didn't like something, he'd tell you. He'd say, you shouldn't work with that director. He's not helping you. That was because of his passion for his work and his respect for his colleagues."

Hall was 42 years old, and in the dawn of his career. His influence stretched around the world. "I remember watching his movies when I was working in Europe and wondering whether I would ever be that brave," said Michael Ballhaus, ASC. "He inspired all of us to try to be more daring, but no matter what you did he was always more extreme." Theo Van de Sande, ASC recalled, "When I was a film student in Holland he was shooting In Cold Blood and Fat City. He never wasted a frame. He found the best images for every story. He invented a new language every time he shot."

In 1968, Hall shot Hell in the Pacific. It was either a logistical nightmare or miracle depending on your perspective. Hall spent eight months shooting on a remote island. He and his crew traveled 20 miles by boat everyday, and then switched to an amphibious duck, and finally waded in, carrying the camera gear over a reef.

When Steven Spielberg interviewed Bill Butler, ASC to shoot Jaws, the director asked if he knew how to shoot day-for-night. The shoot called for complex day-for-night shots made from a boat with the sky always prominent in the background. Butler said, "sure." Then he began searching for the most convincing day-for-night shots he could find. It was Hall's work on Hell in the Pacific hands down. Hall happily explained what worked and what didn't.

In 1969, Hall collected his fourth nomination in five years, and his first Oscar for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. He experimented with over-exposing the negative and printing back to mute the strong primary colors, particularly blue skies and green landscapes. That technique also slightly softened the sharpness of the images. Hall explained that audiences don't perceive reality as perfectly sharp, vivid images.

Director George Roy Hill gave Hall creative license to explore new visual frontiers. One result was the unforgettable bicycle ride featuring Paul Newman and Kathryn Ross. It was choreographed with music and shot at magic hour.

	Hall and Newman

"People often ask about the decision to shoot that scene through the fence," Hall said. "It wasn't planned. I just saw the fence and decided it had a very romantic quality. It was a spur-of-the-moment discovery made possible because George trusted my aesthetic judgement. In the sequence where the posse was chasing Butch and Sundance, George tore the pages from the script and handed them to me. I love using visual symbolism. I wanted to keep the posse far away so you can't see faces, so we used a very long lens. I didn't want to make them real, because it was an idea that was pursuing Butch and Sundance. Modern technology was changing the frontier. Their day was over."

That type of thinking can't be found in a cinematography textbook. Hall intuitively knew what to do, and his mastery of the craft enabled him to do it.

"Conrad Hall was a bridge to the generation that invented cinematography," said Richard Crudo, ASC. "You can feel his artistry from the beginning. There was a profound sense of foreboding embedded in the textures he created for The Outer Limits. In Cold Blood was a great black and white movie and Butch Cassidy redefined the way we use colors. He had an unique way of seeing things and left a magnificent legacy."

Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC, added, "I learned so much from Conrad. His movies always looked so simple, like he didn't light them at all. I once asked him his secret, and he said, 'I over-expose the film, but I don't know how much.' His eye was his light meter. He made imperfect images acceptable, like the lens flare in Butch Cassidy. Conrad was years ahead of all of us. We would all rush to see his latest movie. It was never anything flashy or fancy."

Fat City, a 1972 film, was one of his personal favorites. The director was John Huston and Richard Sylbert was the production designer. "When I was at USC, John used to come in and see us," Hall recalled. "He was like a god. It was unimaginable that someday I'd be shooting a film for him. John told us, 'I think this film is about how your life can run down the drain before you have a chance to put in the plug.' That was a brilliant summation of the concept, and it was something I could hang my whole visual approach on. You pray for those kinds of guiding ideas."

Huston sent Hall off with a camera to find real-life documentary-style images of "life running down the drain" in seamy skid row neighborhoods in Stockton, California. Hall got a camper and covered the rear and side windows with black curtains. He had quick-set mounts in each window and just moved the camera depending on what he saw.

"Once I saw a guy getting a haircut," he said. "We were at a stop sign, so I quickly zoomed in and got a shot of this guy sitting there, staring into space. I'll never forget the actors watching that film. It gave them a sense of the harshness of the lives of the people they were depicting, and it provided a visual storyboard they could emulate."

The opening scene introduces the main character in a seedy hotel room. He is in the foreground, checking the pockets of his jacket. Hall lit the wall in the background, because he wanted the audience to see the fabric of the jacket. He used the camera to explore the room, giving the audience a sense of the environment. Hall had planned to bounce a light off a white card for ambient fill, but at the last moment, he decided to turn the light off and let the latitude of the film pull details out of the shadows. The whole scene takes about a minute, and it told the audience everything they needed to know about the main character without a word of dialog.

John Bailey, ASC observes, "Conrad Hall's work is always unpredictable, edgy and innovative. His lighting is grafted into the body of his films with the skill and delicacy of a great surgeon. He has defined what is best in American cinematography -- subtle but rigorous. His work pushed the envelope of mainstream cinematography and shot off into the deepest artistic space, forever charting new frontiers."

There were times when Hall considered Fat City the film that was nearest and dearest to his heart. It wasn't a success at the box office, and that bothered him. Hall felt that it deserved an audience. For years afterwards, he screened Fat City for film students, and tried to analyze why it didn't attract an audience. He never found the answer.

During the next four years, his credits included such memorable films as Electra Glide in Blue, The Day of the Locust and Marathon Man. The latter two films were both directed by John Schlesinger. Hall and Schlesinger settled on "a gauzy look with golden tones" as kind of a visual metaphor for the hopes and dreams of the characters in The Day of the Locust. Hall collected his fifth Academy award nomination for his effort. "I loved working with John (Schlesinger)," Hall said. "He was very collaborative and had a sense of where he wanted to go and was open about how to get there."

	Hall on Road to Perdition

Marathon Man was Hall's 18th film in 12 years, and it marked a crossroads in his storied career. In 1976, he organized a television commercial production company with his friend Haskell Wexler, ASC. Hall spent the next eleven years shooting and directing hundreds of TV spots, while writing two scripts for films that he planned to direct. One was an original story and the other was based on William Faulkner's novel, The Wild Palms. Schlesinger guessed that Hall stopped shooting to satisfy an appetite for directing. Hall insisted that wasn't accurate. He said he just wanted to experience what it was like to control his own destiny on a film or two from beginning to end.

"In a way, it was the best time of my life, when I was sitting alone at the kitchen table, writing," he said. "It was something I had to do. Photography is a very important part of my life, but at heart I think of myself as a filmmaker."

Hall also said that directing and shooting all those commercials gave him opportunities to experiment and observe other cinematographers at work. He noted that every cinematographer he worked with had his own way of solving problems. Hall directed many spots filmed by George Folsey. He noted that Folsey always used every light available until his gaffer told him there was nothing left. But the complexity of his lighting was never obvious. Folsey lit in little strokes.

Hall said he learned by osmosis, and that all of his experiences were ultimately applied to making his next films. Undoubtedly that was true, but Hall directing commercials was like Bach giving up writing symphonies so he could experiment with country music.

"I met Conrad when he and Haskell Wexler started their commercial company," said Tom Stern. "We did a lot of beer commercials. He was totally committed to what he was doing. Every shot was simple, but it was almost never easy. I was also his gaffer on A Class Action, American Beauty and Road to Perdition. Conrad's lighting was always organic. He felt every shot was equally important and approached each one as if it were a great work of art. Conrad didn't have a cynical bone in his body."

Hall's hiatus from narrative filmmaking ended in 1987, when he shot Black Widow, a lush-looking film directed by Bob Rafelson. Following that effort, Hall was intensely interested in working with writer/ director Robert Towne on Tequila Sunrise. When there was a delay in production, Hall agreed to shoot Scrooged. It was an unhappy experience from day one, and Hall was fired five days into shooting. You read that right. Conrad Hall was fired. In reality, it was like the gods had smiled on him.

Towne was ready for production, and Hall was back on his island in Tahiti "watching the coconuts fall off the trees.' Towne summoned Hall just five days before they were slated to begin shooting. There was no time for preparation or testing.

"I didn't know what he (Towne) was thinking," said Hall, "but I saw Tequila Sunrise as a romantic picture with complex, bigger than life characters. There was a lot of fog and wet streets. It reminded me of the contrast characteristics of the romantic black-and-white films made by old Hollywood."

The colors were lush and deeply saturated, but Hall treated Tequila Sunrise as though it were a black-and white movie with glaringly bright daylight scenes and plush black nights. Hall and Towne agreed that lighting should be low-key and understated. "It was a dialog picture with wonderful lines and beautiful character," Hall stated. 'That's what carried the story. It was our job to make the audience listen."

After studying the rehearsals, Hall opted to use a "quiet" camera with very little movement even on the longest dialogue scenes. He would shoot over someone's shoulder and then draw the audience into close intimate contact with the character's eyes.

In one restaurant scene, Hall simply cut the backs off of practical lampshades and replaced them with diffusion material. He augmented those practical lamps with kisses of soft light flowing through bleached muslin.

"Contrast is what makes photography interesting," he explained, "and there is more than one way to create it. You can flat-light someone and keep the background dark. You can cross-light the cast and keep strong shadows on their faces. You can backlight the cast, and use more somber and gentler light to bring out their skin tones."

Hall used thousands of cubic feet of fog for night exterior scenes, backlighting the characters and modeling their faces with very soft light. He used strong front- or cross-light to create contrast between the actors and background.

There was an incredible exterior scene shot in a park in fading twilight. The characters were on swings. Everyone asked Hall how many nights it took to shoot. The answer was one night. Hall used a trick he learned in commercials. He used portable swings which could be quickly and easily moved so the setting sun was always in the right place. Hall earned his seventh Oscar nomination and first ASC Outstanding Achievement Award for Tequila Sunrise in 1988.

His next entry into the film arena was Class Action, directed by Michael Apted, who has deep roots in documentaries. It was a story about righting old wrongs. Gene Hackman portrayed a lawyer handling a lawsuit against an automobile manufacturer. Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio played his daughter, a corporate attorney for the car company. There are no chases, fights, shootouts or pyrotechnics.

"Some pictures would probably be better off without dialogue," Hall said," but if you lost the soundtrack for Class Action no one would know what was happening. There were no unnecessary camera moves, because that would have distracted the audience. The camera laid back like a distanced observer without drawing attention to any one character. It was like a mystery where we revealed the story one piece at a time."

The following year, Hall shot Jennifer 8, an eloquently simple murder mystery, where the main character is blind. Uma Thurman played the blind person who had no concept of light in her mind. You could hear the audience gasping, or the sense their quiet as they collectively held their breath and strained to followed the movements of characters in the blackness, with only occasional glints of light reflecting off of brighter surfaces. Hall's use of blackness allowed the audience to fill in the gaps in the theater of their own minds.

"Bruce Robinson (the director) received an unsigned letter from someone who said he was a well-known director," Hall related. "He accused Bruce of destroying the picture by allowing the cinematographer - that's me - to make it too dark. I thought the dark images were appropriate for the story - a vision that Bruce and I shared."

In 1993, Hall and writer/director Steve Zaillian collaborated on an extraordinary film, Searching For Bobby Fischer, which explored the inner world of an American boy who was determined to become the greatest chess player in the world.

"Searching for Bobby Fischer was my first film," said Zaillian. "The studio warned me not to hire Conrad. They said he was too old, too crabby and too opinionated. I thought I was expected to have storyboards, but I could see in his face that wasn't the way he wanted to work. He convinced me it is better to trust your instincts. On A Civil Action (his second film with Hall), Conrad read the script once and never looked at it again. He'd come in each morning and ask, what's the point of the next scene He made me think. One day we were shooting a scene around a deposition table where everyone was lying. He came up with this idea of keeping the cameras rolling without ever showing John Travolta (the star) until he finally said one word. Yes. It was finally the truth. You have no idea what raw nerve that took."

Searching for Bobby Fischer had a special place in Hall's heart. "I used a lighting style I called magic naturalism," he said. "The magic consists of stylistic touches to heighten the atmosphere. There is a shot where a young Bobby Fischer and his father are coming down a hallway. There is so much light they seem to be floating. I used 20Ks to blow out the windows at the end of the hallway. Those little things give you a sense of seeing something you never saw before and that's the essence of magic. I used light in both exorbitant and understated ways. I occasionally used so much light that it would blow things out, but other scenes are so dark you are almost struggling to see. Of course, this approach to lighting has to be integrated so it doesn't distract the audience."

No detail was too small for Hall, who occasionally used mirrors to control light. "You can use a small mirror and tape the parts you don't want to use, so you have exact control over its size and shape," he explained.

In one incredible scene filmed in an apartment, the young actor portraying Bobby Fischer is playing chess. Hall used a small mirror to put an edge of light on the tips of certain pieces on the board. He was using soft light on most of the pieces. The mirror light contrasted brilliantly, and it drew the audience to those pieces on the board as those they were seeing the possibilities of a move through Fischer's eyes.

Searching for Bobby Fischer was built on the foundation of intense close-ups and inserts, especially in the beginning of the story. "It's a wonderful way to tell a story about chess," Hall related, "because it is about concentrating attention. The audience has to understand that if the film is going to have any meaning for them. If they are going to empathize with the characters, they have to visualize the process of concentration."

Hall earned another Oscar nomination and his second ASC Outstanding Achievement Award for Searching for Bobby Fischer and an Oscar nomination for A Civil Action in 1998. His last two films were American Beauty and Road to Perdition.

Sam Mendes was initially reluctant to approach Hall about working on a small film with a first-time director who was a migrant from the London stage. "I had admired Conrad from afar," said Mendes. "I met Tom Cruise through one of my plays, and he encouraged me to contract Conrad. The first thing I noticed when we met was the twinkling, mischievous gleam in his eyes. I could see that he was extremely intelligent and artistic, and he was also very opinionated. We hit it off instantly. I was reluctant to show Conrad my storyboards, but he was anxious to see how I saw the story in my mind, and he took it further than I had imagined."

When asked to explain his approach to shooting American Beauty, Hall replied, "There is kind of a beauty in imperfection. It's like music. It's difficult to describe. Sometimes I'll read a review by a music critic and I'll wonder what the heck he is talking about. It is also difficult to articulate the subtleties in cinema, because there aren't words or metaphors to describe many of the emotions you are trying to evoke."

What do you do for an encore after a classic like American Beauty? "Sam and I talked about doing another film together many times after we finished American Beauty," Hall said. "One day Sam called and asked if he could send me a script. He knew how I felt about violence, so Sam told me it was a mafia story, but the violence wasn't gratuitous. The truth is that the story didn't appeal to me as much as American Beauty did when I first read the script. I didn't see an opportunity for humor, but he's a marvelous dramatist, whom I trusted completely."

Hall carefully considered how to make Road to Perdition special. He described a preproduction meeting with Mendes and costume designer Albert Wolsky. Mendes didn't want bright colors. He wanted dark greens, grays, blacks and maybe dark brown. Hall shot tests with hard light smashing down on the fedora hats worn in that period.

"If you light from below it looks unnatural," he said, "so we used chandeliers and other practical sources to motivate top light, and got wonderful shots of slashes of light on faces in the shadows of brims with brightly lit hats."

There was no detail so small that it escaped his attention. "It's not like Citizen Kane, where everything needed to be in sharp focus," he explained. "We shot scenes where both the foreground and background were slightly soft with only one plane where the characters are in sharp focus, so the audience is drawn to them."

Those types of things are transparent to audiences and critics. It's not something they notice seeing, but they feel the emotions and respond to the sense of time and place. Wally Pfister, ASC, observed, "Though I only met him briefly, I had more respect for Conrad Hall than any cameraman I've met. His body of work represents the highest level of artistry that can be achieved in our profession. How wonderful to have left behind a photographic masterpiece like The Road to Perdition as his final work."

George Spiro Dibie, ASC, offered a different insight. "Conrad was so talented that his artistry tends to dominate conversations about him, but filmmaking was just one aspect of his life. Conrad loved his family, his friends and his crew. They were very important to him. He was also a humanitarian who cared deeply about his fellow man and stood behind his beliefs. He was a truly good person who made a difference in the world. During the last months of his life, I went to a small film festival in Ojai, California, because Conrad was being honored. He was gracious and warm and interested in everyone and everything. I will always treasure those precious days with him."

How do you find the right epitaph to sum up the life of Conrad Hall? In his own words, "This isn't a job for me. It never has been. It has always been a way of life. I realize that every picture isn't a work of art. But you still have an awesome responsibility, because you are helping to create something that might influence the thinking of millions of people. Movies are entertainment. They are a diversion from reality. But they can also make a lasting impression about the human condition."

What kept the flame alive for all of those years? Hall answered that question in 1986 in Masters of Light, written by Dennis Schaefer and Leslie Salvato (University of California Press): "I think one of the reasons why people quit is because they are afraid they won't be able to get better and better; they have come to a zenith of some kind. You feel like you have done everything and all that is left to do is just to do it well each time. But you know you haven't done it all, because you know everything keeps evolving and changing; and you know you can evolve with it if you grow and develop as a human being. But the increments are smaller and smaller. I think everyone has that problem whether they are cinematographers or farmers."

(On May 1 the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce will dedicate a star on the Walk of Fame as a tribute to the eternal artistry of Conrad L. Hall, ASC.)