END OF THE RAINBOW -- Award-Winning Short
Reprinted from American Journal of Cinematography, November 1986
by George Turner, associate editor
Anyone who remembers going to a movie theater to see a feature film
of six to 10 reels, a one-reel subject, and assorted trailers-"previews
of coming attractions"--need have no fear of being drafted in the next
national emergency. Today's ticket buys a look at a feature film
accompanied by a trailer or two, a screen ad for the local newspaper, and
some fancy graphics extolling the name of the theater chain. Nowadays
we hear about a short film winning an Oscar or a film festival prize, but
seldom do we get the opportunity to see one.
End of the Rainbow is a delightful exception: a beautifully made,
utterly different 15-minute short that has enjoyed long runs at various
Laemmle theaters followed by a major studio release through Twentieth
Century Fox. It "also ran" at the Academy and wasn't entered at Cannes,
but it won the Silver Hugo (top award for short films) at the Chicago
International Film Festival, the Favorite of the Festival award at the
Bilboa (Spain) festival, the Bronze Dragon and Best Film Score prizes at
the Krakow (Poland) festival, and the top awards of the festivals at
Mannheim, Germany, and Portugal. The Hollywood Reporter called it
"...stunning, soulful...a gleaming and wonderful film."
Rainbow was produced by Marino Colmano, written and directed by
Laszlo Papas, scored by Phil Marshall, choreographed by Paul de Rolf,
designed by Charyl Walters and edited by associate producer Zach Staenberg.
It was photographed by Philippe Rousselot and Colmano, with Steadicam scenes
by Stephen St. John assisted by Paul Edwards. It features jazz saxophonist
Ray Pizzi as a down and out musician in a seedy flat in London.
Pizzi wakes up, goes to the window, looks at the rainy, dreary day,
and goes back to bed. A rainbow showers in through his window. Inspired, he
picks up his sax, goes out onto the balcony, and starts to play "Over the
Rainbow." A crowd gathers and listens. Then he reaches the bridge--and
can't remember the simple melody. As he tries again and again, the crowd
begins heckling him. In despair he flings himself over the rail. As he lies
on the concrete, an ambulance arrives; it's British siren is playing the
bridge notes. He lurches to his feet and starts to play again, this time
superbly. The crowd turns and sees a rainbow above.
Until now the picture has been entirely in black and white, except
for the rainbow. Now the crowd is bathed in color and the street people are
suddenly well dressed and all are carrying musical instruments. We hear a
full orchestral version of the song with appropriate solo riffs and we see
Pizzi, dressed formally, playing at a gala affair. As the song finishes we
see Pizzi face down on the pavement, dead.
The picture was made two years before it was publicly shown. "It
was extremely painful to have to wait for two years before we could see it
in a theater," Colmano said. "I went into the project knowing that we might
never make any money, but my motivation was to make a film that would have
all the feature production values we could pack into it and to have it
distributed on cable and theatrically and win awards.
"Laszlo had the idea 'way back in 1980, then I kicked it around. He
wanted me to produce it and I couldn't find the money at first. He needed a
directing credit and it was his baby to begin with, so I found the money
and got the crew together and produced it. Laszlo had met Rousselot in
Paris and wanted him to photograph it. Philippe could only spend one
weekend here so, knowing he would have little time to get involved here, I
brought my gaffer and key grip to the location and designed the lighting as
I thought it would go, allowing room for modification on Philippe's part,
because I wasn't entirely sure what his style would be. There were a number
of ways to do this, but I chose to use scaffoldings to do the back lighting
using 5Ks. So that was done and the equipment ordered and on standby when
Philippe came in. I asked if there were any changes he wanted, and other
than choosing to put a net he'd brought over the lens, he pretty much went
with the work we had started and seemed happy with it. He shot the first
two-and-a-half days and I shot the remaining two-and-a-half and we wound up
with, literally a 50-50 movie.
"Since we shot the thing completely out of sequence and there were
scenes that had to be intercut, there was a risk that they wouldn't match,"
Colmano recalled. "Our styles are so compatible that there was no
problem--I don't think anyone would notice any difference. I ended up
shooting quite a bit of the opening black and white stuff and inserts
throughout the sequences in color. When I look at it I have a hard time
remembering which of us did what, it was so tightly collaborative. He
seemed to like pumping light through silk and I did, too. It just fell into
place." Colmano emphasized that the picture, despite its fast schedule and
brief running time, was approached in the manner of a feature product.
"We had an Arri IIC and a BLII, a crane and the full complement of
dollies--doorway dollies and regular ones that raise and lower, tracks,
sound equipment. We had 65 people on the crew and a 70 person cast, costume
changes, things being shot out of sequence, and rain effects on standby and
utilized at intervals throughout the production. To do it in the amount of
time we had, to accomplish everything, we had to have enough personnel to
handle it. We had to do it over weekends because that way we could get our
equipment on a one-day rental, which helped with the budget a lot as
opposed to doing it in the middle of the week. I still had to do all the
same production chores that every production has: permits, a million dollar
liability policy, two policemen with motorcycles, firemen, releases from
all the stores that were on the alleyway where we worked, including
Bullock's, The May Company, Pasquini's cafe, a florist shop...We had a
production manager and three assistant directors to help me coordinate all
this stuff. All of them loved the project."
Love, as Colmano pointed out, was the key to success. "I tried to
inspire them to find a personal motivation for doing a project like this.
Obviously, there's no money in it. But if you can believe in it, if you can
learn something from it, or if you need a credit or if you want to meet a
lot of interesting people--whatever your personal motivation may be, I told
them--come prepared to stay through the whole thing. Don't walk away. I had
to talk to every single person with that intention and they did it for
free. I signed contracts with them for deferred payment, but everyone knows
that there will probably never be a chance for recouping an investment on a
picture like this."
One production problem was to make a narrow Los Angeles street
resemble a street in London. "We had signs made that said West Acton and
Queen's Drive, an English taxicab, London buses, an ambulance, a "bobby," a
bicycle, and a red phone booth that we got from Twentieth Century Fox. And
the costuming was a part of it; Hilary Stone, the wardrobe supervisor, did
a wonderful job of it. She had to dress 70 people and she really pulled it
off. We had carts built of scrap lumber; we were working in a warehouse at
the time and we collected a lot of stuff that was being thrown away in
dumpsters, built about a half dozen carts and bought some fresh fruit. In
the alleyway itself there were existing awnings and the mural on the wall,
which added a sort of surrealistic quality. There was the coffee shop and a
flower shop on the other side of the street, so all of it looked European
to begin with. We just augmented that mood. "Instruments were mostly borrowed
from various institutions. We had a grand piano from the May Company which we
stuffed inside the ambulance. We took the legs off, turned it on its side,
crammed it inside for one shot where a guy plays the keys when the doors open
on the ambulance. We had to work on it for two days before we could give it
back."
The rainbow scenes at the opening show splashes of color in a black
and white scene, a striking effect. "Instead of showing some phony optical
in the sky, we created a defraction in the glass," Colmano explained. "It's
his POV of the window and rainbow colored lights come streaming in on
either side of the blinds. When he goes to the window there's a little
defraction on his face. For the black and white portions I used color
negative Eastman 5293, exposed it normally for the most part, and lit
everything knowing it would be black and white. We chose color stock for a
couple of reasons. The lab situation wasn't very conducive to doing 35mm
black and white original negative at the time, and I didn't really have
enough financing to send it back and forth to New York.
"Also, because of the color opticals that dissolve in, we knew
everything would be printed on color stock ultimately. I consciously lit it
with black and white in mind, and there isn't really a tremendous
difference from color technique. Mostly, it's paying attention to having
separation between foreground action and background and keeping in mind
that we're dealing with contrasts as opposed to hues.
"We were using a fairly contrasty lighting scheme to begin with. We
were in an alleyway that was blocking the light on four sides with
six-story walls. What I had essentially was about six hours of fill light
all day, so everything that was shot had to be lit. I created a key source
with 5Ks and nine-lights through silks. It was very directional, pretty
much from one side. On some occasions there was no fill light on the other
side, and when I did use it, it was more in closeups and through silks and
in a three or four to one ratio. The rainbow opticals were made at Cinema
Research by a trial and error process. They tried a few things, and did a
fine job.
"The fantasy sequence became somewhat more lively," Colmano
recalled. "Controlling the mood from one sequence to another was done quite
a lot with the way they were lit. When Ray came out on the balcony at the
beginning, for instance, the rain had stopped and it was nice out. It
wasn't bright sunshine yet, but basically it was a strong directional
lighting. On one side his face was pretty bright, but as he began having a
hard time playing it started to get noticeably darker. Then, at a certain
time, we actually introduced a crack of thunder on the sound track and we
have it darker again. We accomplished this by taking away the little
additional key light, which was outside. I amplified it at the beginning of
the scene by adding a little booster and then turning that off at
appropriate moments and underexposing slightly, then printing it down in
the lab as we went. In the final phase it was all in the timing.
"Contrary to that, in the fantasy sequence we heightened the mood
by pumping up the light a little and overexposing it slightly. By this
point we were into color as well, and the color helped to add that mood
through the fact that we had all the reflectancy of the beautiful outfits
the players were wearing--lots of reds, yellows and greens. In these
sequences there was also a little more fill and more traditional lighting
techniques. In the closeups we were able to add a kicker for a hair light."
Several ideas were considered for the scene in which Pizzi leaps
from the building. "The most obvious thought which occurred to us right
away was to get a stunt man," Colmano recollected. "I hired one who came to
all the meetings and we figured out we'd use an airbag and the whole bit.
Not only was that very expensive, but on the day we were going to do it we
learned that the guy had gotten another job somewhere. We didn't think it was
necessary to show the actual jump, so I suggested that we do a POV of it. We
cut back and forth from him to the crowd below with their reactions, so it
was possible to cut to his reaction actually falling into the crowd.
I took an Arriflex IIC and wrapped it up with tons of gaffer's tape and
rope, put a 16mm lens on it, pulled it up to the balcony and actually
launched it. I had the assistant cameraman put enough tension on the tail
end of it to stop it so it didn't hit the concrete.
"So, we had this very interesting shot and it looked good in the
dailies, but it was one of those things where the idea was better than the
final placement of it in the movie. When we put that kind of motion in
there in the context of the other shots, it didn't work that well--it
called attention to itself more than it should. So we dumped it. What we
did was have him leap out of frame, and then we see the reactions of the
people watching him and gasping as he hits the concrete, their gasps and
the music that's built up at this point is louder than crunching bones or
anything like that, so we didn't have to hear him hit the street or see him
splatter. What we do have is the emotional experience that these people are
going through. Then we cut to him on the street."
At his point Colmano disclosed that the entire sequence of Pizzi
coming to the window, playing his sax and finally realizing that he can't
play the song thorough was done in one long take. "We shot 1,000 feet
non-stop in order to maintain the intensity, even though it's intercut with
the crowd shots." He also described how the climactic "virtuoso" scene was
achieved.
"Everyone's hands are thrown up in the air and we cut back so we're
facing the set concrete. The camera moves across it and we see the
saxophone in the frame and we move on to pick up the man's head in closeup.
We move around the head and back off until we see the entire man and the
saxophone and the street is empty again. The camera raises up until we see
the entire alleyway from above. Then the man in the wheelchair comes in and
reacts and the bobby enters and sees him and runs off to the telephone. We
see Ray alone again, then fade to black.
"The shot was done with a Steadicam, and the Steadicam operator
stepped back onto a crane, which lifted him up to the top of its boom.
Haskell Wexler, ASC, did a similar shot in Bound For Glory, only it was
the reverse; the Steadicam operator came in on the crane and stepped off
into the scene. Ours was probably even more difficult because he had to
move backward."
The music, Colmano pointed out, was integrated carefully with the
images. "It starts in a soulful, jazzy fashion, then goes into a kind of
Roaring Twenties rendition and gets very "pop," then into some guitar riffs
that seem somewhat rock and roll, all blended together in a meaningful way.
"After we finished the rough cut and got to the fine editing stage,
we had Cinema Research make a pan fine grain and a negative of the black
and white section. They A-B rolled it in the printing process."
Since the making of End of the Rainbow, Papas has returned to work
in Paris, Rousselot has received acclaim for his work in the Emerald
Forest, and Colmano has done second unit work on features and has
photographed or directed numerous commercials. He is also involved in
projects with his own company in Los Angeles, Bravo Productions. He is
proudest, perhaps, of End of the Rainbow, which triumphed against the odds.
"What was originally a $130,000 budget on paper came in, through
answer print and seven release prints at $40,000," he said. "I've had
30-second spots that I spent two or three times that amount for."