Gregory Crewdson - Sound and Vision - photographer attempts to capture the essence of a motion picture with one photograph - Brief Article

Film Comment, March-April, 2002 by Chris Chang

The lights are set, the camera loaded, the actor prepped and in position. The soundstage is quiet; the crew stands ready. The air feels charged with the communal buzz common to the moment directly preceding the invocation of the word "Action!" But here, at the obscurely located Edgewood Studios in Rutland, Vermont, things are a little different. There isn't going to be any action today--at least not in the normal sense of the word. The studio has been hired by Gregory Crewdson, a New York-based artist with a passion for film and his own strange take on motion pictures. Contrary to appearance, this is not the set of a movie. Everything is in place for the creation of a single photograph.

"Gregory is so meticulous with his work," says Edgewood cofounder Dave Giancola. "In the week it takes him to shoot one frame, I could shoot half a movie. But his one frame would be better than half my movie. Honestly? His one frame would be better than the whole movie." Giancola produces and directs "zero-budget" classics like Lightning: Fire from the Sky, Icebreaker, and the Billy Ray Cyrus vehicle, Radical Jack. And he's the first to admit to the aesthetic implications of his work: "I have fun making killer-spider movies," he says.

For the image on this page, Crewdson contacted actor Dylan Baker, best known for his controversial role in Todd Solondz's Happiness. (All the images in Crewdson's ongoing Twilight series are untitled. To see further examples, go to the artist's gallery at www.luhringaugustine.com) After seeing the photographs, and then "starring" in one himself, Baker was impressed: "Gregory is following a natural progression towards an art form nobody seems to have considered fully. A film director works hard at having each and every frame of the storyboard say exactly what they want to say, but any director would be hard-pressed to work with one frame, having one picture tell a thousand words. Gregory fills his mind, and eventually his frame, with an entire story." But just because Baker thinks he knows the story, it doesn't necessarily follow that the viewer comes away with the same information. "All photographs are unresolved," says Crewdson. "Unlike other narrative forms, a photo is mute and frozen in time. There is no before and no after. The events remain a mystery." Were there any specific subtexts to the Baker image? "His attempt to uncover something beneath the surface is a metaphor for uncovering the anxiety, rage, and fear that exist beneath repressive facades. The light represents that energy." And the light, of course, is absolutely crucial, and highly technical. Rick Sands, a lighting whiz who has worked in the industry for years--Coppola and Spielberg films are among his many credits--is a key contributor to Crewdson's "look." In conversation he'll talk excitedly about the differences in, for example, the "quality of columnated light" that comes out of a "parabolic aluminum reflector raked across a series of underground mirrors" versus "a cherry-picker mounted with a xenon beam." While Sands speaks the language of hardware pragmatism, Crewdson waxes with theoretical intuitiveness: "I'm using light to create a narrative code. Specific strategies are telling specific stories. I'm particularly interested in expressing psychological or interior ideas with light."

For Crewdson, his "family" connection to Spielberg is appropriate. He considers Close Encounters of the Third Kind both a masterpiece and something of a Rosetta stone: "The building of the totemic pile in the living room is not only the most beautiful scene in film history but also the most perfect sculpture of all time. I hope I achieve a similar tension between wonder and dread in my work." Crewdson also relishes the tension on the set and the way in which his vision comes up against a physical reality that must be overcome to bring it to light. "It's a good thing. It's the tension between the need for absolute control in the face of absolute chaos." Would he ever consider shooting a feature? "I'd love to. I'm into the popular and the accessible. So if it ever happens, it's not going to be an art film."