April / 2009

From Clown White to Eleventh Hour:
An Interview with Rene Ohashi csc, asc

by Wyndham Wise

Rene Ohashi csc, asc

Canadian Cinematographer spoke to Rene Ohashi csc, asc shortly after he returned from Los Angeles where he was shooting the CBS network series Eleventh Hour. Starring Rufus Sewell and Marley Shelton, the series takes its premise from the 2006 British miniseries of the same name starring Patrick Stewart. The premise is based on a special science advisor to the FBI, Sewell, who is brought in to investigate scientific crimes, as a last line of defense.

RO: I was shooting in Los Angeles for about five months on Eleventh Hour, which is a Jerry Bruckheimer production, with Warner Bros. and CBS. Some of the scripts were adapted from the original series and they created more episodes. I alternated as DOP with David Stockton, who shot the pilot. He shot one while I prepped the next one. I was contracted to work on the first 12, and because we were alternating, I shot six. A long time ago [1990] I did 14 episodes of The Wonder Years in Los Angeles.

WW: What was the experience of shooting down there like for you?

RO: The budget on the show was quite high, approximately $3 million per episode. Two years ago, I had also done five episodes of Kidnapped in New York City, and each of those was also about $3 million. The budgets are reflective of U.S. prime-time network programming. On Kidnapped we had an incredible cast - Jeremy Sisto (who is currently in Law & Order), Delroy Lindo, Timothy Hutton, Dana Delany - and had critical acclaim when it first aired, but it never did the numbers. They only aired four episodes, and the rest ended up on the DVD release. With Bruckheimer producing "Eleventh Hour," the budget for promotion is in another league altogether, and it has a good time slot, coming right after CSI. I think CSI draws 18 million viewers, and we were drawing 11 million on a per episode average in the U.S..

It was great being on the Warner Bros.' lot. The whole facility is unbelievable. There are some 40 sound stages, and every big series you can name is being shot there. It's so different to be shooting in that kind of environment, and every sound stage has a list of the movies since the 1930s that had been made in there. It's like walking through movie history. Our offices were at the Warner Bros.' ranch, which is about two miles north of the main lot. I had five stages to work with, because Eleventh Hour has no standing set.

WW: Last year you did an interview with Kodak's OnFilm (www.kodak.com/go/onfilm), so for the purpose of this interview I would like to concentrate on your films. Your first television movie was Clown White (1980), is that correct?

RO: That's right, starring Saul Rubinek and directed by Paul Shapiro. I was really young, and I had just come out of film school at York. There were very few dramatic films being directed by independents at that point. It was either you worked for the CBC, the NFB or nothing. But York was creating a whole new generation of filmmakers. I was interviewed by Paul Shapiro and Martin Harbury [producer] and was subsequently asked to be the DP on Clown White. I had the pleasure of working with Saul Rubinek and much later I would shoot a film with him as director, Clubland [2001]. He's a very intelligent filmmaker and I love working with him. I also shot the series Men for ABC, in which he starred in as well.

WW: Your early documentaries include Prisoners of Debt: Inside the Global Banking Crisis (1982) directed by Peter Raymont, Gongga Shan: White Peaks beyond the Clouds (1982), which was shot in Tibet, Rumours of Glory (1983), the Bruce Cockburn concert film, Kodo: Heartbeat Drummers of Japan (1984), directed by Jacques Hollander, which was shot in Japan, and Neon: An Electric Memoir (1984), which was directed by Rudy Buttignol. This is an exceptionally good group of filmmakers, an alternative documentary scene, if you will.

RO: Rudy was at York, one year ahead of me, and I knew him quite well, so when he formed his own production company, I shot a number of his early industrial films. I got to know Peter Raymont, Barry Greenwald and Jacques Hollander. It was the beginning of an independent scene that developed in Toronto during the 1980s that was an alternative to the CBC, which just dominated everything. It was new blood. Actually, I was only a cameraman on the Cockburn film, Rumours of Glory. Martin Lavut directed and Vic Sarin [csc] was the DP. Bruce had done some of the music for Clown White. The Kodo film came about because it was being produced by Rhombus Media, and the three partners at Rhombus - Niv Fichman, Larry Weinstein, Barbara Willis-Sweete - had all come from the York program, and I believe they had recommended Jacques use me. The film was a combination of a concert film, and we went to their retreat on remote Sado Island in the Sea of Japan. We were there for about two weeks as they got ready for their tour. That was very interesting experience to see Japan even before my parents got to see it, and somewhat surreal being there as a Japanese-Canadian. The people there would speak Japanese to me and couldn't understand why I couldn't speak Japanese. During this time I also worked on and off on Ron Mann's Poetry in Motion, which was shot over several years.

WW: You made a big step into drama with Anne of Green Gables in 1985, which is still the highest-ranking English-Canadian television drama, with a viewing audience of five million when first broadcast.

RO: I had started shooting episodic television, such as The Edison Twins, then I was given the opportunity to shoot Anne. It had a great cast with Colleen Dewhurst, Megan Follows and Richard Farnsworth, and a great story. We all knew it was something special. There was a scene I recall where Colleen and Megan completed a scene, the whole crew stood around and clapped. It was the first time I had experienced that on set. It was perfection, and it emotionally moved everyone. The film was almost entirely shot in Ontario; however, we did a week's worth of key location shooting in Prince Edward Island for which we were unable to find a convincing match and to enhance the visuals.

WW: You received your first Gemini Award for Anne, for best photography in a dramatic program.

RO: That was the first year for the Geminis, so it was an honour to win.

WW: In 1987 you received two Geminis, one for The Truth about Alex for drama, and another for a performing arts program for A Moving Picture, which was choreographed by Anne Ditchburn.

RO: The Truth about Alex was with Paul Shapiro directing again. I worked a lot with him in those days. I was one of three DPs on the Ditchburn film. I worked on several Rhombus productions, including Masterclass with Menuhin, which won the Gemini Award for best arts programming in 1987.

WW: Was Lewis Furey's Shadow Dancing (1988) your first feature?

RO: No, I shot Blindside with Harvey Keitel in 1985. Chris Plummer was amazing to work with in Shadow Dancing. I mean, what a pro. It was so nice to work with someone who understood the camera. He was good with his marks, he knew how to play to the camera and he understood what it meant. He was always conscientious about what the framing was. He's a real talent who understood the medium. He would ask what lens I was using, and he would adjust his performance. You could see the difference in his close up performance and the wide shot. They could be quite different. I ended up working with him again on The Arrow.

Millennium (1989). "I wasn't used to crews of that size, but I got to do some pretty interesting things. I used three cranes and had my grips build 70-foot platforms that moved vertically with chain motors," Rene Ohashi csc, asc.

WW: You shot Millennium, which was released in 1989, with Kris Kristofferson and Cheryl Ladd and directed by Michael Anderson. It was a huge budget for a Canadian film. You won the CSC Award for it, also for Shadow Dancing, but the two films are worlds apart.

RO: I wasn't used to crews of that size, but I got to do some pretty interesting things. A lot of the picture was shot in a factory on Industry Road. The main set was just gigantic, probably 80 feet wide and 120 feet long and 80 feet high. They had these huge cranes that traveled the length of the building, and we used it as part of the lighting set up. I used three cranes and had my grips build 70-foot platforms that moved vertically with chain motors, so I could put my back lights on them; as well I had installed chain motored battons along the entire length of the space, with a total of 60 space lights that provided my ambient fill. It was production of many producers, and it was very hard to work on because it was like trying to satisfy the needs of a committee.

WW: Then you shot La Florida (1993), which was a major hit in Quebec and a Golden Reel Award winner, and Anne Wheeler's Diviners for television in the same year.

RO: La Florida had a great cast with Rémy Girard, Marie-Josée Croze and Margot Kidder. It was interesting to work on a bilingual production where I didn't totally understand what they were saying, but I got the gist of it. Michael Sarrazin was also in it, and his brother, Pierre produced it. I shot two movies for Anne Wheeler. I did The Diviners first, then a year later I shot The War between Us, which was about the Japanese internment camps during the Second World War. I loved working with Anne. She knows her craft and, is a pleasure to work with. She works well with actors, and knows how to draw out a performance. She understands everything about the filmmaking process.

WW: Four years later you shot The Arrow (1997), about the building and dismantling of the famous Canadian jet fighter, the Avro Arrow. It is the only television dramas to feature Ottawa native Dan Aykroyd, and you won a Gemini and a CSC Award for your work on that film.

RO: That was a tough film to get made. It was slated to be shot as a feature but the producers couldn't raise the financing, so it became a television movie but still trying to maintain the integrity of the original script. I remember Mary Leckie sending the script to Industrial Light and Magic to get an idea of the cost of all the special effects. This was just the beginning of the CGI revolution, and the quote she got back was more than the budget of the entire movie. Someone was building a full-scale replica of the plane. The framework was already built, and Tim Bider, who was the production designer, ended up finishing it. They covered the frame with plywood, and this was used for the roll out scene. The plywood turned out to be too heavy for the skeleton frame and the wings ended up drooping. They were almost touching the ground, so we had to fix it with CGI. Once we had the one mocked up, we cloned five others for a wide shot in a hanger, which was shot in Winnipeg. We used some CGI, but mostly it was shot old school. For some of the flying sequences, we used radio-controlled planes.

WW: You won an ASC Award for The Crossing in 2001. Tell me, what was that about?

RO: It's about the American Revolutionary War with Jeff Daniels as George Washington. Another great American story shot in Canada. We shot in and around Toronto for the most part, and in the Black Creek Pioneer Village, which is just outside Toronto. It was the first time I worked with Robert Harmon, the director. We shot it as a 90-minute feature in 21 days. It was a very tight shoot, and because it was a period piece and there was a need for a lot of costumes, the producers were bringing stuff over from England. Period pictures are very expensive to make, so we had to do a lot of CGI cloning.

WW: Did you go down to Los Angeles to receive the ASC Award?

RO: Yes I did, and that was phenomenal. I couldn't believe it, mainly because I didn't think I had a chance because I was up against the miniseries Dune and one of my hero cinematographers Vittorio Storaro [The Last Emperor, Dick Tracy]. Storaro was actually present receiving a Lifetime Achievement ASC Award and naturally I assumed he would win for Dune. Well, I couldn't believe it when I heard my name. It seemed like the whole audience gasped as they were probably expecting what I was expecting. Afterwards Vittorio, was so gracious and said to me "now we both have one."

WW: Actually, you were nominated again by the ASC a year later for "Don Giovanni Unmasked," which was part of the Great Performances series for PBS, and you won another Gemini Award.

RO: That was directed by Barbara Willis Sweete, one of my old friends from York. So it was nice to reconnect after all those years. She is a very good visual director, which is one of the reasons I wanted to work with her again. I had seen a number of her films, and they were always interesting visually, so we worked together on the look of the film and it was a great collaboration.

Rene Ohashi csc, asc (on the far left) with his crew and director Robert Harmon (far right) on the set of Jesse Stone: Thin Ice shooting some of the exteriors in Vancouver.

WW: To date you have made six movies with Robert Harmon, The Crossing, They, Highwaymen and three of the Jesse Stone television movies.

RO: He lives in Los Angeles, and we first worked together on The Crossing. We connected again down at the ASC Awards, and he told me he had a feature in the works, They, and he wanted me to do it. That was a pretty good experience, because we shot it in Vancouver and we had almost 10 weeks to shoot. The budget was $13 million, and because a lot of the locations in Vancouver have been overused and access had got so restricted, we decided to build in studio instead where we could employ even more visual control. We shot 90 per cent of the film on stage. For instance, there is a culminating subway sequence, and we built some 300 feet of track and a whole subway train. I loved working on that film, and sometimes you just hit it off with a director. You are in sync with ideas; you like the same things. Robert and I have the same visual sensibility and everything just clicked.

WW: It became known as Wes Craven Presents: They when it was released.

RO: Initially Wes had nothing to do with the movie. But Americans know how to package and sell movies. There is this whole other machine set up for promotion, and in fact I think they spent the equivalent of the budget of the movie launching it. And they got their money back in two weeks. It would be unheard of for a Canadian movie to spend the budget of the movie promoting it.

WW: Then you began working on the Jesse Stone series, starring Tom Selleck.

RO: We shot all three, Stone Cold and Sea Change and Thin Ice in Halifax and Lunenburg, [for the making of Thin Ice, see CSC News, March 2008]. They just finished shooting a sixth one, which I couldn't do because I was on Eleventh Hour. Thin Ice airs March 1. The series has a filmic look. We shot them on super16 mm and transferred to HD. Actually, I like the theatrical look I was able to achieve by shooting film. Tom Selleck spent a lot of time developing the character of Jesse Stone and he has a huge fan base. The numbers have been strong for the films, and actually it is one of the very few remaining television movies being shot. There is a lot of series work, and the occasional pilot, but no one seems to be making television movies anymore.

Anne of Green Gables, starring Megan Follows and Richard Farnsworth.

WW: You have worked in documentaries, episodic television and drama. Which do you prefer and why?

Tom Selleck with director Richard Harmon on the set of Jesse Stone: Thin Ice.

RO: I prefer dramatic films the most. As you get to understand cinematic language, it's being able to exercise the preciseness of what you can accomplish in the craft because of all the tools you can use. It is far more satisfying if you can control the visuals and actually accomplish what you set out to do in a unique manner. In documentaries it is just so different because it is free-form shooting and trying to find the story as it's being shot; whereas in dramatic films, it's about telling the story with heightened realism, telling a kind of truth where truth becomes reality, and hopefully the viewer will be enlightened and engaged.

Rene Ohashi csc, asc receiving his 2007 Gemini Award

Rene Ohashi AWARDS
Canadian Society of Cinematographers
2007 Best Cinematography in TV Series for Kidnapped
2006 Best Cinematography in TV Drama for Stone Cold
2003 Best Cinematography in Theatrical Feature for Wes Craven Presents: They
2002 Best Cinematography in TV Drama for Clubland
1998 Best Cinematography in a Commercial for Sun Life
1997 Kodak New Century Award for Lifetime Achievement
1997 Best Cinematography in TV Drama for The Arrow
1993 Best Cinematography in a Commercial for Buick Regal
1993 Best Cinematography in TV Drama for Sound and the Silence
1990 Best Cinematography in Theatrical Feature for Millennium
1989 Best Cinematography in Theatrical Feature for Shadow Dancing
1986 Best Cinematography in a Music Video for We Run

American Society of Cinematographers
2001 Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography in Movies of the Week/Miniseries/Pilot for cable or pay TV for The Crossing

Gemini Awards
2007 Best Photography in a Dramatic Program or Series for Shades of Black: The Conrad Black Story
2004 Best Photography in a Dramatic Program or Series for Shattered City: The Halifax Explosion
2001 Best Photography in a Comedy, Variety or Performing Arts Program or Series for Great Performances "Don Giovanni Unmasked"
1998 Best Photography in a Dramatic Program or Series for The Arrow
1995 Best Photography in a Dramatic Program or Series for Race to Freedom: The Underground Railroad
1994 Best Photography in a Dramatic Program or Series for The Diviners
1993 Best Photography in a Dramatic Program or Series for Alexander Graham Bell: The Sound and the Silence
1988 Best Photography in a Comedy, Variety, Performing Arts Program or Series for Masterclass with Menuhin
1987 Best Photography in a Comedy, Variety, Performing Arts Program or Series for A Moving Picture (shared)
1987 Best Photography in a Dramatic Program or Series for The Truth about Alex
1986 Best Photography in a Dramatic Program or Series for Anne of Green Gables

Selected Filmography:
Clown White, 1980 (TV); Prisoners of Debt: Inside the Global Banking Crisis, 1982 (co-ph); Gongga Shan: White Peaks beyond the Clouds, 1982 (TV); Rumors of Glory, 1983 (co-ph, TV); Kodo: Heartbeat Drummers of Japan, 1984; Listen to the City, 1984; The Edison Twins, 1983-84; Neon: An Electric Memoir, 1984 (co-ph); Anne of Green Gables, 1985 (TV); Philip Marlowe, Private Eye, 1985-86; Blindside, 1986; The Truth about Alex, 1986 (TV); A Moving Picture, 1987 (co-ph, TV); Lawrenceville Stories: The Prodigious Hickey, 1987 (TV); Masterclass with Menuhin, 1987 (TV); Lawrenceville Stories: The Return of Hickey, 1988 (TV); Almost Grown, 1988 (TV); Shadow Dancing, 1988; Lawrenceville Stories: The Beginning of the Firm, 1989 (TV); Millennium, 1989; Where the Spirit Lives, 1989; "Men" (1989); Deep Sleep, 1990; Pray for Me, Paul Henderson, 1990 (TV); The Wonder Years, 1990-91; Alexander Graham Bell: The Sound and the Silence, 1992 (TV); La Florida, 1993; The Diviners, 1993 (TV); Race to Freedom: The Underground Railroad, 1994 (TV); The War Between Us, 1994; Kissinger and Nixon, 1995 (TV); The Arrow, 1997 (TV); Jerzy Has a Dream, 1998; Water Damage, 1999; The Crossing, 2000 (TV); Great Performances "Don Giovanni Unmasked," 2001; Clubland, 2001 (TV); Wes Craven Presents: They, 2002; Highwaymen, 2002; Shattered City: The Halifax Explosion, 2003 (TV); Saint Ralph, 2005; Jesse Stone: Stone Cold, 2005 (TV); Shades of Black: The Conrad Black Story, 2006 (TV); Kidnapped, 2006; Jesse Stone: Sea Change, 2007 (TV); Eleventh Hour, 2008-09; Jesse Stone: Thin Ice, 2009 (TV).

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