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Hiro Narita

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fter Honey, Disney re-signed Johnston and Narita to make an even bigger film, The Rocketeer, at a cost of $45 million, considerably more than the then average Hollywood budget of $25 million. Narita was drawn to the project by the story as well as the chance to work with a director he greatly admired. Set in Hollywood of 1938, the film tells the story of an aviator who uses a mysteriously powerful rocket pack to fight evil.

     For The Rocketeer's visual style Narita and Johnston decided to evoke that era by giving the photography a mellow and burnished look. Upon searching for period films from which to draw inspiration, they found that very few films of that period were in color. Narita found help in an unexpected source, a book entitled Reel Art — Great Posters from the Golden Age of the Silver Screen.

     "Although they were all advertising black and white films," Narita told American Cinematographer, "they gave me some ideas about how I could make a color film and still achieve a period look. Based on those posters, I decided to use interesting colors and lighting to capture that wonderful period feel."

     The Rocketeer's sets were far more complex and gigantic than Honey's. "Although we dealt with oversized sets on [Honey], there were really only two: the grass and the attic. While lighting the grass set was quite a challenge because it took an entire stage, there are a number of sets on Rocketeer that are much bigger, and the hugeness of these sets I never encountered before."

     Lighting a set representing the office of billionaire nd adventurer Howard Hughes was a major challenge. The set was built into the back wall of an airplane hangar in San Pedro. The office comprised a quarter of the existing hangar and opened out to the hangar, then to the outside. "I had to deal with an exterior and interior in one shot."

     "We ended up with quite a wide assortment of looks, everything I could experiment with," he says. "We have done every type of photography that one can imagine, except underwater shots." Many of the film's most important scenes, including a shootout, a fly-in and a fire, were shot in a monsterously large set representing the South Sea Club, a meeting place for seduction and danger. The size of the set required Narita to use a computerized lighting board, a far more expensive and complex piece of equipment than the dimmer board that is usually used on large sets. Studios are reluctant to authorize the use of CLBs except to big-name producers and cinematographers.

     Not surprisingly, there were tense moments on the set. One involved the scene in which the Rocketeer rescues a drunken pilot from a crashing plane. Instead of using special effects, the safer course, the scene was shot live.

     "The scene shows the Rocketeer landing on the plane to save the pilot," Narita recalls. "It was shot by the aerial unit using a dummy airplane suspended from a helicopter. The stuntman, doubling for the drunkard pilot, is seen on the top of the flying plane. At one point, he slips. Of course, he had a hidden parachute, but even then... And we had to show the Rocketeer heading toward the plane. The scene was filmed by an aerial camera." It proved to be a heart-stopping sequence off the camera as well as on.

     Despite Narita's high hopes for it, The Rocketeer was a dud, grossing only $80 million worldwide during its first release, less than production cost.

     "It's a strange business," Narita says. "I didn't think Honey would be such a huge hit. I thought No Man's Land would be a big hit, and it wasn't. I've stopped worrying about such things."

     Produced in the mid-80s, No Man's Land, starring Charley Sheen and directed by Peter Werner, is a psychological adventure about an undercover agent who becomes fascinated by the life of a car thief. Much bally-hooed before its release, the film flopped in its opening week. The Rocketeer fared better, running for six weeks in major U.S. cities.

     Another obscurity to which Narita lent his talents was Tim Hunter's Sylvestor. Again, he was drawn into it by the story: an orphaned teenage girl tries to rebuild her life with the help of a stray horse.

     Over the years Narita has also plied his trade in more mercenary fashion by doing additional photography on a number of big films. Additional photography is often carried out on a rush basis after completion of production. Narita's credits for additional photography include work in Return of the Jedi, Zabriskie Point and The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

     Even in the best of circumstances a cinematographer must cope with frustrations. "Most often the cameraman is brought into the film at a very late stage, usually four weeks before the shooting, after all the sets are completed," Narita complains. "By then the usual interpretation is all set — how the film should look, etc., and there is very little room for change."

     Still, much can be done if there is creative rapport among the director, set designer and the cinematographer. "As much as I would like to have an overall concept of the film from the very beginning, my belief is that the film itself, which is a combination of production design, sets, costumes, make-up, slowly creates a style of its own," Narita told American Cinematographer. "I don't want to force strictly my own observations onto the film. It has to be both my response to the project as well as the project inspiring me."

     Narita talks about his documentaries with the same intensity as the big-budget features, but he is unequivocal about his preference for feature films. "You can't put your personal interpretations and tell a dramatic story in a documentary film," he says. But he points out that rare films like Never Cry Wolf contain elements of both forms.

     Narita's TV credits include Go Tell It on the Mountain, Blue Yonder and the expensive miniseries Amerika. But that's one form he'd just as soon stay away from despite handsome fees and relatively brief shooting schedules. A telefilm is shot in only four or five weeks while a feature could take six months. The haste with which TV films are made often "makes it impossible to work on a lot of scenes."

     "Television movies have a small format," he says, "and by habit, TV directors want either closeups or medium shots. The camera angles are limited." Even worse, the colors that a cinematographer chooses may not be the colors that end up on the screen; final control of colors goes to technicians who control signal transmission. "It always seems that I try my best [in television films] and in the end, it doesn't look right. Amerika is an example of where the colors changed. I was sick for three to four days after I saw the telecast. I couldn't recognize my work. And somehow on TV the sunset scenes end up looking like late afternoon scenes."

     Surprisingly, he enjoys commercials. "The change is refreshing, and I feel quite at home with shooting commercials," he says. Someone of his stature could find them to be lucrative for a few days of intense work.

     Big-time success hadn't made Narita forget his roots. This spring he worked with director Donnel Richee to film Island Sea about changing lifestyles in southern Japan. He also regularly visits a sister who lives in Japan.

     "Many young and aspiring film-makers go through long drawn programs," Narita reflects. "They try to follow other filmmakers. They are able to recite camera angles. But they forget that inspiration is most important."

     "I learned English as a second language, and spoke mainly Japanese," Narita says by way of illustration. "The English language seemed too structured. Then I read the works of Samuel Beckett. They opened my psyche, and suddenly speaking English was not difficult any more. The boundaries had vanished."

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Hiro Narita confers on a shooting decision on Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (Walt Disney Pictures, 1989)

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