Empire of Light (10 page)

One Christmas, a nun at the orphanage who had grown concerned about how incredibly withdrawn the boy had become, gave the boy a present that would change his life. It was a used No. 1 Kodak Brownie camera. It was made of cardboard, weighed about 8 ounces and cost a single dollar when purchased four years earlier. To her surprise, the kid took to photography like a duck to water. From that Christmas morning to the day he died, not a day went by that he did not expose film to light.

That’s a true story.

That boy grew up to become a damn good cinematographer. He was fast, efficient, and always delivered a good negative. He was a technical genius who built his own lenses, and he never ever used a light meter. The ol’ boy lit entirely by eye and always nailed the exposure like a hammer. And he was as kind as he was in the know. By the time he hit his forties, he was in demand as one of Hollywood’s most popular cameramen. Everybody loved the Cinematagrapher.

Unfortunately, the Cinematographer’s technical genius overshadowed his artistry and he was never allowed to shoot the masterpiece he craved. He was relegated to B-Movie gangster and science fiction films, with tight schedules and little money. With these limitations, the Cinematographer could only show flashes of his brilliance in one or maybe two scenes in a single movie, if he were lucky.

Yet the kids at his old orphanage loved him and all of his movies. Whenever the Cinematographer finished a film he would treat the kids to a screening, complete with popcorn and an iced bottle of coke. Aftwards, he would escort the kids back home where they listened to the radio while he taught them how to fashion pinhole cameras out of Quaker Oatmeal boxes.

On his fortieth birthday, the children returned the love with a present, a Brownie camera. It was a used 1930 Number 2 Beau Brownie Camera. Produced by the Eastman Kodak Company, Rochester, New York. It cost about four dollars and twenty-five cents when it was brand new, some ten years earlier. The Cinematographer owned far more expensive and professional equipment, yet there was not a camera on this planet he loved more.

By the time he reached the ripe old age of seventy-one, he had photographed hundreds of films, but he had never had a chance to create the masterpiece he knew was in him. In the end, after a very long and busy career, he finally gave up and decided to retire. The old Cinematographer would pack up a few possessions, including his precious vintage Brownie camera, and move to a rest home to live out the remainder of his years in peace. However, what the old Cinematographer didn’t know was that as the 1970s rolled around, he had obtained a cult following with the new generation of young filmmakers, maverick directors who lived outside the confines of Hollywood.

They had watched his films and took note of the constant glimmer of greatness in his work. The young filmmakers had critiqued and re-examined his films and declared that the old cameraman’s career was, in fact, riddled with unsung works of genius. The problem was that nobody could find the old cameraman to tell him of his newfound fame.

That is, until one day, a young whiz kid of a filmmaker had managed to track him down and he gave the Cinematographer the gift he had always craved. The maverick asked him to come out of retirement to photograph what could be a masterpiece of cinematography, a film shot entirely at Magic Hour.

Magic Hour is that fleeting moment after the sun has already set. It’s when the sun can no longer be seen, yet it’s rays still illuminate the sky. And because the sun is so low on the horizon, its rays have to pass through more of our atmosphere than normal, making them softer and warmer.

But the Cinematographer also had a theory about why this light was so full of magic. He surmised that the light also had more time to pass through all of the prayers, hopes and dreams that were sent to heaven from good people down on Earth. It was this ethereal contact that transformed the light rays into a magic light, one that can make almost anything that it falls upon glow like Christmas morning.

Now, Magic Hour,appears at the very end of the day, lasting longer as you get closer to the North Pole..So the production team decided to set up shop in the tall wheat fields of Canada where they could take advantage of the longer period of the enchanted light. But only shooting ninety minutes a day meant it would take years to finish the film. The folks back in Hollywood thought that everybody involved with the production was crazy, but as it turned out, the exact opposite was true.

Since the crew had to wait until close to the end of the day to begin photography, and even then the shooting only lasted an hour and a half at best, the crew had plenty of time to reflect and get to know each other with long conversations about their hopes, dreams, disappointments and pleasures. People got married. People had babies. Some got divorced and some buried loved ones. They were there for each other through it all, and slowly, they actually began to care for each other.

The ol’ man realized something quite special. The gift the director had given him was not a chance to shoot a masterpiece. The gift he was given was the chance to feel the warmth of kin. At long last, at the end of his career and near the end of his life, the orphan boy was finally given a family.

The Cinematographer had never been so happy in all his years, and not a morning passed that he didn’t wake up and thank God for his new life.

And that’s a true story.

Then one day, as often happens on production, something went wrong. The Cinematographer’s long-time assistant began to notice that the film was being slightly over exposed. At first it was by only a quarter of a stop, but soon after it became a half stop and then finally, after a scant two weeks, the film was over exposed by one full stop. This was not like his boss at all, the ol’ man who lit by eye and always perfectly exposed his negative.

The assistant believed the problem had to be with the equipment. So he tested the camera, the lenses and the magazines. Everything checked out fine. The assistant’s last hope was that maybe the laboratory that processed the film had made a mistake, but they checked out fine, as well. Tragically, this meant that the problem had to lie within his mentor and old friend.

He drove his boss to the hospital where the Cinematographer discovered that he was slowly going blind. Within the year, he would be without sight.

The old man tried to press on with filming, but he struggled, and his assistant had to take on more and more responsibilities until the inevitable happened. The Cinematographer had to relinquish his Director of Photography chair to the assistant. After borrowing a few high-powered lights, the Cinematographer left the production set, and he would never return.

He didn’t go back to Los Angeles or retire down to Florida. He stayed in the production village, with his new family, and he began working on a very secret project. The crew would constantly press him for clues, but the cinematographer always smiled mischievously and kept mum. The old man had converted his ’63 Dodge Travco into a top secret lab, and only he had clearence to enter. That is, until one moonless night, when he finally invited his assistant into the motor home.

Stepping into the trailer from the complete darkness of night, the assistant was temporarily blinded. The intensity of the work lights blazed like small suns, to make up for the Cinematographer’s diminishing sight.

He then told his trusted assistant that for years he had been secretly working with a very rare and very special gas, which, when frozen, became a special medium that would allow light to enter it, but not be absorbed. It would literally stop light in its tracks and place it into a suspended animation where it would burn forever.

The old Cinematographer had figured out how to capture light in a bottle.

The assistant was fascinated, and the two decided that during the assistant’s free time that they would travel across the land to capture specimens of the most beautiful light they could find.

They captured the light from the blast of a magician’s explosion, reflected off the faces of children at a birthday party.

They captured the moonlight bouncing off the blue eyes of a Border Collie, keeping watch over his master’s heard.

They captured the pop of flashbulbs, illuminating newlyweds after an evening ceremony in the country.

They captured the light from a jar of fireflies, caught by two best friends during a warm summer night.

They captured the explosion of fireworks, which lit up the town square, in a small American town on the 4th of July.

They captured the spooky light of an old street lamp, illuminating dozens of trick-or-treaters on Halloween night.

They captured Christmas lights on Main Street, during a late November dusting of snow.

They captured the light of a fireplace, warming a mother and her son, after an afternoon of building his first snowman.

But the two hunters of light saved the best for last. The final light captured would be of their own village, their family of production folk back in the Canadian field.

After the film had wrapped and before everybody left the village to go back to their homes, the Cinematographer and his apprentice gathered them all together to take the crew picture with a traditional still camera.

They collected in the middle of the wheat field where the stalks danced in the evening breeze. The apprentice set the timer and then quickly skipped into frame to join the picture.

Click!

Then the Cinematographer and his assistant had a surprise for the crew. They finally unveiled their light capture machine to the amazement of all.

“I know you are all anxious to get home to your families and your homes,” said the Cinematographer, “but if you wouldn’t mind, could you stick around for a few minutes more so that I can capture the light of Magic Hour as it bounces off all your faces, you, the only family I’ve ever known? After which, you may go with my very best wishes for a happy and blessed life.”

The tight-knit crew huddled together again in the wheat field just as the Magic Hour light arrived. The light swept across the golden Canadian landscape and enveloped their faces. It filled the wrinkles of age and made them look years younger. It lightened the circles under their eyes and made them seem more alive. It placed a glint in their eyes and made them seem more enchanted with the moment.

And it was this magic light that was reflected back to the Cinematographer’s machine where it was trapped in a small bottle, crafted of charmed smoke and glass.

And with that, it was over. There was nothing left but handshakes, hugs and goodbyes. The crew climbed into their cars and trucks and caravanned to the airport, caught a plane and flew back to the “reality” of Hollywood, leaving the ol’ man in his motor home, alone once again.

But one member of the crew could not bear to leave him alone in that Canadian field. The assistant. The assistant wanted to spend some more time with his boss, his old friend, for a little while longer.

He asked the Cinematographer where he might go next. After all, there was still plenty of gorgeous light to be captured in the world before his sight completely went away.

“There is no place else to go,” the Cinematographer said sadly. “I just used up the last of the light capture gas on the family portrait. There is no more. It’s all over.”

The Cinematographer had one more trick up his sleeve, however. The apprentice noticed that all of the bottles had been rigged to release all of their light, all at once. He also noticed that the bottles were attached to a new amplifier, so that the light could be boosted to an almost unimaginable level of intensity.

The Cinematographer didn’t know for certain what effect the amplified light would have on his weak eyes, but he had a pretty good idea that the release would probably be the last thing he would ever see on Earth.

He couldn’t think of a better vision before blackness.

After the apprentice nervously helped his mentor set the timer, the ol’ man asked him to leave the motor home, but first he gave his old assistant a gift, the vintage 1930 Brownie camera gifted to him by his old orphanage.

He asked the assistant to go outside and stand a safe distance from the vehicle, and at the exact moment the magic light was released, to take a picture with the Brownie Camera.

The assistant always did as his mentor asked, so after an earnest handshake, the assistant left the trailer and walked deep into the wheat field, leaving the Cinematographer alone.

He had synchronized his watch to the cinematographer’s timer so that he would know the very moment the light would be released.

5, 4, 3, 2…

Click!

A soft explosion of light streamed quickly from ground zero, pouring through the windows, cracks and the undercarriage of the motor home like the very fingers of God.

The light shrouded the assistant, lifted him into the air and rocked him gently like a baby before resting him back on the ground. The assistant felt as if all the joy that had ever been experienced by man had just passed through his body. It tingled his skin and made his hair stand up straight. He dropped to his knees, where he was hidden by the tall wheat, and cried like a newborn baby deep into the night.

When morning arrived, he had finally recovered from the blast. He stood weakly, gazed in the direction of the motor home and discovered that it and all the contents, including the Cinematographer, had mysteriously disappeared. He was gone without a trace.