Speeding ahead.
By Tom Soter
In describing the work of director/cameraman Eric Saarinen, the phrase that most often crops up is "visually striking." Saarinen, a founding partner of Plum Productions, Santa Monica, has captured images of people "driving" lions, elephants, and giraffes through a busy street, and of an automobile creating massive sand dunes in a desert landscape. The wildlife traffic jam of "Animals," an international :60 for Fiat via Leo Burnett, Milan, won a first place Mobius Award for direction and production in ’99, while the desert-set "Drifts" for Chevy Tahoe out of Campbell-Ewald Advertising, Warren, Mich., took several ’98 Mobius and New York Festival awards for production, cinematography, and camera work.
"I’m fascinated with the image," says Saarinen, who has directed several more Chevy ads, including "Lighthouse" and "Lifeboat" for Chevy Blazer, again via Campbell-Ewald. "If you’re at a certain place and a certain time and you take a picture, there is some kind of permanence about that; you’re memorializing the moment in a way no one else can do it. I’m half-blind, which they didn’t find out until I was eight years old. Since my eyes were screwed up, I studied a lot of tricks of depth to compensate for that. I think it gives me an unusual vision."
Saarinen’s visual dexterity comes through in "Lighthouse." The spot opens on a foggy shoreline and a lighthouse. A foghorn sounds, and light sweeps across the water. As the camera moves in on the lighthouse, the punchline becomes apparent: Rather than a bulb, the lighthouse’s warning light is actually the headlights of a Chevy Blazer. The spot unfolds without dialogue, except for the voiceover at the end: "Chevy. A little security in an insecure world."
Artistic Genes
Saarinen, 57, inherited his artistic sensibilities from his mother, the sculptress Lily Saarinen, and his father, Eero Saarinen, an architect. His father’s prominence in his field drove the younger Saarinen into the film world. "My dad was a famous architect," says Saarinen, "so I felt that I had to do something close to [the arts]. But I didn’t want to directly compete with him. Still, in a way, I was always competing with my dad. I wanted to do something that he didn’t do. It was exacerbated because everyone was sort of bowing down to him. He was a great man."
That sense of competition pushed Saarinen to create as much as possible—"overachieving," he says—in a variety of areas. As an undergraduate at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vt., Saarinen studied painting and graphic design. He later earned a master’s degree of fine arts from UCLA’s film production program.
Saarinen’s first professional jobs were for low-budget producer Roger Corman, who was mentor to both George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola. Among Saarinen’s more colorful credits were: second-unit camera work on Corman’s Death Race 2000, and serving as cinematographer for The Hills Have Eyes, one of horror-meister Wes Craven’s earliest films. (Craven is currently repped for commercials through bicoastal The Industry.)
Saarinen has since shot over a dozen feature films, including Albert Brooks’ Lost In America, Real Life and Modern Romance. He worked on documentaries such as the Academy Award-nominated short Exploratorium, and a film about artists Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenburg and Andy Warhol for the Los Angeles County Museum. Saarinen also did camera work on the Rolling Stones’ concert film Gimme Shelter, the TV series The Underwater World of Jacques Cousteau, and several National Geographic specials.
In ’81, Saarinen circumnavigated the globe two and a half times in 13 months to shoot Symbiosis, a 16-minute, 65mm film for Walt Disney World’s Epcot Center, Orlando, Fla.
Through those assignments, Saarinen learned to search for the perfect visual. "I do my own camera work," he says. "Since I do a fair amount of scenics, I need someone
Judge Upholds Dismissal Of Involuntary Manslaughter Charge Against Alec Baldwin In “Rust” Shooting
A New Mexico judge has upheld her decision to dismiss an involuntary manslaughter charge against Alec Baldwin in the fatal shooting of a cinematographer on the set of a Western movie.
In a ruling Thursday, state District Court Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer stood by her July decision to dismiss an involuntary manslaughter charge against Baldwin. She said prosecutors did not raise any factual or legal arguments that would justify reversing her decision.
"Because the state's amended motion raises arguments previously made, and arguments that the state elected not to raise earlier, the court does not find the amended motion well taken," the judge wrote, adding that the request was also untimely.
A spokesperson for Baldwin's lawyers said Friday that they had no immediate reaction to teh decision.
The case was thrown out halfway through trial on allegations that police and prosecutors withheld evidence from the defense in the 2021 death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of the film "Rust."
Baldwin's trial was upended by revelations that ammunition was brought into the Santa Fe County sheriff's office in March by a man who said it could be related to Hutchins' killing. Prosecutors said they deemed the ammo unrelated and unimportant, while Baldwin's lawyers say investigators "buried" the evidence in a separate case file and filed a successful motion to dismiss.
Special prosecutor Kari Morrissey can now decide whether to appeal to a higher court.
Baldwin, the lead actor and co-producer for "Rust," was pointing a gun at Hutchins during a rehearsal on a movie set outside Santa Fe in October 2021 when the revolver went off, killing Hutchins and wounding director Joel Souza. Baldwin has said he pulled back the hammer —... Read More