BY MARGARET A. McGURK
The Cincinnati Enquirer
If anyone is indispensable to the region's burgeoning business of low-budget filmmaking, it's cinematographer Jeff Barklage.
In the past four years, at least 13 independent local movies -- including shorts and video productions -- have been made in the Tristate. Mr. Barklage had a hand in seven of them.
That doesn't count his biggest break to date, as director of photography on The Naked Man, shot in Minneapolis but co-written and directed by Dayton native J. Todd Anderson. That film, co-written by Ethan Coen, is owned by October Films, which may release it early next year.
At 36, Mr. Barklage has been working in film since he started lugging cables at 16. He has shot scores of commercials, music videos and films. He has an agent, a growing national reputation and a stack of scripts from would-be filmmakers seeking his services.
A tall man with long red hair, a cheery disposition and a ready laugh, he seems not far removed from the camera-happy teen-ager who came up with a simple plan to break into the business: "I called all the film producers in the phone book and begged for any job."
Local producer Gerald Hagner was impressed with the kid's enterprise and gave him a job.
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BARKLAGE FILE
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Age: 36.
Hometown: Milford.
Education: Clermont Northeastern High School; attended Wright State University.
Family: Married to Debbie, who helps run his business.
Children: Adam, 16; Jennifer, 15.
Hobbies: His basement is full of model trains. Several years ago, he began taking lessons on the Scottish bagpipes -- "an instrument of stamina."
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"I'm sitting there in his basement showing him stop-motion animation of, like, skeletons walking around and stuff," Mr. Barklage recalls. He was hired to run errands and move equipment. "I got to clap the slate a couple of times. That was neat."
He tried college for a while, at Wright State University, but he had so much more experience than his classmates that he found he wasn't learning much. So he quit and went back to work.
He landed a job at a now-defunct animation studio owned by Dave Kelleher, where he met another former WSU student, Mr. Anderson. The two teamed up on some music videos, for Sawyer Brown and Amy Grant among others. Mr. Barklage has since shot videos for Melissa Etheridge, Ricky Skaggs and Over The Rhine.
"Jeff has something that can't be denied. He has talent," said Mr. Anderson, who called it a privilege to have Mr. Barklage shoot his first feature film.
Ideas into pictures
A cinematographer, listed in movie credits as "director of photography" and known as the "DP," is the person who turns ideas into pictures.
The DP hires and oversees the camera crew, which plans each shot down to the exact distance from lens to subject, sets up lights and films the scene. The DP may run the camera or supervise a camera operator.
He (or, very rarely she) uses the script, the director's ideas (often sketched out into storyboards) and production designs to compose film images.
"When working with (Mr. Barklage), you can say "This is the atmosphere I'm looking for' and let him loose. I know when he says it's OK, it's OK," Mr. Anderson said.
"Like a lot of DPs, if the director is soft, he'll take control. But he doesn't do that readily," Mr. Anderson said. "He will politely move in, not to insult the director, but he helps them out. He has a good ability of working with a first-time director, like the one you're talking to right now."
Production designer Kathleen McKernin also worked on The Naked Man with Mr. Barklage.
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FILM CREDITS
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Among films and videos shot by cinematographer Jeff Barklage since 1995:
People Like Us (in post-production).
April's Fool (in post-production).
Bad Lie (short).
The Naked Man (awaiting release).
Beemer Baby (short).
Live Nude Shakespeare, (video).
Evil Ambitions (video).
Vamps (video).
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"We're the right and left hand of the director," she said. "Visually, we have to tell his story in the way he wants it told." They looked at locations, drawings, even color samples together. "You can have a DP walk into a set and say "It's all white and if I put lights in, it is going to look like a polar bear in a snowstorm,' " she said. With Mr. Barklage, "We were on the same page, thinking the same way."
That's not a given in the movie business, where DPs and production designers have been known to clash.
"I thought he was great," she said. "He's not a diva. . . . He was a very easy-going person and able to laugh at himself. . . . He's not a yeller or a screamer. He's able to talk to you like a person." "Jeff is totally confident of his skills, and he likes to have fun," Mr. Anderson said. "Too many times the ego gets in front of the fun."
The bulk of Mr. Barklage's business is in commercials. He has shot ads for dozens of products, including Tide, Charmin, Windex and the Illinois State Lottery. He shot the Bud Light commercial in which a man hides inside a copying machine, rolling out bottles of beer to a prospective customer. He also shot a memorable public service spot for bike helmets that showed melons falling to the ground with and without helmets.
Mr. Barklage savors the variety and technical precision of commercial work, but he laments the tendency to pigeon-hole talent. "I used to do the JTM commercials," he said. "People would say, you can't do cosmetics because you do meat. . . . It's a weird, wacky situation. "What's your specialty?' "Cinematography!' Why do I have to say I do meat patties or something?"
The barriers are even greater between commercial work and feature films, he said, so he was grateful for the chance to shoot film for Airborne and Milk Money, the film that earned him entry to the nationwide camera operators union.
He worked on a number of small, independent films in Cleveland and Columbus, he said, even though Cincinnati was home to many more experienced production crew members.
He remembered asking himself, "Why is this? How can the heart of the production community have no independent production? . . . I started thinking, you know why, people who actually do it for a living realize how much it really costs and how much work is involved. People who have really no clue . . . don't see it that way."
Grade Z training ground
A turning point came when a pair of aspiring horror filmmakers, Mike Fox and Mark Burchett, asked for his help on a no-budget, low-brow video movie called The Janitor From Hell. Mr. Barklage was intrigued enough to say yes. That effort fell through, and instead they made Vamps.
An otherwise grade-Z production, Vamps is notable for the quality of the scenes that Mr. Barklage shot himself. He likewise shared his talents on the post-Vamps feature, Evil Ambitions, and on Mr. Fox's solo piece, Live Nude Shakespeare.
Mr. Barklage doesn't list the exploitation flicks on his resume, but he happily acknowledges the boost they've given to the local film scene.
"You can kind of weed out who's going to be able to work and who's not by how they work on those projects," he said. "I end up seeing them on other sets. It's pretty nice to see that as a training ground."
For example, Jeff Dunn, a volunteer on Mr. Barklage's Vamps camera crew, went on to make his own low-brow video horror flick, Zombie Cult Massacre, and has worked in crew positions on other films. Videographer Brent Vinson shot his noir thriller Deadly Secrets, still unfinished, with some help from Mr. Barklage, and other people he met on the Vamps set.
Students from Southern Ohio College who worked as interns on Evil Ambitions turned up as crew members on April's Fool, a feature film shot this spring by Mr. Barklage and co-produced by SOC faculty member Mark Turner. Mr. Fox served as line producer.
People Like Us, shot in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky this summer, used some crew members from April's Fool. Producer Marion Schnigenberger was also a producer on The Naked Man.
"The first time I met him," Mr. Vinson recalled, "he had a production meeting at his house. I just thought it was really impressive that he would invite us all over . . . He really made us feel like peers. He just came across as a regular guy."
Said Mr. Dunn, "He's the very definition of professional. When you get on the set, he really knows what he's talking about. . . . It's incredible for a guy with his experience how much support he's given for these low-budget productions."
Former ad executive Greg Newberry knew Mr. Barklage from commercial circles before he asked him to shoot the short film Beemer Baby. "The thing I didn't know about Jeff is he's got an incredible sense of composition," Mr. Newberry said. "Just about every shot he would set it up and say "Check this out,' and "I'd say, 'It looks fantastic. Shoot it.' . . . I learned a lot from him.
"On the set Jeff is all business. He knows what he's doing. . . . He's not temperamental. He's not a prima donna."
Job insecurity
Mr. Barklage said he understands the danger of complacency in his business.
"It's interesting, but at the same time you're never quite sure what's going to happen. Say you work six weeks on a movie, then you're off for two weeks. Instead of just winding down and enjoying the time that you deserve, cause you've worked like crazy 80 hours a week, instead you're thinking "When's my next job? Where am I gonna get my next job from?' "
That's not as neurotic as it sounds. Consider what Mr. Barklage heard from his professional hero and role model Roger Deakins (Kundun, Fargo, The Shawshank Redemption), several years ago about how he prepares for film. "I'm always so insecure about my own job," Mr. Deakins told the younger man, "I have to sit there and look at some of my own films to realize I know what I'm doing."
Mr. Barklage said cinematographers face other challenges, including widespread mystification about the nature of the job. Take the neighbors. In preparing for The Naked Man, he shot color tests in his back yard in Milford, where he lives with his wife and two teen-age children. He used a set of fake body parts created for a violent scene, much to the horror of his next-door neighbor.
"My neighbor has no idea what I do for a living, and he's watching me shooting these weird swatches of guts." Mr. Barklage shook his head.
Or how about bankers: "Banks cannot figure out what you're doing," he said. "I'm an independent contractor like a guy who lays bricks. Same thing. We go out there, do a job, give 'em an invoice, then we get paid, and that's it and move on."
Even a man's own family can be confused. "You go to family reunions and they ask you what you do and no one understands at all. They can't figure it out . . . People think of Hollywood as "movies,' and they think of Cincinnati as "P&G.' "
The kids get it, though. "I go to career days almost every year and talk in classes and bring photographs. They always want to see blood-and-guts pictures," he said.
Out of place with actors
None of that makes Mr. Barklage wish to become a director.
"I would feel too out of place with actors," he said. "Actors are strange people. You need to know where to begin and where to stop with an actor."
He also prefers to stay in Milford, the town where he was born and raised.
"If you grow up in the Midwest you're used to the lower key of life, the little bit slower pace," he said. "When you hit New York or L.A., it's such a hugely different time frame that it's against your instincts.
"I go to New York and I just can't wait to get out. To do anything, even to load equipment out of a truck at a hotel lobby, is impossible." Mr. Barklage is busy these days -- among other jobs, he's awaiting word on a trip to Australia to shoot wild countryside for a public television show. But the wait for The Naked Man remains an itch that can't be scratched.
Uncertainty over the release date meant Mr. Barklage could not supply movie stills to American Cinematographer, the hip-insider trade magazine that asked to interview him. His own "nuts-and-bolts" article about lighting, written for the International Photographers Guild union magazine, appears in the November issue.
Otherwise, he waits, works and relaxes with the model trains that fill his basement. "Jeff's just a big kid," Mr. Anderson said. "That's what he is. His own kid has to fight him for his train set."
Mr. Barklage also pursues a hobby that even some of his closest friends don't know about -- playing the Highland bagpipes.
He travels with a "chanter," which looks like a small wooden flute, for unobtrusive practice sessions.
He said he waits for solitude to haul out the full set, which he began studying a few years ago after inspiration struck during the Milford Frontier Days Parade.
He takes lessons when he can with Dave Palladino of Clifton. He hauls out the full set, he said, "Once a week or so, usually on a Sunday. I'll do it when no one's around. I tried it in the basement, but the thing is they're so tall, I hit the ceiling. So I have to play in my living room. My kids, they hate it, 'cause I'm really not that good. It does sound pretty rotten."
