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..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..R.J. Matson
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Michael Wilmington

"The cameras are a little bit lighter, more portable and easier to use … but not much," says Reed Smoot, director of photography on The Young Black Stallion. "They're not sound-blimped, so the cameras are like loud sewing machines. A magazine only holds about 3 ½ minutes worth of film, so you're constantly changing them. And, of course, 65mm film is quite a bit more expensive than 35mm."

Looking into a viewfinder doesn't tell a cinematographer much he doesn't already know, and, Smoot adds, once a scene is shot, it's almost impossible to determine exactly what you've got. That won't come until the footage can be examined much later on an answer print. A misplaced cigarette butt or unseen graffiti tag, when blown up to three stories, will have the same effect on viewers of a nature film as an unpopped zit in a teen romance.

Smoot has shot nearly a dozen large-format films, including the long-running Grand Canyon: The Hidden Secrets, Mysteries of Egypt, Yellowstone and To Be an Astronaut. He directed The Great American West, and also served as DP on Shackleton's Antarctic Adventure, China: The Panda Adventure, The Human Body, Jane Goodall's Wild Chimpanzees and ESPN's Ultimate X.

The Young Black Stallion represents Disney's first foray into dramatic live-action storytelling for a strictly large-format presentation. It was green-lit after the company realized a $75-million bump in business for Fantasia 2000, during its exclusive four-month IMAX run.

Producer Fred Roos and screenwriter Jeanne Rosenberg - developers of Carroll Ballard's The Black Stallion and its 1983 sequel, The Black Stallion Returns - had already walked the idea of a large-format prequel to the adventure around Hollywood. But Disney's Richard Cook was the first one to embrace the project.

In the meantime, Disney retrofitted The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast for large-format screens, just as other studios did with Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, Gladiator, Apollo 13 and The Matrix Reloaded. And, last winter, Disney opened the animated feature Treasure Planet on IMAX screens day-and-date with its launch in standard theaters, a strategy employed last month, as well, by Warners with Matrix Revolutions.

Until recently, this distribution strategy would have been impossible to pull off with much success.

The introduction of IMAX's Digital Remastering System into the marketplace convinced studios that their pictures wouldn't suffer by being blown up to fit a giant screen. Moreover, as more IMAX screens were added to shopping malls, mega-plexes and other destinations, the stranglehold on entertainment-oriented pictures finally was broken.

Until then, museums and other institutions pretty much dictated what themes were appropriate for their customers. Even T-Rex: Back to the Cretaceous was given a thumb's-down by some venues because it had an incidental romantic subplot. That was in 1999, and T-Rex still is being shown in some theaters to positive financial effect.

Simon Wincer, who seems to be as comfortable around horses as he is with people, was brought in from Australia to direct Young Black Stallion. If he didn't know all that much about large-format filmmaking going into the project, Smoot was there to lend his expertise and experience.

Walter and Steven Marley's book, The Young Black Stallion, served as the template for the 53-minute adaptation. It set the action in the mountains and deserts of Northern Africa, immediately after the end of World War II. As the movie opens, a young Arab girl is separated from her family, pretty much left for dead.

Miraculously, while wandering through the wilderness, Neera befriends a frisky black colt, which she names Shetan (The Devil). Together, they find the home of her grandfather, but Shetan chooses to remain wild and free.

A year of so later, when the grandfather is threatened with the loss of his land, Neera re-connects with Shetan. Against her grandfather's wishes and tribal tradition, the girl enters the stallion in a winner-take-all endurance race staged annually by local macho men. Guess who wins.

Instead of shooting in Northern Africa, where the desert is something less than pristine, Smoot and Wincer took their show to the Skeleton Coast of Namibia, the Spitzkoppe and South Africa's Drakensberg mountain range. Rugged, remote and visually spectacular, the landscape provided a perfect backdrop for the IMAX camera.

Coming from a 35mm background, Wincer quickly learned to balance intimacy and grandeur. After all, a close-up shot in IMAX and in standard format are two completely things.

Working with horses also presented challenges, as their trainers would have to give hand and whip commands from far greater distances than normal, and it would be far easier for the animals to ignore them. Because the camera would pick up foreign footprints easier from a distance, Neera (newcomer Biana Tamimi) would be required to spend longer periods of time alone with the large animals, away from the trainers. Fortunately, she'd been around horses for most of her young life, and was familiar with many of their idiosyncrasies.

Given the cinematic advances demonstrated this year in Seabiscuit, Smoot's ability to create a comparably believable and exciting race was severely tested. Helicopters, of course, would be employed to follow the racers through the tight canyons from above, while 75-pound cameras were mounted on sophisticated gyro-stablizing heads to track the action at ground level.

Wincer had directed several Aussie-accented oaters, including The Man From Snowy River and Phar Lap. He'd also done the Lonesome Dove mini-series; Crossfire Trail, Monte Walsh and P.T. Barnum for cable; and, among other features, Free Willy, The Phantom and Operation Dumbo Drop. He was comfortable around animals, action and adventure.

Nonetheless, shooting in Namibia wasn't as cut and dry as it might have been in, say, Vancouver. The riders, crews, horses and camels came from farther away, and no one can say they're at their best in 110-degree heat.

Smoot's assistants spent most of their time in the desert keeping the lenses clear of desert dust and grit, which could damage the equipment and show up on the screen as floating debris. Certain "motion artifacts" had to be avoided, in order to keep audiences from suffering acute bouts with sea-sickness.

One camera literally shook apart after trying to follow horses at 30 m.p.h., over a washboard-rippled back road. The crew spent hours on the satellite phone with IMAX technicians, trying to solve problems without an emergency trip home.

The visual preciseness afforded in the large-format presented another unique concern, in that the coloration of the several black stallions often had to touched up with vegetable dye. Pure black coats are rare commodities, even among Arabians.

Disney's flirtation with large-format features recalls its popular documentary series, True-Life Adventures from the '50s, and the company would be ecstatic if it could replicate that kind of brand identity. Next on the docket, though, is Sacred Planet, a "world travelogue," narrated by Robert Redford, which explores the traditions of indigenous cultures.

Wincer apparently caught the IMAX bug, as he's now taking a large-format 3-D look at NASCAR racing. Meanwhile, Roos is bringing another Black Stallion adventure to the standard screen, this time for the series original distributor, MGM/UA. And, Smoot is completing The Heart of India.

- by Gary Dretzka

December 24, 2003