I spend a lot of time collecting reference images that I can use to help develop a visual language with directors. This website has proven a rich resource for images of day interiors. Also a great study of how closely lighting and production design work in concert to create mood.
The urban night photography in "Drive", directed by Nicolas Winding Refn and photographed by Newton Thomas Sigel
I often gauge a film’s strength by how close it hits its ideal position on the impressionism/exposition continuum. At the most extreme point on the exposition end of the spectrum lies motion picture work that is almost exclusively concerned with dispensing information. The nightly news, CNN, and the weakest documentary films––these are projects where content reigns supreme and there is little or no effort made to create a visceral experience for the audience. This work is closer to news, not art, and there is little room for the viewer to meet what he is watching with his own experience.
On the other extreme of the spectrum lie the most abstract and impressionistic films where only a bare minimum of information is provided, and sometimes not even that. This is the realm of poetry, not prose, with spare dialogue and sometimes only the faintest thread of exposition. It’s unclear what lies at the outer reaches of that extreme because so few films dare to go there. In the canon of less obscure cinema, the work of Andrei Tarkovsky probably comes closest. Blade Runner and Days of Heaven, both of which I’ve written about previously, are examples of mainstream films that have dared to tread into these satisfying waters, albeit only knee-deep. Rare is the American film willing to go deeper.
Every film has an ideal place on this continuum, and it’s rare to find a film that hits it on the nose. Nicholas Winding Refn’s Drive, with sublime photography by Newton Thomas Sigel, comes very close. It is patient, hypnotic and deliciously austere in its design, to the degree that feels as though the narrative serves the photography, and not the other way around. Los Angeles has been vilified in American culture for so long that it is refreshing to see a film that celebrates the city’s beauty, a beauty that is so deeply rooted in the automobile experience. There are car chases, sure, and they are exciting, but the film isn’t about these moments so much as the compulsion to move, the need to pause, and the impossibility of doing so. Refn’s success creating an environment that supports this tension, especially through scoring and sound design, is masterful, though there are still elements of narrative hand-holding that I find frustrating. They are frustrating because they are unnecessary: economy is the goal with narrative, not coddling, and not everything must be explained to the audience.
All in all: 8.3 out of 10.
An interview set-up from Ted Gesing's upcoming documentary, "Gary and the Romans"
Though we shot the interview in a 16:9 aspect ratio, the final version will be cropped to 4:3.
September has been a bit of a slow shooting month, so I’ve kept busy studying The King’s Gambit, entertaining old friends visiting from out of town, and picking up some lighting work on a few episodic dramas (CSI, 90210, etc). I had a brief shoot for an independent documentary directed by Ted Gesing last weekend that was a lot of fun. In many ways it was a classic interview set-up, though we had more set-up time than usual and the luxury of a more customized grip/electric package, both of which did a lot to help things go as smoothly as they did.
The biggest logistical challenge on this shoot was the combination of white walls and a small shooting space, which can often be tricky for the cinematographer. One thing that helped was the decision early on to pursue a composition and lighting scheme that would make having a backlight an option rather than a necessity (my thoughts on backlighting as an overused convention in American cinema are no secret). Another big challenge in small shooting spaces is the difficulty establishing depth in the composition, particularly when shooting on a camera format with an inherently large depth of field. This required a bit more thought than usual due to the fact that we were composing for a 4:3 aspect ratio, which is somewhat uncommon these days. Though we shot in 16:9, Ted plans to chop off the sides of the image to achieve the 4:3 dimensions, as featured above.
I didn’t think the 4:3 space left us enough room to hang a picture on the back wall without it competing with our talent in the frame, so we explored alternate methods for spicing up the flat wall behind him (ultimately deciding on simulated table lamp spill low in the frame). This effect had the added bonus of bouncing some color onto the frame-left side of his face as a bit of an edge light. I personally would have probably preferred the image without the edge (a simpler, cleaner look), but it would have been tricky to pull off without sacrificing the warm splash on the back wall.
All in all a fun shoot, and it’s always nice to support independent film. It was great to finally get a chance to work with Ted, and I owe a big thank-you to Nate Miller for helping out on the shoot.
What’s next?
A night exterior for a car commercial, shot by Guillermo Navarro with the help of his trusted, long-time gaffer (and one of my mentors) David Lee.
There are generally two apprentice paths to becoming a Director of Photography. The most popular route is in the camera department, where one advances through the various camera assistant and operator positions before becoming a DP. The other, slightly less common route is in the electric (i.e., lighting) department, where one begins as a lighting technician and eventually becomes the gaffer, the cinematographer’s principal advisor on all things lighting.
There are pros and cons to both paths, and the DP’s experience level will inevitably be stronger in one area than in the other. DP’s who came up through the lighting department, for example, have to learn how to work with camera operators. Camera assistants, on the other hand, have unparalleled access to the DP and to camera equipment, but no opportunity to learn first-hand how to actually light a set. This leads to a strange quandary for new cinematographers who come up through the camera department: as DP they are generally assumed to be the lighting authority on set, but often have little or no practical lighting experience.
The smartest freshman DPs in this position recognize their weakness and hire an experienced gaffer to help compensate. Others make the mistake of trying to prove expertise they don’t yet have, often micro-managing the very crew members they brought on to advise them. This puts the gaffer in an awkward position: though he is committed to helping achieve the DP’s photographic goals for the project and usually knows better than anyone what lighting is necessary to do so, he is often ordered by the DP to set lights that he knows are not the ideal choices for what they are trying to achieve. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen this happen: a new DP without lighting experience panics in the face of a big lighting set-up and starts calling for specific lights that make absolutely no sense. When these lights don’t achieve the desired result, further panic ensues.
There are dozens of factors that go into every lighting decision: What kind of effect do we want? How much power will it require? How many lamp operators will be needed to set it up? How many do we have available? How long will it take them to set the light? How many other lights also need to be set? What kind of grip support will be necessary? Even when the DP knows that a certain light will provide the effect he needs, there is no way for him to know about all these other variables. In an ideal scenario, where this relationship of trust is already in place, the DP shares his photographic goals with the gaffer early on, keeps him abreast of how they apply to each scene, and works with him to shape the look.
The solution? Hire a gaffer you can trust, and then trust him.
Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure.
- Thomas J. Watson, Jr.
A recent shoot that went poorly has me thinking about how important it is to embrace failure in one’s pursuits. Two anecdotes come to mind, the first one personal:
For one of my very first jobs out of film school I worked as a PA in the camera department on an independent feature. One day the camera loader didn’t show up to work and a discussion ensued about whether I could step up and fill his shoes (this was back when all features were still shot on celluloid). I had loaded film in school and, like most recent film school graduates, I was positively bubbling with hubris. When the first assistant cameraman inquired about my experience he wanted to know whether I had ever flashed a magazine (i.e., allowed light ruin the film during loading). I responded proudly that I had never once made that most horrendous of mistakes, and I was sure this answer would put me into his good graces. Instead he shook his head and said that he couldn’t hire me. “If you’ve never flashed a mag, you haven’t been loading film long enough to be any good at it.” I was furious, but he was right. He wouldn’t hire be because I hadn’t yet failed, and this for me was an important lesson: experience is the name we give our mistakes.
The second anecdote is from Thomas J. Watson, Sr., the former president of IBM:
“Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I just spent $600,000 training him.”
My shoot went poorly for a hundred different reasons, some of them outside of my control, but some of them decidedly my fault. I might not ever work for those filmmakers again, but I will definitely never make those same mistakes on future shoots, and that makes the whole ordeal an incredibly valuable experience.
I don’t want to hire people who don’t make mistakes; I want to hire people who have made lots of them. Colossal mistakes that have cost productions gobs of money. Failure is the only way to succeed.
What’s next?
"Marietta, Reader of Books" (2010). From the series "Les Lieux de Mémoire: Portraiture from the South Caucasus"
In 2009 I left the States for a year to shoot a collection of large-scale exhibition portraits in Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia. Though I also taught cinematography to university students and even did some shooting for local directors, the bulk of my project focused on this photographic work. Frustrated by the journalistic obsession with war, poverty and decaying infrastructure that has dominated the region’s coverage for decades, I wanted to explore the post-Soviet condition in the Caucasus through a patient, non-narrative study of human form (you can read more about the project here).
I’m always a bit surprised when I have to explain how undertaking this project was not a hiatus from my work as a cinematographer, but rather an important part of it, much like a painter going to Europe to study Goya’s sketches, or a novelist studying Shakespeare’s plays. The project was about strengthening a deep, fundamental understanding of the photographic medium. It was about developing the core around which the craft is built.
Portraiture is a foundation of visual art the way Shakespeare, Greek myth and religious texts form the bedrock of all modern-day storytelling. The genre has endured millennia of artistic evolution precisely because it addresses our existential questions about how, and why, we interact with the world around us. We are fascinated by portraiture not simply because we are attracted to the human form, but because studying it allows us, subconsciously, to search for clues in others that we believe might help with our deepest questions about life.
The role of portraiture in cinema, where it manifests most often as close-ups, is no less significant. It is a key cinematic bridge between story and audience, the humanizing vehicle that enables us to relate to the narrative’s events, and the single biggest factor distinguishing cinema from the theater. It is thanks to portraiture that we viewers are able to relate to the suffering, joy, love, and anger on the screen, and rare is the wide shot capable of delivering so much.
When I look today at the portraits I shot in the Caucasus I am sometimes struck by how formally unsensational they seem next to contemporary commercial photography and photojournalism. But this was their design. The goal was to create a series of large-scale images, printed one meter in width, to be studied in the kind of meditative environment that only a gallery can provide. To me the connection between portraiture and cinematography seems so basic, so essential to the motion picture medium. Whether or not Hollywood will support this ambition in a DP is a question I find myself asking with increasing frequency.
The view from here: hazy, with intermittent visibility.
You can read the blog I kept during my time overseas here.
Terrence Malick's "Days of Heaven", shot by the great Nestor Almendros.
Strange. Strange how our tastes evolve. When I first saw Days of Heaven I remember thinking that it was the only film I’d ever seen that could rival Blade Runner in its photography. The film as a whole was so far outside mainstream filmmaking, especially when it was released in 1978, and so closely in line with my own aesthetic sensibilities when I saw it, that suddenly I didn’t feel quite so alone. Finally I’d found a filmmaker who respected austerity, spare dialogue and understated lighting as I much as I do. To me the film was a rare triumph of impressionism over exposition in American cinema.
What made Days of Heaven palatable to American audiences was the voiceover of the young Linda Manz. I remember finding her narration an acceptable substitute for all the dialogue that would have certainly asphyxiated the film. But when I recently screened The Criterion Collection release of the film (which looks incredible) I was struck by how much further my aesthetic sensibilities had shifted away from mainstream American filmmaking. I still consider it a masterpiece, but I couldn’t help but note how extraneous the narration seemed. Of all her off-camera lines, there was only one that I considered an asset for the film: her description of Judgement Day that we hear toward the beginning of the picture. The rest of the piece would have been stronger without the off-camera guide, without the handholding. I suspect Europeans would have loved it even more, and Americans at the time even less.
I am reminded that my most rewarding filmmaking partnerships have almost all been with directors who did not grow up in America. How we managed to find each other in the forests of the Los Angeles film industry will forever remain a mystery to me. Fate, perhaps.
An interview scene from Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner", shot by the great Jordan Cronenweth. In the canon of motion picture interviews there is this scene and then all the others.
As much as I love the documentary genre, I’ve never been able to shake my dislike for interviews as a filmmaking tool. To me it is an overused and uninspired convention that contradicts a core principal of cinema: films should create an experience, not simply dispense information. Even well-shot interviews are still variations on the same unsatisfying form. When was the last time you saw a doc interview that didn’t look like all the others?
My question is this: why can’t documentary interviews look more like this scene from Blade Runner? I see no reason that doc makers can’t take the kind of creative risks that Ridley Scott and his cinematographer, Jordan Cronenweth, took in this scene. Sure there are budgetary constraints in non-fiction filmmaking that feature films rarely have to contend with, but this isn’t why documentary interviews are so pedestrian. After all, close-ups are always some of the least expensive shots, even in the priciest Hollywood pictures. (It’s lighting for wide shots, multiple angles, and moving cameras that make scenes more expensive from a photographic perspective.)
Apologists of the interview format would argue that there are serious conceptual disparities between what the doc interview and this interview in Blade Runner are trying to achieve, but I’m not convinced. Fundamentally, both aim to suspend the disbelief of the viewer and transport him into the world of the film. Cinema does this best by creating a visceral experience for the audience; the intellectual experience of cinema, I believe, begins in earnest when the credits roll. The fact that documentaries are non-fictional is of intellectual, not emotional, consequence: if a film is successful in suspending our disbelief, then the veracity of the subject matter is of little relevance when we watch the movie. For documentaries, it is a spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down.
Practitioners of the interview format argue that well-shot interviews incorporate photographic elements—backgrounds, lighting, etc.—that help create this visceral experience, but even at their best these contributions are limited by formal conventions that few filmmakers are willing to challenge. How many productions have I worked on where we made huge compromises in order to shoot an interview in the subject’s living room, telling ourselves that this will somehow draw the viewer into her world? The truth, in the final analysis, is that this kind of attention has an insignificant effect on the interview footage. It may nudge the audience toward an intellectual understanding of the subject’s plight, but viscerally it does little to move us closer to her experience. Neither does the soft key light, the cool hair light, or the slash across the wall in the background that we have seen thousands of times. These are tired conventions—desperately mundane—and for viewers today they have become a signal for us to sit back and wait for spoonfuls of information. In cinema, that which is boring goes unnoticed.
The interview scene in Blade Runner, by contrast, transports us instantly and decisively into a dystopian Los Angeles of 2019, and it is the filmmakers’ brave aesthetic vision that take us there. Some would point out that you can’t shoot a high-concept interview if the rest of the film has a traditional documentary look, and they are right: the scene must fit into the film’s larger stylistic plan. But the answer is not to shoot the interview so that it is as formally uninspiring as the rest of the film, but rather to shoot the rest of the film so that it is as exciting as the interview. The idea of “capturing reality” has always been based on a false premise, and there is no rule forbidding poetry in the documentary genre. It is art, not news, that we are trying to create.
There are documentary filmmakers who have moved beyond the interview format in some of their work. My graduate school mentor, Jan Krawitz, made the film Styx in 1976 that remains a deep influence on my filmmaking to this day. Sweetgrass, a film by Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor, is a more recent example of a documentary style I respect. These films support the idea that in strong cinema photography doesn’t just enable characters to tell a story, photography itself tells the story.
A gel test on the cyc wall
It’s impossible to spend a day on set and not learn something. I’ve had a good run of projects recently, and here’s a quick recap of some of the more salient lessons. The crazy thing is, I feel like I’ve already learned these same lessons a hundred times over.
What’s next?
Basketball at its finest: in black-and-white
This is a picture from the 1969 Celtics championship season. What I’m immediately struck by is how much better basketball looks in black-and-white. And with the absence of modern lighting there is actually shadow on the court, something unheard of in today’s sports coverage. America’s obsession with overlighting causes us to forget the epic symbolism of light and shadow: the struggle between knowledge and ignorance, between the certain past and the unknowable future, between good and evil. Together light and shadow work together to create and subvert expectation, a process that informs narrative at the very deepest levels. And for the characters in our lives they often signify the differences between the men we are and those we had wished to become. These struggles are generally more visible with more personal narratives, which is one of the reasons why the experience of watching college ball is so much more emotional than following the NBA.
This sense of struggle is why we love sports, and its presence makes this 1969 game seem quieter, more sincere, and more deserving of its place in history.
