What A Gaffer Does On Set: Crew Breakdown

INTRO

In this series I go behind the scenes and look at some of the different crew positions on movie sets and what each of these jobs entails.

For anyone who would like to work in film, knowing what is expected of your role is of course a given, but having a basic understanding of the roles of other departments on set also comes in handy. In this Crew Breakdown video I’ll go over the head of department position in the lighting department, gaffer, to break down what they do, their average day on set and some tips which they use to be the best in their field.

ROLE

In film production the gaffer, sometimes referred to as the chief lighting technician, is responsible for executing, and sometimes designing, a production’s lighting plan. The word gaffer was derived from a hooked metal pole called a gaff which was used to adjust stage lights.

The role and contribution of the cinematographer and the gaffer on set can be flexible. 

On paper, the director of photography is responsible for the concept and design of the lighting which they then delegate to the gaffer who practically executes that plan with the electrical team. The lighting department has a hierarchical setup. Since productions usually deal with truck loads of lighting equipment, a full team is required to quickly move around and set up the gear.

The gaffer is at the top and consults directly with the DP. 

They pass down instructions to their best boy electric, second in command, who leads a team of sparks or electricians in setting up the lights. A genny op is responsible for power generation and running cables to the various lighting fixtures.   

As there are a variety of DPs with a variety of working styles, the manner in which they navigate their relationship with their gaffer occurs on a spectrum.

Some DPs like to be very technical and specific about their setups. For example they may ask their gaffer to put up an 18K HMI at a specific height and angle outside a window bounced off an 8x8 half silk with a ¼ CTS gel frame a meter in front of the light.

Other DPs may be more conceptual about their lighting and ask their gaffer for a strong, bounced source which is warmed up a bit and then let their gaffer handle the specifics of executing the setup.

Most DPs are somewhere in the middle.

Gaffers require an extensive knowledge of film production lighting and electrical concepts.  They need to know everything: from being able to calculate the amount of power generation required to run large lighting setups, to having an in-depth knowledge of lighting fixtures available on the market as well as an eye for using that technology to create specific qualities, strengths and shapes of light.

Due to this required wealth of knowledge, some gaffers have been known to make the move up to DP. For example, Erik Messerschmidt transitioned from working as Jeff Cronenweth’s gaffer on Gone Girl to being cinematographer on David Fincher’s subsequent projects.

The lighting and grips departments have some overlap in their duties which differs depending on the country.

In the ‘British System’, adopted across the UK, Europe and Commonwealth countries, including South Africa where I work, the lighting department is responsible for handling both the electrical equipment as well as the basic rigging of it using stands, frames and tools for modifying and shaping light.

In the ‘US System’ the lighting department only handles the lights themselves and the distribution of electrical power. The grips department sets up the stands, does the rigging and handles equipment that modifies light, such as setting up flags or diffusion.

Many gaffers buy their own gear which they keep in their lighting truck and then rent out to productions through their own company. Any additional gear needed will then be acquired from a rental house.

AVERAGE DAY ON SET

A gaffer’s job begins before they even step onto set. In the build up to a job they will meet with the DP to determine their vision for the lighting and come up with a plan.

They will assemble a gear list which falls within the production’s budget and organise a lighting crew, with more or less members depending on the nature and complexity of the setups. Sometimes locations will be pre-lit and sometimes they will be lit during the shooting day. 

Pre-lighting means that the gaffer or best boy will supervise the rigging and setup of lights at a location before the rest of the crew arrives. This is done to save on setup time on the actual day of shooting. Once all the lights are roughly in place, as per the gaffer’s instructions, the DP will then bring in a camera and consult with the gaffer to do lighting tweaks. This may include repositioning lights, adding negative fill, diffusion or practical fixtures. 

These tweaks usually continue between different setups of a scene. For example a light may be moved closer or refined for an actor’s close up.

When working on film, and sometimes with digital, the DP may ask for a strength of light as well as a colour temperature. This is measured in kelvin, foot candles or in stops on a light meter. For example, the DP may ask the gaffer to give them a key light with a stop of 5.6 at 500 ASA at 3,200K.  The gaffer must ensure that the lights that they hire have sufficient output to achieve the DP’s desired strength of illumination.

For larger rigging or lighting setups the gaffer will consult with the key grip to ensure the safe execution of those setups. 

When a scene is completed, the electrical team will de-rig the lights and begin setting up for the next scene. This is then repeated throughout the day.  

TIPS

Of the gaffers that I’ve observed, the most successful ones tend to stick to hiring the same lighting crew from job to job.  Of course this rule isn’t set in stone, but generally having a team of technicians that are familiar with each other and a set style of working are able to deliver lighting setups quickly and efficiently.  Particularly on short form jobs like commercials where the crew may only have a day to get used to a system of working.

Most teams work with coms and earpieces. The gaffer on set can then give instructions to his team over radio to communicate effectively and make a request happen as quickly as possible. Lighting crews may also stagger the position of themselves and the gear on the location. For example, one spark may be at the lighting truck, making sure the gear there is organised. Other sparks will be on standby with gear which may potentially be requested just outside the location. And the gaffer will be on the actual set within earshot of the DP, ready to communicate any requests to his team. 

As with any crew position, being proactive is encouraged. For a gaffer this may include ‘offering something up’ or making creative or technical suggestions to the DP which they may decide to go with.

To minimise setup time, gaffers communicate the setups for the day to their team before they happen. That way, gear that is not being used can be set up in the next location ahead of time or begin getting packed away to cut down on wrap time at the end of the day. 

When shooting exteriors, gaffers often use apps such as SunSeeker or weather apps to try and predict where the sun will be during the day. A gaffer glass, a high density UV inhibitor, is also used to look directly at the sun without damaging the eye to determine its position and how it will travel through clouds. Another old trick is to look at the reflection of the sun against a reflective surface like a pair of sunglasses. 

They then communicate this information to the DP, for example saying that in about 5 minutes there will be full sun.  

How Edgar Wright Shoots A Film At 3 Budget Levels

INTRO

In this series I take a look at the careers of different directors by comparing three of their films shot at increasing budget levels.

Edgar Wright is a director known for producing snappy, kinetic, genre mash-ups which utilise the camera and the edit in inventive and stylised ways. In this video I’ll break down Wright’s filmmaking process and approach to shooting: A Fistful Of Fingers, Shaun Of The Dead and Baby Driver, to identify the similarities between the three films and how his career has progressed over time.    

A FISTFUL OF FINGERS 

Between the ages of 18 and 20 Edgar Wright indulged his early passion for cinema by making three hour-long genre films on video with his school friends. One was a superhero movie, one a cop movie and one a western, to which he gave the tongue in cheek title: A Fistful Of Fingers. These early undertakings displayed a fascination with genre which would continue throughout his career as director.

While at Bournemouth Art College he became inspired by filmmakers like Sam Raimi and Robert Rodriguez who made their own no-budget movies. And so, he set out to produce a proper feature length version of his prior video taped A Fistful of Fingers which mashed up the western traits with satirical films like Monty Python And The Holy Grail.

“My tutor warned me not do a spoof as my first movie, and he was probably right, but I ignored his advice. They had a PC in the college library, so I holed up in there and painstakingly typed out the script. As you can probably tell from the movie, I never did a second draft. It might have been better if I did.”

To get funding to make the film he tried reaching out to celebrities such as Jonathan Ross.

When that didn’t yield any success he turned to the editor of the local newspaper. It turned out he had just come into an inheritance and he decided to use a portion of it to fund Wright’s movie as a way to reduce his tax bill on the funds. 

With the modest budget he was able to hire a skeleton film crew, some gear and pay for the 16mm Fujifilm stock over 21 days of shooting.

To accommodate catering into the modest budget he made a deal with a local pizza restaurant, which meant he and his crew ate pizza every day of the shoot.

Wright got his school friends, some of whom did drama and school plays, to act and even managed to score a cameo from TV celebrity Jeremy Beadle.

“I was a big Western fan, but hadn't quite matured into liking Howard Hawks and John Ford. My parents used to talk about Sergio Leone films a lot. And I got really into them. I love Clint Eastwood. I love the camera angles. I love the music. And when it came to picking a subject matter for a comedy film, a Western seemed doable. We could just go stand in a quarry with some toy guns. No sets required.”

Wright would maintain these core ideas of using homages to genre films, interesting camera work and a heavy use of music throughout his subsequent movies. He employed some of Sergio Leone’s aesthetic and stylistic tropes, such as using close ups and quick cutting during standoffs and a musical motif.

While he did draw inspiration from these techniques, A Fistful Of Fingers also hints at the formation of what would become his own visual style: a quick, kinetic cutting on prominent sound design beats to detailed extreme close ups.

Rather than just copying, he twisted genres to produce something which was unique.

To edit the film he was able to score a suite, which was basically a broom closet, at Pinewood Studios. 

“It only just qualifies as a feature because it’s 78 minutes long. The original assembly edit of the movie, which is the longest it can possibly be before you’ve cut anything out, was 72 minutes long.”

He learnt an important lesson in post that in order to use quick cutting in the edit he required more footage than he had managed to get during production.

“There just wasn't anything to cut to, to speed up the pace, because every shot is in there. I think I've over-compensated for it ever since, with the amount of coverage I get. You shoot more stuff to make the film faster."

Although in hindsight Wright admits that the movie wasn’t that great his debut low budget feature did: serve as an introduction into feature filmmaking, get him exposure as a young director, made him useful industry contacts, and acted as a learning curve which established some of his early stylistic traits and creative voice. 

SHAUN OF THE DEAD

“When we were shooting the scene with the zombies outside the pub one of the zombies in make up came up to me thinking that I was a runner and just looked over at me and went, ‘Whooh, straight to video for this one.’” 

With the contacts that Wright made from his first movie he was able to start directing BBC TV shows.

One of those shows, Spaced, became a cult sitcom and paired him up with a collaborator he would work with for many years to come - Simon Pegg. Together they wrote a screenplay, developing it from an episode of Spaced. 

This time he drew from the genre conventions of the rom com and, of course, the zombie movie. The roles were specifically written for Pegg and Nick Frost. He secured a low $6 million budget from Working Title Films.

“I felt with Shaun of the Dead I was getting a second chance to make my first movie. I left nothing to chance.”

He therefore prepped the film as much as possible in advance and had it fully worked out by the time production began. David M. Dunlap, an established camera operator and 2nd unit DP, was brought on to photograph the project. 

Perhaps, selecting a cinematographer who was better known as a 2nd unit DP allowed the production to save a bit of money and showed that Wright was confident in communicating the film’s visual direction to a cameraman who could technically execute it.

Dunlap opted to shoot on multiple Arricam cameras with Cooke S4 lenses on Kodak film stock. 

This time, Wright was able to use the increased budget to execute shots which weren’t possible in his prior film. For example, he used a Steadicam to shoot a long take sequence of Pegg going to the local shop. 

Filming it in this way without cutting both introduced the space and location to the audience while simultaneously creating an uneasy feeling and foreshadowing the predatory looks which would later come from zombies.

He built on the kinetic editing of A Fistful Of Fingers. Cutting quickly on amped up sound effects with extreme close ups added a dynamism and humour to the mundane aspects of daily life, such as making breakfast.

In another scene he introduced one of his trademark techniques by synchronising on screen actions to popular music - something we’ll revisit later. However the $6 million budget still had its limitations. Certain scenes which required lots of zombie extras to be paid stretched the budget to its limit. 

“We saved by encouraging fans of Spaced to be zombies. I think they got paid a pound. We pushed their fandom to the limits.”

Upon release, Shaun Of The Dead found both critical and financial success.

The $6 million film effectively delivered a fairly contained zombie story with great writing and performances, which meshed different genre conventions to create a unique, creatively stylised piece, driven by an inventive camera and edit.   

BABY DRIVER 

Many years, and films later, Wright finally managed to produce a movie which he had initially imagined when he was still making his first film.

“My initial idea of a car-chase film powered by music goes right back to my flat in Wood Green, when I was 21 and first living in London. I made a music video for Blue Song by Mint Royale. I hadn’t come up with a concept so I cannibalised the opening scene I’d planned for Baby Driver, with Noel Fielding as a getaway driver. I was happy with the video but also mad at myself for squandering this great idea. But it ended up helping because years later, I had proof of concept.”

He used this proof of concept and his directing track record to secure $34 million of funding for the project.

This time his genre reference was The Driver, a crime thriller about a getaway driver.

To prepare for the large portions of action synchronised to popular music, he pre-selected all the tracks before production. He got his team to clear the rights and storyboards were created and cut to the time of the music. The music was then played on set during production to ensure that the actions on screen could be correctly synced. 

He enlisted legendary DP Bill Pope to shoot it, who he’d previously worked with on Scott Pilgrim. Like his other projects, he elected to shoot on film due to his love for its look. 

Pope selected Kodak’s 250D stock and multiple Panavision XL2s with the more modern G-Series anamorphics. He used two cameras each on both the A and B units of the movie.

“Edgar likes a second camera, because he is crazy about continuity. It offers the actors a certain amount of freedom. And his cutting is so rapid that without continuity he can't make those cuts.”

Baby Driver starts as a character study and progresses into an action movie. We see the movie largely through his eyes.

The cinematography reflects this. For example during chase scenes, when we move away from the action, it’s always Baby that we keep cutting back to in close up.

Like in Shaun Of The Dead, they used a long-take Steadicam shot in an homage to musicals that show the world as a lovely place, before things go south. In order to get the shot they spent a day rehearsing and a full day shooting that one long take. In the end they managed to get it on take 22 after almost killing the Steadicam operator.

Pope and Wright also wanted to return to the roots of car films and include as many practical effects as possible rather than relying on CGI.

“Our film is a visual and thematic rejection of the current spate of car movies that are so heavily CG'd and fantastical. We want the audience to be in those cars with the actors actually driving them.”

Baby Driver’s $34 million budget was spent on a larger crew, a larger production window and executing complex action sequences with lots of practical stunts with more expensive, famous cast members.

CONCLUSION

Edgar Wright lays the groundwork in his screenplays, executes the shoot visually by getting lots of specific coverage and then masters the film in the edit - where all the stylistic bits and pieces fall into place.

He learned an early lesson through his debut that preparation and having a definite vision for a film is crucial.

He found his artistic voice early on and played to his strengths by making genre inspired pieces that are wholly original and which worship the medium of cinema. 

The Most Popular Cinema Cameras (Part 2): Arri, Red, Panavision, Sony

INTRO

Over the years cinematographers have chosen different cameras to dictate the medium and influence the look and capabilities of how footage is shot.

In the second part of this video I’ll go over a few of the most popular cinema cameras which have been used in the film and commercials industry. I’ll look at a variety of formats and go over their ergonomics as well as the look which each can generate.  

ARRI ALEXA MINI LF (2019)

In recent times there’s been a boom in the use of LF, or large format, digital cameras. The Mini LF from Arri is probably the most popular camera used to capture this format. 

So what makes large format cinema cameras different? 

Back when film was the default medium these cameras were designed around the 35mm sized film gauge. When cameras transitioned to digital, most manufacturers created sensors matching the size of Super 35 film which was already an industry standard. These cameras had similar visual characteristics to 35mm film, such as the field of view, depth of field and selection of lenses which covered the sensor.

Large format cameras use a sensor larger than the traditional Super 35 sensors. The Mini LF has a sensor size which is in between the regular Alexa’s Super 35 sensor and the Alexa 65.

The look that is produced by large format can be difficult to describe. The larger sensor means that lenses can record more surface area. This means that when using the same lens on a Super 35 sensor and an LF sensor, the field of view of the LF will be wider.

Also, a larger sensor combined with DPs typically using longer focal lengths means that the depth of field on the LF is very shallow, even in wide shots.This results in a ‘larger than life’ look which is great for capturing expansive vistas or showing more background information in a frame.

The Mini LF uses a bigger version of the highly regarded Alev 3 sensor which is found in other Arri cameras. It produces beautiful, organic colour with a base ISO of 800 at up to 4.5K Arriraw.

The maximum frames per second that can be shot with this codec is 40. Meaning that the camera needs to change to a lower res codec if slow motion is required.

Shooting large format comes at an increased cost, not only due to the rental of the more expensive camera and lenses, but also due to data storage. When shooting at 4.5K you only get 32 minutes of footage for one whole terabyte of storage. 

The Mini LF has a great ergonomic design. It’s accommodated in a slightly larger, updated version of the Alexa Mini body. This means it’s small enough to be used for lightweight setups, such as on an Arri Trinity. The modularity of the design means it can be quickly and effectively built into different configurations by camera assistants, saving a production time on set.

It comes with an LPL mount, Arri’s new mount which accommodates large format lenses. However there is also an LPL to PL adapter which allows the use of standard PL lenses too. 

The Mini LF has 3 internal FSND filters, which have no colour shift, and come in 0.6, 1.2 and 1.8 strengths. This is far fewer internal NDs than some of its competitors such as the Sony Venice.

Overall, the Mini LF has become a dominant large format force in the high end film market due to its efficient design, compact size, beautiful, organic Arri look and its ability to meet Netflix’s 4K UHD approval standards.     

RED MONSTRO (2017)

Next, let’s take a look at Arri’s large format competitor, the Red Monstro.

Monstro refers to the sensor designed by Red which, like the Mini LF, is larger than the standard Super 35 size. This bigger sensor requires special lenses designed to cover large formats. This includes vintage lens options - such as lenses from Canon originally designed to cover their full frame stills cameras - as well as newly released modern lenses such as the Zeiss Supreme Primes.

This Monstro sensor is capable of recording in 8K resolution. Recording in such a high resolution makes it possible to easily reframe or stabilise shots in post without downresing. Although the camera captures in 8K, this is usually downsized to either 4K or 2K for its final display. Downsizing 8K footage will result in a sharper, crisper look than footage that is natively shot at a lower resolution such as 2K.

The Monstro can record at 8K in Redcode RAW at up to 60 frames per second, meaning slow mo is possible at this high resolution. The Monstro has a low pixel density, meaning that the pixels in the sensor are further apart than on the Helium sensor, for example. Noise is therefore reduced and the camera is capable of better low light performance.

This Monstro sensor can come in a few different bodies: the older body with the DSMC2 brain, the new Red Ranger body or even Panavision’s DXL2 body.

The older Red body is compactly constructed and therefore good for lightweight rigs like gimbal or steadicam. Personally I’m not the biggest fan of Red's touch screen monitor system, which acts as a menu for the camera. It is easy to use, however it quickly attracts fingerprints and smears of dirt, meaning it requires constant cleaning to be used as an actual exposure reference monitor.

Red’s are also a little less user friendly when paired with Arri accessories. For example, when using a Mini LF with a compatible WCU-4 focus handset from Arri it’s quick and easy to do things like change settings, programme lens data, roll the camera and playback clips all from the handset.

Shooting on Red with Arri accessories requires work-around solutions for these issues, which may slightly slow down production.

Overall the Monstro is great for those looking for a large format camera with a crisp, clean, high resolution look that has lots of maneuverability in post production. 

PANAVISION XL2 (2004)

Now, let's move from digital to film and take a look at a 35mm camera.

There are two main camera choices when it comes to shooting 35mm motion picture film today: the Arricam or the Panavision XL2. The XL2 is the most modern 35mm camera produced by Panavision. It comes with a PV mount and supports all anamorphic and spherical 35mm film lenses as well as standard accessories.

It comes in an ergonomic form factor that means it can alternate between studio builds and lighter steadicam builds. 

It can shoot 3 or 4 perf film. Using a 3 perf negative pulldown saves on film stock but records to a reduced surface area, meaning slightly less fidelity and quality. The XL2 comes with a 400’ and a 1000’ magazine option and features a clear, detachable optical viewfinder. It’s capable of shooting from 3 up to 50 frames per second. 

A big improvement comes from the 2 HD video tap options. This makes it much easier to monitor footage and provides a clearer feed to the focus puller. This is a big step up from some older 35mm cameras which had very low definition, barely visible video feeds, sometimes only in black and white. 

Since it’s a film camera its look is determined by whatever stock is selected by the cinematographer.

The XL2 is a great, contemporary 35mm film camera due to its reliability, ergonomic versatility, ability to record up to 50 frames per second and the increased quality of its video feed. 

SONY F65 (2011)

Finally, something a little different.

The F65, from Sony’s CineAlta range, is a Super 35 digital camera capable of recording in 8K resolution. Although now discontinued, for its time the F65 was able to deliver highly detailed images from its CMOS sensor. With extremely fine texture and low aliasing courtesy of its amazing 16 bit RAW files.

Despite producing incredible images and being a technically amazing camera, it never achieved widespread appeal in the industry.

This is probably due to its design.

I’ve worked with the F65 once and believe me when I say it's a clunky, cumbersome machine to work with. The body is extremely wide and heavy meaning it is very difficult to manoeuvre for anything handheld. It’s like having a boulder on your shoulder. It’s also too large to be usable with a steadicam.

So while the F65 is capable of producing incredible images in 8K, 16 bit RAW, with beautiful colour science, it is limited by its bulky size and cumbersome ergonomics, which probably contributed to it not being mass adopted across the industry. 

What Tension Looks Like: Uncut Gems

INTRO

There are two ways to present a story: objectively or subjectively.

Directors who frame their stories through an objective lens use the camera to create an emotional distance from the characters so that the onus of how the film is interpreted is placed solely on the audience. Hirokazu Kore-Eda is a great example of a director who likes to maintain a wider, objective point of view on social realist stories.

On the other hand, directors who frame their stories subjectively use the camera to manipulate the audience into getting entangled in the minds of the characters. Warping the viewer’s emotional perspective into that of the fictional people represented on screen.

The Safdies use the camera to create cinematic worlds in this subjective style. Uncut Gems is no exception.

In this video I’ll break down how they used this subject approach to directing to create a chaotically tense, amped up, social realist thriller which visually represents the manic, addictive behaviour of its lead: Howard Ratner.    

BACKGROUND

“The goal was to make it seem like it was unspooling in front of you. That there was no script at all because that adds to the tension. It adds to the plausibility of, no, this is actually happening in front of me.”

In the ten years which it took the Safdies and fellow co-writer Ronald Bronstein to develop and write the script, this goal of complete and utter immersion remained at the film’s centre. It’s a style of filmmaking which they’d spent years cultivating.

Their other films, such as Heaven Knows What and Good Time, also prioritised a similar chaotic realism which was built around characters more on the extreme side.These movies push right to the limit of what is realistic. Keeping audiences in maximum suspense without losing them due to implausibility.

Josh and Benny initially pitched the script to Adam Sandler’s manager in 2009, who rejected it before Sandler got a chance to read it. 

In 2016 they managed to secure funding for the project from Elara Pictures and RT Features. They later cast Jonah Hill as the lead, and attempted to age down the character, with A24 set to distribute. The Safdies cultivate this sense of amped up realism in their films through a combination of casting actors with star power alongside first-time actors.   

After almost ten years, Sandler saw Good Time, got hold of the script in 2018 and agreed to come on board to star, replacing Hill.  

To get a sense of Howard Ratner before production began the Safdies conducted camera tests. 

“It wasn’t all there but it was pretty close. It was kind of exciting that all of a sudden he just put on these clothes, put on the teeth and he just clicked. We had this viewing room at a sports bar and we filled it with these degenerate gamblers, some real life bookees who we were actually trying to convince to be in the movie still and there was a Celtics game on. That was the only script. You have your bet and this is it. All these people were trying to meet Adam Sandler but here he shows up as Howard and he’s trying to give them enough Sandler so that they’re, like, OK with it but he’s really just trying to open up their personalities so he can feast on them.”

While they did embrace a certain amount of improvisation during production, they noted that improv was a means but not an end. They used that same spontaneous, realistic energy that comes from improv but structured it through the written scenes in the script.   

So while a large part of the energy of the film came from casting and performance, another component of it came from the film’s visual style.

VISUAL STYLE

So, how did they use cinematography to represent manic, addictive tension visually?

They borrowed from the visual approach which they had formed with DP Sean Price Williams on prior films such as Heaven Knows What, whose characters were literal addicts with some of the same impulsive, chaotic decision making traits as Ratner.

This time they teamed up with cinematographer Darius Khondji.

Heaven Knows What used extremely long, old school wildlife lenses and sometimes shot two whole blocks away from the actors. As the lenses were too large and cumbersome to be able to operate efficiently handheld, Sean Price Williams operated the camera off a fluid head tripod. This allowed him to track the actions of the actors from a far off, voyeuristic point of view.

Khondji adopted this style of using extremely long focal lengths, shooting from far away off an operated fluid head. From early on Khondji made it clear that he wanted to help the Safdies make their movie, rather than imposing his own visual preferences. 

“They wanted Uncut Gems to capture the realism of New York, with a garish and gritty look, inspired visually by the kinetic photography of filmmakers such as Robert Altman and post modern architecture in the city, which I found rather ugly.”

“I am more disposed towards glamorous and exciting visuals and quickly realised they did not want a pretty-looking result.”

In particular they referenced the garish, postmodern architecture and designs of Michael Graves. 

Instead of using spherical zooms he pushed to use Panavision C-Series anamorphic lenses. He felt anamorphic lenses would help to isolate Ratner amongst the busy backgrounds and make his close ups feel larger than life.

"Of course, widescreen can be used to convey the epic nature of the story, but anamorphic can also act like a magnifier. Josh and Benny like telling stories close-up to their characters. They love how the long anamorphic lenses rendered the actors' faces, and felt it was perfect for Howard.”

He even managed to track down a rare 360mm Panavision anamorphic prime lens which allowed them to shoot tight shots with a compressed, uneasy feeling.

They also implemented zooms to introduce dynamic movement and mimic subjective point of view shots.These were done on Panavision front anamorphic zooms, specifically the 70-200 and 40-80. 

Khondji’s lighting embraced the realistic yet garishly colourful tone that the Safdies wanted. He was forced to light in a 360 degree style where the entire area of the set is lit. 

This was due to the Safdie’s preference for not having definite marks for actors and them preferring the actors to block the scene in the way felt most natural, giving them space to improvise and move around if necessary.

This lighting style was different to most of Khondji’s films where he lights specific areas which the actors would be forced to stand in on marks.

To give the negative a rougher feel Khondji selected Kodak’s higher grain 500T film stock which he pushed by an extra stop. This means he underexposed the film by a stop and then got the lab to compensate by overdeveloping it. The result was a grainier image with more contrast and less resolution.

Some scenes were shot digitally on the Alexa Mini. 

Colourist Damien Van der Cruyssen created custom LUTs to try and balance the look of the digital footage with the 35mm scans. In the final grade he also added grain elements to the Alexa footage, shot by the camera crew with the 500T film, to try and maintain the same continuity in texture across the film.

Now, let’s take a look at a couple of examples from Uncut Gems to break down how this visual approach was implemented.

SCENE 1 - JEWELRY STORE

Ratner’s 47th Street jewelry store located in New York’s Diamond District was all built and shot in a studio. They leaned into a colourful, garish look both in the production design as well as in the lighting.

Khondji’s team rigged Arri Skypanels overhead into the ceiling panels which could all be controlled. This meant the lights were out of sight and scenes could be shot 360. 

These RGB LEDs are also easily dimmable and can alter their colour. They used them to create a palette of strong, tacky cyans, pinks and greens. They also placed different practical lights in shot all around the store.

In these scenes, and indeed throughout the whole movie, the camera almost never sits still as it tracks the constant movement of the characters. This cranks up the tension visually. Large portions of these scenes also play out in close ups shot on long lenses. By not letting the scene play out in wides it’s difficult to get a sense of the layout of the store. This framing results in a claustrophobic, trapped psychological feeling.

Overall this mixture of harsh, garish lighting, constant camera movement and an abundance of close ups builds up a feeling of chaotic tension in Ratner’s space. 

SCENE 2 - THEATRE

While this feeling of constant tension is cranked up through most of the film, the Safdie’s carefully insert just enough moments of calm to punctuate the madness and prevent the movie from being too overbearing.

These scenes typically involve quieter moments with his family, around whom he is forced to momentarily slow down.

This scene plays out with realistic, yet more traditionally cinematic lighting. The colour temperature is a more comforting, warmer tungsten. There’s a more conventional contrast split between light and shadow. The light is softer. In these less crazy scenes the camera finally comes to a stop. The scene is covered in locked off frames. 

However the shot selection still sticks to claustrophobic close ups. Like Ratner himself, although the visual language briefly becomes a little more grounded it never truly relaxes.

Using the slower pacing of these stiller moments allows the audience to take a breath for a second before the tense, action-packed rollercoaster begins again. 

CONCLUSION

The subjective camera in Uncut Gems functions to heighten the feeling of tension which Ratner embodies. The cinematography is Ratner. It’s bold, garish, rough, intense and always in motion.

Rather than having beautiful, cinematic images for their own sake, Uncut Gems does a great job of making visual decisions which truly support the mood of the story.

Even if that mood is ugly and intensely chaotic.

That is what good cinematography is meant to do.

The Pros & Cons Of Film Vs Digital: Featuring Robert Yeoman

INTRO

As I’ve mentioned on this channel before, the cinematographer and director’s choice of photographic medium is an extremely important one in the filmmaking process. There are many options available to DPs, from large format all the way down to shooting with a tiny 8mm negative.

However, perhaps the biggest choice of mediums for productions with a big enough budget is between film and digital capture.

In this video I’ll use some exclusive interview footage of renowned DP Robert Yeoman provided by the cool folks over at Cooke Optics TV to break down some of the pros and cons of shooting on film versus digital.

BASIC COMPARISON

Before we get into the pros and cons of each medium we need to understand exactly what makes film and digital different. There’s a reason that films are called films.The analog medium is made from a photochemical gelatin emulsion. 

When light hits this emulsion for a short period of time, such as 1/50th of a second, it absorbs and imprints those light rays onto the emulsion.

After exposure, the film then needs to be developed by passing it through a combination of chemicals without exposing it to any additional light.This permanently fixes the image and imprints it onto a piece of film. Usually negative film is used, which means that when exposed and developed it imprints an opposite image on the film. Colours are reversed, the darkest parts of the film appear light and the lightest parts appear dark. Later this negative is then turned into a positive. 

However colour reversal films such as Kodak Ektachrome, which capture light as a positive, do exist.  

From the late 1800s up until the early 2000s this remained the dominant medium for capturing and presenting motion pictures. After the 2010s however, digital cinema cameras have become the dominant medium for capturing images.

Digital cinema cameras use the same concept as film cameras, but the film emulsion is replaced with a sensor which captures light in pixels. This information is stored in the form of digital files in formats such as ProRes or RAW. 

CAMERAS

When it comes to choosing motion picture film cameras, there are two go-to companies - Arri and Panavision. There are also a handful of other brands such as Aaton or Moviecam, but they are used less frequently. 

Like most DPs, Robert Yeoman sticks to the big two. He started out using Arri cameras.

“Well I started in 16mm. We used the Arri S and then an Arri SR. I love those cameras. The Arri SR is a great camera. For 35mm, you know, there was the Arri IIC which originally came out, then the Arri III, the BLs a little bit. You know, the big, old, clunky, BLs.”

Early in his feature career, in the late 1980s, Yeoman made the move from Arri over to Panavision. 

“I went into Panavision and I used the Golds, you know all the Panavision cameras for a long time. It was all 35mm. And then I went to Germany with Wes to do Grand Budapest and I just felt in my gut, cause we were using German crew, that we should use the Arris. So we shot Arricam. I love them and they work beautifully.”

After that experience he’s taken a liking to using the Arricam ST and LT cameras when he shoots on film. Although a large portion of his filmography was shot in 35mm, Yeoman has recently started using digital cameras since they’ve become the dominant medium. The high-end digital cinema camera space is currently dominated by Arri, Red and Sony.

Although there is a large range of cameras in the space from the other lower budget brands, such as Canon and Blackmagic.

“My next movie after that was a digital film. I kinda tested different cameras and I just kinda liked the Alexa so I became an Alexa person. So when I shoot movies digitally now I use the Alexa. My last movie was film and we shot Arricam but generally my camera of choice now is the Alexa.”

PROS & CONS

When it comes to making a pros and cons list, one of the biggest pluses for digital comes down to its ease of use. If working in the lower budget realm with fewer resources and time, it can be a great option. 

“I mean, I love both film and digital. You know, digital cameras are great. And for certain things they are probably superior to film. You know, doing a documentary, you know, or if you’re going somewhere where you know you can’t light and there’s very little light. Then you’re probably better off with a digital camera. And they can achieve amazing looks. Most of the movies shot today are digitally shot. Some of them are incredibly beautiful.”

Digital cameras are also able to roll for extended periods of time before a card needs to be changed. Whereas with film, a 400 foot 35mm magazine shooting 4 perf only lasts for about four and a half minutes before the camera needs to be reloaded.

With processing costs it adds up to around $430 for four and a half minutes of footage. This makes film an expensive option, unless directors are disciplined in how they cover scenes. So, while digital gives filmmakers the ability to get more options and variations of takes without the need to cut in between, there’s a case to be made that this style of working also has its down side. 

Digital footage shot in this continuously rolling ’spray and pray' method is usually far less deliberate. 

“The thing about film is there’s a mystery to it. And I think that when you shoot film people are more concentrating. Because it’s valuable and you can hear there’s something going through the camera. I find that people on the set concentrate more. When you’re shooting digitally they tend to just roll the camera and don’t cut, and people’s attention is on their phones. You know, it’s something I try to tell my guys is that if you have to take a text or call then go outside. I don’t want to see your phone on the set. I understand you need to make a call but just take it somewhere else because it’s very distracting to the director and the actors.”

Another practical pro of digital which isn’t always considered is it’s playback capabilities. Digital cinema cameras provide a crystal clear video feed which can be transmitted to a large director or clients monitor at up to 4K resolution. 

This means that directors, DPs and clients can see exactly what footage is being captured on set. This way there are never any unfortunate surprises in the editing room. Although the video tap systems in modern film cameras have greatly increased, the quality of their video output isn’t optimal. This means that the rushes, or raw footage, can only be properly viewed after processing. Usually this occurs the next day, but when shooting in a remote location this may only happen at the end of each week of shooting.

If there’s an issue like a strand of hair on the gate that is recorded over the entire scene, or a close up which is all out of focus, this may only be seen much later. In some cases this could mean reshooting a scene. But with digital these kinds of issues can be quickly identified and corrected on set.  

The final, and probably most important pro, is the look. 

Although colour correction tools have incredible capabilities nowadays, trying to achieve a truly identical filmic look digitally is a tough task. 

“I think that there’s a quality to the film that you can’t achieve digitally. When I shot the Brian Wilson movie, Love & Mercy, of course they budgeted digitally. So I said ‘Listen, this was a movie back in the 60s and 70s and it has to be film.’ I got the director onboard and the I took the next step and said I really want to shoot 16mm for a lot of this old stuff. So we did tests and I showed them to the director and he was onboard with that. He loved it. And so, we had the director on our side and went in and said we want to shoot film. And they were like ’Oh my God’, you know. They fought it tooth and nail but we got our film and I think it has a quality to it which you can’t duplicate digitally. People will argue with me on that I’m sure. I’ve been in movies where I’m like ‘Is this film or is this digital?’ I kind of go back and forth. But I’m rarely fooled. I can usually tell. Like this film I just shot. We shot a lot of black and white film. And it has a quality to it which I don’t think you can do digitally. It has randomness in the grain and it just has a feeling to it that I don’t think digitally you can achieve. There’s a texture and a feeling and a depth to it that the digital camera doesn’t get. Again, I’m not saying anything bad about digital cameras, I love them, they’re wonderful. But there’s something special about film and a film camera.” 

CONCLUSION

When we tally up the results it seems that the digital pros are mainly around its versatility, practicality and ease of use.  Ultimately these reasons pale in comparison to the most important one - the look.

As Yeoman mentions, whether or not the look of 16mm or 35mm can be achieved by digital means is a discussion many have had. 

Personally, I fall on the side that it is possible to almost replicate the film look in the colour grade. But there still remains a certain magical, photochemical randomness  and optical quality to the medium of film which can’t 100% be matched.  

Film certainly isn’t right for each project, far from it. But there do still remain some movies for which shooting in the analogue format perfectly supports the visual way in which the story is told.

Why Franchises Killed The Blockbuster

INTRO

“It’s another form. And the theatres are almost like amusement parks in a sense. So these films now I think are more like theme rides.”

Many will already know that this is a quote from esteemed director Martin Scorcese in reference to Marvel movies, which blew up a debate around the cinematic value of the MCU.  At the time some fans strongly disagreed with this, while others supported Scorcese’s view.

Since I happen to agree with the statement to a large extent, I’ll use it as a jumping off point to examine the larger impact which I feel this trend of ‘theme park filmmaking’ has had on cinema.And how I feel it has contributed to the large scale decline of the original blockbuster.

THE CINEMATIC DIET

Rather than using Scorsese’s metaphor of theme parks, I thought I’d use another idea to set up the dichotomy between the two kinds of films I’ll be discussing.  That of healthy food versus fast food - to make things more easily digestible (if you’ll excuse the pun).

In the world of blockbusters - popular and financially successful films - I see healthy movies as those which provide both a level of mainstream entertainment as well as engaging with deeper emotional, thematic and psychological human ideas.

Like healthy foods they have substance and provide a type of nutrition which creatively nourishes us in a positive way.

Ever exit a cinema with a feeling that the movie had a deep impact on you that sticks in your brain for hours, if not days, and which affects your understanding and the way in which you feel about certain topics in the future. This is healthy cinema. Fast food films on the other hand provide transient entertainment, sure, but lack much meaningfulness beyond that.

In the moment they may be cool, funny, action packed and enthralling but they don’t linger in the mind much after that or provide a different or deeper insight on the human experience after multiple viewings.

When talking about these kinds of films I don’t mean to say that they are inherently bad or that there’s anything wrong with watching them. After all there’s nothing wrong with treating yourself to an occasional bit of junk food every now and then. The problem is that rather than being an exception, fast food food films are now the basis of what we consume. They have become the primary source of nutrition in our cinematic diet. 

I don’t mean to single out Marvel films alone.

I think fast food entertainment has become prevalent in recent years across the majority of  Hollywood big releases, which for the most part focus on superhero movies, reboots, sequels or franchises of some kind. But, more on this later.

STORY STRUCTURE

One of the defining differences between fast food and healthy films are how they structure their story. Healthy blockbusters of the past based their stories around suspense, characterisation and relatable, human-based emotion. Moments of action are sparsely punctuated throughout the overwhelming moments of human drama. This builds suspense and an anticipation for the big setpieces, which heightens those moments of action when they finally occur. 

Healthy blockbusters are also underpinned by larger themes which play out across the entire film. 

For example, E.T. uses the more obvious metaphor of an alien literally being alienated and seeking to return to his species to create a parallel between Elliot’s loss of his father through divorce and his search to establish a new home without him. The movie is not just about an alien, it’s really about how children deal with divorce.

Many fast food blockbusters of recent years take an opposite approach. 

Their stories are structured around action, character introductions and funny one liners that are punctuated with brief moments of real, human drama or emotion. It’s like they write the beats of the big fights and set pieces first and then work out which little scenes they need to insert in between those action scenes to make the story make sense. This throws off the narrative and explains the lack of emotional impact they have after you finish watching them. 

There’s little ebb and flow of emotion, there isn’t the same crafted, suspenseful build up. Action just happens. There’s a character introduction, some exposition, a funny line. Then more action. Repeat. 

With healthy films the action is just a byproduct of the story.

With fast food movies the story is just there to support the action. 

ORIGINAL IDEAS

Coming back to the idea that our cinematic diet now consists mainly of junk food entertainment, I think that the real reason it bothers me is that it goes against the very thing which drives art forward: originality. What most healthy blockbusters have in common is that they have a novelty factor, born out of original artistic ideas. 

Take Star Wars for example, it brought mainstream attention to the otherwise niche genre of the space opera. Fast food films on the other hand are built upon the same, established, formulaic structure. Just look at the Star Wars reboot.

They are formulaic both in terms of writing as well as in the actual creative production of the films. 

If you break down the basic photography choices of Marvel films, almost all of them comply to the same standards. They have to be shot in a widescreen 2.39:1 aspect ratio, with smooth, stable technocrane or dolly moves, with the same Arri Alexa digital sensor and a desaturated, low contrast colour grade. The fact that these key creative decisions are all standardised across a range of different stories and characters is troubling to me.

This may seem trivial but this is in fact the crux of the issue. 

I’ve never worked as crew on a Marvel film myself but the creative input of the individual filmmakers and technicians on these movies seem very limited. Decisions are made and enforced by corporate consensus in a board room, which are carried out technically by the director and crew. As opposed to the decisions being made by individual auteurs.

Historically in any art form, whether it’s painting, music, dance or film, bold, creative decisions made by individuals are what drives art forward.

When creative decisions are solely made by a committee motivated by profit they will naturally tend toward choices which are safer investments - this means taking less artistic risk. Committees didn’t produce music by Miles Davis, Black Sabbath or NWA. Individuals did. And those individuals pushed art forward. By making formulaic, consensus-based, fast food films the core of our cinematic diet, we are hindering the very medium of cinema.

STUDIO FUNDING

So, if this is the case, why do these movies continue getting made? Well, the easy answer is - money.

In the past Hollywood studios would approach movie funding the same way as traditional investing. They would use their capital to produce a broad range of movies at various levels: lower, medium and higher budget. Just like you’d invest in an index of companies. Some of these would succeed financially, some wouldn’t. But if the majority of the films attained success, which they almost always did, then the studios made a profit.

Somewhere along the way, this traditional model was replaced with an approach to investing which is more like cryptocurrency. Instead of putting less money into a broad selection of films, they decided to YOLO everything on Bitcoin, or in this case individual blockbusters like The Avengers. In doing so they took on more risk but stood to gain increased profit.

Look at Endgame for example. It’s budget was around $400 million.

Instead of making 10 $10 Million movies, 10 $20 million movies and 1 $100 million blockbuster, they used all those funds to make just one super blockbuster.

Unfortunately I can’t dispute their approach since all of these gigantic blockbusters they invest in tend to perform well...really well. The more money that is invested into one individual film, the greater the risk the studio takes on. So, how do they minimise some of that risk? 

Well, by passing all creative decisions through a giant committee, trying to appeal to the masses and, as a result, minimise original creativity and artistic risk taking as much as possible. 

In the process driving art backwards.  

CONCLUSION

What we are left with today is a cinematic diet largely populated with gigantic, fast food blockbusters consisting of sequels, franchises and reboots. A handful of healthy options produced in the low budget range which are seen by few.

 And the very, very occasional original blockbusters which are able to be made by only a select handful of directors who have maintained a successful financial track record throughout their careers.  

So, what’s the solution to this problem?

Well, I’m not sure. Perhaps salvation lies in the hands of the streaming services who have seen positive results from pushing original content to try to gain subscribers.

As streaming eclipses the cinema experience, maybe this is the best we as an audience can hope for going forward. All that is certain is that artists at every level should be encouraged to take risks and push creative boundaries through innovation, rather than replicating a formula. 

It’s then on the funders and gatekeepers to acknowledge the value of this kind of storytelling. As history has shown us, art thrives with a blend of lots of healthy movies along with the occasional fast food guilty pleasure.

This is the recipe to a perfectly balanced diet that we need to follow if we want to get our audience’s appetite for cinema back in shape.

Cinematography Style: Darius Khondji

INTRODUCTION

The Lyrebird is known for inter mixing their own song with that of a number of other noises.

Before you think that I’ve decided to change my content to that of a birding channel (insert David Att clip), I should clarify that I’m trying to create a parallel, albeit an overstretched one, to the visual style of renowned cinematographer Darius Khondji.

Like the calls of these birds, Khondji is a cinematographer who is able to adapt images into almost any form to mimic the style of whichever director he works with, while subtly mixing in some of his own call. His extreme visual control and technical prowess have made him one of the most sought after and experienced contemporary cinematographers working today.

In this episode of cinematography style I’ll break down the work of Darius Khondji by examining his philosophy on photography as well as some of the gear which he uses to execute these ideas.          

BACKGROUND

Khondji was born in Iran and relocated to France with his family shortly thereafter. His fascination with film began at an early age where he would take the train from the suburbs into central Paris to go and watch horror movies. 

At 12 he bought an 8mm camera with his allowance and started making short films. After finishing school he moved to New York where he studied film at NYU.  He then moved back to Paris and began working in the industry as a camera assistant and then in the lighting department on music videos and commercials. 

His break came when he photographed Delicatessen, which went on to earn him cinematography award nominations. 

His track record with directors speaks for itself and reads like a modern ‘best of’ list. A few of those high-profile directors include: David Fincher, Wong Kar-Wai, Danny Boyle, Bong Joon-Ho, Paul Thomas Anderson, Michael Haneke and the Safdie Brothers. 

PHILOSOPHY

As mentioned, Khondji is known for his ability to translate the director’s vision to the screen. In order to do this he tries to unlock the film in a visual sense before he begins production. He refers to this moment of clarity and visual inspiration as ‘the big bang’. 

Khondji admits that this usually does not come from reading the script, but rather from conversations with the director.

“When I start a project, the look of the film often remains hidden to me, sort of like an animal hiding in the shadows that’s going to come out eventually, that’s going to show part of its face or body as it emerges from the shade. That’s the look of the film, the mood and soul of the film.”

“The big bang can also come from something the director says to me, even if it’s only a single word or sentence. On Se7en, it came when I talked to David Fincher on the phone about the script and he said to me: “Darius, it has to be scary.”

The tone with which Fincher delivered that line to him unlocked the look of the film in his mind.  He delivered a dark, underexposed, contrasty negative by underexposing the film stock by two full stops, used a bleach bypass process and lit the frames so that for interiors the brightness always came from outside. This made the spaces feel grim and dark.

Khondji pushed this look so far that they were even forced to reshoot one scene because they couldn’t see Morgan Freeman’s face at all. 

Although he has regularly collaborated with some directors, he is known for being a DP who is open to working with an array of talented filmmakers across a range of stories and genres.  

For example when working with Wong Kar-Wai he used some of the visual cues that had been established by his regular DP Christopher Doyle, such as using reflections, shooting through foreground, step printing and amping up the saturated, neon lighting.

When working with the Safdie brothers he embraced the style they had already formed with their prior cinematographer Sean Price Williams. Such as using verite, handheld work, shooting on long lenses and using RGB lighting with a 35mm 500T film stock. 

Despite his flexibility to mimic certain stylistic straits which directors have established in their prior work, he isn’t a copycat and always injects touches of his own style, such as creating a dark negative with controlled, cinematic dolly moves.  

Part of this ability to accurately deliver the director’s vision comes from his preference for maintaining a consistent visual look throughout production, whatever that look may be. It’s this blend of flexibility along with his own inventiveness which has made him incredibly in demand.

 GEAR

Being able to provide different looks for different films means that the gear which Khondji uses constantly changes. 

While he remains an avid film enthusiast, and regards it as the most beautiful medium, he has occasionally shot digitally - such as on Okja - where Netflix required that he use a 4K camera. For digital work he exclusively uses Arri Alexa cameras, with his favourite being the large format Alexa 65.

“It's not like film, but I take a really special pleasure in shooting with it, mainly because of the format. With 6K and big pixels, it's not compressed at all. It's very nice and sharp. It's got a smoothness at the center.”

“When you shoot in the dark, you just push the sensor and it is still beautiful. It doesn't have any of the low-light harshness of other cameras. Shooting on the Alexa 65, I  treat it almost like film. I expose it like film.”

When shooting 35mm he’s used various cameras such as the Panaflex Platinum, the Arricam ST and the Aaton 35 III depending on the situation.

Likewise the lenses he chooses also vary from project to project. Some of these include the Cooke S4s, Panavision Primos, Zeiss Master Primes, Panavision C series anamorphics and the Panavision Primo 70 series for large format. He usually opts for primes over zooms and utilises a range of different focal lengths.

However for Uncut Gems, he had to deviate from his own preferences in order to create the Safdie brothers’ trademark style, which included telling large portions of the movie using voyeuristic close ups.

“The way in which they wanted to shoot Uncut Gems, with extremely long lenses, tracking shots using long lenses, plus zooms, meant I was out of my comfort zone right from the start. I would never recommend any filmmaker to work like that. But, I like being pushed in ways I have not experienced before.”

One of those long lenses included Panavision’s C-series 360mm specialty telephoto anamorphic lens. To aid pulling focus using these extremely long lenses with a shallow depth of field, his 1st AC used a Preston Light Ranger. This is a tool that provides distance readouts, visual cues for focusing as well as having an optional autofocus mode for very difficult pulls.

Like his varied use of camera gear, the lights he uses are equally as diverse.

For night scenes or interiors he likes creating small, contrasty pockets of light which compliment large areas of shadow. To emphasise an important moment in a scene he likes lighting so that an actor will exit the shadows and hit a small pool of light. Khondji mixes warm and cool colour temperatures and has a preference for combining natural daylight with artificial fixtures.

In Se7en he did this using warmer, tungsten Chinese lanterns and cooler Kino Flo fluorescent tubes. To him the warmer light represented the past and present, while the cooler Kino Flos represented the future.

To exercise control over lighting levels he often gets his team to rig all the lights on dimmers.

For Amour, which required soft, realistic lighting, this involved rigging spacelights in an apartment for a natural ambience which could quickly be dimmed up or down to get to the desired level.  

He embraces changing technology and now likes using LED Arri Skypanels for their ability to easily dim and change temperatures.   

When it comes to selecting film stocks he has a preference for Kodak. He’s extensively used various daylight and tungsten Eastman EXR stocks, such as their 50D and 100T variants and recently he’s used the modern Kodak Vision stocks. On occasions in the past he’s selected Fuji Eterna stocks for their more vivid, punchy, saturated colour.  

CONCLUSION

Khondji occupies the traditional role of the cinematographer who sees his primary job as being responsible for translating the vision of the director onto the screen.

While there are certain stylistic characteristics which do remain consistent throughout his work they are subtle and are of secondary importance to finding the correct, individual photographic style for each movie.

To deliver a range of photographic styles as he does requires plenty of technical know-how, years of experience, as well as an intuitive knack for finding each story’s ‘big bang’. 

How Spielberg Shoots A Film At 3 Budget Levels

Steven Spielberg is the king of the original blockbuster and has found both financial and critical acclaim across a variety of genres over a long career.

I think the key to his success stems from his ability to craft movies which on the one hand are very entertaining with mass appeal yet on the other hand still contain more depth than just a regular popcorn flick.

Spielberg deliberately constructs his films visually so that, no matter the subject, they produce a strong and visceral response from the audience.

In this video I’ll break down three of his films which he produced at three increasing budget levels: Duel, Raiders Of The Lost Ark and Saving Private Ryan, to see the similarities in his work and how the movies he has directed have evolved throughout his career.   

 DUEL ($450,000)

Spielberg was drawn to making movies at a young age. At around 10 he began making adventure films using an 8mm camera. 

He taught himself the basics through making these short films and consuming as many movies as possible at the cinema.

At 17 he made his first 140 minute independent sci fi feature film, Firelight, on a budget of around $500 from his father.

Despite having an astounding reel, he was rejected from USC’s film school due to bad academic grades.

“I didn’t go to film school so my only film school was a couple of summers hanging around on the Universal lot unofficially, then getting jobs directing TV and I guess you would call it on-the-job training.”

“I was an ambitious lad at the time, and I just wanted to be a movie director. I looked at every television episode I directed as a stepping stone to getting someone to hire me to direct a feature.”

Based on the strength of the episodic TV episodes he directed in his early 20s, he was able to strike a deal to direct a TV film with Universal which would air as part of broadcaster ABC’s Movie Of The Week.

Spielberg was drawn to the idea of Duel after reading a short story by Richard Matheson, who later adapted it into a screenplay.

Duel is about an anthropomorphised truck which chases down a protagonist, trying to run him off the road. Spielberg has described how his own experience of being bullied as a child drew him to the material.

The truck was specially selected due to having features which resembled the human face.

Spielberg cut around 50% of the dialogue in the script and instead opted to tell the story visually rather than through speech.

He had to work off a modest budget of $450,000, with a $5,000 director’s fee. This only allowed for a ridiculously tight 11 day shooting window.

Spielberg overcame this lack of production time and budget by thoroughly planning out the film in pre-production, a technique he’d picked up from working in TV.

“I had a shot list for all the television I ever directed. You had to. They give you very few days. They give you six days for an hour. And I had something like 12 on Duel for 74 minutes.”

“I had my shots organised and it’s the only way to get ten pages shot a day.”

To shoot so much material in such a short space of time Spielberg collaborated with experienced cinematographer Jack Marta, and a skeleton crew, carefully placing as many as five cameras to cover the action.

One camera would be mounted inside the car, while some of the cameras would be filming run-bys, for example filming the truck from right to left. They could then maximise their coverage by simultaneously mounting the remaining cameras on the blind side of the vehicle to pick up extra details.  

This minimised the number of takes required on complex sequences and ensured Spielberg had the coverage he required to edit the film.

Part of what makes Duel so engaging, frightening and almost supernatural comes from the visual language, combined with the fact that the driver remains unseen the entire time.

This technique of increasing tension by not showing the threat, was one he would use again on Jaws.

Spielberg and Marta also used the constant motion and rhythm of the camera moving forward, backwards and panning with the action on an operated head to add tension to the story.

Duel was shot in the more affordable spherical format with Panavision and Arriflex cameras on Panavision Super Speed lenses, which come in a wide selection of focal lengths from 14mm to 180mm at a fast stop. 

However it does appear as though Marta largely shot the film at a fairly deep stop. 

This both sharpened up the image, made pulling focus easier and allowed the audience to see more of the background, which included the menacing chasing truck.

Duel ended up as an incredibly engaging, genre blending early feature for Spielberg, especially considering its low budget and limited production time. 

He extensively shot listed the film in pre-production, used five cameras to increase coverage, over a limited 11 day shooting window, and focused on telling a simple, concept-based story visually by crafting a dynamic visual language, full of movement.      

RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK ($20 Million)

After the success of Star Wars, Spielberg met up with George Lucas in Hawaii who mentioned that he had a concept for a story, Raiders Of The Lost Arc. Spielberg was excited about the idea as he had been wanting to make a James Bond style adventure thriller.

Raiders had all those Bond qualities, without the gimmicks and technology, and with added supernatural characteristics which was right up Spielberg’s alley. 

However, Philip Kaufman had already been attached to direct. When Kauffman dropped out Spielberg jumped on board.

He set the goal of wanting to make a medium budget film which looked more expensive than it actually was.

“I really wanted to make Raiders economically and make it look like $40 million and, in fact, spend only $20 million - which was the original intended budget.”

“The $20 million actually would pay for 87 days of shooting, but I had devised a second schedule of 73 days that very few people knew about - Paramount Pictures, for one.” 

73 days was the schedule which he stuck to.

He finished the film on the short schedule by: minimising the amount of takes by shooting between three to five, and by storyboarding almost the entire film in advance.

Spielberg felt that minimising takes led to more spontaneity and less self-indulgence. Not only did he storyboard all the sequences involving fights, chases and effects but he even storyboarded more traditional dialogue and performance based scenes.

Again he employed an experienced cinematographer to execute his vision, this time British DP Douglas Slocombe. Like Duel they opted to shoot with multiple cameras to speed up production.

Slocombe brought on a large British technical crew who worked quickly and were accustomed to working in tough, remote conditions, and building large studio sets.

“We had almost $4 million in sets alone, and when you multiply that against $100,000 per shooting day on a distant location, and everybody's salaries, and what it costs today to shoot a movie internationally, you start to see why the film cost $20 million.”

Spielberg described the cinematography as a combination of what he wanted to do and what the DP wanted.

Initially Speilberg wanted the lighting to be moodier, like a noir, using backlight with no fill, but Slocombe convinced him to use some fill light to create a richer, contrasty negative with the Eastman 5247 100T film stock.

For example, in the bar scene Slocombe used a large carbon arc lamp as a backlight. Instead of using a fill light he allowed the light which hit the cream wall and bounced back to fill in the face.

In other cases he brought in an old school basher light which comes with a 1,000W tungsten bulb and covered it with lots of diffusion for a soft fill.

Slocombe’s lighting notably mixes both hard light with strong shadows and soft, wrapping light. He also mixed cooler and warmer colour temperatures. These techniques created interesting visual contrasts in the frame.  

Like the story of Indiana Jones itself, the cinematography mixed a naturalistic feel at times with a more elevated, fantastical look. 

For example in an adventuring scene in the jungle, using lots of smoke and hard light evoked a more magical, fantastical feel. Whereas in the more realistic, normal world of the university his lighting is a little softer, more natural and conventional.

Spielberg also mixed practical effects, such as a scene where a fibreglass and plaster 12 foot boulder chases down Harrison Ford, with special effects in post production done by overlaying optical composites. 

Like Duel, Slocombe also shot the film at a slightly deeper stop, far from wide open. This allows us to see more background information, sharpened up the Panavision C-Series anamorphic lenses and minimised optical falloff.

Like in many of Spielberg’s films he employed traditional grips equipment, mainly a dolly, to execute smooth, cinematic and dynamic movement.

In the end he delivered Raiders on its medium-sized $20 million budget, which was shot in four different countries in remote locations, with expensive set builds, numerous special effects, lots of extras and a famous leading man, yet over a short production window. 

SAVING PRIVATE RYAN ($70 Million)

By the late 90s, World War II had become a period that Spielberg was fascinated with examining in his films.

The premise and approach he took to Saving Private Ryan however differed from his previous treatments of the time period. 

In order to tell this large scope but personal, visceral, on the ground war film he was able to secure a sizeable $70 million budget.

To prepare his team of actors for the more realistic style of filming which they would be undertaking he sent them on a gruelling boot camp to acclimate them to the army’s physical labour and difficult living conditions.

He also made sure that the bags and gear they carried on screen were realistically weighted and made them carry real guns. He joked that after two weeks the actors didn’t need age-ing makeup as they were really physically exhausted.

Spielberg teamed up with cinematographer Janusz Kamiński, who by this stage had become a regular collaborator of his, to execute the photography based on his vision of realism.

"When I read a script and like the story, I respond to it on an emotional level." 

"I have a concept of who the characters are and where the story is taking us, and I then imagine how I can enhance the storytelling through visuals. The story automatically dictates how I’m going to light it.”

Kaminiski narrowed down the look he wanted through a process of elimination by first dismissing photographic styles which didn’t suit the project. 

He then did research and came up with sources of inspiration such as Robert Capa’s visually chaotic photographs of the invasion of Omaha Beach. 

After he had an idea of the look he wanted Kaminski conducted various camera tests to find the correct combination of film stock, processing techniques and lenses which most aligned with his vision.

He settled on Eastman’s 200T film stock, pushed by one stop, Panavision Super and Ultra Speed lenses and a film development process called ENR which both desaturated the stock and sharpened up the look of textures, such as clothing.

To get the lenses closer to emulating the vintage glass of World War II, he got Panavision to remove the coating from them. This decreased contrast, increased flares and fogged the lens more when it was hit directly with light.

Probably the most well known sequence in the film is the brutal landing. The idea behind this scene was to create the illusion that the action was being captured by several combat cameramen on the ground. To achieve this they shot almost entirely with a handheld camera. 

To further push the visually chaotic camera movement, Kaminski employed Clairmont Camera’s Image Shaker. This is a device which can be mounted onto the front bars of the camera and vibrates at a controlled level with vertical and horizontal vibration settings.  They used this to mimic the effect of explosions happening around the soldiers and to increase the visual tension with vibration.

Another trick Kaminiski used to create a sense of urgency and reality was shooting with a shutter angle of between 45 and 90 degrees, instead of the standard 180.

Shooting with a narrower shutter angle sharpens up the motion, making the camera movement feel more jittery. For explosions it also sharpens up the particles in the air so that you can see grains of sand getting blown around.

To enforce a feeling of realism Kaminski also largely relied on natural light. Only using an occasional white or silver bounce if he needed fill.

However for other scenes which weren’t daylight exteriors, such as one in an office, he did decide to use artificial light. 

He created his own sun by getting his team to rig 18 18K HMIs onto a truss outside the window and added a ¼ CTO and CTS gel to them to warm up their colour temperatures.

For another night scene which took place by candle light he used a tungsten china ball placed below the actors as a key light. He then used a flag to block some of the light so that half of the soldier’s face remained in shadow.

So, Saving Private Ryan used its larger budget to employ a cast of stars, execute huge scale war set pieces, with loads of extras, costumes and production design builds over a longer production window.            

CONCLUSION

Going over Spielberg’s filmography it becomes apparent that he doesn’t have just one style, preferred genre, or tone.

As we’ve seen the visual language which he uses changes depending on the story, from a fantastical, lighter adventure film to a rough, dark, realistic portrait of war.  However what does remain consistent is that the camera is always an active participant in his storytelling process.

Despite using different visual styles, Spielberg has an incredible ability as a director to strongly translate an emotion or feeling to the audience. This is a rare skill to possess and acquire, yet one which is absolutely crucial to effective storytelling and which has made him the king of the original blockbuster.