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’.