Cinematography Style: Ellen Kuras
INTRODUCTION
Ellen Kuras's career as a cinematographer spans multiple forms and genres over a few decades. Documentaries, high budget movies, indie feature films, music videos, shorts, she's done it all.
Her work stands out as being representative of her own point of view and is characterised by visual metaphors that reflect the meaning of the story being told.
In this episode I'll show how Ellen Kuras' philosophy on creating images and the gear that she uses informs her own cinematography style.
BACKGROUND
American DP Ellen Kuras was led into film through studying anthropology, where she had to produce documentary projects. Her first notable film as a cinematographer was a short documentary in Cambodia which received the Eastman Kodak Best Cinematography Focus Award, won an Academy Award in the student film competition and screened at Sundance.
That same year she shot Swoon, her first dramatic feature film, which kickstarted her career as a cinematographer.
She’s shot a range of projects for a range of well known directors as well as also working as a director herself. Some of her collaborators include: Michel Gondry, Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee, Jim Jarmusch and Sam Mendes.
PHILOSOPHY
“There's kind of a different environment now in the world of cinematography. You can make a film with your iPhone. So the question becomes: what distinguishes you from another person who's making a film?”
Kuras believes the answer to this question lies in the point of view or perspective that the DP brings to a project.
She uses her perspective to create visuals that reflect the meaning of the story which is being photographed - a lesson she learnt early in her career when she hired someone else to shoot her anthropology masters thesis film in the 1980s.
“It was really beautifully shot, but it was missing something. I couldn't put my finger on it at the time. I was just like, ‘It doesn't move me.’”
Even though the film looked beautiful it was missing the connection of a visual metaphor which connected to the core of the film.
Therefore it felt empty.
From that moment on she picked up the camera and began shooting documentaries. She challenged herself to be cognisant of the form of the photography and to sculpt it to suit the film’s meaning.
“Every single shot has a story to it. Every single time you pan the camera, there's a reason for it. There's a reason why you choose the lenses you do. Why do a dolly move? Because it looks like a cool shot? Maybe. But then, what does it mean? You have to understand that when we see something, we perceive it visually as an audience and it affects us.”
Kuras paired her awareness of the visual language with the core requirement of a DP, which is to translate a director’s vision to the screen. Sometimes this required deviating from her own preferences in order to service the desires of the director.
She likes building up a kind of telepathy between the director and cinematographer.
In order to create this relationship, gain an intimate knowledge of the story and to make herself familiar with the director’s vision for the film she insists on extensive pre production prep.
For long form narrative work she requests at least 4 days with the director before the shoot starts. She dislikes taking time on set to do this as it loses the production valuable shooting time. Kuras uses this knowledge to translate the director’s descriptions and feelings about the story into photographic form by making technical decisions.
For example, on Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind the language had to be organic and dynamic to add a naturalism and imperfection to the relationship of the characters and avoid the film becoming static. To create this visual metaphor they made the decision to shoot handheld, using longer takes and not being precious about the shots being steady or traditionally cinematic. This added an emotional layer to the camerawork which was the right visual tone for the movie.
One of the first questions she asks herself when crafting a visual language for a film is whose point of view the story, or a particular moment, needs to be told from.
She emphasises that it's especially important for cinematographers to be aware of this in documentaries where DPs may sometimes have to shoot portions of the film without the director being present.
GEAR
“I was asking everybody. I was like ‘listen, do you know anybody who has a used camera I can buy.’ Somebody said, ‘Talk to that guy over there. He’s an equipment dealer.’ I talked to him and turns out he’d just got an SR2. I borrowed money, I begged my parents and I bought this camera. And I t changed my life.”
Owning her first 16mm camera - the Arri SR2 - allowed her access to shoot whenever she needed, including on her first notable documentary project in Cambodia. She also built up a familiarity with the camera in her early career which allowed her to operate it effectively and efficiently as an extension of herself.
Unlike some DPs, Kuras is not precious about sticking to a particular set of lenses, cameras or film stocks. She changes her selection of gear depending on the needs of the project.
She’s used 35mm film cameras such as the Panavision Millennium and Platinum, the Arricam ST and LTs and of course her own Arri SR2 for 16mm.
While most of her work has been on celluloid, she’s started using the Sony Venice for jobs that need a digital camera, which she has occasionally supplemented with the A7S II.
The lenses she’s used have included: Panavision C and E-Series anamorphics, the vintage Cooke Xtal Express anamorphics, Zeiss Super Speeds and Cooke S4s.
However she doesn’t limit herself to prime lenses and likes using zooms such as the Cooke Varokinetal 16mm zoom or the Angenieux Optimo range.
When she was starting out she pushed against the zeitgeist that cinematographers should only use primes due to the inferior optical qualities of zoom lenses. Zooms gave her the opportunity to make subtle movements in or out without being too prescribed. On Swoon she did push ins at the end of a take to bookend scenes after the director called cut, to capture the actors doing a physical release.
Kuras tells a story of getting the blessing of legendary DP Sven Nykvist to use zooms. He told her to follow whatever she feels, her point of view, and let the choices in gear be dictated by that.
She likes finding creating solutions and isn’t afraid of limiting her selection of film gear on a job. For example, on Eternal Sunshine she didn’t use a regular dolly at all and instead opted for a doorway or sled dolly, or sometimes even a wheelchair which the camera operator sat on with a handheld camera on the shoulder while her grip tracked.
Some overhead shots were also done on a rideable GF-8 crane and operated handheld on the shoulder rather than off a stabilised head or a fluid head - as is the norm.
She likes including practical lighting fixtures on locations. Sometimes she supplements these with various single lightbulbs rigged to dimmers. Her longtime gaffer, John Nadeau, fabricated a creative, custom light rig with four clip lights to a c-stand which was shaped and controlled by using blackwrap. They could position this to create a realistic quality of practical light.
She likes supplementing existing light with added film lights. For example, in a street exterior night scene she rigged additional sodium vapour lights onto telephone poles to augment the existing streetlights.
Kuras has used different Kodak and Fuji stocks over her career. However, she took a particular liking to Fujifilm stocks such as Reala 500D due to its cooler cyan bias in the shadow areas, its saturation and grain. Again, this went against the status quo of the time that shadows should be pure black without cyan.
CONCLUSION
While at times Ellen Kuras’ style may have gone against the grain of traditional cinematography conventions, her decisions were always motivated by her point of view which use visual metaphors to enforce the story.
While she’s certainly technically proficient and a solid camera operator, she claims her most valuable asset to be her point of view.
That's what truly and uniquely identifies and differentiates each DP from each other.