How Iñárritu Shoots A Film At 3 Budget Levels
INTRODUCTION
Gritty, textural, real and raw are how I’d describe the look of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s highly acclaimed movies. From the breakneck success of his first independent budget film all the way up to high budget blockbusters, his movies are the product of a clear directorial voice, that goes after telling difficult, risky stories that at times interweave non-linear narratives and express the psychological state of each character’s strife.
In this video I’ll break down how Iñárritu created his first low budget feature Amores Perros, the mid budget Birdman up to the blockbuster level The Revenant.
AMORES PERROS - $2 MILLION
Iñárritu’s success as a feature film director didn’t happen overnight. He began his career in a different field of entertainment, radio, which progressed into a producing job in TV, which led to him creating his own production company, Zeta Films - where he produced commercials, short films and even a TV pilot.
Since Amores Perros was an incredibly ambitious, logistically and structurally challenging first feature, it helped that he carried some experience as a director into it along with an established relationship with crew.
“Most of the people that worked with me on this film, almost all of the head of departments from Rodrigo Prieto to Brigitte Broch the production designer, all this team, we had been working together for many years doing commercials - I have a production company.
So, in a way, that complexity, it was a language that we had already established between us. So it was my first film but definitely was not my first time on a set.” - Alejandro González Iñárritu
The story, which he worked on with screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, was constructed using three subplots which all feature human character’s different relationships with dogs which were interwoven and connected by a common plot point.
This push to make such a tightly packed and difficult first feature on a relatively low budget was partly due to the difficulties involved in producing a movie in Mexico at the time.
“Your first film normally was at the mercy of the government and then you just show it to your friends. Because there was no money, nobody wanted to see any Mexican film at that time.
There was an anxiety that runs that it was your only real opportunity to say something and to express yourself. So, I think it has to do with: you want to include everything you wanted to say.” - Alejandro González Iñárritu
The story and also how it was stylistically told through the cinematography leaned into the extreme.
Most of the film was shot with a handheld camera and wide angle lenses - which, combined with the dynamic camera operating from Prieto - injected a gritty, raw realism into the story. This technique of moving with characters on wide angle prime lenses - from 14mm to 40mm - is something that he would continue to use in his later movies.
Shot on a wide angle lens.
This wider warped intensity that was used to capture the more intense and chaotic characters, was flipped when photographing the outcast figure Chivo. They instead shot him with much more telephoto focal lengths on an Angenieux 25mm-250mm HR zoom lens - which had the effect of further isolating him from the environment.
Shot on a telephoto lens.
Another large part of the extreme, raw look of the movie was created by how the 35mm film was developed in the lab. By skipping the processing step of bleaching the negative, which is called bleach bypass, it creates a desaturated, higher contrast look with exaggerated, more pronounced film grain.
In other words all the vibrancy in the colour gets sucked out, except for a few colours like red which remain abrupt and punchy, the highlights get brighter and are more prone to blowing out, while the shadows more easily get crushed to pure black with little detail.
Iñárritu has stated that this bleach bypass look was a way of emulating and exaggerating the look of Mexico City, which is quite polluted with particles in the air that makes things feel hazy and grey. It also added more contrast to the city light which could otherwise look quite flat.
Iñárritu’s bold, risky vision that combined an extreme, raw narrative with an extreme, raw look, went down very well at festivals, where it won the prestigious Cannes Critics’ Week, inspired him to create a trilogy of like minded films which he called his Death Trilogy, went on to have success with audiences - making back around 10 times its low budget, and through doing so jump started his career as a director.
BIRDMAN - 16 MILLION
“I shot that film in 19 days - less than four weeks - and it was crazy.” - Alejandro González Iñárritu
Birdman came about during a free schedule window he had, while waiting for the correct winter season to shoot his next much higher budget movie - The Revenant. The script’s $16.5 million budget was financed in a co-production between Fox Searchlight, who initially got the script but had a budget cap on what they could spend, and New Regency, who were producing Iñárritu’s other film in production.
There were some resonances in the script between the lead actor Michael Keaton’s own career and that of the lead character - who was well known for being cast as a superhero and struggled to regain his perception as a quote unquote ‘prestigious’ theatre actor.
Iñárritu pitched a radical idea that the entire film should happen in a single, long take - or more accurately have the appearance of a single take through combining and disguising the cuts from various individual takes.
This long take concept was partially based on the idea of interconnecting various characters - like he’d also done in his prior work - and capturing the intensity and energy of backstage, without giving the audience cutting points or moments to breathe.
Unlike Amores Perros - which creates an extreme intensity through quick cutting and a large amount of camera angles - Birdman took the other extreme of creating intensity by keeping the camera always in motion and not cutting.
This stylistic decision was also one that was formed out of necessity.
“The reason I think I got into this different kind of approach or design of making films was because of need. Sometimes the restrictions and limitations are the best - at least creatively. I didn’t have enough money. I didn’t have enough time.” - Alejandro González Iñárritu
Getting an ensemble cast of actors and constructing the stages meant that the shooting schedule was limited to only 19 days. These choreographed long takes are incredibly difficult to shoot, as it requires perfection not only from the actors but also from the crew and camera operators, however, accomplishing, for example, a 10 minute long take can knock considerable shooting pages off the schedule in a small amount of time.
Taking this approach meant that the final film had to be fully designed in pre-production, before shooting, rather than discovered or re-constructed in the edit.
The ‘editing’ happened up front both in making changes to the script by getting it down to 103 pages from its initial 125 pages, and in the months leading up to the shoot where cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki and Iñárritu worked out the blocking with stand ins, a camera and a mock set in a warehouse which they mapped out with textiles and c-stands.
The film was shot on Alexa cameras, mainly the Mini, in either a Steadicam build for smoother tracking shots or handheld operated shots by Lubezki. Like Amores Perros it was filmed on wide angle lenses, a combination of Master Primes and Summilux-Cs - which are both very clean, sharp sets of prime lenses.
To keep a naturalistic feel to the lighting and to practically be able to shoot 360 degrees on sets, Lubezki designed it around only using practical sources that you could see within the shot. Whether that was overhead stage lighting, bulbs on makeup mirrors or overhead fluorescents in a corridor.
This meant that colour temperatures were mixed and at times cast monochromatic hues over the image - which may have gone a bit against traditional expectations of maintaining skin tones, but gave the images a more naturalistic and real feel that is present in Iñárritu’s movies.
The digital Alexa allowed him to roll for long takes and expose at a very sensitive 1,200ASA with the lenses opened up to a T/2 aperture. This allowed them to shoot in low light environments while also preserving a big dynamic range between highlights and shadows. This helped them when shooting a shot that went out into a non-locked off Time Square at night, where they had no control over the lighting or how it was balanced.
Although Birdman was shot in a vastly different style - it maintained a feeling of raw realism, chaotic energy and gritty intensity that interconnected different characters in the story - just like he had in his debut feature.
THE REVENANT - 135 MILLION
Following Birdman, Iñárritu leaped into shooting his next, much higher budget feature that he had been prepping for many years: The Revenant - an 1823 action filled Western with a revenge story.
“I prepared that film in 2011. And I started scouting and storyboarding. And I was very excited about the experience to allow myself to go to the nature. And then I realised that there is no that kind of romantic thing of losing yourself in nature. No. It’s a war. You’re at war with nature to make it work - what you need.” - Alejandro González Iñárritu
Again, Iñárritu proposed a radical approach to making the film. He wanted to shoot all the extremely isolated, natural spaces entirely on location, rather than shooting in a studio with bluescreens and locations created by visual effects. He also wanted to shoot the film chronologically.
To envelope audiences in the world and push the realism as far as possible his DP, Lubezki, also pushed to shoot almost entirely using natural light.
Not only did shooting it for real produce a visual style that is unmatched in realism, but placing the actors in the real environment and shooting chronologically put the actors through real, raw, intense conditions that, probably, accentuated the level of realism in the performances.
“The conditions were massive. The physical scenes that he went through were extremely precise. Actually dangerous. Because if you do a bad move, the choreography with these kinds of stunts with such a speed and camera movements that are so precise, you put yourself at risk.” - Alejandro González Iñárritu
These many stunt sequences were made even more challenging as, in a similar style to Birdman, Iñárritu decided to design many of these sequences as long takes. Throughout the production they used one of three methods of moving the camera: a Steadicam for smoother tracking shots, Lubezki operating a handheld camera, or using a Technocrane for moves at speed, over difficult terrain or for booming overhead camera moves.
A technical challenge that emerged from shooting long takes in uncontrolled natural light, was how to balance exposure without it getting blown out or getting too dark - when moving from a dark area to a light area, or visa versa.
Lubezki’s DIT was tasked with pulling the iris. This is where a motor is attached to the aperture ring on a lens, which transmits to a handheld device that can be turned to change the aperture during a shot - either opening up and making the image brighter, or stopping down and making it darker. This has to be done carefully and gradually so as to avoid these changes in exposure being noticeable and distracting.
After initially choosing to shoot the day scenes on 35mm film, to maximise dynamic range, Lubezki decided to switch to a purely digital workflow - again shooting on the Alexa Mini as the A cam, the XT for Steadicam and crane, and the Alexa 65 for vistas or moments where they wanted the greater width and resolution of the large sensor.
Again, they also used wide angle Master Primes and Summilux-Cs - more specifically the 14mm Master Prime and occasionally a 12mm or 16mm. When on the larger field of view Alexa 65 he would often use a 24mm Prime 65 lens.
Like his other films, The Revenant preserved an intense, raw, real chaotic feeling, however at a higher budget that could afford one of the biggest stars in the world, a very long production schedule, more complicated visual effects shots, in very challenging, slow shooting environments, with many complex action and stunt sequences.