Cinematography Style: Matthew Libatique

INTRODUCTION

“There’s an abundance of ways to shoot a film. In this world because we have so many people who are trying to make films, being original is also really difficult. You really have to go with a kind of abandon when you’re trying to create something special.”

From gritty, low budget movies to the biggest, blockbuster superhero flicks in the world, Matthew Libatique’s cinematography has covered them all. Directors are drawn to his appetite for creative risk taking, his bold, subjective, in your face close ups combined with his deep experience and on set knowledge that has covered a broad array of technical shooting setups.

In this edition of Cinematography Style, we’ll unpack Matthew Libatique’s photography by unveiling some of his philosophical thoughts and insights about working as a DP, as well as breaking down some of the gear and technical setups he has used to achieve his vision. 

BACKGROUND

“I started becoming interested in films because of the camera. In undergraduate school I saw Do The Right Thing. It was like a mind explosion of possibility. It was the first time I ever saw a film that made it feel like it was possible for a person like me to make films.”

Even though Libatique majored in sociology and communication during his undergraduate studies at university, he was still strongly drawn to the camera. This led him to enrolling to study an MFA in cinematography at the AFI. It was there that he met a director who would be one of his most important and long running collaborators: Darren Aronofsky. 

He shot Aronofsky’s early short film Protozoa, and when it came to working on their debut feature film, Pi, Libatique got called up to shoot it.

“The director gives you a motivation, an idea, a concept. And then you can build off of that. And the more they give you the more you can do.”

After the success of Aronofsky’s early films, Libatique began working as a feature film DP with other A-list directors, like: Spike Lee, Jon Favreau and Bradley Cooper.

PHILOSOPHY

“When I was becoming interested in filmmaking in undergrad I didn’t study film. It was in sociology and communications. The one camera they had was an Arri S and it had a variable speed motor on it. The variable speed motor was set to reverse. So when I got the footage back I had double exposed everything. And I looked at it and it was a complete and utter f— up on my part. But then I was sort of inspired by the mistake. I always look back on that moment and I’ve kinda made a career on those mistakes working out.”

I’d ascribe Libatique’s appetite for visual risk taking, which include what may be seen as ‘mistakes’ or ‘happy accidents’, as being a large part of what informs his photography.

What I mean by visual risk taking is that the films that he shoots often carry a visual language which doesn’t conform to what is seen as mainstream, Hollywood, cinematic conventions - such as steady, flowing camera moves, neutral colour palettes and more restrained contrast levels with highlights that don’t blow out and turn to pure white.

At times, his camera movement and lighting deliberately distorts and challenges what is seen as a perfect, clean image, by finding beauty in imperfections.

For example, his debut film Pi was shot on the highly sensitive black and white reversal film. This film has an exposure latitude that is far more limited than traditional colour negative film. What this means visually is that there is a tiny range or spectrum between the brightest parts of the image and the darkest parts of the image, and that areas of overexposure are quick to blow out, while shadowy areas of underexposure are quick to get crushed to pure black.

This resulted in an extremely high contrast black and white film, the complete opposite of Hollywood’s more traditionally accepted colour images that have gently graduated areas of light and shadow.

Another example of visual risk taking is using body mount rigs on Aronofsky movies like Requiem For A Dream where he strapped the camera directly onto actors for a highly subjective, actor focused point of view.

Even in his recent, high end budget work on a Superhero movie like Venom, he often directed light straight into anamorphic lenses, deliberately producing excessive horizontal flares that dirtied up the image.

Often these stylistic ideas will come from the director, especially when working with a director that is more hands on about the cinematography, like Arnofsky. But other times, visual ideas evolve from a combination of discussions and real world tests prior to shooting.

When prepping for A Star Is Born, Libatique brought a camera into director and actor Bradley Cooper’s house while he was working on the music to shoot some camera tests with him. A lot of ideas came out of this test that informed the language of the film. This included a red light that Bradley Cooper had in his kitchen, which inspired the use of magenta stage lighting for many of the performances in the film.

A final stylistic philosophy which I’d attribute to Libatique is his continual awareness of the point of view of the camera and whether the placement of the camera takes on a subjective or an objective perspective. 

In many of his films, particularly in his work with Aronofsky, he’s known for using a highly subjective camera that is one with the subject or character of the film. He does this by shooting them almost front on in big close ups that are tight and isolate the character in the frame. 

This is also paired with a handheld camera that he operates himself. By shooting with the characters in a reactive way as if he’s tethered to them it also makes the shots more character focused and subjective.

This isn’t to say that he always does this. Some other stories he’s shot in a wider, more detached, objective style. But whatever the movie he’s always acutely aware of where he places the camera and the effect that it has on the audience.

GEAR

Earlier I mentioned that he shot Pi on black and white reversal film, 16mm Eastman Tri-X 200 and Plus-X 50 to be precise. Unlike modern digital cinema cameras that have something like 17 stops of dynamic range, this reversal film that he shot on only had about 3 stops of range between the darkest shadows and brightest highlights.

This required his metering of exposure to be very precise. If he let the highlights be 4 stops brighter than the shadows then they would blow out to white and lose all information. One way he narrowed down the precision of his exposure was with reflective metering.

“The thing that has really stuck with me throughout my career is the impact of reflective lighting.”

There are two approaches to metering or judging how much light there is. One is called incident metering. This is where the light metre is placed directly between the source of the light and the subject - such as in front of an actor’s face - facing the light, to determine how much light is directly hitting them.

Another way to metre light - which Libatique uses - is reflective metering. Instead of facing the metre towards the light, he faces it towards the subject. This way the light metre measures the amount of light that is hitting the subject and bouncing back - hence reflective metering.

“I’ve been using a reflective metre my entire career until this digital revolution. And even so I use a waveform that gives me a reflective reading of somebody’s skin tone because that’s the only way that I know how to expose anything.”

He mixes up his choice of format, camera and lenses a lot depending on the story and practical needs. For example, some of Aronofsky’s work he’s shot in 16mm with Fuji Eterna film for some and Kodak Vision stock for others.

Much of the rest of his work prior to digital cinematography taking over was shot on 35mm - again alternating between Fujifilm and Kodak stocks for different projects. 

Since digital has taken over he mainly uses different versions of the Arri Alexa - especially the Alexa Mini - but does occasionally use Red cameras.

He even famously used a Canon 7D DSLR with a 24mm L series lens to shoot the subway scenes in Black Swan, which he shot at 1,600 ISO at a deep stop of T8 ½. He did it in a documentary style, even pulling his own focus on the barrel of the lens. His colourist Charlie Hertzfeld later manipulated the 7D footage, especially the highlights, until it could be cut with the rest of the grainy 16mm footage.

His selection of lenses is as varied as his selection of cameras. He switches between using spherical and anamorphic lenses. Some examples of lenses he’s used include Panavision Ultra Speeds, Cooke Anamorphics, Zeiss Ultra Primes, Panavision Primos and Cooke S4s. 

On A Star Is Born, he carried two different anamorphic lens sets - the more modern, cleaner Cooke Anamorphics, and the super vintage Kowas - and switched between them depending on the feeling he wanted.

He used the Kowas, with their excessive flaring, hazing and optical imperfections for more subjective close up moments on stage. Then for the more objective off-stage work he switched to the cleaner Cookes.

Overall most of the lighting in his films does tend to gravitate more towards the naturalistic side. But, within that, he introduces subtle changes depending on the nature and tone of the story.

For the more comedic Ruby Sparks a lot of his lighting, although naturalistic, was very soft and diffused on the actors faces. While Straight Outta Compton, which tips a bit more into a tense dramatic tone, had harder shadows, less diffusion and an overall lower exposure while still feeling naturalistic. 

So while his lighting is always motivated by reality; the texture, quality, direction and colour of it changes depending on how he wants the image to feel. 

Since the rise in LED lighting, he often uses fixtures like LiteGear LiteMats, Astera Tubes and of course Arri Skypanels. When he can, he likes rigging them to a board so that he can precisely set levels and sometimes even make subtle changes as the camera roams around in a space.

Although he has used every kind of rig to move the camera, from a MOVI to a Steadicam to a Dolly, he is partial to operating the camera handheld on the shoulder. I think in some contexts this can be seen as one of those creative risks that we talked about earlier. 

For example, even on the large budget, traditional blockbuster - Iron Man - which you would expect to only have perfectly smooth dolly, crane and Steadicam motion - he threw the camera on his shoulder and gave us some of those on the ground, handheld close ups which he does so well.          

CONCLUSION

Although he uses a lot of different tools to capture his images, he doesn’t do so haphazardly. Being a good cinematographer is more than just knowing every piece of gear available. It’s about knowing how you can use that gear to produce a tangible effect.

Sometimes that effect should be a bit more subtle, but certain stories call for boldness.

His images may take large creative risks that go against conventions and expectations, but those risks are only taken when they are justified by the story.