Cinematography Style: Néstor Almendros
INTRODUCTION
Although cinematographer Néstor Almendros did most of his work in France, often for groundbreaking French New Wave directors, like Éric Rohmer and François Truffaut, he is probably best known for his collaborations with Hollywood directors on some iconic movies in the 70s and 80s.
Directors were often drawn to his pioneering way of working with natural light, his taste for cinematic simplicity and a focus on providing them with his creative insights, beyond just his technical expertise.
In this episode let’s break down how his thoughts and philosophies on cinematography influenced his photographic style, and also take a look at some of the gear and techniques that he used to pull off some breathtaking images.
PHILOSOPHY
Many of the filmmaking techniques that Almendros would later use on larger feature productions, were actually gleaned in his earliest explorations into cinematography.
Three of these concepts which appear as threads throughout his filmography are: his knowledge of movies, his focus on natural lighting and his push for cinematic simplicity.
He developed an early love for cinema, so much so that he eventually became a bit of a cinefile and started writing movie reviews. He cites this as one of the best educational resources for DPs, claiming that the technical side of photography can always be learnt or executed by film technicians and crew that you work with, but having a solid foundation and understanding of what films came before and what the current trends are in cinema and photography are incredibly important.
In his early years he wanted to be a director. This made having a perspective on the narrative a must. It’s the job of the cinematographer to be sensitive to the needs of the story and have the necessary cultural background to draw from.
An example of a movie that he was influenced by was the early Italian neorealist film La Terra Trema - shot by cinematographer G. R. Aldo. He was blown away by how Aldo used naturalistic lighting in a way that was very different from the other much more stylised and overlit movies of the time - which blasted hard, frontal key light at actors.
Instead of shooting on sets in film studios and shining hard, spot lit key light, fill light and backlight at actors as was the norm, many of these Italian neorealist films used available, naturalistic light in real locations, which may be hard with unflattering shadows under direct sun, a soft, gentle feel under cloudy conditions, or use the last remnants of dusk light remaining in the sky after sunset.
His appreciation for naturalistic light may also have been influenced by his filmmaking originating in shooting documentaries in Cuba - where he could only work with a camera and available light as there was not enough budget to hire lights or a team of electricians.
To overcome the low levels of light inside some of the houses they would shoot in, they came up with the idea of using mirrors to bounce the sunlight that was outside into the house through windows then bouncing it off the ceiling.
This technique of softening light by bouncing it became important later, but so too did the function of mimicking the direction of the natural sunlight by angling it through windows and increasing its strength.
In other words, taking an existing source of natural light and strengthening it by artificial means.
Almendros inspired a major transition in thinking about lighting. Rather than being bound to film school concepts like three-point lighting, he instead wanted the lighting in his films, even when using artificial film lights, to be motivated by what the natural light sources - like the sun - does in real life.
He talks about this in his autobiography:
“When it comes to lighting, one of my basic principles is that the light sources must be justified. I believe that what is functional is beautiful, that functional light is beautiful light. I try to make sure that my light is logical rather than aesthetic.”
Another aspect to Almendros’ work is an appreciation for simplicity both in practical, technical terms as well as aesthetic terms. Again, this may perhaps have evolved from the beginning of his career in documentary and on low budget films, where he became accustomed to making do with a lack of resources.
A great example of his economical way of working, was on his first narrative feature: La Collectionneuse which he shot for French New Wave director Éric Rohmer. Because of an extremely limited budget they were faced with a choice early on: either shoot in the less expensive 16mm or shoot extremely economically on 35mm.
They went with 35mm.
A shooting ratio refers to how much footage was shot in relation to the length of the finished movie: so if 20 hours of footage was shot to complete a 2 hour movie then the production had a shooting ratio of 10:1. La Collectionneuse had an insanely low shooting ratio of 1.5:1. This meant that they shot only 1 take for most shots.
Working in such an economical way has a few advantages: it forces directors to think about exactly what they want and have a refined vision. As Almendros says: “the problem is that when there are many options there is a tendency to use them all.”
Even later on in his career when he was working with larger budgets on Hollywood productions, he always gravitated to finding the simplest method using the tools that would most easily produce an image with functional, realistic light that told the story.
For example, not using a big truck full of lights and a large team of electricians, if he could get a more authentic image from only using natural light.
Visually, many of the films he shot also have a certain stylistic simplicity to them. Although of course it depended on which director he worked with, he often shot quite deliberately composed, static frames without many dynamic camera moves. This was especially true when working with Rohmer who liked shooting stationary frames from a tripod head.
So, Almendros can be characterised by his cinematic knowledge, naturalistic lighting, and simplicity - but how did he translate that over with the techniques and gear that he used?
GEAR
Nowadays the default for most cinematographers is to base their placement of lights, and quality of illumination on the real life sources that exist in the location.
As I mentioned before, that wasn’t always the case. The prior standard was that actors should almost always be well illuminated in clear, strong pockets of light which were usually placed in front of the talent, from above, and shined directly at them. This clearly illuminates the face without shadow, however isn’t what light does in real life.
Compare this shot of how actors used to be lit when placed next to a window, to how Almendros did it in Days Of Heaven. There are two big takeaways.
Firstly, Almendros places the light source outside the window, shining in, mimicking the direction that the sun would in real life. While the other shot keys the actor with a high, frontal source of light - that doesn’t make sense in the real world.
Secondly, the quality of the light is different. Almendros uses a much more diffused light that is far softer with a natural, gentle transition from shadow to brightness. While the other example has a very clear, crisp shadow caused by very strong, undiffused artificial light.
A technique he often used to get this soft quality of light when shooting interiors was to bounce lights, often from outside a window, into the ceiling. This reflected the source around the room, decreasing the intensity of the light, but lifting the overall ambience in the room in a natural way.
He liked using strong sources with high output to create his artificial sunlight for interiors on location or in studio sets, such as tungsten minibrutes, old carbon arc lights, or, later on, HMIs.
Although he is known for his use of naturalistic soft light in movies like Days Of Heaven, he also did use hard light at times when it was functional and could be justified by a realistic source.
He also often favoured lighting with a single source - meaning one lighting fixture which pushed light in a singular direction. He often did this by using practical light fixtures - like lamp shades with tungsten bulbs - and not adding any extra fill light to lift the exposure levels in the space.
In Days Of Heaven he even took this idea and transferred it to the oil lamp props, which he had replaced with electric quartz bulbs that shine through orange tinted glass, which were wired under the shirts of actors and attached to a belt with batteries they could wear.
These innovative solutions led the way to what is nowadays easily done with battery powered LEDs.
He paired this warm practical light with another lighting technique he would master - exposing for very low levels of ambient dusk light in the sky.
Days of Heaven is probably best known for using this dusk light known as “magic hour”, but it’s actually something that he’d been doing since his first feature.
This was especially difficult as for most of his career he worked with a Kodak film stock that had a very low ASA rating compared to today’s standards. Kodak 5247 is a tungsten balanced film that was rated at only 125 EI - which is around 5 stops slower than a modern digital cinema like the Sony Venice 2 that can shoot at 3,200 EI.
To expose at these extremely low levels of natural light he would rate the 125 ASA film at 200 ASA on his light meter, 2/3rds of a stop underexposed. As it got darker he would then remove the 85 filter - which changes the colour temperature of tungsten film to daylight but also darkens the image by one stop.
Then as it got progressively darker he’d also change to lenses with a faster aperture that let in more light, ending wide open on a Panavision Super Speed T1.1 55mm - poor focus puller.
If they needed to push things even further into low light shooting he would sometimes even film at 12 or 18 frames per second and change the shutter from 1/50 to 1/16. In this case they’d also ask the actors to move more slowly than usual to mask the otherwise sped up feeling of motion you’d get - reaping the final moments of available natural light before everything became dark.
However, when he wasn’t working with the smallest amounts of available light, Almendros actually preferred to not shoot with a wide open aperture. He felt the best depth of field was slightly stopped down, so that the background wasn’t a complete blur and could still be made out, yet was slightly soft so as to isolate the characters from the frame and make them stand out.
He also innovated other DIY tech that could be used to simulate naturalistic lighting. For example, he ignited flame jets attached to gas tanks, which could be easily handled and had a controllable flame. These could be brought near actors to naturalistically illuminate them for scenes involving fire, rather than using electric lights - which was standard practice before.
To achieve a wide shot of locusts flying off in-camera, without post production visual effects, Almendros again pulled a technique from his knowledge of cinema - this time a movie called The Good Earth. They suspended helicopters just above the shot and released seeds and peanut shells, then to get the effect of the insects taking off they got the actors to perform their actions in reverse.
This was shot on an old Arriflex which could shoot film backwards that would later play out the original action in reverse.
This innovation also extended into camera movement. Days Of Heaven was the first film to use the Panaglide - Panavision’s lightweight alternative to the Steadicam, which could be used to get sweeping, tracking shots with actors over uneven natural terrain.
CONCLUSION
Much of what we take for granted in cinematography today, like shooting in low light, using practical sources, and thinking about motivated natural lighting rather than three-point lighting, are all innovations aided by Almendros’ work.
He was able to use his knowledge of cinema to inform his taste and storytelling techniques, then pushed established technical boundaries and ways of thinking to make his cinematography extremely beautiful but also extremely influential.