How Different Directors Create Different Looks: Pachinko

INTRODUCTION

The job of a director is to take the bunch of words written in the screenplay and transform it into an audio and visual work. As you can imagine there are a number of ways this can be done, some lean into stylisation, others side with naturalism, some like to let the performances of actors stand alone, others still like to push the looseness of the camera language. 

Just like how different artists can produce portraits which look and feel totally different, different directors, DPs and creative crew members, with their different points of view, produce films which are unique to them.

With this in mind, let’s take a look at how different episodes of Pachinko, which used the same technical crew and locations, each took a unique creative approach based on having a different director and cinematographer team.

SETTING THE LOOK

Multi part series have a shooting structure which differs from regular feature length filmmaking. Almost all movies will be led by a singular director and photographed by one cinematographer. 

However, due to the extended workload and high shooting volume that comes with long form series, these shows are usually broken into a few different blocks, which are each directed by and photographed by different creative teams.

To maintain consistency, typically the creative team who shoots the first block of episodes will create what is called a ‘bible’, which dictates the look and feel of the series and how it should be creatively produced going forward.

In the case of Pachinko this first block of shooting was done by director Kogonada and DP Florian Hoffmeister.

“The structure is that the first block, which was my block and which includes the pilot, will actually set the look. A lot of creative exploration and a lot of creative development will actually happen in prep for the first block and then the second or third or whatever comes after basically works along those guidelines established by the creative team of the first block.” - Florian Hoffmeister

These guidelines will usually be bound by both technical choices as well as creative ones. For example, the camera selection, lenses, rigging of lighting fixtures at regular locations and the LUT which interprets the look of the colour grade, will remain consistent.

While similarly, visual decisions like the aspect ratio, frame composition and camera movement will try to conform to what has been done before. 

You can see this across the various seasons in shows like Breaking Bad, which was filmed in 35mm with Kodak Vision 2 stocks, a 16:9 aspect ratio, with a warm colour palette with sickly greens, and consistently handheld camera movement.

Or The Bear, which uses quite a contrast heavy, saturated LUT, lots of long lenses, tight close ups, and a cooler palette. 

Or Yellowstone’s use of natural light, sharp lenses and stable frames which are shot with telephoto focal lengths that compress the background of landscapes and bring them closer to the characters. 

What made Pachinko a bit different from your average series, was that when it came to shooting block two with a new creative team of director Justin Chon and DP Ante Cheng, instead of conforming to a ‘bible’, they were given the freedom to depart from the established look and creatively approach their episodes with the look they felt was best suited to the story.  

TWO APPROACHES

So what made the approaches of these two directors different from each other? Kogonada, who shot the first block, is a director to whom form is everything. If you look at his other work, each frame feels carefully considered, deliberately crafted and photographed with a subtle feeling of objectivity. All aspects of his storytelling feel structured and based around form, both narratively, in terms of blocking and performance and visually.

Justin Chon on the other hand, who directed the second block, is a filmmaker with an acting background whose work is very much bound up in performance and emotion. Again, this directorial tone also creeps into the look, with much of his other work having a level of looseness, energy, emotion, texture and far more subjectivity and closeness to his characters. 

“I always felt that if you were to press these two very different filmmakers into this…You know, the constraints of, like, what they call a unified vision or a bible you would lose a lot of emotional and visual variety. So, I very much from the beginning, I love it for a system where the second block would not necessarily work along our lines.” - Florian Hoffmeister

Each block was given the same resources, locations and crew to shoot with, but was led by a different vision from two different directors. So, what were some of the things that each block did differently to create their unique tones?

BLOCK 1: KOGONADA / HOFFMEISTER

Pachinko is an historical epic drama with a storyline which jumps around between the 1920s and the 80s: showing how significantly the past experiences of people inform their present situation. This connection between the past and present is so strong that on a philosophical level, it’s almost as if the story is taking place in one time.

Koganada’s approach stressed that the spaces in the film are more important than time, and in doing so stylistically disregarded the different periods and treated them almost as if they were taking place at one time.

What this meant in terms of the camera language was that they chose not to visually differentiate the different time periods. Not using any different language of cinematography to portray different timelines, like aspect ratios, the colour grade, or different lenses. Kogonada and Hoffmeister made the decision to maintain the same visual look in both the 20s and 80s.

They let the production design, costume and make up work differentiate the time periods rather than the camera.

This look leaned on their preference for structured, formal, objective, stable visuals. They almost exclusively shot off a tripod or dolly - carefully composing each frame and barely moving the camera much. 

If the camera did move it mostly tracked along with the motion and speed of the characters with a high degree of stability from something like a Steadicam or dolly. 

Or, they used some linear push ins or pull outs on stationary characters. However, these were handled almost exclusively with very subtle, barely perceptible, creeping motion done with a dolly and tracks.

In other words the camera never did stylistic moves for the sake of movement and was rather motivated by the movement of characters or an emotion. 

When it came to their shot selection, they often covered scenes with a medium-wide master shot taken from the waist up, before jumping into medium shots, medium close ups, or close ups which very rarely were framed tightly on characters.

They saved using these more intimate close ups for key moments where they really wanted to emotionally elevate a feeling and get inside the character’s head.

Framing scenes from this mid to wide range distance created a little more emotional separation and a greater feeling of objectivity.

The DP and director often balanced these shots with a symmetrical care, lining up centrally framed compositions of characters - especially during wides - which gave a hint of Yasujirō Ozu. 

In terms of their camera and lens selection, they favoured quite a clean, sharp, large format look with a shallow depth of field.

The first block was shot on a Sony Venice with Panavision Panaspeed spherical prime lenses. These come with a very fast stop of T/1.4, which was used by Hoffmeister to separate characters from their background, especially during close ups, by shooting them with a wide stop with lots of bokeh.

Shooting with the wider field of view of a full frame sensor and large format lenses meant that Hoffmeister could choose longer focal lengths and still be able to frame with enough width for wide shots. Using these more medium or telephoto focal lengths, again, created a shallow depth of field which better isolated the characters in the frame by blurring the background. 

Hoffmeister worked with colourist Tom Poole in creating a photochemical looking LUT for the digital camera which was based on the colour work produced by Magnum photographer Burt Glinn in Japan.

Overall, the stylistic approach of this first block relied on creating one consistent, clean look across the different time periods, which didn't try to be too nostalgic or emotional, maintaining more objective, traditionally cinematic, composed frames, never trying to make the audience aware of the presence of the camera.

BLOCK 2: CHON / CHENG

Block two’s approach countered this idea of a clean, objective, formal, structured tone, instead leaning into emotion and subjectivity.

This was done by largely forgoing the smooth or locked camera moves, in favour of a handheld camera, deliberately operated with much more looseness and less precision.

Although, like in the first block they would often hold on static frames, Chon and Cheng decided to do this with a handheld camera, rather than off a tripod head, giving the images a subtle looseness.

Sometimes these hand operated compositions would even have a bit of a dutch tilt to them, with a slightly off kilter horizon, or go in and out of focus a little in an organic way as the focus puller reacted to the more improvised camera motion.

When they wanted a bit more energy they also incorporated some handheld camera moves to give the footage a bit more dynamism.  

When it came to portraying the different time periods, the block two team took a different approach. Rather than maintaining the same look for everything, they subtly gave the 20s period footage a different feel by shooting it on anamorphic lenses, then used the same spherical Panaspeeds for the 80s scenes.

When shooting anamorphic they kept the same 2.20 aspect ratio as the rest of the show by chopping off the sides of the wider 2.40 native frame which they extracted from the anamorphic lenses.

These anamorphic lenses provided a greater focus falloff around the edges of the frame. In other words, the sweet spot in the middle would stay sharp while the borders of the shot progressively fell out of focus. 

These lenses also create an oval bokeh shape which is different from the regular rounded bokeh of spherical glass. Anamorphics also tend to flare a bit easier - with a lateral flare.

These flares were another inclusion which differentiated block two from block one and made Chon’s images feel a lot more textural and a bit rougher than Kogonada’s clean frames.

The DP and director also ‘messed up’ the image in other ways. They added haze when shooting interior scenes, especially those in the 20s, to give an additional layer of texture.

Also their images have a higher degree of halation or bloom to the highlights than block one, which looks a bit cleaner. I’m not sure whether this came from the anamorphic glass, the use of haze, effects in post, or by using a stronger diffusion filter in front of the lens, however it too added a smoky texture.

Like in some of their other work together, they also implemented much more colourful lighting than in the first block, pushing in blue or red tones. Or, sometimes, using a very cool colour balance to push tones into an exaggerated dawn, blue look.

CONCLUSION

I think what this case study shows is that there is not necessarily a right or a wrong approach when it comes to making creative decisions. Different directors, DPs and crew members will bring different sensibilities and interpretations to the screenplay. 

Like in art, it's these nuanced differences in how the subject matter is portrayed which are the little signature at the bottom of the painting which show the authorship of each film.