Cinematography Style: Rodrigo Prieto

INTRODUCTION

If you put together a list of some of your favourite working directors of the last two decades, there’s a decent chance that Rodrigo Prieto has shot for one of them: Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee, Alejandro Iñárritu, Greta Gerwig, Oliver Stone…the list goes on.

Although his cinematography spans decades, it often contains a deliberate use of rich saturated colours, a widescreen aspect ratio and visually bold decisions, which are always focused on presenting a subjective view of the character to the audience.

So, in this episode, let’s dive into how Prieto’s philosophy on image making affects the camera and pick out some of the film gear he uses to create his masterful images.   

PHILOSOPHY

“I try to make the cinematography subjective. And that’s in every movie, really, I do. I try to make the audience, as much as possible, be in the perspective of the character. That is not only literally the camera angle being in the POV of a character. It’s more making the camera behave, and the lighting, and everything about it - the texture and the feel of the movie - behave like the main person we’re following.” - Rodrigo Prieto

The idea of creating images that put the viewer into the shoes of the protagonist is one of the underlying philosophies in his work. For example, how do we visually convey a character’s progression from a naive, straight laced graduate to an excessive, risk taking, paranoid white collar criminal.

The camera could start by moving with a smooth, steady motion, under a well exposed light, and later shift to a rough, raw, handheld aesthetic with harder light and stronger shadows.

Or, if we take another story, how do we visually present a series of interweaving timelines and narratives so that the audience doesn’t get too confused?

You could do it by using a different colour cast for each different character arc. Using more sickly, cooler tones for a man in need of medical care, and a much warmer palette for a man trying to hold his life together through his faith.

Or, how do you put the audience in the shoes of a disorientated warrior during a surreal, near death experience during a battle?

How about by radically shifting colour out of the bounds of reality.

You could pick apart each and every one of the film’s he shoots in this way and uncover a philosophical rationale behind the often bold visual decision making that supports the story.  

It’s more about creating a feeling and a tone that is representative of a character’s state of mind than it is about shooting from the physical POV or perspective of the protagonist.

Each director he works for brings a different artistic sensibility, however the camera’s subjectivity is always present.

“Every director is completely different. For example, Ang Lee is very precise and also very methodical. And he likes to pick the focal length of the lens. And he talks to me about the framing and composition. He’ll look through a viewfinder and tell me have that corner of that window in frame and this and that, you know. Oliver Stone thrives in chaos. So every time I say, ‘Oliver we have this problem with the camera’, there’s a bump in the dolly, whatever, he’d say ‘Rodrigo Perfect is the enemy of good.’ And Scorsese is maybe a mix of both. He’s very precise in the shot listing he designs and he has a very good idea of the energy he needs the camera to have. But he also leaves space for improvisation by the actors and for new ideas to come.” - Rodrigo Prieto

Being able to adapt to how different directors work is an important skill. Cinematographers should be able to offer both their technical skills and practical advice on how to achieve a desired look or an unconventional shot, as well as lighting each scene.

Some director’s like to maintain more control over how each shot is composed, while other director’s may just describe a tone or feeling that they want to achieve and then leave room for the DP to offer their own ideas and suggestions as to how to achieve that.

When working with directors that like to maintain creative control over small details, it helps to build up a trust in their visual sensibilities and accept the challenge of focusing on the lighting and technical execution of the shots.

Sometimes it may also be necessary to surrender control of minor visual details in order to capture better performances. 

“The performances were the essential thing in this film. So, you know, I had to compromise sometimes the possibilities of the lighting to be sure that we captured the performances of these amazing actors.” - Rodrigo Prieto

On The Irishman, this meant embracing the decision to use multiple cameras to cover dialogue scenes - which allowed them to get greater coverage of the performances.

The reason this may compromise cinematic choices is because the more pieces of gear that you place within a set, the more you limit the kind of angles you can shoot, or the space that you can place light without it getting blocked or seen in a shot. 

To further complicate things, they had to use an interesting but cumbersome rig that actually accommodated three cinema cameras in order to de-age characters.

GEAR

This 3-D rig consisted of a Red Helium that could shoot high res, 8K files that could later be used for VFX work. This camera was placed in the centre of the rig and captured the actual shot and frame that they would use.

Two, special infrared Alexa Minis were then placed alongside the capture camera as ‘witness cameras’ that also had an infrared ring light to neutralise shadows that could only be picked up by the Minis and wouldn’t show up on the recorded Red image.

They could use these reference clips with the recorded clips and combine it with some AI and machine learning, powered by a NVIDIA GPU chip, to de-age the actors.

Prieto got his camera and grip team to reconfigure this large rig and made it more modular so that the ‘witness cameras’ could be moved around to either be alongside the main camera or at the top and bottom. This allowed them to use this hefty setup on a variety of grip rigs.  

Prieto’s photographic decisions are often bold, and use colour expressively. Across his career he has manipulated colour in different ways as the technology has progressed. He’s done it photochemically with film, by using a combination of film and the digital intermediate, as well as with digital cameras and the colour grade.

Let’s compare some of the techniques he’s used - starting with film.

The most common way of shooting on film, is to use a colour negative stock and expose and develop it normally. However Prieto has often experimented with different stocks and development methods.

For example, on Alexander he used the rare Kodak Ektachrome 2443 EIR stock. Sometimes called Aerochrome, it is sensitive to infrared light and displays colour in unusual and often unpredictable ways: turning greens to red, purple or blue. He rated this stock at 125 ISO and used an ND0.3 and a Yellow No. 12 filter to make the effects of infrared light more intense.

Another technique he used in many films, such as Amores Perros, is a type of development called bleach bypass processing. During the processing of film in a lab, the step of bleaching the film is skipped. This results in a black and white layer that is overlayed on top of the colour image, which reduces the saturation of colour, but increases both the contrast and film grain - creating a raw, gritty look.

Instead of doing this technique photochemically on Babel, he did it in the digital intermediate. In other words he processed the film normally, then added a half bleach bypass look to the film in the colour grade. 

This allowed him to control the intensity of the look, creating colour that was somewhere in between a bleach bypass and regular development.

As the technology has shifted more towards digital, he’s been able to do everything digitally instead of photochemically: from picking the look of a stock to choosing a development method, all within the grade.   

On The Irishman, he chose to differentiate the time periods by applying different film emulation LUTs to both the digital and film footage from different eras: a Kodachrome look for the 50s, an Ektachrome look for the 60s and a bleach bypass development look for the 70s onward.

You can see how foliage looks different across these looks: including deeper shades of blue and stronger contrast in the shadows for the 50s, a bit of a warmer look in the 60s, and a very destaurated but high contrast look from the 70s onward.

He’s used many lenses over the years, but has often reverted to shooting in a widescreen format with anamorphic glass, such as the Hawk V-Lites, the Arri Master Anamorphics or Panavision G-Series. 

Prieto also likes using Arri cameras, whether that is the Arricam ST or LT when shooting on film, or on variations of the Alexa when shooting digitally. 

Another example of how he uses colour can be found in how he lights night interiors and exteriors. He often uses quite a classic technique of creating alternate planes of colour in different parts of the image. Specifically, he likes to create pockets of warm light indoors and then place cooler, blue sources of light outside of windows. This creates increased colour contrast and more depth in the frame.

CONCLUSION

Although he often paints with lots of colour and quite strong visual techniques, it is always done deliberately. Prieto uses the technical tools at his disposal to craft images that create a mood that mimics that of the main protagonist.

Whether that’s through his use of colour, lighting or camera movement.

The cinematography remains subjective and deliberate in a way that subtly or sometimes not so subtly helps to support the story.