Eye on the Oscars: The Cinematographer

Denis Villeneuve’s unsettling psychological crime thriller “Prisoners” provides a contrast between the disturbing subject matter (child abduction, suicide, torture) and Roger Deakins’ restrained camerawork, reminiscent of the Brit d.p.’s cooly matter-of-fact lensing in another police procedural, “Fargo.”

“Denis and I talked a lot in prep about the best style to use, and while we considered going with a very aggressive, docu-drama, handheld approach,” says Deakins. “We both ultimately decided that the film might be over the top and melodramatic like that. I love character studies and photographing faces, and it seemed best just to observe these people and the gradual decline of Hugh Jackman’s desperate father.”

Shot over 55 days in and around Atlanta, the film used all practical locations, “apart from one set we built, of the apartment interior,” reports Deakins, who used the Arri Alexa — “great for all the low-light and night shoots we had to do.”

Using real locations gave the filmmakers the naturalism they wanted, but achieving the film’s bleak, sunless look while shooting in Atlanta (doubling for suburban Pennsylvania) proved difficult.

“We structured the shoot around the forecast, and even got rainy days when we needed them,” recalls Deakins.

Ironically, the d.p., nominated last year for the Bond blockbuster “Skyfall,” found “Prisoners” “harder to shoot in a sense. You don’t have the huge budget and lots of toys to play with, but that also makes you more creative.”

-Iain Blair

When French cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel first discussed the look of “Inside Llewyn Davis” with the Coen brothers, they gave him a concise but vivid image — “a slushy, wintry New York,” he recalls.

In turn, the d.p. suggested another key image, the cover of the classic “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” album, “with overcast skies and that feeling of being cold, and they’d had the same idea,” he recalls.

Building on that, Delbonnel chose a distinct tonal palette to convey the film’s “sadness and what I feel is something much deeper going on than just a story about folk music,” he says. “It’s really a requiem, and a very dark comedy.”

Avoiding the cliches of blue-hued compositions spelling out melancholy, Delbonnel instead embraced dirty magenta and cyan coupled with “very pale skin tones.”

In turn, the d.p. was also embraced by the Coens’ tightknit “family,” including a camera crew usually helmed by Roger Deakins. “I’d worked with his key grip Mitch Lillian before, on ‘Across the Universe,’ and I ended up using a jib arm a lot, which they like to do,” he notes.

Delbonnel also made ample use of wide lenses: 21mm, 25mm and 27mm. “I’m a wide lens guy, and so are Joel and Ethan, so our visual approach was always similar.”

So much so that, by the time the d.p. did the DI, the Coens deemed it unnecessary to supervise the sessions where Delbonnel and colorist Peter Doyle also took out the blue channel. “They trusted me completely with the final look of their film.”

-Iain Blair 

Martial arts may be a brutal business, but thanks to French cinematographer Philippe Le Sourd, it’s never looked more beautiful than in Wong Kar Wai’s “The Grandmaster,” the tale of Ip Man, the master who trained kung fu legend Bruce Lee.

The opening scene — a balletic martial arts showdown at night, in the rain — sets the tone; rigorously framed movement choreographed against dagger-like sheets of water in an expressionistic tour-de-force.

“That one scene took a month to film, shooting every single day, but they work in a very different way in China,” reports Le Sourd. “There was no real script and Wong would write scenes every day, we’d discuss them, and then start shooting.”

Le Sourd, who began working on the project in 2009, says he was the only European on the crew, and that even communication was “a challenge, although Wong and I could discuss things in English.”

The production was entirely shot on location throughout China, “in some very difficult conditions,” says Le Sourd, who particularly recalls the “incredible cold night shoots we did in Manchuria.”

For the 365 days of shooting, spread over three years, the d.p. mixed film and digital, using both the Arriflex and Vision Research Phantom Flex Digital Camera at frame rates as high as 1,000 per second.

Filming literally ended when Le Sourd ran out of Fuji stock.

“We got the last lot they ever made — the end of an era and very sad.”

-Iain Blair

It’s a delicious irony that “Gravity,” perhaps the most technologically complex cinematic undertaking of the year, was originally conceived as a return to simplicity.

“Four or five years ago, we planned on doing it in Europe with a tiny crew of just a few people,” says d.p. Emmanuel Lubezki. “It was geared to be cheap, with one or two great actors. The script was really brilliant and beautiful. We wanted it to be very simple.”

Of course the project evolved, and in the end required incredibly sophisticated technology, including a huge lightbox lined with more than 4,000 LED bulbs that projected images of space that were sometimes reflected in the shot. The box, cameras and images were all remotely controlled in precision choreography, at times seamlessly shifting from subjective to objective.

Lubezki says he took inspiration from the LED projections at a Peter Gabriel concert.

“Six months earlier, we could not have done this movie the way we did it,” he says. “Almost every piece of equipment that we used was either custom-made or just coming out on the market and in beta testing. It’s exciting but very scary because if something breaks, suddenly you have to stop production.”

The cameras he used were Arri Alexas, with Codex Digital Recorders ensuring the maximum amount of data was captured, resulting in greater flexibility in post.

“The amount of information and the quality of the information was far superior,” he says.

To an unprecedented extent, director Alfonso Cuaron depended on Lubezki’s talent and eye throughout the entire shoot, from previsualization through visual effects and post.“On ‘Gravity,’ a big part of my collaboration was to do the virtual lighting,” says Lubezki. “I was able to do all the lighting for the movie, and to collaborate on the framing and design of the shots. I was lucky to be included in the movie that way. And virtual lighting is not more or less than the conventional lighting we have always done. But it is every bit as important. Who better than a cinematographer to understand what light should be doing in a scene?”

-David Heuring 

Most cinematographers can only dream of shooting a studio feature in black and white. With “Nebraska,” Phedon Papamichael can cross that off his bucket list. Helmer Alexander Payne always envisioned the tale monochromatically. The decision led to a reduced budget, but the project was eventually feted with six Oscar nominations.

Payne allowed Papamichael more freedom to compose than in their previous forays (“Sideways,” “The Descendants”), and the d.p. says that the b&w approach allowed him to craft iconic widescreen imagery in harmony with the desolate landscapes and the curmudgeonly isolation of Dern’s character, Woody Grant.

“Without the cacophony of colors, you’re not fighting to make an elegant frame,” explains Papamichael. “There’s definitely a poetic power in black and white.”

Papamichael shot on Arri Alexa digital cameras using older rehoused C-series Panavision anamorphic lenses.

“Alexander tells stories about people, about characters with all their subtleties and facial expressions,” says Papamichael. “He doesn’t want to miss any of the nuances of the performance. Our camera movement was very subtle. Nothing is wasted. But you’re always with a character at the moment you need to be, and nothing gets covered up by any kind of style, movement, rack focusing or lighting that would distract or take away from the story. The movie overall is very precisely crafted, and I think that’s why, ultimately, his movies are so successful. You feel the love and the labor, and the thought behind everything.”

-David Heuring