With the feature film awards show season now in the industry’s collective rearview mirror, SHOOT touched base with several of the cinematographers who had a hand in some of the most honored work. The talent ranges from an emerging DP who made her biggest splash to date with Fruitvale–a film which was the darling of the Sundance Festival–to another artisan whose feature lensing debut recently scored him a Film Independent Spirit Award. We then turn to a two-time Academy Award nominee who scored his first Oscar this year, and finally an iconic cinematographer who last month won his third career ASC Award for Feature Film Excellence; this also marked his 11th ASC Award nomination in addition to having received the organization’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011.
SHOOT gains insights from cinematographers Rachel Morrison, Ben Richardson, Claudio Miranda, ASC, and Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC.
Morrison shot the Ryan Coogler-directed Fruitvale which won the U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize and the U.S. Dramatic Audience Award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
Richardson made an auspicious feature debut with Beasts of The Southern Wild, directed by Benh Zeitlin. Beasts earned Best Cinematography distinction for Richardson at the Spirit Awards last month as well as in the Dramatic category at last year’s Sundance Film Festival.
Miranda recently won the Oscar for the Ang Lee-directed Life of Pi.
And Deakins copped the ASC Award on the strength of the Sam Mendes-directed Skyfall.
Rachel Morrison A drama based on the real-life 2009 shooting death of young, unarmed African-American man Oscar Grant by a law enforcement officer at an Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) station in the Fruitvale section of Oakland, Calif., Fruitvale received widespread acclaim upon its debut at the 2013 Sundance Fest. The film marks Coogler’s directorial debut and has brought several artisans into prominence, including DP Morrison.
“The whole Sundance experience was completely surreal,” shared Morrison. “There are those films that people start talking about long before the festival, but no one was mentioning ours. At a certain point you start to believe the hype (or lack thereof) and wonder if anyone will even actually show up to your screenings. Then we had our premiere and not only did they show up, but they cried… and they clapped… so much so that we got a standing ovation. Then it was like a snowball effect–people started talking about our little film. When it won the Audience Award, we thought that was it. We were overjoyed. To win the Grand Jury too, now that was a dream come true!”
Morrison assessed that it would be fair to say that Fruitvale “has been my biggest splash to date. I’ve been at Sundance with three other films. Any Day Now won Tribeca’s Audience Award last year, but none have received anywhere near the kind of attention this film has been attracting. It is a really special film.”
As for how she got the opportunity to shoot that “special film,” Morrison related, “Ilyse McKimmie, director of the Sundance Labs, recommended me to Ryan when he was searching for DPs. We interviewed over Skype, which I try to avoid as it’s generally hard to make the same kind of connection you would in person, but in this case it was really profound. We connected immediately and deeply, like we had known each other for life. We had similar ideas for the film and had a lot of the same references. We each brought unique life experiences to the table, but are cut from the same cloth. It was truly incredible.”
Morrison said of director Coogler, “Ryan has a real appreciation for cinematography and a great technical knowledge base, which was refreshing because I could reference lens sizes and apertures and he would know exactly what I was talking about. I really like to get inside the director’s head as much as possible during prep so that when we’re under the gun and the director has new challenges coming from every direction, I can at least do my best to deflect the ones that come my way and interpret their vision, even when they are busy putting out fires in the other room. Similarly, Ryan put a lot of faith and trust in me. Once we developed a shorthand, he rarely even looked at the monitor, preferring instead to work directly with the actors while I helmed the camera and lens. In this way we were able to create a very intimate environment, which I think comes through very effectively in the work. Honestly, the most important lesson for me on Fruitvale is that with an incredible leader and team, all dedicated to telling the same story, for the right reason, anything is possible.”
Fruitvale was described by Morrison as having been “the age old indie story–not enough time or money. Mainly time. In this case, however, it was particularly challenging as we had an ensemble cast, hundreds of extras, kids, dogs, gunfire, stunts and visual effects–basically every ingredient they say not to use in low budget filmmaking.”
For Fruitvale, Morrison shot Super 16mm on the Arri 416 using Zeiss Ultra 16mm lenses. “Both Ryan and I felt strongly about shooting film for this story in particular. It was important that the audience felt enmeshed in Oscar’s world and that the world was real. There is something tactile and organic to the look of film, which connects with our senses and helps us relate. We wanted the pronounced granularity of Super 16 in conjunction with a familiar and color-accurate rendition. We contemplated 2-perf 35, which we would force process to exaggerate the grain, but ultimately felt the widescreen aspect ratio would lack intimacy and opted for Super 16 instead. I was nervous about sacrificing shallow depth of field from my arsenal of tools, but in retrospect I have no doubt Super 16 was the right way to go on every level.”
Morrison studied photojournalism as an undergrad and conjectured that she “would probably have been a combat photographer if I hadn’t fallen in love with narrative cinematography. I’m not a trust fund kid. I took work as it came. As a result, my career is nothing if not diverse. I’ve shot everything from The Hills to quirky comedies, to a recent horror/thriller called The Harvest starring Michael Shannon, Samantha Morton and Peter Fonda–but I am a drama girl through and through. My passion is to shoot films that make you cry, make you think and make you engage on a deeper level. Perhaps you might even learn something about yourself? For this reason, I am most proud of Fruitvale, Sound of My Voice and Any Day Now. I’ve been incredibly fortunate–it has taken less than three years since I transitioned to shooting primarily features (and I’ve shot eight films in this time). I’m really looking forward to the next few years.”
As for what’s on the immediate horizon, Morrison shared, “I have a couple features in the works, but nothing I can talk about just yet. I’ve also started shooting commercials between my features. I recently completed a long-form branded project for Toyota, directed by Paul Bozymowski and produced by @radical.media, as well as a 30-second spot for Naked Juice, directed by Focus Creeps [of Foundation Content]. I enjoy short form because you get a few more toys, a few more minutes, and you get to meet new people on every project.”
Ben Richardson Richardson’s coming out party as a feature cinematographer, Beasts of the Southern Wild, most definitely put him on the map, earning him Best Cinematography honors at both last year’s Sundance Fest and at last month’s Film Independent Spirit Awards. When asked at the latter awards ceremony what inspired his lensing of Beasts, Richardson cited his first meeting with the young girl Quvenzhane Wallis, a non-actor who would end up being both an Oscar and a Spirit Award nominee for Best Female Lead. Richardson recalled shooting a short rehearsal video with Wallis and knowing instantly that his priority as a cinematographer was to make sure to capture her magical spirit.
But Richardson’s gravitating towards Beasts predated that magical introduction to Wallis. In some respects, the process began well before Beasts was ever even a notion, back when he first met director Zeitlin in Prague one summer; both were starting out in the industry, looking to learn and move up the proverbial ladder. “I liked the way Benh [Zeitlin] thought. He was the kind of person I wanted to work with.”
That ambition was realized when director Zeitlin came to Richardson to shoot the short Glory at Sea in Louisiana. Though scheduling kept Richardson from lensing the entire project, the two built on their initial rapport. “We established a way of working together, and ways to use the camera expressively, to involve the camera as a personality in the project,” recalled Richardson.
Still Richardson wasn’t a lock a few years later to get the opportunity to shoot Beasts of the Southern Wild. But when he saw what Zeitlin was trying to do, “something welled up inside me,” said Richardson. “I decided to fight for the chance to work on this film. I shot a test reel with a video camera at several locations [in Southern Louisiana] and got it into Benh’s hands. Benh and the producers went to bat for me, convincing the guys with the money that I was the right person to shoot the film.”
One of the reasons that Richardson was the right choice had to do with his decision to let the movie’s world of Southern Louisiana “sort of author things for you. You need to let the world present you with opportunities. The weakness of people sometimes is that they try to impose their will on an unbending world and the two don’t align. The attempt to achieve a certain look or stylistic dimension doesn’t mesh with what’s in front of you. There’s a balance you try to maintain as a cinematographer. You don’t want to be totally passive but you also don’t want to impose your will against what’s out there or you miss an important part of the story.”
In that vein, numerous people who have seen Beasts asked Richardson if he has documentary filmmaking experience. “I don’t but I take that as a great compliment–that the world of Southern Louisiana captured in the film seemed that real to them.”
Richardson deployed an ARRI 416 film camera to lens Beasts of the Southern Wild. “I cannot express how much I love that camera. It helped us be adaptable. It lent itself to our lighting strategy which was to use natural light as much as possible–though certain days we had to have lots of equipment on location. Even then we tried to keep the equipment out of view for the performers so they could just be themselves.”
Having wrapped the awards show circuit and extensive promo/publicity events for Beasts, Richardson wasn’t done at press time with his red carpet endeavors. His second feature, Drinking Buddies, a romantic comedy directed by Joe Swanberg, made its world premiere at this month’s South By Southwest (SXSW) Festival in Austin, Texas. “It’s a film that could hardly be further from what Beasts of the Southern Wild is about,” said Richardson. “Joe’s attitude and sense of comedy and people attracted me to the project.” Drinking Buddies–featuring a cast of Olivia Wilde, Jake Johnson, Anna Kendrick and Ron Livingston–played in the Narrative Spotlight portion of SXSW.
Richardson has also been active in commercials and music videos. On the former front, he shot a moving public service campaign for Gateway, a social service agency in Birmingham, Alabama. Laura Belsey of Shadow Pictures directed the package of PSAs. Richardson more recently lensed the Passion Pit music video “Carried Away” directed by the duo called Brewer from production house PRETTYBIRD.
Claudio Miranda, ASC Asked what winning the Best Cinematography Oscar for Life Of Pi means to him, Claudio Miranda, ASC, views it as a reminder of how far he’s come. “In many ways, I’m surprised that life put me in this place. I remember being Harris Savides’ gaffer and at that time I had never thought of assuming that role of cinematographer. It wasn’t on my radar, yet somehow I’m here with an Oscar. It sounds clich๏ฟฝ but while the award goes to a single person, it’s the result of everyone’s contributions.”
Life of Pi earned Miranda his first career Oscar. He was previously nominated for David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2009). Reflecting on what he learned from his experience working with Lee, Miranda related, “He’s a much different director than Fincher. You get in touch with Ang’s feelings. Ang conveys how something should feel in a scene and I would decipher it into more of a technical thing so that the feeling he wanted could be realized, how the scene should look and feel. It wasn’t always a case of looking or feeling beautiful; at times, for instance, he wanted a harsh feel. But these feelings are also grounded in research. Ang hired a scientist so he can determine how something should look–the waves had to have a big swell, for example. Ang’s wife is a biologist. He comes from that kind of perspective; he wanted this movie to be in a real place–that’s a driving force behind his movies.”
Miranda said two movies he shot got him on Lee’s radar for Life of Pi—The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and the Joseph Kosinski-directed Tron: Legacy. The former because Miranda shot it digitally and Tron for the 3D work. “Ang hadn’t even seen Tron–it wasn’t yet released when we first met but he knew about the 3D work I had done on that film. He heard good things and even though he didn’t see Tron–I’m not sure he’s even seen it now in its entirety–Ang and I hit it off and he decided to go with me on Life of Pi.”
Miranda deployed six ARRI ALEXA cameras on Life of Pi. He said the ALEXA at the time was the clear-cut choice based on tests he did with different cameras, shooting a little boat off the Venice Beach pier with the camera very low to the water. Sunlight reflecting on water is a digital challenge, observed Miranda who concluded that the ALEXA was the only camera that didn’t feel electronic in the highlights. “The [ALEXA] imagery was stunning and it came naturally. I worked my ass off with the other [digital] cameras thinking there must be more they could do, that I could get the same results. But they couldn’t deliver anything close [to what the ALEXA yielded].”
Regarding the biggest challenge Life of Pi posed, Miranda observed, “In a word, water. A lot of our efforts were in aid of making the water look natural, capturing sunlight on the ripples without it appearing electronic, keeping spray off the lens, moving from above water to underwater, even dealing with the lack of marks on water! In the 120×40 meter structure we built around the wave tank in Taichung, we had massive doors we could open to let in the light, and silks and blacks so I could shape the way the light hit the water. But it paid off and a lot of the really beautiful scenes feature light on water, including the sleeping Vishnu on the pool with candles. Fortunately, the ARRI ALEXA had an amazing capacity to hold highlights and make it look real, and Pace Fusion built an amazing 3D housing to meet underwater challenges.”
As for what’s next, Miranda has wrapped DI on the Kosinksi-directed Oblivion and is going to embark on Tomorrowland directed by Brad Bird. Miranda hopes to again accommodate more commercials into his schedule. He hadn’t been able to recently due to the promotional commitments tied to Life of Pi.
Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC Deakins, ASC, BSC, recently won his third career ASC Award for Feature Film Excellence, this time for Skyfall. His previous ASC Award wins were for The Shawshank Redemption (1995) and The Man Who Wasn’t There (2002). He has a total of 11 career nominations in the feature category. Deakins’ other nominations were for Fargo (1997), Kundun (1998), O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2001), No Country for Old Men (2008), The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2008), Revolutionary Road (2009), The Reader (2009) and True Grit (2011).
Further testament to his perennial status as an awards contender, Deakins has 10 career Best Cinematography Oscar nominations (for all the films recognized by the ASC Awards except for Revolutionary Road).
Asked to reflect on what his latest ASC Award win meant to him personally and professionally, Deakins shared, “The ASC award is, of course, very special. That said, I don’t shoot films to garner awards but because I love being a cinematographer and creating images. I am my biggest critic and I strive, often with little real success, to satisfy my own ambitions for every film I shoot.”
He described Skyfall as being “a very complicated film” which “encompassed a huge range of very difficult situations to light and shoot. Like any film, the biggest challenge was to allow the story to dominate the imagery rather than the technical aspects of just capturing those images.”
The ASC Award for Skyfall comes two years after Deakins received the American Society of Cinematographers’ Lifetime Achievement Award. His continued accomplishments underscore that a Lifetime Achievement honor doesn’t necessarily cap a career. In fact, when it was announced in late 2010 that he would be the ASC Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, Deakins said, “I had mixed emotions when I was told about this recognition. To be honest, I am flattered, but I also feel like I am only just getting started. I’m enjoying what I do more than I ever have and there seems to be so much more I want to do. I feel like I’m getting this award about halfway through my career.”
