Based on the groundbreaking visual pull of Gravity, Emmanuel Lubezki, ASC, AMC, this month earned his fourth career ASC Award nomination for Outstanding Achievement in Feature Film. Lubezki won ASC Awards for The Tree of Life in 2012 and Children of Men in 2007, and was nominated in 2000 for Sleepy Hollow.
Still, ASC recognition doesn’t ever get old. “It’s incredibly exciting when you get the call that you’ve been named a nominee,” affirmed Lubezki. “That’s especially true after a movie like this, with five years of work put in by so many talented people. To be appreciated by cinematographers you respect so much and whose work has somehow shaped a little bit who you are and what you’re like is a tremendous honor. Some of them are my teachers.”
This time, though, the recognition takes on an added significance that goes well beyond the nominee and the Alfonso Cuarón-directed film. “Gravity represented a big change for me as compared to everything I’ve done before,” related Lubezki. “We’re used to capturing images on film and are just starting to capture images with digital cameras. Now, though, as the cinematographer works with the effects team, we’re often creating images rather than capturing them. We are creating images in computers, lighting in computers. Combining the virtual cinematography with the live action in this movie was very challenging. To have work in CG considered cinematography–where, for example, a cinematographer’s expertise in lighting extends to what’s created digitally–is part of the new era we’re entering. To have that recognized by my peers in the ASC means a lot.”
The very latest recognition is also of the highest profile, coming in the form of Lubezki’s sixth career Best Cinematography Oscar nomination. The prior five were for The Tree of Life in 2012, Children of Men in 2007, The New World in 2006, Sleepy Hollow in 2000, and A Little Princess in 1996.
Integral to Gravity–for which the ARRI Alexa was deployed–was the collaborative relationship between Lubezki and the film’s VFX supervisor Tim Webber of Framestore. “We created a great team, working on every single aspect together, exploring and deciding things together,” said Lubezki. “It’s like collaborating with a great gaffer or production designer. We had a great overall team where everyone had the same objectives and we all worked hard to figure out how to achieve those goals.”
Like Lubezki, Webber too is an Oscar nominee for Gravity, part of a team in the running for a Visual Effects Academy Award. Gravity scored a total of 10 nominations, including Best Picture and Director.
Lubezki and Webber have been members of the same team before, on the Cuarón-directed Children of Men. Webber earned a BAFTA Film Award nomination for Best Visual Effects on the strength of Children of Men as well as a pair of VES Award noms. Lubezki won the ASC Award for Children of Men, which also garnered him a Best Cinematography Oscar nomination.
Additionally Lubezki has diversified into directing, joining the roster of Park Pictures in 2011 for commercials and branded content. He made his spot directorial debut with a Powerade campaign out of Wieden+Kennedy.
Getting back to this year’s ASC Award, Lubezki said he was “excited to see more cinematographers nominated. The work is so different, almost impossible to compare but it’s healthy to show this diverse range and the many ways cinematographers contribute artistically.”
Traditionally, the ASC selects five nominees, but a three-way tie this year boosted that number to seven. Instead of a tie in point totals bringing about more nominees, Lubezki would like to consider permanently having more than five cinematographers selected as finalists for the award each year to showcase the broad range of work being done. This year’s field of ASC nominees also consists of Barry Ackroyd, BSC, for Captain Phillips; Sean Bobbitt, BSC, for 12 Years a Slave; Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC, for Prisoners; Bruno Delbonnel, ASC, AFC for Inside Llewyn Davis; Philippe Le Sourd for The Grandmaster; and Phedon Papamichael, ASC, for Nebraska.
Andrew Dunn, BSC
“One of the best things we can hope for is to be involved in films that will have a life and touch people in their hearts,” said Andrew Dunn, BSC, in reference to his collaborations with director Lee Daniels, first the profoundly moving Precious–a winner of two Oscars (Best Supporting Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay) and recipient of six Academy Award nominations (including for Best Picture and Best Director) in 2010, and then Lee Daniels’ The Butler.
Additionally, The Butler earned Dunn a 2013 Camerimage Golden Frog nomination. The movie tells the extraordinary story of Gaines who served eight presidents as a White House butler from 1952 to 1986. The film begins in the cotton fields of Gaines’ youth, extends through the civil rights movement–in which Gaines’ son was an active participant–and culminates with Gaines returning to the White House at age 92 to meet an African-American president. The Butler spans 85 years of American history and was shot by Dunn in a mere 38 days.
From the get-go, Dunn and Daniels knew they would shoot on film. “Digital is getting better and better,” said Dunn. “I just shot a movie on digital. But film has a texture, life and depth that digital is yet to fully achieve–even more so back when we set out on The Butler 18 months ago.”
Another factor leading to the decision to shoot The Butler on film was the need to mesh Dunn’s original footage with archival news footage. “To make that transition as seamless as possible, film was the natural choice. Film lent itself better to the historical nature of the movie,” assessed Dunn who primarily deployed a Panavision camera, complemented by a couple of Arriflex film camera models for special sequences. Dunn and Daniels chose to frame The Butler in a 1.85:1 aspect ratio, maximizing the negative in 3-perf format.
While Gaines is the focus of the story, he is often on the periphery in White House scenes where the presidents he served under are the center of attention. As a butler, Gaines is unobtrusive when in the same room as the president. This made for a delicate balance that Dunn had to somehow maintain. Gaines is physically off to the side, a quiet observer in many scenes yet the story is about him and his unique perspective on history as it’s being made. “Thankfully, Forest Whitaker is a remarkable actor,” said Dunn. “He is silent in the room, generally ignored in many scenes, yet you can imagine what he might be thinking. Forrest is brilliant–his performance demonstrates that nothing is everything at the same time. I learned from him as a cinematographer–the importance to show everything but not show off everything.”
Dunn said of Daniels, “Lee has great heart and is an inspiration. He allows freedom when he trusts people–the actors around him, editors and the DP. We had an even more free and easy rapport when we got back together again for The Butler. Precious was like getting married–you experience so much together and understand one another. We just picked up right where we left off on The Butler.
As for his digital cinematography exploits, Dunn’s recent credits include Hello Carter which was shot on the RED Epic, and Endless Love shot on the ARRI Alexa. Dunn is also set to deploy Alexa on the feature Man Up.
During the course of his career, Dunn has enjoyed close-knit relationships with such directors as not only Daniels but Robert Altman and Mick Jackson. For the latter, Dunn shot L.A. Story, The Bodyguard and notable BBC fare. And for Altman, Dunn lensed Gosford Park and The Company as well as several commercials. Of the late Altman, Dunn said, “He was a master. And like all master craftsmen, he made things look easy. And he made it easy for everyone to give their very best. Working with him was fun and joyous. The work was not about him but what he was trying to convey. Working with him was one of the great highlights of my life.”
Among other career highlights for Dunn would be The Madness of King George (directed by Nicholas Hytner) which earned a Best Cinematography Award from the BSC.
Nick Higgins
An Audience Award winner at the 2013 SXSW Festival, The Crash Reel is another in a series of collaborations between director Lucy Walker and cinematographer Nick Higgins. Their filmography together also includes: Countdown to Zero, a documentary about the escalating nuclear arms race; eight docu-style commercials for Target; four docu-shorts about 2012 Summer Olympic athletes for Liberty Mutual; and The Lion’s Mouth Opens, a short which just premiered at Sundance.
The Crash Reel, which made this year’s Oscar shortlist for Best Feature Documentary while earning Walker her first DGA Award nomination, introduces us to American snowboarding champion Kevin Pearce who in 2009 was enjoying the most successful season of his career, winning several events and challenging the dominance of legendary extreme sports athlete Shaun White. But while riding the slopes of Park City, Utah, in training for the 2010 Winter Olympics, Pearce suffered a traumatic brain injury that left him in a coma, followed by a long road of adjusting to what would be a lifelong disability. Still, he aspires and strives mightily to return to competitive snowboarding.
For Higgins, the biggest challenge of The Crash Reel was “how to capture the delicate family interactions without adversely affecting the mood of the situation. Any camera crew in a cinema verite situation is definitely an elephant in the room. If that elephant can be limited to two people, one with a camera and the other with a boom, you definitely have more of a fighting chance at capturing enough of what would happen without you being there to make a film.
“For the very intimate dinner scene where the family talks frankly about Kevin’s plan to get back on snow there was only Lucy directing/holding a boom and me filming with my old Panasonic HDX900,” continued Higgins. “People have asked me if it wouldn’t have been better to shoot that scene with two cameras so I wouldn’t have had to run around the table getting all the shots on one camera. The problem with two cameras in that situation is that it’s another person that needs to be introduced before we shoot. It’s another person that has to go to the bathroom before we shoot, another person that needs to plug batteries in etc, etc. The second you arrive at a scene like that, you start having an impact. The more impact the less real the situation will be. In terms of covering a scene with seven people around a round table with one camera you have to accept that you can’t get every line of dialogue in a clean single. Along the way you just make sure you’re getting clean singles of the key participants reacting to wherever is being said. You certainly try to get a bunch of the key lines on camera but you don’t sweat it when you miss some. The absolutely most important aspect a cinematographer can bring for a verite scene is remembering to listen. It’s definitely not about the visuals on their own as you have to capture the scene in a way it can be cut together. If you don’t listen to what’s going on, you won’t be able to determine what is and isn’t key to the story.
“The other two things I think of during a scene is The Salesman which reminds me I don’t have to “chase lips” and get every line of dialogue in a clean single, and War Photographer, the film about Janes Nachtwey, which reminds me to make the elephant in the room move around as calmly as possible. This point is huge. If I am frantic, it affects the scene. If I am calm and cover myself in my proverbial cloak of invisibility, people start to act like they aren’t seeing me.”
As for his choice of cameras for The Crash Reel, Higgins stared on the Panasonic HDX900 with a Fujinon 10×5 lens. “That’s what the first dinner scene was shot on.,” he said. “When I think of that camera, I think of the lens. It was wide, it had a manual iris and it had a doubler. I have fond memories of that lens. I don’t miss the 12 pound body much but I do reminisce about that lens. During the production, the [Canon] C300 came out and I immediately sold the HDX900 and bought one with an EF mount. I do love the C300 camera, I like the ability to use selective focus to draw attention to what I want and I love the fact that it has more dynamic range, but I miss my ENG lens. I find myself using the 24-105 as my go-to verite lens because I can get a clean single from about five feet away. I wish it was wider and I wish it was longer and I wish it had a manual iris and that it was faster than an F4 but alas it isn’t. I try to limit how long I spend each day crying into my soup about this.”
In addition to his collaborations with Walker, Higgins’ notable credits include Bess Kargman’s First Position and Morgan Spurlock’s Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope.
