In this installment of our Cinematographers and Cameras Series, we share a tale of two DPs. One cinematographer has the ongoing creative challenge of shooting the lauded FOX TV series Glee, continuing a groundbreaking collaboration with its creator Ryan Murphy, which includes their having earlier teamed on another unconventional TV series, Nip/Tuck, as well as the critically acclaimed feature Running with Scissors (Murphy’s feature directing debut).
The other DP too has an enduring working relationship with a director, namely Alex Gibney, which includes Taxi to the Dark Side, winner of the Best Documentary Oscar in 2008. This DP is active not only in documentaries but also in narrative films and commercials. Last year she earned an Independent Spirit Award for Best Cinematography on the strength of director Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler.
Here’s our close-up look at cinematographers Christopher Baffa, ASC, and Maryse Alberti.
Christopher Baffa, ASC
A phone call will be forever etched in the memory of Christopher Baffa, ASC. He was overseas on his honeymoon, picked up his phone and was awed to hear Owen Roizman on the other end.
“My wife looked at me and asked if something was wrong,” recollected Baffa. “I guess my face had turned ashen white. Owen had invited me into the ranks of the ASC [American Society of Cinematographers]. I can’t begin to describe how deeply I was honored. I have been going to the ASC Awards for 15 years [the first dozen as a non-member] and the organization means so much to me. It is dedicated to our craft. But once you are granted the honor of membership, you really discover what a wonderfully generous organization the ASC is–how it embraces young talent and helps it to develop. There’s a great camaraderie in the ASC. Members don’t look at each other as competition but rather colleagues whom they are eager to help. In fact, ASC members are chomping at the bit to help you, to share experiences about equipment, film stocks, to answer questions and serve as sounding boards for ideas.”
Baffa got a taste of that generosity well before he became an ASC member. He recalled attending an ASC open house where he had the chance to meet and talk with the noted cinematographer John Seale, ASC. “It was right around the time he had done The English Patient and he told me of his penchant for using a single film stock for a movie, giving it a unified feel,” said Baffa. “If you want more or less contrast, you build that into the lighting. Staying with the same stock, throughout, provides a clean palette for you to work on.”
The encounter with Seale influenced Baffa who would later go on to decide on a single film stock (Kodak’s Vision2 5218) for the feature Running With Scissors. And Baffa has pretty much gone the same single stock route with Glee, opting for Kodak Vision3 500T 5219 film in the 3-perf 35mm format.
“That was the best approach for those projects,” related Baffa who at the same time sees the prudence of going with multiple stocks and looks if they advance the story. He cited as a prime example “the brilliant work” of DP Robert Richardson, ASC, on JFK–using 16mm, 35mm, black and white, and color to represent different perspectives and sources of footage that wove themselves perfectly into the tapestry of that Oliver Stone film.
“It all comes down to what is right for the project,” affirmed Baffa, sharing some of the creative considerations that went into Nip/Tuck and now Glee, two visually bold series created by Murphy. Baffa is the DP on Glee and prior to that shot the majority of the F/X network’s Nip/Tuck episodes.
“Nip/Tuck changed the landscape of television to a certain degree,” observed Baffa. “Ryan Murphy is a very visual person with a lot of ideas. He’s attracted to and creates unique material–what I’d call ‘heightened’ or larger than life material. When you have dark characters and storylines, material that is on the edge, at times seemingly outlandish, you don’t want flashy stylized cinematography. Ryan instead wanted the cinematography to give the show a realistic foundation. If you’re too broad in your visual approach, it’s harder to get the audience to accept how broad Ryan wanted to get in his storytelling. You need to give the story a realistic visual grounding.”
At the same time, continued Baffa, “I don’t use that as an excuse to avoid or to not try to tell the story creatively with the camera, to have the lighting help set an emotional tone. What this approach Ryan and I have taken means I have to exercise a little more restraint, The visuals have to capture a realism that allows accessibility for the audience.”
Glee is an extension of that naturalistic, realistic approach–“high school should feel like high school,” said Baffa who observed that a major challenge for him is to keep believable the dichotomy that exists between the reality of high school and when the kids in a sense “escape that world” by getting up and performing, sometimes on ambitious sets.
“When the kids perform their musical numbers,” related Baffa, “they can escape the cornfields of Ohio, their socioeconomic standing or their lower rung status in the school’s social hierarchy. It’s an opportunity for them to shine. So Ryan wanted a high school reality that was visually neutral enough to then allow us to go to a special place for the performances. They both have to feel like the same world–but there’s a separation between the normal and the super normal. We have to make it so our viewers suspend their disbelief and want to go along for the ride.”
Baffa credited Glee writers/creators Murphy, Ian Brennan and Brad Falchuk with taking that extraordinary leap “from a dangling bridge” between the normal and super normal, entrusting him and such artisans as production designer Mark Hutman and costume designer Lou Eyrich to somehow maintain the desired visual equilibrium.
In turn, Baffa observed he too has to have trust in other artists, citing as an example colorist Kevin Kirwan of Encore Hollywood. “So much can be achieved in telecine. I feel comfortable collaborating with him to create there [at Encore] and in my photography.”
Professionally Baffa has worked pretty much entirely in the film medium. But he has experimented on his own with digital photography. “I’m not as big a fan as others are of digital, yet there have been huge leaps there. I continue to do my homework because digital is something that’s coming on. But I’m not into the argument for digital being along the lines of it can be made to look like film. Why for the most part go there when you have film already? I can embrace the decision to go digital because it gives a different visual look or feel that supports the storyline. And I certainly understand economic realities but I’m not convinced that digital is always cheaper [than film]. I’m generally fine with the new technology–and certainly fine if it proves to be substantially cheaper and allows someone to do a project they couldn’t easily do otherwise. But I’m nervous when that decision is made by others before the cinematographer is consulted. The cinematographer needs to be involved in that decision.”
While he hasn’t been involved in commercials for some time, Baffa–who’s handled by The Caleel Agency–is starting to entertain the prospect of again getting his feet wet in the ad arena, noting that he greatly admires the visuals that a number of cinematographers are creating in spots.
Baffa went to film school at USC with ambitions to be a director. But an instructor he befriended gave him some pivotal career advice. “He said that I should think about being a DP. He conveyed it in a tongue-in-cheek manner but the bottom line is he was telling me my films look great but they don’t make much sense. At first that seemed harsh but upon reflection he was accurate. The fact is that I feel I’m better at helping others tell and realize their stories.”
To this day, Baffa does not aspire to the director’s chair. “Some DPs on series now write that into their contracts–that they want the chance to direct an episode or two. But that’s not for me. I love being a cinematographer, having conversations with the director about story, thematic elements we’re trying to bring forward, character, plot. This kind of collaboration has hopefully made me a better cinematographer.”
Maryse Alberti
This year’s festival circuit speaks volumes about cinematographer Maryse Alberti, showcasing her versatility spanning narrative films and feature-length documentaries, as well as her ongoing collaborations with notable directors. On the narrative front, last month’s Toronto Film Festival saw the debut of Stone, a dramatic thriller directed by John Curran and starring Edward Norton as the title character who’s a convicted arsonist, and Robert De Niro as parole officer Jack Maybury. In order to secure his freedom, Stone asks his wife, played by Milla Jovovich, to seduce Maybury. From a script by Junebug writer Angus MacLachlan, the film garnered positive reviews in Toronto and was released in the U.S. earlier this month.
“To work with a director like John and actors like Robert De Niro and Edward Norton, you have to bring your best game as a cinematographer–and that opportunity is what attracted me to the project,” related Alberti.
This is the second film Alberti has shot for Curran, the first being the critically acclaimed We Don’t Live Here Anymore (which earned Alberti a Best Cinematography nomination at the 2004 Independent Spirit Awards). “John and I have a trust that was built during our first film together. Our approach [to Stone] was to let the actors and the dialogue be in the forefront, keeping the look of the film realistic.”
The 2010 film fest circuit also saw the debut at Tribeca and then a screening at the Toronto Festival of Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer, a documentary directed by Alex Gibney with whom Alberti has enjoyed a longstanding collaborative relationship. Earlier in the year at Sundance, Gibney’s Casino Jack and the United States of Money premiered, a documentary also lensed by Alberti.
Alberti’s filmography with director Gibney additionally includes the Academy Award-winning documentary Taxi to the Dark Side, the Oscar-nominated documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys In the Room, and Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson.
“I started working with Alex on Enron,” recalled Alberti. “He is very bright, a great interviewer, well prepared and a great collaborator. Once he trusts you, he will discuss the approach to the movie and let you go on and do your work. He approaches his documentaries in many respects as you would a narrative feature–lighting and making the documentary as stylized as the subject matter will allow. It’s quite different from the school of [documentarian] Frederick Wiseman. Alex is a wonderful person. In documentaries, you travel a lot and there are only three or four people in the crew. It’s important you like them since you’re spending so much time together. Alex is a joy to work with.”
Alberti’s collaborations with Gibney often have her shooting with varied digital cameras. A soon-to-be-released Gibney-directed documentary she shot about multiple Tour de France winning cyclist Lance Armstrong, for instance, deployed a tiny camera perched on a bicycle seat.
Her documentary and spotmaking exploits have seen Alberti shoot with such cameras as RED, Iconix, the Arri D21, Sony’s F35 and EX3. The DP’s latest commercial, Southwest Airlines directed by Whitey of Hungry Man, deployed the Canon 5D Mark II. Alberti also shot a museum/art gallery piece with the 5D for fine artist Laurie Anderson. Alberti finds herself lensing art installations for museums and art galleries, collaborating with and showcasing the work of such artists as Anderson and Pierre Huyghe.
Alberti of course continues to regularly shoot a variety of projects on film, including commercials (like a recent Rob Bindler-directed, Chelsea-produced 16mm job for Visa) and narrative features (such as Stone shot on 35mm). Alberti’s notable movies include director Todd Haynes’ Velvet Goldmine and Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler which, respectively, won the 1999 and 2009 Independent Spirit Award for Best Cinematography.
Luck played a part in her landing The Wrestler. Alberti noted that Aronofsky’s DP and friend Matthew Libatique wasn’t available at the time to shoot the film, opening up a chance for her to get the assignment, for which a hand-held camera approach was adopted, somewhat inspired by the Dardenne brothers (Jean-Pierre and Luc) and their work on such films as Rosetta and L’enfant. Alberti observed that the decision to go with a hand-held 16mm camera helped to give the movie a feeling of realism, a sense of place that conveyed the world of the lead character brilliantly played by Mickey Rourke.
Alberti started out as a still photographer, then diversified into moving pictures, shooting for herself and others before getting her first big break, a full-length documentary titled H-2 Worker. Directed by Stephanie Black, H-2 Worker went on to win Best Documentary and Best Cinematography distinction at the 1990 Sundance Fest. The same two Sundance honors came again in ’95 for Crumb which Alberti shot for director Terry Zwigoff.
She shot the Susan Seidelman-directed Dutch Masters which won a Best Short Film Oscar in ’94. Alberti also garnered a Best Cinematography Emmy nom in ’06 for Non-Fiction Programming for HBO’s All Aboard! Rosie’s Family Cruise.
Alberdi, who is repped by Dattner Dispoto and Associates, believes one discipline informs another, noting that her documentary work helps her in narrative features and vice versa, which in turn can benefit her work with artists on museum and gallery pieces.
Spots also help to hone one’s craft. “You have to tell a story in 30 seconds, meaning that each shot is vital. A two-second shot has to be really perfect.”
