By Robert Goldrich

One cinematographer recently earned his third career Oscar and ASC Award nominations.

Another scored his second Academy Award nod and third ASC Award nom.

And our third DP became an Oscar nominee for the third time, and an ASC Award nominee for the fourth.

Here are insights from Matthew Libatique, ASC, FPS on Maestro (Netflix), Hoyte van Hoytema, ASC, FSF, NSC on Oppenheimer (Universal Pictures), and Edward Lachman, ASC on El Conde (Netflix).

Matthew Libatique, ASC, FPS
Two of Libatique’s three career Best Cinematography Oscar nominations are for films directed by Bradley Cooper–A Star Is Born in 2019 and Maestro this year. Libatique’s first Academy Award nod came in 2011 for Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan. 

Libatique has had the chance to see Cooper grow as a director–from his helming debut on A Star Is Born to his second film some four years later, Maestro. “He’s certainly evolved,” observed Libatique, citing as an example Cooper’s advancement by “leaps and bounds” when it comes to knowledge about cameras, focal lengths and optics. “The proximity of cameras has always been important to him. He was familiar with all that on A Star Is Born. Now he is well versed in all these choices to help his story move forward. It was not unlike working with [director] Jon Favreau on Iron Man, then Iron Man 2 and Cowboys & Aliens. Both [Cooper and Favreau] had writing and directing sensibilities in terms of acting and performance. But they exponentially grew in terms of camera and optics.“

Libatique also saw a maturation in an aspect of Cooper’s script writing. While a brilliant storyteller all along with a keen sense of characters and story arc, Libatique saw another dimension come to the fore in Cooper’s writing (along with Josh Singer) for Maestro–extensive, beautiful, specific and thoroughly thought through shot descriptions starting with an inspired early scene in the film during which a young Leonard Bernstein gets his first high-profile career break, an opportunity that’s emerged at the 11th hour to conduct the New York Philharmonic. The sequence starts in his apartment when he’s informed of the gig and makes a mad, spirited dash that ultimately takes him on stage at the podium. It’s a visual tour de force–aided and abetted with ambitious set pieces–which literally “pulled him to his destiny,” as described in the script, related Libatique.

Cooper is the ultimate conductor of Maestro as director, co-writer and actor. Libatique noted that with both A Star Is Born and Maestro, Cooper edits in his head. He’s spent time in editing rooms with great filmmakers ranging from Guillermo del Toro to Clint Eastwood and David O. Russell. This sense of editing helps immeasurably in maximizing each shot and character performance. In Maestro, Cooper takes us on stage and off, capturing parts of Bernstein’s public life as a music icon while also diving into his private world centered on a loving yet complicated marriage to Felicia Montealegre Cohn Bernstein. Art and life come together in this love story pairing the protagonists portrayed, respectively, by Cooper and Carey Mulligan–with each leading actor earning an Oscar nomination. 

Mulligan’s performance is masterful as we feel her love for her husband and their three children juxtaposed with this fiercely independent woman’s frustration and at times loneliness in light of his string of male lovers. There’s also Leonard Bernstein’s work and music–a career which educated Americans on the joy and importance of the arts–which are a source of pride and inspiration to his wife.

Maestro garnered a total of seven Oscar nominations–the others being for Best Picture, Original Screenplay, Achievement in Sound, and Makeup & Hairstyling.

The cinematography ranges from capturing the intimacies of an imperfect marriage to the rousing spectacle of Bernstein conducing Gustav Mahler’s second symphony at Ely Cathedral in the city of Ely situated in Cambridgeshire, England. Upon seeing the cathedral for the first time, Libatique said he couldn’t remember ever lighting an architectural structure that was so massive. Plus it had to be at night, meaning that he didn’t have the option of incorporating light through the windows. Libatique described the logistical proposition as daunting but he learned to rely on the people who had experience there before including a local U.K. team whom he peppered with questions. The give and take, along with careful planning and deliberations, helped Libatique arrive at “a clarity” of what was needed and how it could be done. He recollected that two, maybe three days were spent on lighting while simultaneously looking to do justice to Cooper’s vision as to how this portion of the story needed to be told–and its context in terms of the overall story. So while engaged in the complexity of the lighting situation, Libatique never lost sight of the goal and heart of the camera per Cooper’s intentions.

Affecting Libatique greatly was a sound check in which the London Philharmonic performed Mahler at the location. “They started to play and everybody froze,” said Libatique. “I sat down in the first pew and couldn’t take my eyes and ears off of what we were experiencing. It was so moving–for me and everyone there. I remember how the music touched me–and how it was our duty to have the audience feel that power and emotion in the film.”

From the life’s work of Bernstein to his life–and bond with Felicia–Maestro manages to visually connect one with the other, a prime example being a dreamlike dance production as the couple leaves a lunch with Bernstein’s mentor Serge Koussevitzky at the Tanglewood music venue in Massachusetts and then ends up on stage at Broadway’s St. James Theater. They watch a choreographed piece about sailors on shore leave, for which Leonard Bernstein composed the music. As the music turns into the composition for Bernstein’s musical "On the Town," he and Felicia are swept up in the production which is one of love and conflict–reflecting the path of their relationship to come. 

“Lenny transforms into one of the sailors and Felecia gets a look at who he is,” related Libatique who marveled at Cooper’s acumen for visualizing a relationship in such an ambitious manner–and creating a golden opportunity for Libatique to ply his craft.

Cooper and Libatique opted for film to capture Maestro. Black-and-white photography was deployed at the outset as a young Bernstein falls in love with Felecia and rises to stardom. The black-and-white lensing does not at all resemble old Hollywood cinema but rather looks real and in the present. The second half of the film turns to color as the couple’s relationship shows signs of unraveling while Bernstein encounters artistic struggles. The color portion entailed exposing and rating the film to give it the appropriate period feel. 

Maestro starts with an aspect ratio of 1.33:1 in black and white and holds that with the transition to color as the story hits the 1970s. Cooper liked that horizontal environment confining two people in a marriage that has conflict.  In the ‘80s, the aspect ratio shifts–timed to the death of Felecia, leaving a lonely man, Bernstein, within the more isolating parameters of a wider 1.85:1 aspect ratio. 

Two Panavision Panaflex Millennium XL film cameras were used primarily on Maestro. An additional Panaflex Millennium XL camera was used for Steadicam shots. Panavision Vintage Prime lenses played an integral role in Maestro. 

Visual nuances and bridges bringing together personal and professional lives helped, said Libatique, address the delicate balance inherent in biopics. In the case of someone like Bernstein, you’re subject to criticism of too much personal life and not enough music–or conversely, too much career and not enough personal life, lacking in humanity. Cooper and Libatique teamed to create a celebration of this married couple’s remarkable lives, their love and conflicts, their family–while also giving a nod to the public eye, their love of people, loving the energy that you feel from the crowd. It’s a marriage of the intimate and the epic, private and public lives, the role art plays in life–and how it helps to sustain and reinvigorate lives.

Libatique has a track record of making art with varied luminaries, the longest collaborative track record being the one he’s enjoyed with director Aronofsky. The two first met on their third day while attending the AFI Conservatory. Besides Black Swan, their films together include Pi, Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain, Black Swan, Noah, mother! and The Whale. 

Libatique has also shot for Spike Lee, spanning such films as She Hate Me, Inside Man, Miracle at St. Anna and Chi-Raq. And Libatique has struck up a creative rapport with director Olivia Wilde, shooting the short Wake Up, which premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, and then the feature Don’t Worry Darling, Wilde’s story of a 1950s’ housewife living in a utopian experimental community.

Among the cinematographer’s other notable credits are Straight Outta Compton, Everything is Illuminated, Tigerland and Venom, while creating a defining style for the Marvel Universe with Iron Man and Iron Man 2. 

Libatique has three career ASC Award nominations–for Black Swan, A Star Is Born and Maestro. He also recently scored an American Film Institute honor–the Franklin J. Schaffner Alumni Medal which recognizes the extraordinary creative talents of AFI Conservatory alumni who embody the qualities of filmmaker Schaffner: talent, taste, dedication and commitment to quality storytelling in film and television. Libatique is an alum of the AFI class of 1992. Past recipients of the Schaffner Alumni Medial include Aronofsky, Lesli Linka Glatter, Siân Heder, Patty Jenkins, Janusz Kamiński, Mimi Leder, David Lynch, Terrence Malick, Melina Matsoukas and Rachel Morrison. Libatique will be presented the Shaffner Alumni Medal at the AFI Life Achievement Award gala tribute to Nicole Kidman on April 27 in Los Angeles.

Hoyte van Hoytema, ASC, FSF, NSC
Both of van Hoytema’s career Best Cinematography Oscar nominations have come for Christopher Nolan films–Dunkirk in 2018 and Oppenheimer this year. The two films also picked up ASC Award nominations, giving van Hoytema a total of three over the years–the first having been in 2012 for director Tomas Alfredson’s Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy.

Oppenheimer marks the fourth film van Hoytema has lensed for Nolan–the other two being Interstellar (2014) and Tenet (2020).

Nolan’s script for Oppenheimer is an adaptation of Martin Sherwin and Kai Bird’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2005 book, “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer.” The script delves into the life of theoretical physicist Oppenheimer and conveys the thoughts, ideas and concerns within the brilliant mind of the man who served as director of the Manhattan Project’s Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico during World War II and who became known as “the father of the atomic bomb.”

Van Hoytema noted that for Oppenheimer the large format IMAX camera would immerse itself not as much in spectacle and epic but on faces–intimate, personal, subjective, delving into the minds and inner workings of Oppenheimer (an Oscar-nominated performance by Cillian Murphy) and other characters. For this film, the immersive nature of IMAX would often have faces as the landscapes, observed van Hoytema, bringing another dimension to what he described as “a psychological drama.”

At times the IMAX camera was too noisy for scenes in which sound and dialogue were especially pivotal. When dialogue was extensive, Nolan and van Hoytema often opted for a quieter Panavision Panaflex System 65 film camera. But for shorter dialogue sequences,  the IMAX camera was deployed with certain allowances. For example, after shooting a scene, the director went at times with the audio-only route immediately, having the actors repeat their lines and physical actions–even though only the sound is being recorded. The “muscle memory” of skilled actors enabled them to re-create their verbal and physical performances on the spot—so that the dialogue and other related audio nuances are captured to mesh seamlessly with what had previously been lensed. “It’s amazing how incredible Chris is with making all this work,” avoiding having to resort to ADR, shared production sound mixer Willie D. Burton, CAS in an installment of SHOOT’s The Road To Oscar Series. 

Burton is part of the Oscar-nominated sound team on Oppenheimer. He, van Hoytema and Murphy have three of the Oscar-leading 13 nominations which Oppenheimer garnered this year–the others being for Best Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, Supporting Actor and Actress, Editing, Original Score, Production Design and Makeup & Hair Styling.

Van Hoytema noted that helping to define protagonists in Oppenheimer was the use of color and black-and-white photography. Generally the narrative prior to World War II is in color whereas the post-war conflicts of the physicist are in black and white. The post-war turmoil depicted in monochrome includes the anti-communist movement headed by bureaucrat Lewis Strauss (an Oscar-nominated Robert Downey Jr.), which stripped Oppenheimer of his security clearance.

Van Hoytema noted that the POV of Oppenheimer as a character is in color and more visceral–including the quantum physics experiments depicted, all dancing around in his head. Strauss meanwhile is in black and white, providing a contrast between the two men and what they represent–helping to define them and separate their narratives for the audience.

Yet this personal epic also has epic visual moments, perhaps most notably the first atomic bomb test at Trinity, New Mexico. Van Hoytema is quick to credit Andrew Jackson, the overall production visual effects supervisor. Jackson, a mainstay at visual effects house DNEG, has worked on Nolan’s last four features–including Tenet for which Jackson was part of the team that won the Best Achievement in Visual Effects Oscar in 2021.

“I get a lot of credit for the quantum physics and portrayal of atoms colliding,” related van Hoytema. “I always want to acknowledge the special visual effects department who created an incredible experimental playground–playing with physical elements, fire, ping pong balls, water tanks, analog film elements much like the great Douglas Trumbull did in Blade Runner and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Our intent was to shoot things in an existing sort of physical way. Andrew [Jackson] helped make this possible.”

With a career rooted in practical visual effects, Jackson dovetailed naturally with Nolan whose preference is in the practical real world realm. This too brought van Hoytema and Jackson together with dynamics such as projecting on backgrounds, and depicting a big bang with little explosions staged by Jackson and his ensemble, which complemented van Hoytema’s manipulation of lighting to create the desired effect. Van Hoytema and Jackson brought a collaborative rapport to Oppenheimer, having worked together on such earlier  Nolan films as Tenet and Dunkirk.

Van Hoytema added that his collaborative bond with Nolan has grown stronger as their relationship evolves. “It’s become slightly more intuitive, not just his intellectually explaining something,” observed van Hoytema. “We’re so intuitive with each other that now we work faster, are more specific.” 

This intuitive connection represents “an advantage I’d like to have more and more in my filmmaking,” affirmed van Hoytema, noting that such an instinctive understanding goes a long way toward helping to break new ground in storytelling, which they did with Oppenheimer. 

Van Hoytema also had a hand in bringing a new collaborator for Nolan into the Oppenheimer fold. Production designer Ruth De Jong had worked on director Jordan Peele’s Nope with two colleagues of Nolan–van Hoytema and special effects maven Scott R. Fisher. The latter is a two-time Academy Award winner for Nolan’s Interstellar and Tenet. De Jong enjoyed a positive working relationship with van Hoytema and Fisher on Nope, with the production designer’s accomplishments on that film including the creation and construction of a Western town from the ground up. Their gratifying experience on Nope translated into van Hoytema connecting De Jong with Nolan who was looking for a production designer to take on the creatively ambitious Oppenheimer. During a three-hour meeting, De Jong struck up a creative rapport with Nolan and his producer wife, Emma Thomas, and a foundation was laid for their coming together on Oppenheimer–which yielded a Production Design Oscar nomination for De Jong and set decorator Claire Kaufman.

Edward Lachman, ASC 
On the strength of El Conde, Lachman earned his third Best Cinematography Oscar nomination–the first coming for a pair of Todd Haynes-directed films, Far from Heaven in 2003 and Carol in 2016.  El Conde also added to Lachman’s career tally of ASC Award nominations. He now has four, the others being for Far from Heaven, Carol and in 2012 the HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce (also directed by Haynes). Additionally, the ASC bestowed its Lifetime Achievement Award upon Lachman in 2017.

El Conde marked the first feature on which Lachman teamed with Pablo Larrain, a director whom the DP has long admired. “I met Pablo almost 14 years ago when he showed Tony Manero,” recalled Lachman. “From there, we’d run into each other at Telluride, the New York Film Festival for his films like Post Mortem, No and much later Neruda. His work is so compelling–how he examined and dissected the state of Chilean society during the 1970s. And there was always a metaphor for how he told the story. The language of cinema works best in metaphor. He’s a strong visualist. I was very taken by his work. He knew my work. He said someday we should work together. But I never knew if that would happen.”

That collaboration did come about–initially in short-form as Lachman shot a Larrain-directed commercial for a French brand. Then Lachman got the invite to shoot El Conde, which the DP was drawn to for not just the chance to finally take on a feature with Larrain but also an ingenious metaphor in which Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, a symbol of world fascism, is a vampire. The premise of this satiric dark comedy/horror film appealed deeply to Lachman who regards a vampire and its behavior as “a perfect metaphor” for what Pinochet actually did. “He took the blood out of Chile and its people culturally, socially and economically,” said Lachman. “To an extent society complied and yielded, being seduced by that form of fascism. To choose the language of black-and-white photography and the history of the vampire film, the Gothic form of cinema, was inspired. Pinochet’s children are as much of a vampire as he is in terms of what they’re trying to get out of him.”

In El Conde, Pinochet–after 250 years of life–has decided to cease drinking blood and end his eternal life. He can no longer bear that the world remembers him as a thief and the epitome of evil. Yet he eventually finds motivation–which comes in an unexpected form–to continue living.

El Conde is driven visually by sumptuous black-and-white cinematography, inspired in part by the German expressionistic vampire films of yesteryear such as Nosferatu, the silent classic from the 1920s. Ultimately, Lachman did not try to replicate that cinematic genre or era, instead tapping into the real trauma and horror the Chileans lived through under Pinochet as a visual influence. Lachman added that black-and-white lensing was chosen in that it can lend itself to the satiric–a prime example being Dr. Strangelove. Black and white, he continued, brings an element of farce to Pinochet yet still balanced by the horror of his strong-arm behavior. And many were complicit, condoning and supporting Pinochet, fearful of his power. On the flip side, while some elements of the church were in the wrong, others acted morally and responsibly–and paid a dear price for their opposition, with many losing their lives. El Conde is a satiric yet at the same time an all-too-real reminder of the toll that totalitarianism and abuse of power takes on society.

Lachman broke new technical ground with El Conde, asking ARRI if they could fashion a monochrome version of its Alexa Mini LF camera for the film. ARRI did on a tight turnaround time, and Lachman’s artistry with the camera–in tandem with Baltar lenses and his own EL (Exposure Latitude) Zone System–yielded Oscar and ASC Award nominations.

Lachman developed and patented the EL Zone System to determine optimal zones of exposure from the camera’s sensor. The system enabled him to place his exposure values based on 18 percent gray with F-stops translated through the camera sensor, instead of IRE (International Radio Engineers) values which don’t provide the proper linear units of measurement. Lachman described the EL Zone System as a digital world breakthrough reminiscent of Ansel Adams in the analog arena placing his exposure to set the range of detail in the highlights and shadow areas to define the latitude of the images. 

During the course of El Conde, Lachman said he and Larrain developed a mutual trust. Lachman noted that Larrain at times wanted to operate the camera. “I was supportive of that. He studied cinematography himself when he was younger. Some people call this relationship a marriage. I like to call him a dance partner. You’re making the steps together and it comes down to how you implement each other in the steps you take. Are you in rhythm or not? I found our language to be in rhythm.”

Lachman added, “It’s an adventure to go into a country you’ve never shot in, to work with a crew I never shot with. All my life I’ve done that. I’ve worked in Beirut, Italy, Japan. I welcome this. It’s more of an adventure than a job. I had a wonderful Chilean crew. I learned from them as much as they learned from me.”

As for the rhythmic rapport he enjoyed with Larrain on El Conde, Lachman noted that they recently wrapped a return engagement as “dance partners.” Lachman lensed another film with Larrain–this one in Budapest, starring Angelina Jolie as famed opera singer Maria Callas.

MySHOOT Profiles