One cinematographer is perhaps best known for his ongoing work over the years with director Wes Anderson.
Another DP recently earned an AICP Show honor for his tour de force inside-the-game perspective on baseball for Dick’s Sporting Goods directed by Derek Cianfrance of @radical.media for Anomaly, New York. On the long-form front, the same cinematographer also turned out this year’s Sam Raimi-directed Oz the Great and Powerful.
And our third DP has to his recent credit the first 11 episodes of Netflix’s House of Cards series, including the pilot and the second episode, which were both directed by David Fincher.
Here are our close-up looks at cinematographers Robert Yeoman, ASC, Peter Deming, ASC, and Eigil Bryld.
Robert Yeoman, ASC During a recent Kodak-sponsored session at the 2013 Los Angeles Film Festival, cinematographer Robert Yeoman, ASC, recalled that something quite special was initiated years ago by a letter he received from Wes Anderson who was set to embark on his feature film directorial debut, Bottle Rocket.
Anderson, 24 years old at the time, wrote Yeoman, asking if he’d consider shooting Bottle Rocket. Anderson sought out Yeoman based on the DP’s lensing of director Gus Van Sant’s Drugstore Cowboy.
Anderson and Yeoman then met, hit it off and entered into a working relationship which started with Bottle Rocket and has extended through all of Anderson’s live-action features, including Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Darjeeling Limited, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, and Moonrise Kingdom which garnered a Best Original Screenplay Oscar nomination this year for Anderson and Roman Coppola (who share the same commercialmaking roost as directors–Coppola’s The Directors Bureau). Moonrise Kingdom also earned Yeoman his second Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Cinematography.
Most recently, Yeoman shot Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, which is currently in postproduction. Lensed in Germany, the film sports a cast which includes Ralph Fiennes, Edward Norton, Owen Wilson, Tilda Swinton, Jude Law and Bill Murray,
Yeoman said his collaborations with Anderson have entailed shooting 35mm anamorphic, except for the last two films, Moonrise Kingdom which was shot on 16mm film, and The Grand Budapest Hotel for which they elected to go the spherical cinematography route.
Yeoman recollected that Anderson used to heavily storyboard his features, which helped define the shooting approach and put everything into motion. Anderson would draw the storyboards himself, work that Yeoman described as being “very evocative,” capturing the mood the director wanted for each scene. However, for their last two pictures, Yeoman said that Anderson has gone with animatics which artists have created per his detailed instructions. Yeoman said he and Anderson “relied heavily” on these animatics for The Grand Budapest Hotel. The animatics, observed the DP, “became our bible.”
Yeoman cited several of Anderson’s preferences such as his affinity for putting people center frame and attaining a visual symmetry, having tight eyelines and liking wider lenses. The cinematographer noted that Anderson is rigorous in his pre-pro, laying the foundation for the look and feel of a film.
By contrast, offering a more improvisational bent is director Paul Feig with whom Yeoman has shot a pair of comedies–the twice Oscar-nominated Bridesmaids (Best Original Screenplay for Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo, and Best Supporting Actress for Melissa McCarthy), and The Heat starring Sandra Bullock and McCarthy. Yeoman described McCarthy as “a comic genius” who adds much through improvisation, underscoring the need for the cinematography to be flexible enough for the ad-lib magic that can emerge.
As for how Yeoman emerged on the industry scene, the breakthrough film was the aforementioned Drugstore Cowboy. The producers of that feature had earlier turned out a Talking Heads music video shot by Yeoman. That in turn got Yeoman the chance to fly up from L.A. to Portland, Ore., to meet Van Sant. Drugstore Cowboy gained critical acclaim and won Yeoman an Independent Spirit Award in 1990 for Best Cinematography.
A major film proponent, Yeoman observed that he could not have replicated the look and feel of Drugstore Cowboy digitally. He said that Kodak and other film advocates now need to reach out to young directors and DPs so that they can see and experience film’s many benefits. Still, filmmakers today must at the same time embrace digital, which Yeoman said necessitates that cinematographers become more aware and knowledgeable than ever before about the postproduction process.
Upon starting college in North Carolina, Yeoman had no inkling that he would pursue a filmmaking career. Indeed he was briefly on a pre-med track. But he later joined a university film society and became enamored with the work of such directors as Bernardo Bertolucci and Michelangelo Antonioni. The clincher for Yeoman was seeing Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. This led Yeoman to USC Film School where he gravitated to cinematography, inspired by the work of such notable DPs as Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC, Vittorio Storaro, ASC, and Gordon Willis, ASC.
Yeoman then found himself in the workplace where he was directly influenced by a couple of cinematographers. His first big break was landing 2nd unit duty on To Live and Die in L.A., directed by William Friedkin and shot by Robby M๏ฟฝller, NSC, BVK. Yeoman said that M๏ฟฝller was “a huge influence” who introduced him to the European style.
The other alluded to DP who had a positive impact on Yeoman was John Toll, ASC. Yeoman did 2nd unit on The Rainmaker directed by Francis Ford Coppola and shot by Toll.
Besides the collaborations with Anderson and Feig, Yeoman’s filmography as a cinematographer also includes director Wes Craven’s Red Eye, Roman Coppola’s CQ, Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale, Drew Barrymore’s Whip It and Kevin Smith’s Dogma.
Furthermore, Yeoman’s DP credits also include commercials for such directors as Anderson, Roman Coppola, Erich Joiner, Craig Gillespie and Noam Murro.
Regarding advice he would offer young, aspiring cinematographers, Yeoman said, “Shoot anything you can.” This is more feasible than when he started out thanks to today’s digital technology. “You don’t have to spend a lot of money,” he said, to take “the opportunity to practice your craft. Keep shooting. You learn so much and you learn from your mistakes.”
Next on the docket for Yeoman–who’s handled by the Murtha Agency–is Love & Mercy, a feature about the life of Brian Wilson and 1960s band The Beach Boys.
Peter Deming, ASC It’s been an eventful several months spanning short and long-form fare for DP Peter Deming, ASC. In February, Oz the Great and Powerful–which Deming shot for director Sam Raimi–debuted in U.S. theaters. Based on L. Frank Baum’s “Oz” novels, the fantasy adventure film also pays homage and is a prequel of sorts to the 1939 MGM classic The Wizard of Oz. While Deming has shot assorted commercials digitally in recent years, Oz the Great and Powerful marks his first digitally lensed feature.
As for the short-form project, just some four months after Oz’s premiere, Deming–who’s repped by ICM–received an AICP Show honor for his cinematography on Dick’s Sporting Goods’ “Every Pitch” directed by Cianfrance.
The commercial focuses on a brief sequence in a baseball game, taking us into its nuances, subtleties and many facets from the perspectives of the pitcher, the players in the field, the batter and a baserunner–all in one continuous camera shot.
Deming said that he and Cianfrance had some initial phone conversations about “doing the spot in one shot, the visual feel and execution. Eventually of course we sat down and mapped out exactly what the shot was and began a pre-viz process to pinpoint the exact timing…while that was happening, I was trying to figure out how exactly to achieve the vision in terms of hardware. We were concerned there were so many variables involved (a dolly move, an arm move, camera operation, focus and the zooming required, all in sync with the players’ actions and positions) that a small portion should be programmed. This was maybe the biggest challenge. We settled on a motion controlled track and dolly with a small six-foot arm. The track went about 180 degrees around home plate, then straight out to the pitcher’s mound and about 270 degrees around that.
“The dolly and arm move were programmed while the camera operation, focus work and zooming were all done live each take,” continued Deming. The reason for that was Derek didn’t want a programmed feel. The feeling was very very much to be like we were capturing this live (which of course we were) and to give it an edge. And part of that ultimate look was also achieved by shooting on film, something Derek was very adamant about. And once we saw the rushes, I’d say he was exactly right. Originating on film gave the spot a texture it may not have otherwise had in shooting digital. We used a Panavision Platinum camera with a Primo 11-1 zoom (24-275mm)–which we used almost all of!”
Deming recalled rehearsing the first night “with a 60-second counting track, with the camera move and the players, and each player would have a certain section of the count in which we would be featuring them or their action would take place. Once the shot was getting close, the players switched to earwigs and each had a radio mic so sound could get a clean track for the mix. I think we did 70-some takes over two nights, with take 45 being the hero.”
As for Oz the Great and Powerful, Deming said the biggest challenge was “to create believable day exterior photography inside of a soundstage (the entire film was stage based), that also had enough stop for effective 3D capture. And our D/E sets were not small…most involved a stage of approximately 30,000 square feet of stage space each (125×250′) to be covered by lighting–and we had three of those. It was a huge task to create the ambient required and then build a ‘sun’ source that could reach 200 feet or so and have the width without huge falloff. And then you could really begin lighting the specific scene of the day. I credit greatly our crew and producers who gave us an awful lot of support and trust.”
Regarding choice of camera, Deming related, “In prep we tested film vs. ARRI ALEXA vs RED Epic, both as a potential conversion process and shooting in stereo. Through a consensus of production, VFX and post departments, we settled on the RED Epics mounted on a 3D element Technica Atom rig.”
Deming described working with Raimi as “one of the most pleasant, visually collaborative and comprehensive” experiences he’s ever had. Deming said Raimi’s “process begins early and involves storyboarding/pre-visualizing the entire film. On a film like Oz, that process is key as so many departments are contributing to any given shot.”
Noting that while he and director Raimi have “only done three films together [Evil Dead 2, Drag Me To Hell and Oz], we’ve known each other for more than 25 years and that familiarity can’t be measured.”
Deming’s feature filmography also includes winning the Independent Spirit Award for Best Cinematography on the strength of Mulholland Drive directed by David Lynch. Reflecting on his theatrical movie lensing over the years, Deming observed, “I would say that with some films you have a definite look and style in your head and if you can achieve even half of that in the finished product, it’s a major victory…And then there are others that sort of bring you along for the ride and the production process is very much a discovery, and the look is both a product of that journey and the preproduction. Both are exciting and satisfying. I would put From Hell [directed by Albert and Allen Hughes] and I Heart Huckabees [directed by David O. Russell] in the former category in that the final look was very much as imagined and discussed in preproduction, particularly in the case of From Hell, and that was very satisfying.
“In the latter category I would put both Lost Highway [directed by Lynch] and Mulholland Drive. The look of those films was very much a product of the experience of each day in addition to anything we discussed in prep.”
Deming has also shot commercials directed by Lynch and the Hughes Brothers. Deming recently shot another Dick’s Sporting Goods’ ad–this one concerning football and titled “Every Snap”–for director Cianfrance.
Relative to how commercials inform his feature work and vice versa, Deming said, “I think they both feed off each other. In features the longevity and sometimes the scope of the projects allow you to really pinpoint a style and refine it which you can then apply to commercial work. Also in features you can sometimes work on a scale not typical in commercials; then when that type of scale is required, you can apply tested methods that a feature schedule allows to a commercial application…And on the flip side, often the commercial application isn’t tied to drama or dialogue and you can explore a slightly more pure visual technique.”
As for shooting digitally, Deming said, “There are many things about the digital process I like very much, as long as I can be around for post and maintain the look we intended. Unfortunately, I think film will eventually fall by the wayside, although I’d love to always have the option of either format. The majority of my digital experience has been with the RED Epic and the ALEXA, both of which I think are fine cameras.”
Eigil Bryld Episodic fare didn’t hold much allure for cinematographer Eigil Bryld–until he got an invite to meet David Fincher to discuss what turned out to be House of Cards, the critically acclaimed series that helped to establish Netflix as a force in original programming. Bryld lensed the first 11 episodes, the first two directed by Fincher who is an executive producer on the show. And for his work on episode one, Bryld last month earned a primetime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Cinematography for a Single-Camera Series.
“David [Fincher] has very strong ideas,” said Bryld. “I like working with directors who are straight forward and not convoluted. He’s very hands on. He was used to shooting less than a page a day. All of a sudden we had to shoot four, five pages a day. We did that while staying true to crafting it all like a movie. I had 10 weeks of prep with Fincher in Baltimore which helped us to craft the lighting in an ambient manner while adding what was required for specific scenes. The prep helped us to be efficient with our setups, how to best use two cameras–we always used two cameras–and capture well-choreographed and composed images.”
Bryld added, “We never did anything fancy with the camera other than telling the story. We didn’t use long lenses. We wanted to have a sense of space. Inherently the whole show is about people in offices, in homes and they’re talking. We wanted to help create a sense of drama using the space, showing people in relation to each other and their space. Shadows were a major player. Everything in House of Cards has an undercurrent to it, something hiding in the shadows, always another motive. Space can heighten that feeling, add volume and enhance the dramatic feeling.”
House of Cards deployed two customized RED Epics. “Fincher has quite a strong relationship with RED,” said Bryld. “We didn’t want to work through a certain technology. We wanted the technology to work for us. We kept things very simple and closeknit. We never had more than 25 crew members on the floor. We landed in a sweet spot where we could operate and pull off most things, being able to adjust to every curveball.”
Bryld was accustomed to high-profile TV prior to House of Cards. He earned an Emmy nomination for Best Cinematography in a Miniseries or Movie in 2010 for HBO’s You Don’t Know Jack directed by Barry Levinson and starring Al Pacino as Dr. Jack Kevorkian.
Bryld’s work spans varied disciplines. He has lensed commercials for such directors as Levinson, Ivan Zacharias, Bill Bruce, and Henry-Alex Rubin.
On the theatrical film front, Bryld’s credits include: Not Fade Away, the feature directorial debut of David Chase, creator of The Sopranos; In Bruges directed by Martin McDonagh; and The King directed by James Marsh (for whom Bryld earlier shot Wisconsin Death Trip, earning a BAFTA TV Award for Best Photography).
“Every project takes you to a different place,” observed Bryld who recalled The Eighteens–which he shot for Anders Ronnow Klarlund–earning exposure at MoMA’s New Directors, New Films, leading to the DP meeting director Marsh. “He was married to a Danish woman I knew from my native Denmark and he was about to do this film called Wisconsin Death Trip, sort of a documentary that was a re-enactment of mostly tragedies that happened in Wisconsin at the turn of the last century. I ended up shooting that–a very visual, very stylized piece for the BBC and Cinemax, which led to another BBC show, a two-part miniseries, Crime and Punishment [directed by Julian Jarrold].”
From there, Bryld starting working in more features in the U.K. He later reunited with Marsh on The King. Eyeing the U.S. market, Bryld–who was living in Europe at the time–began a relationship with The Skouras Agency which continues to this day. Bryld took on other European projects, then reunited with Jarrold on Becoming Jane, a feature centered on Jane Austen before she attained her fame.
Graham Broadbent was a producer on that film, which led to Bryld meeting McDonagh and their teaming on In Bruges. A year later Bryld moved to the U.S. Levinson had seen In Bruges, which led to Bryld getting the chance to lens You Don’t Know Jack.
Aside from commercials–several of which he shot digitally–Bryld pretty much lensed on film, until Not Fade Away, the 1960s period piece helmed by Chase. “We originally wanted to go with film; after all, it was a period piece but then we started to do some tests on digital,” recalled Bryld. “We had all these actors who weren’t really musicians but were portraying musicians and we saw some advantage to shooting for a long time, not having to change film rolls. We ultimately decided on the [ARRI] ALEXA. It was a totally new way for me to work. The beauty of digital is that it’s right there in front of you. You look at the monitor and see if you captured what you had in mind. With David Chase, this was terrific because we could really get specific in our discussions about what we did. One of the things that scared people early on about digital is that the shroud of mystery that had surrounded the DP was suddenly gone. But that can turn out to be a good thing. I would rather operate out in the open. I can sleep better at night. I don’t have to worry about the lab telling me about something being scratched.”
Still, Bryld believes in film. “Part of me would love to get to shoot a project on film again. The beauty of film is clearly fading away as more people turn to digital. I don’t want that beauty of film to be lost.”
