Shortly after shooting Wild, which earned him a Golden Frog nomination last year from Camerimage, cinematographer Yves Bélanger, CSC, said he got a phone call for a feature also chronicling a woman’s journey of self-discovery, but far different from Wild in other respects. Bélanger became enamored with the script which was for Brooklyn (Fox Searchlight Pictures), director John Crowley’s feature introducing us to Eilis Lacey (portrayed by Saoirse Ronan) who leaves her small Irish town–and her mother and sister–to find a life and career in New York in the 1950s. Based on Colm Toibin’s 2009 novel, Brooklyn was nominated for five British Independent Film Awards, earlier this week winning for Best Actress (Ronan). Ronan’s tour de force performance in Brooklyn earlier won Best Actress honors from the New York Film Critics Circle Awards.
Brooklyn marked Bélanger’s first collaboration with Crowley. The DP said that many directors today, who come from film school and are raised on television, aren’t necessarily that good with actors. “They are very precise but not well versed in the language of actors,” assessed Bélanger, “John is different, very special. Part of that is because he comes from theater and film. You hear him talk to the actors, you listen to what he says. He’s very precise with the actors about the text, the words. They read together. You see the bond with actors.”
Brooklyn posed creative challenges for Bélanger, including shooting in Montreal for 1950s’ Brooklyn, NY. Instrumental in capturing the spirit of this period piece, said Bélanger, was the fact that he and Crowley had a shared vision for the picture. “I had done some period work before but sometimes you fall into the trap of being too careful as if you’re shooting something in a museum,” said Bélanger. “To make it look real and come alive, John and I agreed that while we wanted the film to look beautiful and classic, we needed to be free and loose. So we did a lot of hand-held shots that with natural light gave a realism to the kind of classic yet free look we wanted to attain.”
Bélanger deployed ARRI’s Alexa on Brooklyn, which was largely a one-camera shoot, a notable exception being family dinner gathering scenes lensed with two hand-held cameras. He cited his intuitive working relationship with Canadian production designer Francois Seguin and British costume designer Odile Dicks-Mereaux as being integral to shaping the look and feel of Brooklyn. “We didn’t have to talk all that much. We knew we were doing the same film and what we were working towards,” shared Bélanger.
The cinematographer added that helping him on Brooklyn was his experience utilizing real light in his work with director Jean-Marc Vallée, including the aforementioned Wild which earned Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress Oscar nominations earlier this year for Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern, respectively. Bélanger’s first feature collaboration with Vallée was Dallas Buyers Club which won three Academy Awards in 2014–for Best Leading Actor (Matthew McConaughey), Best Supporting Actor (Jared Leto) and Best Achievement in Makeup and Hairstyling (Adruitha Lee and Robin Mathews). Dallas Buyers Club was nominated for a total of six Oscars, including for Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay (Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack) and Best Achievement in Film Editing (Vallée and Martin Pensa). Bélanger also shot this year’s Vallée-helmed release Demolition starring Jake Gyllenhaal.
During the prior Oscar season when Wild was a leading contender, SHOOT connected with Vallée who said of Bélanger, “I love his courage and humility. He works off of available light with no electric crew. He shoots handheld in a different way and is willing to get out of his comfort zone to capture reality so that the images he gets aren’t forced or staged. Again, it’s an approach that captures actor performances in the best way possible. He’s never trying to create images for his demo reel. With his work, he’s never saying ‘look how clever and creative I am.’ His focus is on the storytelling.”
Wild earned Bélanger his second career Golden Frog nomination, the first coming back in 2012 for the Xavier Dolan-directed Laurence Anyways.
At press time, Bélanger had embarked on his fourth major collaboration with Vallée–the HBO miniseries Big Little Lies starring Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon.
This is the fifth in a multi-part series with future installments of The Road To Oscar slated to run in the weekly SHOOT>e.dition, The SHOOT Dailies, SHOOT’s December and January print issues (and PDF versions) and on SHOOTonline.com. The series will appear weekly through the Academy Awards. The 88th Academy Awards nominations will be announced on Thursday, January 14, 2016. The Oscars will be held on Sunday, February 28, 2016, at the Dolby Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center in Hollywood, and will be televised live by the ABC Television Network at 7 pm ET/4 pm PT. The Oscar presentation also will be televised live in more than 225 countries and territories worldwide.
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