American Cinematographer Review: Jan 2011 : A Biutiful Fighter
I summarize all the good stuff so you can save time and money.
One day I had to move stuff off my bookshelf in the basement.
There was a giant picture of King Charles II and as I moved it, I revealed a la “Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull,” a giant box of the old American Cinematographer magazines. I took one out and I was like, “holy smokes there’s useful stuff in here.” And I want to share this knowledge cause not everyone has these issues anymore, and I feel like the era I had of them, which was 2008-2014, was a special time. Because DPs were mostly shooting on film but also the transition to digital. I also found an issue of Penthouse, but I won’t review it because this substack is about technical filmmaking, not anatomy and beauty.
I expect this feature to last about 200 weeks. And when I run out, I’ll order even older issues. Or maybe I’ll have fame and success and my loving, adoring fans will shower me with their old issues.
FEATURE ARTICLE #1: BIUTIFUL. DP RODRIGO PRIETO. RATING: 8/10
The first film featured in an issue of American Cinematographer is the big one. The one with the cover. It’s a lot of pressure for the DP to really share some good nuggets or they might not make the cover the next time. And that can lead to some socially awkward situations when they are all dressed up in costumes at the ASC clubhouse.
Bieutiful was good, I think? It was directed by Iñárritu so it had to be.
To summerize some stuff, it seems that Rodrigo had a go-to arsenal of lights. He uses kino flos a lot and blanket lights that are like 6x6 lights and HMIs and rifa lights and dedolights. Dedolights can give him a quick spicy look where he wants it. I feel like DPs used them more back in the day to have hard light in scenes, not just soft lights. This should come back.
If he shot the film today, he would probably use litemats and litetiles and titan tubes because kinos, all though they have nice color, are slow and you can’t really dim them and you have to manually change bulbs to change color temp.
He puts big HMI and Tungsten units out windows and puts kinos above door frames. He also uses jokers with softtubes. Kind of like a tube light, but back before LED tube lights existed.
A lot of DPs seem to put a little light over a window to push the light a little more. I should start doing that a litle more.
AC also shines when it talks gels. Who doesn’t get excited when you hear the word LEE and then some three digit number? For his film, he used Lee 013 straw tint for a sodium vapor look and Lee 728 steel green for metal haloide lights. I never heard of straw tint.
In his strip club and night club scenes he worked very hard. He used gels again, rosco 90 green and storaro orange . He had Mac2000 mover lights and also in a cool way used these lights called 4x8 martin LC RGB LED that could be programmed with video images. I’m sure there are more modern theatrical lights that can do that. He would project “bubbly images” to project imagery for color work. Super interesting. So not just flat imagery but color that was moving in interesting patterns.
The article mentions other stuff, but I was kind of zoning out.
NEXT BIG FILM ARTICLE #2: THE FIGHTER dp. Hoyte Van Hoytema Rating 9/10
The Fighter was the rebirth of David O. Russell’s career after he went down from those early youtube videos that showed him yelling at Lily Tomlin. This of course overshadowed by that audio clip that was leaked of Christian Bale taking down Shane Hurlbut. But I need to stay focused here. I’m reviewing AC.
The Fighter was the first of the trilogy of David O films that were mostly steadicam and natural environments, and incredibly freeing feeling, kind of like the actors could go anywhere in their films. Naturalistic. It was a change in David O much like Gus Van Sant with his Gerry triology. Really amazing when a director switches it up after like 10 years.
They did a lens change while still rolling film, with the camera on the steadicam! Seems very doc-like and definitely not as controlled as one imagines Hoyte likes to work.
Hoyte puts lights outside windows. According to his gaffer, if there’s a door, he puts a light outside the door. And he lights outside windows not by putting lights outside them, but hangs a bounce over them, nicknamed “an eyebrow” - which is a bounce over the window angled. And he bounces light into it. He doesn’t seem to really put lights inside spaces, and probably couldn’t cause the camera can look anywhere in the film. He could change the amount of light that comes in the room by adjusting the eyebrow. Photo of this below.
One bounce was 120 ft by 12 feet and hung with truses. That’s long! That’s a lot of sewing! Did David O sew these rags? I hope so.
This is smart cause you can shoot into windows and not see the light or the stands! I want to try this!
When it came time to shoot the boxing scenes, he just did what they really do on a TV match - hung a wall of par 64s on a truss on all sides. Blast that light each and every way and it’s a nice evenly lit boxing ring.
Hoyte convinced the big money people to shoot 2-perf, instead of going digital. This is a cheaper way to shoot, sine it’s a 2.35 aspect ratio so you don’t need the top and bottom of 4 perf. I think you save like 50% on film!
His backers were nervous, but he told them this is what they do in Europe and they agreed because Europe is great.
I mean he’s a smart dude. There’s a bunch of other stuff in the article, but I don’t want to give it all away and I am getting tired of writing.
Tron Remake Article with DP Claudio Miranda Rating 6/10
In third place came Claudio with his Tron remake article. Shot on the sony f35, a camera I owned back before the used alexa became affordable! He shot mostly on the 25mm and 32mm focal lengths on the Zeiss Master Primes at t1.4 sometimes cause it’s greenscreen and sometimes you need the stop. It seems like almost all these ace DPs shoot a lot on these focal lengths. “Call Me by Your Name” was shot all on the 35mm!!
SECRET SCENE STEALER OF THE MAGAZINE: ROGER DEAKINS PROFILE RATING 10/10
Deakins speaks. Probably one of the nicest and best sharer of infomation from one of the top people in his career field. This was a great article. He talks about his life from birth on, and being a photographer and just taking photos and photos and developing film and watching good films and listening to people as the way he got into cinematography. He went to film school but he says it was anarchy and he just learned on his own. Basically he was self-taught. Didn’t know that!
He works his butt off in pre-production and gives his gaffer and grips detailed notes of where he wants everything. Super prepared. And they don’t really deviate.
He started his career shooting documentaries and left it after he was shooting a scene of a woman having a mental breakdown and his director wanted him to keep filming, but instead he wanted to help her.
The greatest thing he says is,
“Cinematography is personal and something you have to develop yourself and there’s no easy way to do that, just a matter of finding time on your own and doing it. You can’t learn from somebody else. It’s not just technique. In fact, it’s less about technique and more about a way of seeing. “
Technique plus style. And the style you can’t learn from a magazine like AC! Man, what a jab to say in a publication that’s all about gear brands! Maybe that’s why AC put him in last.
And to fully translate what Rogers says I think is this: you can’t just read articles about what big dog DPs use to light stuff and buy a 25mm master prime and assume you can shoot something like “No Country for Old Men.” You have to find your style and who you are as an artist and that’s something you work on your whole life.
And also, the Cohen bros. note that when Roger shoots even insert shots, he takes it super seriously.
Best Advertisement of the Issue
Body language is everything. I just hope after this photo he didn’t cause the alexa to tip over. That would have been embarassing to him and his family.
Not as Good Advertisement
Trying too hard to be “in control.” Guy needs to breathe and relax and not point while his hand is on the pan handle. Maybe less of a smile if he’s that serious.
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This is golden Ed. Thanks for putting this together.