Cinematographers (Directors of Photography)

[Napoleon]

I really like:

Michael Seresin

Spoiler

Bugsy Malone
Midnight Express
Foxes
Fame
Shoot the Moon
Birdy
Angel Heart
Come See the Paradise
City Hall
Mercury Rising
Angela's Ashes
Domestic Disturbance
The Life of David Gale
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Step Up
All Good Things
Gravity (Additional Photography)
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Jungle Book: Origins

Masanobu Takayanagi

Spoiler

Black Mass
Spotlight
True Story
Out of the Furnace
Cinnamon Girl: California Dreamin'
Silver Linings Playbook
The Punisher: Dirty Laundry
The Grey
Warrior
The Agent
Meet Monica Velour
Viko
Amar a morir
God's Marble
Seven's Eleven: Sweet Toys
War Eagle, Arkansas
Ugly Me
Divide
Denial
The Powder Puff Principle
The White Horse Is Dead
For Them
Making Life Work
Edgewater
Mindcrime
Fragments of Existence
Shui Hen
Have You Seen Me

Robert Richardson

Spoiler

An Outpost of Progress
Salvador
Platoon
Wall Street
Dudes
Eight Men Out
Talk Radio
Born on the Fourth of July
The Doors
JFK
City of Hope
A Few Good Men
Heaven & Earth
Natural Born Killers
Nixon
Casino
U Turn
Fast, Cheap and Out of Control
Wag the Dog
The Horse Whisperer
Bringing Out the Dead
Powder Keg
The Four Feathers
Kill Bill: Vol. 1
Kill Bill: Vol. 2
The Aviator
The Good Shepherd
Shine a Light
Standard Operating Procedure
Inglourious Basterds
Shutter Island
Eat Pray Love
Living in the Material World: George Harrison
Hugo
Django Unchained
The Hateful Eight

 

[NosfeRomas]

Christopher Doyle

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

 

[Gabe99]

The Cinematographer's Job Is Not to Create Amazing Images:
Roger Deakins on Shooting 'Sicario'

 

[Gabe99]

Cinematographer Roger Deakins Got to Play with Some New Toys on ‘Sicario’

“Sicario” marks cinematographer Roger Deakins’ second collaboration with director Denis Villeneuve after “Prisoners,” with a third — a sequel to Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner” — on the way. A moody capturing of the border thriller with silky digital photography, the work marks just another example of the celebrated artist’s brilliant eye for imagery that tells a story rather than merely showcasing it.

I spoke with the 12-time Oscar nominee (still looking for that elusive first win) about his work on the film, playing with thermal imaging devices to creep effect, going back to celluloid on the Coen brothers’ “Hail, Caesar!” and much more.

 

[Gabe99]

Variety:
The Oscar race for best cinematography is as heated as ever!
From post-production stitching to 65mm anamorphic lenses, it's a playground for geeks this year.

It seems like we say it every year, but the Oscar race for best cinematography is as heated as it has ever been this season.

Most eyes, certainly, are on Emmanuel Lubezki. The reigning champ joined a very exclusive group of back-to-back winners in the category upon claiming the prize for “Birdman” last year (He also won for “Gravity”). With Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s best picture follow-up “The Revenant,” Lubezki shot on brand new Arri Alexa 65 cameras, even freezing a few of them in Alberta, Canada, while using only natural light. The stitching technique that was employed to make “Birdman” appear as one unbroken take was used in a number of sequences as well. No one has even seen the film and you’d be forgiven for thinking it the frontrunner sight unseen.

But three-time Oscar winner Robert Richardson had his own box of toys to play with on Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight.” Dusting off Ultra Panavision technology and lenses not used for a half-century (since 1966’s “Khartoum”), his work will mark the widest 70mm release in 20 years. Plans are in motion to outfit some 100 theaters with projectors to screen the limited engagement roadshow version of the film. That’s candy for this branch. Straight up candy.

While Richardson has picked up 10 nominations from the American Society of Cinematographers but has yet to win (despite three Oscars), Roger Deakins has amassed 12 Academy Award nominations and remains a bridesmaid (despite three ASC Awards). Once again, Deakins has exemplified the virtues of digital photography on Denis Villeneuve’s “Sicario,” dabbling in techniques (as in a riveting thermal imaging sequence) that show the veteran ever enlivened by his craft.

Danny Cohen has been singled out by the ASC for Tom Hooper’s “The King’s Speech” and “Les Misérables,” and Oscar-nominated for the former. He brings the soft, wide-angle aesthetic that has served them well to “The Danish Girl,” aided, of course, by the task of capturing beautiful design elements. If the film is an overall hit with the Academy, he should have no trouble squeezing in. (Cohen also, by the way, breathed a lot of visual life into Lenny Abrahamson’s “Room,” which could be singled out as well.)

But one has to wonder what the branch will think of 70-year-old John Seale operating camera like a boss on war rigs tearing through desert scenery in George Miller’s “Mad Max: Fury Road.” The DP came out of retirement for the film, which boasts some of the most dynamic imagery in the category. Perhaps it could be dinged by being a product of heavy post-production, but so much is these days that it shouldn’t factor in too much. The four-time Oscar nominee won the prize for 1996’s “The English Patient.”

Janusz Kaminski keeps his collaboration with maestro Steven Spielberg going with “Bridge of Spies.” Full of the milky, blown-out frames that have become a hallmark of their work together, it’s a moody world Kaminski has put up on screen. Both of his Oscars and five of his six nominations have come for Spielberg films, so he should be seen as formidable — particularly if the film soars as an across-the-board player (which it very well could).

Speaking earlier of Deakins (and of celluloid), Sam Mendes tapped Hoyte van Hoytema for the latest James Bond experience, “Spectre.” Not only that, but the franchise went back to film after Deakins’ ASC-winning digital work on “Skyfall” in 2012. Somehow, despite being one of the most exciting DPs in the game with celebrated work on films like “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” “Her” and “Interstellar,” Hoytema has yet to pick up an Oscar nod. Might that change this year?

Edward Lachman is a true artist of the form, having been singled out by the Academy once before for Todd Haynes’ “Far From Heaven.” He teams with the director again on “Carol” for some of the most exquisite frames you’ll see this year. On one hand it could depend on how well the film does overall with the Academy, but I could see Lachman’s colleagues in the cinematography branch standing up for this even if few others do.

Last year brought a surprise for many when the category found room for Lukasz Zal and Ryszard Lenczewski’s work on Polish drama “Ida.” People forget this branch is well-populated with European artists with an eye to any and all contenders, not necessarily just those in the thick of the best picture Oscar hunt. With that in mind, Mátyás Erdély’s unique work on Hungarian Holocaust drama “Son of Saul” has to be kept on the table. The whole story of the film is in how it was captured visually, using extended takes that keep the central character front and center, never drifting to cover peripheral events but rather letting his reaction to them set the tone.

Finally, there is Danny Boyle and DP Alwin H. Küchler’s bold decision to shoot “Steve Jobs” in three different formats — 16mm, 35mm and digital — to liven up its three distinctive acts. Is it too much to-do or a brilliant visual storytelling device (meant to convey the eponymous computer pioneer’s efforts to push us toward the digital age)? I could see voters going either way, but it’s unlike anything else in the race, that’s for sure.

That’s 10 and I feel like I’m barely scratching the surface. What about Yves Belanger and Charlotte Bruus Christensen’s jaw-dropping period visuals on “Brooklyn” and “Far From the Madding Crowd” respectively (still two of the most exquisitely shot films of the year)? What about Masanobu Takayanagi’s on-going, under-the-radar dominance as a master of moody detail, reflected again in “Black Mass?” What about Anthony Dod Mantle re-invigorating Ron Howard’s mise-en-scène with “In the Heart of the Sea” after cranking out such delicious work on “Rush?” Adam Arkapaw’s lush frames from “Macbeth?” Luca Bigazzi’s stark compositions on “Youth?” A one-take experience in “Victoria” to rival “Birdman?”

I could mention so many others. But I’ll just point you to the category’s dedicated Contenders page, where we’ll be attempting to handicap this incredibly competitive race all season long. Suffice it to say, I do not envy the cinematographers this task of narrowing things down.

 

[Gabe99]

Wired 11.23.15:
How The Good Dinosaur Got Its Stunning Scenery
Sharon Calahan, director of photography on The Good Dinosaur, painted concept art for characters (like main dino Arlo) and landscapes

IN THE MAZE of offices at Pixar’s Emeryville, California, headquarters, the lighting section stands out. Overhead bulbs are dimmed—all the better for viewing nuanced effects on computer screens—except for a string of gentle white lights at the front, illuminating the dark blue walls. Sharon Calahan, the director of photography for Pixar’s upcoming movie, The Good Dinosaur, has an office nestled in the corner. Calahan is attentive and soft-spoken, warm and smiley under a curtain of bangs. It’s easy to picture her in the mountains, where she spends all her vacation time painting lighting studies of trees, valleys, and skies. A small stack of canvases leans against the wall beside her desk.

Spend time at Pixar and you’ll hear a regular refrain: The famed animation house wants its films to seem more like live-action flicks than cartoons. Executing that pursuit falls to crew members like Calahan. Though she deals mostly in pixels—she’s one of the rare DPs whose entire body of work is computer-generated—it’s still her job to build a believable (and believably lit) world.

Calahan thinks of each new project at Pixar as a unique stylistic challenge. Ratatouille was “soft and warm and romantic,” she says; Cars 2, which she worked on next, was “a guys’ film with shiny metal.” With The Good Dinosaur, out Thanksgiving Day, Calahan got to spend time in her happy place: open, natural landscapes.

The movie is set in a world where the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs never struck and prehistoric creatures live on Earth with people. It’s the story of Arlo, an apatosaurus who gets lost and on his journey home befriends a human named Spot.

When the director of The Good Dinosaur, Peter Sohn, told Calahan he wanted the film to have a rugged, pioneer feel, she already had a place in mind: Jackson, Wyoming, where she’d spent time painting landscapes. Calahan joined the crew there on a scouting trip so they could soak up the region’s treacherous terrain, severe weather, and expansive sky. Starting north, they boated down the Snake River, explored canyons, rode through the Targhee wilderness, and gazed at the Milky Way (sans light pollution).

“Pete hadn’t spent much time in an area like that, and I watched him discover that world: how harsh it can be, how the weather turns on a dime, how rugged everything is, how short the growing season is, and how much early settlers there must have struggled to survive,” Calahan says. “It inspired him to find the tone of the film. He wanted that big-sky feeling—when there’s low moisture in the air, you really can see for miles.”

Calahan’s day-to-day contributions on a film are similar to those of a live-action director of photography. Early in preproduction, she looks at storyboards and composes paintings to inspire tone, feel, and the general look of the film. From there, she pitches ideas, asks for shots to be recomposed, and explores lighting options for each scene. Her weeks eventually turn into a flurry of art and set reviews, lighting walk-throughs, director check-ins, color grading, and effects critiques, all while overseeing her nearly 50-person lighting department for this movie.

As inspiration for production on The Good Dinosaur, the crew watched dozens of films: classic Westerns for mood and story; Seven Years in Tibet and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty for scope and camera work; and Carroll Ballard’s The Black Stallion and Never Cry Wolf for tone. Because The Good Dinosaur is highly visual, with color and light playing a large supporting role, Calahan also revisited some of her favorite Russian landscape paintings, like the moody, evocative works of Ivan Shishkin and Isaac Levitan. “There’s a truth about their paintings that I like,” she says.

Calahan says the resulting look is authentic—but not exactly photo-realistic. “We want it to be believable that if Arlo fell and hit his knee, it would hurt,” she says of the titular good dinosaur. “That the water seems cold, that you can breathe the air and feel the wind.” But her background in fine arts taught her that not every detail is necessary: “I’m not trying to paint every blade of grass or every leaf. I’m trying to reduce things down to their essential elements and bigger shapes that hold the image together structurally.”

Because the film is set entirely outdoors—a first for Calahan—she had to ensure each scene would have a distinct look and feel. One solution was determining signature coloring and lighting styles: Scenes among trees dominated by brown and green hues are followed, for example, by alpine pools with a cool, blue palette. Calahan’s lighting in one moment might capture the feeling of a late afternoon; minutes later, a subtle change in intensity and shadowing has to telegraph the turn to dusk.

Calahan made compositional changes as well. Typically, CG films build out the foreground of scenes, relying on matte paint for the background. But because The Good Dinosaur relies so heavily on a sense of place, her team created individual volumetric clouds and used USGS data to expand the geographical detail. To add to that feeling of vastness, they chose wide framing, with more helicopter-style shots than normal.

After countless refinements from different departments, Calahan helped decide when scenes were ready to be cut into the film. “I’m trying to capture a certain emotion,” she says. “I want it to make me homesick, in a way.”

Though Calahan has been with Pixar since Toy Story, her foray into film was largely accidental. She studied advertising and graphics and then entered the television industry making commercials. From there, it was a slow evolution. “I kept walking through open doors,” she says. After a coworker joined Pixar, Calahan snagged an interview and was hired as a lighting supervisor.

Over her 21 years at the studio, the nature of Calahan’s work has changed. When she started out, creating light in a scene meant writing script code. Now, advanced user interfaces and improved design programs mean Calahan and her team can create complicated lighting faster—the saved time is invested in making subtler, more complex films. Calahan is still a rare bird in the film business. Few people share her title in the animation industry, and when the American Society of Cinematographers invited her to join its ranks last year, she became its first member to have an all-CG reel.

One of her sponsors for ASC membership, the cinematographer Stephen Goldblatt (The Help, Lethal Weapon), says traditional cinematography entails physical work on location, and that some society members initially didn’t understand Calahan’s process. “She has her own problems to deal with, technically and logistically, which just happen to be inside a studio,” he says. “The lighting, color, texture, how much light or how little light, the mood, the haze, the smoke are all introduced like in the work I do. She just does it with tools that simulate that infusion. What I admire in her work is what I admire in Vittorio Storaro’s work or any great cinematographer’s work—in the end, it’s irrelevant how it’s produced.”

Calahan hopes her acceptance might influence aspiring artists to follow her path, though it might not happen overnight. “It was something I’d dreamed about,” she says. “Change is hard. What I do is different than live-action, but there’s so much of it that’s the same. There’s still a newness to it all.”