Five Men and a Camera

The original idea was to gather all five Oscar-nominated cinematographers in one room to talk about the art and craft of shooting movies. But in today’s global filmmaking reality, a conference call linking four countries had to suffice.

Bruno Delbonnel checked in from Paris, the city he so charmingly mythologized in “Amelie.” “Black Hawk Down’s” director of photography, Slawomir Idziak, spoke from Warsaw. “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” cinematographer Andrew Lesnie called from his home in Sydney. British-born Roger Deakins, director of photography for “The Man Who Wasn’t There,” and Australian native Donald M. McAlpine, nominated for his work in “Moulin Rouge,” gathered around a speaker phone in a Beverly Hills hotel suite.

Delbonnel, working for the first time with his close friend “Amelie” director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, drew inspiration from French Impressionist painter Pierre Bonnard and scouted Paris for three months to find the 80 locations featured in the film.

Deakins, who also shot leading Oscar contender “A Beautiful Mind,” has made six movies with “The Man Who Wasn’t There” filmmaking team of Joel and Ethan Coen. Deakins and the Coen brothers, shooting in Pasadena and Orange, filmed in color before printing the images in black and white. McAlpine contributed to Australia’s independent film movement with such breakthrough efforts as “My Brilliant Career” (1979) and “Breaker Morant” (1980). He teamed for the first time with Baz Luhrmann on “William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet” and spent a year in pre-production re-creating fin-de-siecle Paris on three Australian sound stages.

Lesnie, best known for shooting “Babe” in 1995, helped create a complex “Lord of the Rings” color scheme, defining each realm of Middle-earth with a distinct set palette. The “Rings” trilogy, filmed in New Zealand, marks Lesnie’s first collaboration with director Peter Jackson.

Idziak worked closely with the late Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski on films such as “The Double Life of Veronique” (1991). Ridley Scott hired Idziak on the strength of “Veronique” as well as “Gattica” (1995) and “I Want You” (1998). For “Black Hawk Down,” set in Mogadishu, Somalia, but filmed in Morocco, Idziak coordinated as many as seven cameras shooting simultaneously for lengthy combat sequences. It’s his first film with Scott.

As they voiced their views in an 80-minute discussion excerpted below, a fundamental bond emerged: To trot out that most familiar of filmmaking truisms, these master craftsmen thrive on collaboration. Given the chance in the nominated work to participate as artists, Deakins, Delbonnel, McAlpine, Idziak and Lesnie responded with moving images of the first order.

Question: Each of these five films conjures such a vivid sense of place. How did you go about creating this kind of heightened reality, where the setting itself becomes a major character in the story?

Deakins: Well, that was the way Joel and Ethan had written it, as a black-and-white film. Obviously, “The Man Who Wasn’t There” was an hommage to film noir, but also an hommage to ‘40s science-fiction movies and B-movies, so there was a lot of different imagery that was conjured up just by reading the script. You spend time in pre-production, just generally talking about the ideas.

Q: Putting that noir twist into this middle-class environment, throwing two unexpected things together ...

Deakins: They’ve generally done that with all their films. That’s what’s so great about Joel and Ethan’s filmmaking. They often examine small lives, small-town America.

Q: Bruno, how did you create this particular vision of Paris in “Amelie”?

Delbonnel: The idea was to create a kind of fairy tale look, so the major thing for us was to make Paris look beautiful, which was kind of difficult because Paris is not anymore beautiful for us. It’s a very weird city now and very ugly. We had to find those really remote locations in Paris that only Parisians know about, which are places the camera likes. The lens makes it beautiful because they’re already beautiful. And then choosing a wide lens as we did, we wanted to show those buildings which are kind of special to this place, Montmartre.

Idziak: I must say, filming “Black Hawk Down” was a very easy task with Ridley as the director. Having a partner who had a complete and clear vision of the picture, I had only to fulfill his vision. We had a little bit of fighting, but I was completely free in terms of the color scheme, how to proceed in terms of filtering, the vision in terms of lighting and so on.

Q: The word “dust” comes to mind when I think of “Black Hawk Down.” I wonder if your choice of color brought out that sense of dryness even more?

Idziak: The color decision--I’m just joking of course--but very often Ridley used to mention that he was making this public-is-about-to-vomit sort of picture. So I just tried to find my inspiration for the colors in the color of vomiting. [Laughter.] That’s why I use so much yellow and all this.

Q: Andrew, I read somewhere that tourism in New Zealand has increased 20% since “Lord of the Rings” was released. Tell me about the sense of place you and Peter Jackson set out to create.

Lesnie: We took the view that Middle-earth was a prehistory of the planet. Photographically, that translated into not wanting to make the movie feel too much like a straight-out fantasy, that the story wasn’t set on another planet, but that it was definitely set on Earth and that we had just backed up in time. And in terms of mythology, we wanted to appeal to that primal sense among people that they may have visited these environments sometime in their past or in a past life even. New Zealand is an extraordinarily beautiful country. For its size, it has an amazing number of dramatic landscapes.

Q: Donald?

McAlpine: The basic concept for “Moulin Rouge” was that it was the equivalent of a New York 1980s nightclub set in turn-of-the-century Paris. The big attraction [for the working girls] was to attach yourself to some gentleman of wealth and substance, and the place you could do that, apparently, was the Moulin Rouge. So it was basically a massive pickup joint, with an underlying core of prostitution and, to a minor degree, some drugs. So it was a pretty rough old town.

On top of that was a layer having to do with Zidler, the manager of the club, who was obsessed with electricity. At that point in history, electricity was the equivalent, say, of television in the ‘40s, where people would go to watch it in a shop front. So people would just go to Moulin Rouge to see the wonder of electricity.

Q: As the director of photography, how did you express all of those elements?

McAlpine: It was a great excuse to light up the joint. The club is endlessly surrounded by strings and strings and strings of small lamps. Everything’s outlined in festoon lighting, and basically that’s the way we did it. It was really an effort to capture the ethic of the time, and the way to do that was to transmit as much visual and kinetic energy from the performers to the screen. That was our mantra every day: Where’s the energy? Look for the energy; fight for the energy. A lot of that was simply done by often using wide lenses and a lot of camera movement.

Q (to all): Do you feel you have a signature style that carries through from one project to the next, or do you think of yourself more as a chameleon?

Deakins: I like to think I don’t have a style, but I also like to think that if somebody saw a film that I’d shot, they’d know that it was me that shot it. Look, for every film, it’s a new script, a new set of people. I’m never doing anything that I’ve done before. I hope that every film has its own look and its own feel, but I’d like to feel I have something I am giving that is personal--otherwise I don’t know why I’m bothering.

Delbonnel: I don’t think I have a style. I hope I don’t, in fact, because to have a style is to have just one way to light or something. For “Amelie,” I used digital grading, [a recently developed process that digitally manipulates a film’s color] and maybe on the next one I’ll use another kind of grading. Sometimes directors don’t have a really pristine view of what they want to achieve, so for me it’s very important to collaborate with different people from the director to the production designer and costume designer, and find what is the best thing to do for this script.

Idziak: I try not to have any kind of bridge between the project being made and the next one. I try always to find inspiration in the script, and try to define the language, to find something new, and to establish a completely fresh attitude.

But, you know, something I’d like to say: I am used to working in a system in which the cinematographer is the first person engaged. In Eastern Europe, it’s a sort of rule. So it was a surprise to me to work in the type of production like you often have in the U.S., to be asked to deliver some kind of vision at a moment when the set designer is already hired, sets have all appeared, locations are already chosen. It’s something which always puzzled me.

Very often I have a feeling that some American pictures are very much alike. You have a feeling of a Christmas tree decoration--you have a lot of decoration so you don’t see very clearly the tree behind them. I try to avoid that. I try to be very direct in the way I use my camera and my lighting.

McAlpine: Style often means superimposing some sort of visual dogma over the whole thing, and that, I think, is ridiculous. Every shot has to be set up so it suits that particular scene relative to the scene before and the one afterward, and the whole movie. So the style of the thing, I believe, comes out of all that which is inside you all, combined with that which is laid on you.

“Moulin Rouge” was a magnificent experience because for one year prior to shooting, I was brainwashed. Baz and C.M. [production and costume designer Catherine Martin] and the writers and the wardrobe were all working to an increasing degree as we developed the whole dramatic and visual concept of the movie. Every detail of that film was planned.

It was the sort of experience that I certainly haven’t had at any time in Hollywood, and it sort of relates back to my poverty years of moviemaking: You spend evenings over the course of a year with a director developing this little movie called “Breaker Morant” or “My Brilliant Career.” Then, eventually, you get some idiot to finance it, and you go and make it. That to me was moviemaking truly from the heart. Of course, if you’re going to play this industrial game, which is what Hollywood is, it’s another game, and there’s a lot of joys in that. But they’re different joys.

Q: One more point on the question of style. In the course of developing any kind of aesthetic, you’re inevitably going to develop likes and dislikes. Slawomir, for example, talks about “Christmas tree decoration,” and I imagine that helps define a certain consistency in the way he likes to shoot. Could you talk about things you try to stay away from as a cinematographer?

McAlpine: I guess on a level we’re all whores, and sometimes you have to do things you don’t like. My fundamental thing is, I feel an obligation to the audience to get as much information up on the screen as I can--to keep it as honest I can. With that in mind, I very rarely use filtration. I very rarely use smoke for atmosphere. I’ve avoided like the plague shooting Super 35. That’s an argument I have to have for every movie I shoot.

Aesthetically, every rule, if you can find a rule, is designed to be broken. On “Moulin Rouge,” shooting your glamour leading lady on a 40-millimeter [distorting] lens endlessly and getting away with it was breaking a rule that--you’d just be killed--I had a feeling sometimes with Baz that if I were in Hollywood and these dailies came up, I’d have been fired. In Australia, people were cheering.

Q: Bruno?

Delbonnel: Here, we are really fighting against these boring French movies--it’s the end of the French New Wave, and we are still dealing with intellectuals from the Cahiers du Cinema and all those kind of magazines that try to emphasize all these native intellectual subjects. Now, with Jeunet, and very few other directors in France and a very few cinematographers as well, we are fighting to find an aesthetic. That means I am open to every new kind of technique, every kind of new technology, you see?

So when I hear Don McAlpine talking about Super 35 and that he hates it, I say, “I love it!” I prefer to use circular lenses and shots and Super 35, and “Amelie” was done this way and I hope it is beautiful. I like what Don says about breaking the rules--I too think there are no rules.

What I saw in “Night of the Hunter” [the 1955 film starring Robert Mitchum with cinematography by Stanley Cortez] in terms of cinematography was amazing. It was absolutely new for its time in the history of movies. The lighting was gorgeous and the story was great as well, and it was the proper light for this movie. And that is what keeps me going in fact. And I don’t like the very flat light we have in France. I think it’s definitely ugly. That’s it.

Idziak: War movies are not my cup of tea, but it was a great pleasure and honor to work with Ridley Scott on “Black Hawk Down.” The only thing that helped me to survive the picture was the fact that Ridley had not worked on this kind of picture before either, so somehow we both tried to open up the genre with an experimental approach. We didn’t try to look to the past.

Lesnie: I don’t have any particular technical dislikes. I think each project attracts technology that is appropriate to it. For me, the biggest issues are the scripts. I always ask myself: Is it an important story? Is it worth telling? When I go to the movies, if I’m only examining the actual technique of the movie, that means I’m bored with the film. But if the film sucks me in, I’ll generally have to go back a second time to look at the photography. Those are the kinds of films I want to take part in.

Deakins: I’ve got many hates and dislikes, but they’re generalizations: I hate shooting little scenes with multiple cameras. I hate blue backlight. I hate most Steadicam work. But then I still use Steadicam on blue backlight with multiple cameras. It just depends on the project.

I hate most modern movies--I find them bland and uninteresting, and I find not only the scripts bland and uninteresting but the productions bland and uninteresting. I’ve been lucky. I’ve had projects where I don’t feel I’ve been forced into producing a bland and uninteresting look. [Laughter.]

You know, Don says we’re prostitutes in a way, because it’s a business out here, but there’s still great movies getting made in Hollywood. I think it’s wrong to blame Hollywood. It’s just the times--if you want me to go on the globalization kick, I will. [Laughter.] In England, they’re not particularly making great indigenous product about British culture, and they’re not doing that in France or anywhere else.

Q: You each worked with directors who have a very precise vision of what they want, so I’m sure you planned in advance as much as possible what the look of the film should be. Was there still room to be spontaneous on the set?

Deakins: I think, contrary to opinion, the more prepared you are, the more you can make use of those times that come along where you say, “Well, I don’t want to do it like we storyboarded it. Let’s take this direction and do something totally different.” Whereas if you have no plan and you’re wandering around on the set with the actors trying to find out what the hell the scene is about or saying, “Well, this dialogue doesn’t work,” then you’ve got a pretty scarce chance of making a good scene.

That’s why I love working with Joel and Ethan. They’re always very prepared. People say, “Well isn’t that restricting, if everything’s storyboarded before you get to the set?” Yeah, but we all do that together so we know what we’re aiming for. Then you have this sort of platform to build on and you can take that in any direction you want.

Q: So, you’ve got your gauges and your lenses and your meters and your storyboards, but are there also internal gauges, as it were, where you say, “This is better than what we’d planned?”

Deakins: But that’s the most important thing. You have to know the technique of lighting, you have to know what a lens does and why you want to use camera movement or not. But when you’re on the set, it’s totally about gut feeling, about your reaction to the actor and the way he’s moving or what he’s saying or what the scene’s about. If you get bogged down in the tech, you’re lost--it’s nothing.

Delbonnel: My experience with Jeunet was the same as Roger’s with the Coen brothers. For example, when we shot “Amelie” in May, we had 20 days of rain, which is quite unusual, but because of this prep, we were able to change a lot of things and even use the rain. Technique--it’s not the main point. You can have the most beautiful crane movement, but it’s useless because it doesn’t mean anything.

McAlpine: Some days you’ll shoot exactly what was planned. For me, those are the least rewarding days. Other days, when you go to the set, all of a sudden something explodes. All the preparation, all the storyboards, all your knowledge of cinema--you bring that with you, so that when anything comes along--and the inspiration can come from an actor, a trick of the lighting, a trick of the weather, even the director [McAlpine laughs]--unless you can actually add something when that happens, I think you should stay home.

Q: You’ve all just spoken about the importance of preparation. What were your points of references in preparing for these movies--not only other films, but also painting, comic books, novels, photographers? Also, more generally, who are the influences that inspired you to shoot films in the first place? Roger, we’ll start with you. Before starting “The Man Who Wasn’t There,” I understand, you saw a couple of noir films [“This Gun for Hire” (1942) and “The Blue Dahlia” (1946)].

Deakins: I do see other movies, but I don’t think in those terms. The way you visualize it in your head is something much more personal. It might be a walk on the beach or the way the light hits on a certain day that stimulates your imagination. You’re really bringing to the film who you are.

Delbonnel: Maybe one of my main references now is the French Impressionist painter Pierre Bonnard. There is this kind of vibration of light. What interests me the most in his paintings is, for example, the sensation of a bright sunny day [evoked] not through a ray of light as in Vermeer paintings, but with a color palette: the association of colors which anybody can feel as the sensation of a warm, sunny day. When I was a child, I liked very much in a French apartment when the light is hitting the end of the room--or only the floor or only the ceiling. So for “Amelie” I tried mixing this recollection of my childhood and the idea of this light vibrating to create a feeling.

Idziak: I am not the kind of person who is inspired by painting, by other movies, other pictures--it is just the opposite for me. The script or literature which is about the subject I’m about to film is very interesting to me. My grandfather, my grandmother, my father, my mother, both of my sisters, they are all photographers, and I made the move from still photography to cinema. My father was very simple in his profession. He never ever used a light meter because he knew exactly how to expose his mechanism. I admire this kind of hand worker, who achieves this level of mastery in his profession.

Q: Andrew?

Lesnie: One of my biggest influences when I’m on a production is music because it seems to stimulate my visual sensibility.

Q: In particular, for “Lord of the Rings”?

Lesnie: I looked for classical composers because I was looking for grand but complex music to get my mind working on the scale of the project. I listened to Prokofiev, to Holst. The earliest films I had an interest in was for the music as much as the photography, like “On the Waterfront,” which to this day I find to be an extremely moving film, in no small part of the brilliant score.

Q: Is there anything else that anybody here wants to address?

Delbonnel: There is one thing that to me seems special. I don’t talk about “Amelie,” but I have seen “Moulin Rouge,” “The Man Who Wasn’t There,” “Lord of the Rings” and “Black Hawk Down,” and all those movies are very special. And there is a point where all of us meet, I don’t know exactly where, which makes cinematography very interesting because [these films are] really different from what we usually see. And even with these backgrounds and different histories and different systems even, you know, from Hollywood to Poland and France and Australia, there is a place where we can meet, in cinematography, and we see it in each of these movies.

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Hugh Hart is a regular contributor to Calendar.