December 18, 2024

Lawrence Sher, ASC on ShotDeck, Joker: Folie à Deux

Cinematographer Lawrence Sher, ASC has a career that spans indie favorites like Garden State to blockbuster hits like the Hangover movies and Joker. But it was the arduous process of creating lookbooks for Garden State that sparked an idea: a comprehensive, searchable database of cinematic images. This idea evolved into ShotDeck, a powerful tool for filmmakers and creatives alike.

Larry’s initial struggle involved manually grabbing screenshots from DVDs and tapes. Google Images offered some help, but the images lacked the cinematic quality he sought. By 2015, he began working with a computer engineer to build a solution, realizing that if he found such a library valuable, his colleagues would too. After years of beta testing, ShotDeck officially launched as a company in 2020.

ShotDeck can also be used beyond pre-production pitch decks. “In my day to day, what I realized was every director I communicated with, across all the other departments, we were constantly in need of communicating creative ideas,” Larry says. “It’s difficult to communicate creative ideas with words. Having images that you can point to with a director is the easiest way.”

Larry would like ShotDeck to become the “visual IMDb,” housing an exhaustive collection of cinematic imagery. Recently, ShotDeck partnered with Canva, integrating its library directly into the design platform. This allows Canva users to seamlessly access and incorporate over 1.5 million high-definition film stills into their projects, streamlining workflows for filmmakers, designers, and content creators.

For Joker: Folie à Deux, Larry and director Todd Phillips continued their 15 year collaboration. Certain scenes of the movie were partly influenced by The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour. Larry had to rely on using screen grabs from the show’s DVDs as visual references, since they weren’t inputted into ShotDeck yet. Joker: Folie à Deux maintains a visual connection to the first Joker, but expands on the original by embracing more fantastical elements. They scaled up the stages and sets, which provided greater flexibility in lighting and camera movement. Larry was able to use more color and a wider range of lighting techniques during the musical sequences, as Arthur Fleck becomes more and more detached from reality. He sees Joker: Folie à Deux as an operatic tragedy, exploring the internal conflict of a person battling their shadow self and delving into the complexities of love and its potential to drive someone to the edge.

Larry defends director Todd Phillips’s creative vision for the sequel. “When you make a sequel, you have to have a new approach to the material, otherwise why do a sequel to anything?” he points out. “This idea that Todd just took $200 million and just lit it on fire is absurd. The greatest thing about Todd as a filmmaker is he’s at heart a gambler. He’s a gambler in the way that the movie business should be a gamble. What are we doing this for if not to continue to express something that isn’t simply trying to service the audience? We’re giving something that you might not have asked for.” He continues, “The movie we made and the way we approached it, it’s exactly what we were trying to do.”

Find Lawrence Sher: Instagram @lawrencesherdp

Hear our previous interview with Lawrence Sher on Joker: https://www.camnoir.com/ep56/

You can see Joker: Folie a Deux currently streaming on Max.

Shotdeck is now available on Canva.

Sponsored by Hot Rod Cameras: https://hotrodcameras.com/
Sponsored by ARRI: https://www.arri.com/en

The Cinematography Podcast website: www.camnoir.com
YouTube: @TheCinematographyPodcast
Facebook: @cinepod
Instagram: @thecinepod
Blue Sky: @thecinepod.bsky.social

October 5, 2022

Mike Prickett, Emmy-winning surf cinematographer of HBOs 100 Foot Wave

The six part HBO documentary 100 Foot Wave is the story of big wave surfer Garrett McNamara, as he learns about the biggest waves in the world in Nazaré, Portugal. Then, with help from the town of Nazaré, he and his team set up a safety and support system and invite surfers to come from all over the world to surf. The series captures the amazing power of the ocean, and the passion of surfers chasing big waves and putting themselves at risk of serious injury and death.

Surf and ocean cinematographer Mike Prickett was the perfect DP for 100 Foot Wave. Mike has decades of experience shooting in the water, following Garrett and many other big wave surfers around the world. He’s shot documentaries Riding Giants, Step Into Liquid and the biopic Chasing Mavericks. As a kid growing up on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, Mike took advantage of living in a tourist spot. He had his own camera, took pictures of the tourists, developed and printed the pictures while they did glass bottom boat tours, and then sold the photos to them when they returned. He soon figured out how to take photos underwater with his camera in a water housing, then got a 16mm Bolex camera and started shooting movies. Mike learned how to surf and began filming the top surfers around the world, developing new and better camera systems as the technology progressed.

On a shoot in Tahiti in 2012, Mike saved a diver who got caught in a current that pushed him down at least 220 feet underwater. As Mike swam back up with the diver, they began to run out of air and had to surface quickly. Mike got the bends, which has left his legs partially paralyzed. But he’s kept right on shooting, developing different and exciting ways to further the technology of water cinematography. Mike says that even if you can’t use your legs very well, it doesn’t matter when you’re out there. He’s able to shoot from the cliffs, use remote controlled jet skis and drones, and fly in helicopters, ride jet skis or boats on the ocean.

For 100 Foot Wave, Nazaré, Portugal presented some unique challenges as a location, because the waves are so big and the area gets so foggy. The surfers and the camera crew wait all year for the big waves to come to Nazaré by November and December, and they must be ready to go and shoot at a moment’s notice. Shooting is a massive undertaking, with at least 15 camera people on the waves to catch the action. The crew caught the action with long lenses from the cliffs, the beach, and with waterproof drones, but when it was foggy, they needed to have people in the water. Mike and the team built a special remote controlled electric jet ski with a gimbal system that could be controlled by an operator from the cliffs- basically inventing a way to do smooth dolly shots on the water.

Mike Prickett just won a Creative Arts Emmy for episode four of 100 Foot Wave.

100 Foot Wave is streaming on HBOMax.

Find Mike Prickett: https://saltnairstudios.com/
Instagram: @mikeprickett_

Find out even more about this episode, with extensive show notes and links: https://camnoir.com/ep186/

Sponsored by DZOFilm: https://www.dzofilm.com/
Sponsored by Hot Rod Cameras: www.hotrodcameras.com

The Cinematography Podcast website: www.camnoir.com
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheCinematographyPodcast
Facebook: @cinepod
Instagram: @thecinepod
Twitter: @ShortEndz

June 23, 2021

Cinematographer Dan Stoloff on shooting The Boys on Amazon Prime, The Americans and Suits

Over his long career, cinematographer Dan Stoloff feels he’s always learning as a DP. Every job, even if it seems small, is an opportunity to meet people and build relationships.

Dan’s latest project, The Boys season two on Amazon Prime, plays with the idea that superheroes in that world are actually just corrupt and possibly psychotic people with special powers, who behave in ways that are anything but super. They have celebrity, play politics, and use publicists and the media to manipulate their image. A small group of people- “The Boys” in the show’s title- band together to expose the superheroes and the corporation they work for. Dan likes that the show stays relatable and not to fantastical. When he came on board for the second season of The Boys, Dan knew he wanted to change the look as the story moves forward. The first season presented a slick, neatly packaged corporate world for the superheroes which was shot with a Steadicam, while the grittier world of the regular guys who are trying to expose and take down the supers was done handheld. For the second season, the two worlds have started to clash and unravel, so Dan gave everything a more ragged look. He decided to adhere more closely to the graphic novel of The Boys, sometimes using black silhouettes and contrasts such as subtractive lighting, positioning the actors against a dark background. Dan also enjoyed that season two presented a variety of scenes to shoot with different cameras, equipment, lighting scenarios and lenses, such as a big-budget hero movie, newscasts, an awards show, a country farmhouse and a gritty basement.

In Dan’s early career, he moved from Boston to New York, after having shot several claymation films. He began shooting comedy projects for Broadway Video, Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michael’s production company, and got a call to shoot The State, a 1990’s MTV sketch comedy show shot on 16mm. But Dan hadn’t considered television as a serious place for artistic expression until The Sopranos opened his eyes to the possibilities of a quality series. By then, the mid-budget independent features that Dan had worked on started to dry up, and he began seeking out jobs on television series. After landing his first television series, Memphis Beat, Dan found he likes the precision, continuity, and security of TV. He went on to DP the show Fairly Legal and then worked for nearly five seasons as the cinematographer of the USA show Suits. On Suits, Dan learned a lot about shooting through multiple levels of glass, playing with reflections and bouncing outdoor light to make it look more natural even within an office building or conference room.

Prior to The Boys, Dan shot season six of The Americans on FX. In season six, more of The Americans takes place in Russia, and some of the street scenes and exteriors were actually shot there, though most of the interiors were shot on a soundstage. Dan wanted to differentiate between the two countries, keeping the colors to a green and cyan palette for Russia so that it felt cold, while in contrast the American scenes were shot in full, rich color.

You can find Dan Stoloff: http://danstoloff.com/
You can watch Season Two of The Boys streaming on Amazon Prime.

Find out even more about this episode, with extensive show notes and links: https://camnoir.com/ep129/

Sponsored by Hot Rod Cameras: www.hotrodcameras.com

Website: www.camnoir.com
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNQIhe3yjQJG72EjZJBRI1w
Facebook: @cinepod
Instagram: @thecinepod
Twitter: @ShortEndz

December 9, 2019

Lawrence Sher, ASC, talks about creating the look of Joker with director Todd Phillips

When setting out to make Joker, Lawrence Sher and director Todd Phillips decided to go for an intimate, 70’s style of movie that’s character-driven, rather than the large scale, elaborate looks typical of today’s comic book superhero/villain films. Joaquin Phoenix had some leeway to improvise and play with the character. Larry and Todd Phillips’ background of working with comedians on movies such as The Hangover made them feel comfortable with improvisation.