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.

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December 5, 2024

The whimsical world of Wicked: Alice Brooks, ASC

Cinematographer Alice Brooks, ASC was in post on In The Heights four years ago when director Jon M. Chu let her know their next project together was adapting the world-famous Broadway musical, Wicked. With such a huge fan base, Alice and Chu wanted to make sure they respected the musical, but they both wanted to find a dynamic, filmic way to approach the material. “John kept instilling in us, don’t make the obvious choices,” Alice says. “We were all creating a world of Oz together that no one had ever seen before, that was magical and wondrous and a little bit different.” Alice chose to go back to the source material for inspiration- the Oz books by L. Frank Baum. “Every single paragraph has an incredibly rich color description. Beautiful, poetic, just the world of Oz in color. It’s unbelievable. And color means something, color is symbolism in Oz. No color is arbitrary.”

Alice embraced all the colors of the rainbow for Wicked. They chose the color palette of pink and green for Glinda (Ariana Grande) and Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo), with pink hued lighting to represent hope and connection between the two characters. In Wicked, good and evil are not as clearly defined as in typical fairy tales, since it’s the origin story of how Elphaba becomes the wicked witch. Alice knew she could play with light and contrast between the two characters. Sunrise lighting would represent Glinda, while sunset and darkness represented Elphaba. Alice made notes in the script for time of day as references for each character. She worked closely with gaffer David Smith to create complex lighting cues throughout the film to match sunrise for Glinda and sunset and darkness for Elphaba.

Early on, the production team discussed how to create the magical world of Oz without relying on bluescreens or virtual production. In London, they built real, massive, practical sets just like in old Hollywood movies. Alice remembers that Wicked used 17 sets that were 85 feet by 145 feet, with four huge backlots: Munchkinland, Shiz University, the train station, and Emerald City. Each was the size of four American football fields. “We had real tangible spaces to light and to create in,” she says. “And we didn’t live in a blue screen world that so many movies do these days.”

To create just the right green skin tone for actress Cynthia Erivo, Alice and makeup designer Frances Hannon did several makeup and lighting tests on different shades of green. It took a lot of trial and error to find the right shade of green- many hues simply looked like paint, or appeared grayish under the lights. As the DP, Alice also had to choose what lenses Wicked would use to capture both the scope and intimacy of the story. She worked with Dan Sasaski, Panavision’s senior vice president of optical engineering and lens strategy, to create the Ultra Panatar II series of lenses for the film. For closeups, Alice chose a 65 mm lens for Cynthia Erivo and a 75mm lens for Ariana Grande because she found that a slightly different focal length for each actress worked best, due to the different shapes of their faces.

Find Alice Brooks: Instagram @_alicebrooks_

Hear our previous interview with Alice Brooks on In the Heights. https://www.camnoir.com/ep130/

Wicked is currently in theaters.

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July 19, 2023

Junk Film: Why Bad Movies Matter author Katharine Coldiron

Author Katharine Coldiron wrote her book, Junk Film: Why Bad Movies Matter around thirteen essays exploring movies from the 1940’s to the 2010’s. Ed Wood’s Plan 9 From Outer Space, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, Staying Alive, and the musical television show Cop Rock are just some of the disastrous projects explored in the book. Katharine feels that bad movies can be unintentional teaching tools for film students and movie aficionados- but you have to watch a ton of bad movies before you can learn anything from them.

There are specific elements that all bad movies share: insufficient resources, incompetence in the basics of filmmaking, and bad acting or screenwriting that create unintentional comedy. Bad movies are actually records of ATTEMPTS at making a movie, and you can see the broken mechanics of each project discussed in Junk Film. In writing the book, Katharine chose to focus on movies she was interested in exploring. She didn’t want to write about movies that have been well-covered. For example, she chose not to write about Tommy Wiseau’s The Room, but instead focused on his follow-up, another stinker called Best Friends.

Katharine feels that the problem with most junk films is not the cinematography, which is at least usually competent. Where these films fail is in the directing and editing process, with the director incompetently stringing along narrative logic from one scene to another. After watching so many bad movies, Katharine has a pointer for creating a good movie: if the director, editor and crew is cohesive, competent, and cares about the film’s final quality, then your movie will at least be watchable.

Junk Film is available on Amazon and at Barnes&Noble.com

Find Katharine Coldiron: http://kcoldiron.com/
Twitter: @ferrifrigida

WIN an autographed copy of Junk Film: Why Bad Movies Matter. Follow us on Instagram @thecinepod, Threads @thecinepod Facebook @cinepod or Twitter @ShortEndz and comment on our post about the book giveaway for this episode!

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July 12, 2023

Star Trek: Picard and Schmigadoon! Cinematographer Jon Joffin, ASC

Jon Joffin, ASC has learned the importance of staying creative, committed and inspired during shoots. In his long career as a cinematographer, Jon has learned how to work on a team, manage people, and surround himself with those who really care about their craft.

When he was first starting out, Jon was hired as a second unit camera operator on The X-Files. Prior to that, he had only worked on music videos and smaller films. The X-Files was a huge show at the time, and Jon quickly moved up to DP for several episodes. The dark and bold look was extremely cinematic, with its signature scenes of bobbing flashlights in the dark woods. The X-Files search for dark secrets set it apart from most high-key sitcoms and workplace dramas that were popular at the time, and it opened up many new opportunities for Jon’s career.

For the series Star Trek: Picard Season 3, the series creators decided they wanted a big, rich cinematic look for the show. In the previous two seasons, the ship had been lit overhead with sky panels, giving it a flatter look. Jon chose bigger, softer light sources and fewer cameras that could focus on the faces of the well-known actors who were reuniting from Star Trek: The Next Generation. He wanted to get good close-ups that would capture their performances and their ease of working together. It was also important to make it look and feel like a realistic spacecraft and not a set. The crew rebuilt the Starship Enterprise set for the show, and it needed to be lit in a similar way that people remembered from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Jon brightened up the lights on that set so that it was a closer match to the original Enterprise.

The Apple TV+ series Schmigadoon! is about a couple who gets lost while backpacking and find themselves in a magical world of musical theater. Season Two finds the couple trying to get back to Schmigadoon, but they end up in Schmicago instead. Jon was excited to work on Schmigadoon! Season 2, because he loves musicals and had previously shot one called Julie and the Phantoms. Schmigadoon! season 2 is based on darker musicals than season 1, such as Chicago, Cabaret and Sweeney Todd, interspersed with 70’s musicals Godspell and Hair. Jon met with showrunner Cinco Paul, who wrote the Despicable Me and Minions movies and who wrote the songs and scripts for season 2. They decided to use a bright, Technicolor look, with a soft contrast, while also working in darker, vibrant tones for the more harrowing musicals.

Jon Joffin just received an Emmy nomination for his work on Schmigadoon! Season 2. You can find it on Apple TV+

Star Trek: Picard is on Paramount Plus

Find Jon Joffin: https://ddatalent.com/client/jon-joffin-asc-mini-series-and-tv-movies
Instagram: @jonjoffin

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December 29, 2021

Seamus McGarvey ASC, BSC on the musical adaptation of Cyrano, shooting in Sicily during the pandemic and on an active volcano

Cinematographer Seamus McGarvey is very happy about being a DP, and his love of the job always takes him through the difficult times. When he sees a movie that actually works beautifully on screen, it makes everything worthwhile.

The new musical Cyrano is based on the stage play by Erica Schmidt, which caught the attention of director Joe Wright, who knew he wanted to adapt it into a film. Stars Peter Dinklage and Haley Bennett also reprise their roles in the movie as Cyrano de Bergerac and Roxanne. Wright used the stage play as a guide for what the film should look like, and hired his frequent collaborator, Seamus McGarvey as the cinematographer. The two have now worked on five films together. Seamus wanted the film to feel more intimate than a play, so he chose close up portraiture of the actor’s faces, capturing sensitive performances. Because of the pandemic, Wright felt even more strongly about the story of Cyrano being an outsider, craving love and human connection. They began shooting in the fall of 2020, creating a bubble of performers in the town of Noto, Sicily, with many background actors playing a few different parts. Since Sicily was still locked down for COVID with no tourism and few people out and about, most of the town became the entire set- the locations were all real houses and buildings. The crew was able to shoot with little distraction or interference, and with no bars or restaurants open, they became a tight-knit group.

In his adaptation of Cyrano, Wright was guided by the musical and wanted the dialog to roll naturally into song, which were recorded live during the shoot. Playback had to be done through earpieces for all of the performers so they knew when to sing and dance. Fortunately, all of the actors were such good singers that they didn’t have to do a lot of takes, and they had time to focus on rehearsals and blocking first. Seamus had previously shot the musical The Greatest Showman, and he enjoyed the experience on Cyrano of playing with the rhythm of photography with song, creating a beat to the pictures themselves. The “Every Letter” song sequence in Cyrano reminded him of working on music videos in his early career, and he and the crew had fun creating lens flares with flashlights throughout the scene. They worked with lots of candles and torches, with some LED torches with CGI flames for a nighttime staircase fight scene in the film.

The filming of Cyrano literally ended with a bang. Mount Etna is an active volcano, and Wright chose to film the final battle sequences up the side of it. The weather had turned unseasonably cold and it started snowing, creating a real problem for the set which had to be relocated. The snow would start to melt because the earth beneath was hot with molten lava. Finally, within days of completing shooting and beginning to wrap out of the location, Mt. Etna erupted and the sets were covered in ash. The entire crew quickly evacuated.

Find Seamus McGarvey: Instagram @seamiemc
Twitter: @mcseamus

You can see Cyrano opening in theaters December 31.

Find out even more about this episode, with extensive show notes and links: https://camnoir.com//ep153/

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YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheCinematographyPodcast
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April 14, 2021

Matthew Libatique, ASC, PART 2: Tigerland, The Fountain, working with Spike Lee, Straight Outta Compton, Iron Man, A Star is Born

In Part 2 of our interview, we continue our conversation with cinematographer Matty Libatique.

After Pi, Matty couldn’t believe that such a small movie shot on 16mm black and white film opened so many doors for him. He began to get calls for large Hollywood movies, such as Tigerland with director Joel Schumacher. Schumacher, known for big-budget, glossy films like Batman and Robin, was looking for a new look for the gritty Vietnam training camp film, starring an up and coming Colin Farrell. Matty and Schumacher decided to shoot hand-held 16 mm for Tigerland so that it would amplify the anger, stress and pain of preparing for war.

Spike Lee’s film Do The Right Thing influenced Matty’s path to a career in cinema, and he had the honor to work with Lee on four films, including Inside Man. Matty found Lee’s approach to film to be incredibly unique. Lee would decide scenes with multiple cameras could become one camera done in one shot, or plan that a single camera scene should be done with multiple cameras and angles. Matty thinks that as a DP you are a collaborator and need to be present as a fellow filmmaker and not as a fanboy, so he resisted telling Lee that Do The Right Thing was the reason why he went into film. Matty also got the chance to work with another hero of his, director and cinematographer Ernest Dickerson, who shot Do The Right Thing, on the film Never Die Alone.

Matty teamed up again with director Darren Aronofsky on The Fountain, an incredibly surreal sci-fi love story that takes place across space and time. It was a big challenge for Matty to bring Aronofsky’s vision of The Fountain to life, bouncing ideas off Aronofsky’s astrophysicist collaborator, who described what other universes might look like. By contrast, their next movie together, Black Swan, was a stripped down thriller, focused on taught performances and choreography. Black Swan earned Matty his first Academy Award nomination for cinematography.

Surprisingly, working on the first Iron Man movie felt to Matty just like working on a giant independent film. With a comedic star like Robert Downey Jr. and an experienced comedic director like Jon Favereau, the two often reworked the script before shooting scenes. Matty had never worked on a project with such a large budget, and he helped create the look of the Marvel cinematic universe.

When Matty heard Straight Outta Compton was in developement, he immediately asked his agent for a meeting with director F. Gary Gray, because he was such a big fan of the hip-hop group NWA. The film is about the origins of NWA’s generation-defining album and the story of the band, but it was not a straightforward biopic, and Matty wanted to make sure the movie had the right look and feel for the era.

For 2018’s A Star is Born, starring Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper, Matty and Cooper, who also directed the film, wanted to pay homage to the other two versions but Cooper’s take on the story was definitely different. They decided to feature more musical performance in their version, and early into shooting, Cooper changed the ending so that the main character, Jackson Maine, doesn’t die in a motorcycle accident. Matty found that Bradley Cooper has the ability to clearly explain what he sees in his imagination, and his acting experience enabled him to be aware of where the camera was positioned so he didn’t have to watch playback of his scenes.

Matty’s film, The Prom, can be streamed on Netflix. He is currently shooting the film, Don’t Worry Darling, directed by Olivia Wilde.

Hear Part 1 of our interview with Matty Libatique: https://www.camnoir.com/ep120/

Hear our 2019 interview with Matty Libatique: https://www.camnoir.com/ep33/

Find Matty Libatique: Instagram @libatique

Find out even more about this episode, with extensive show notes and links: https://camnoir.com/ep121/

Sponsored by Hot Rod Cameras: www.hotrodcameras.com

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

April 6, 2021

Matthew Libatique, ASC, PART 1: The Prom, Pi, working with director Darren Aronofsky and his early career

Cinematographer Matty Libatique’s work ranges from mind-bending features like Pi, Black Swan and Requiem for a Dream to huge Marvel movies such as Iron Man and Birds of Prey. He enjoys balancing his work on both large films and smaller indies in order to feel satisfied and to keep his craft sharp.

For his latest film, The Prom, Matty met with director Ryan Murphy about the project. The star-studded cast and the message about gay acceptance appealed to him. But once Matty saw the Broadway play he was concerned- he had never shot a musical before, and he wasn’t quite sure how to translate a big Broadway musical into a movie. Matty had worked on several music videos and was the cinematographer of 2018’s A Star is Born, which featured musical performances, but it was incredibly gritty and grounded in reality compared to The Prom’s bubbly feel-good fantasy world. He and director Ryan Murphy met and knew they wanted to keep it big and colorful while not going too over the top. Murphy loves working with color, and the two decided The Prom had to feature two distinct palettes of colors- the yellow/browns of normal Indiana contrasted with the bright pastels of “the prom” and the theater people who descend on the town. For the final scene in the movie where all the characters go to the all-inclusive prom, Matty and his team utilized a full array of lights on stage that they programmed on the fly.

Growing up, Matty was always attracted to light, camera and composition in movies, but he didn’t understand what anybody did on a film set until he saw Do The Right Thing. The Spike Lee film made him realize he wanted to make movies. He went to AFI film school along with director Darren Aronofsky and the two bonded right away. They began making movies together in a partnership that continues today. Matty says of his long relationship with Darren Aronofsky that when you keep working with the same directors, it’s a sign you’re doing the right thing and dedicating your craft to the right ideas. Their first feature together, Pi, had to be created within the parameters of an incredibly low budget. Aronofsky couldn’t afford to shoot color film, only Super 16mm black and white reversal, so Pi had a grainy, gritty look and style immediately. A few scenes in Pi use a body-mounted rig to give it a first-person perspective. Matty and Aranofsky first saw the rig used by Icelandic cinematographers Eidur and Einar Snorri, now known as a Snorricam, and knew they wanted to use it in Pi- but the key was to use it sparingly.

Matty’s film, The Prom, is currently on Netflix. He is currently shooting the film, Don’t Worry Darling, directed by Olivia Wilde.

Hear our 2019 interview with Matty Libatique: https://www.camnoir.com/ep33/

Listen for Matty Libatique, Part 2, coming next week! He talks about Tigerland, The Fountain, working with Spike Lee, Iron Man and more.

Find Matty Libatique: Instagram @libatique

Find out even more about this episode, with extensive show notes and links: https://camnoir.com/ep120/

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