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“We Weren’t Looking To Trick the Audience”: DP Michael Latham on SALLY
Sally Ride appears in
SALLY by Cristina Costantini. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by NASA. The first American woman to enter space is the subject of SALLY, Cristina Costantini’s documentary about the astronaut Sally Ride. The film also delves into an aspect of the maverick’s personal life: her 27-year-long relationship with her partner Tam O’Shaughnessy and the immense burden of keeping their love hidden from the public.
DP Michael Latham talks about how he came aboard the project, the team’s mission of “serving the archive” from NASA and the difficulties inherent to the film’s interview shoots.
See all responses to our annual Sundance cinematographer interviews here.
Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film?
Latham: I had a mutual friend with the producer Lauren Cioffi who recommended me for the project. It was an exciting opportunity to work with Cristina who I hadn’t worked with before and honestly story wise what isn’t there to like: it’s space, it’s a love story, it’s fighting against patriarchy.
Filmmaker: What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this job?
Latham: Like every job you interview with the director to see if you get along and are creatively aligned. The project was dealing with a lot of archive which was shot on film and Cristina was looking at how to blend in the modern day interviews and verite seamlessly. I had been researching and developing film emulations on my previous projects so I had a strong understanding of how to best execute this along with experience with shooting film which we would utilize in the recreations.
Filmmaker: What were your artistic goals on this film, and how did you realize them?
Latham: Our goal was to serve the archive as best we could and not take away from the footage that NASA camera man had so beautifully captured. We were dealing with three main elements: interviews with our main subjects, recreations of moments that weren’t captured in the archive and modern day verite.
Cristina, Jon Bush and I spent a lot of time discussing the look for the main interviews. We wanted something that felt at home against the NASA archive with the appropriate NASA color pallet but didn’t feel “retro” or too recognisable a space that you would question it. The other tricky factor was the set had to travel around America and so we tested different methods on how to achieve this practically and economically. Ultimately landing on making the majority of the set out of fabrics, both hung or stretched over lighting frames. The travel also meant I had to choose my lighting package carefully so that it was common enough that it was able to be sourced anywhere in the country.
The other main challenge was what format to shoot our footage on. Our interviews had to be digital for practical reasons but the verite and recreations we had more leeway. We weren’t looking to trick the audience into thinking our recreations were archive but also did not want the footage to be jarring and take the audience out of the film. We did tests with 35mm, 16mm and digital with a film emulation. We cut them against the original archive and landed on 16mm as it felt most at home. The film emulation tests would carry over to our interviews and modern day verite which were shot digitally to help them blend more seamlessly.
Filmmaker: How did you want your cinematography to enhance the film’s storytelling and treatment of its characters?
Latham: The goal was to complement the NASA archive.
Filmmaker: Were there any specific influences on your cinematography, whether they be other films, or visual art, or photography, or something else?
Latham: Our main influence was the NASA archive and images of the time in which our story was told.
Filmmaker: What were the biggest challenges posed by production to those goals?
Latham: Documentary budgets are always challenging and when it comes to essentially shooting a period piece with space ships it gets even tougher. Jon did a great job at pulling together a believable world on a shoestring budget which we shot on a tight schedule.
Filmmaker: What camera did you shoot on?
Latham: We shot our interviews and verite on Arri Alexa Mini LF’s and the recreations on Arri 416.
Filmmaker: Why did you choose the camera that you did?
Latham: I feel the Arri sensors are the most organic feeling and I prefer the larger format of Mini LF as it produces more of a photographic portraiture feel. The Arri 416 is one of the last 16mm cameras to be manufactured and so I felt there was a better chance of it being reliable which was important on a tight schedule. A lot of them have also been upgraded to have a better video split allowing for the director to get a better idea of what we were filming.
Filmmaker: What lenses did you use?
Latham: For the interviews and verite we used Zeiss Supreme Primes as Cristina wanted a more modern look and I have always liked the cooler skin tones of Zeiss lenses. For the recreations we used 16mm Zeiss Super Speed lenses as they have that ’70s/’80s aesthetic that was reminiscent of the images we were trying to recreate.
Filmmaker: Describe your approach to lighting.
Latham: I am always trying to light things as natural as possible. Usually I would light more with more contrast and darker tones but that felt like the wrong choice against the archive as a lot of it was vibrant and poppy.
Filmmaker: What was the most difficult scene to realize and why? And how did you do it?
Latham: Ironically the interviews were the most challenging as they were shot over the span of a year, all over the country, with different equipment, gaffers and studios. The way the light reacted in each space vastly varied and so it was a real challenge to keep consistency. In the end we still needed to balance the final shots with our great colorists Marco Cordero and Ben Neufeld.
Filmmaker: Finally, describe the finishing of the film. How much of your look was “baked in” versus realized in the DI?
Latham: With the film archive we tried to keep as much of the original intention as possible, over time the film stock can go a bit funky so we corrected those issues. For our recreations the grade was pretty light and then for our interviews and verite we had our film emulation recipe on it.
TECH BOX
Film Title: SALLY
Camera: Arri Alexa Mini LF, Arri 416
Lenses: Zeiss Supreme Primes, 16mm Zeiss Super Speeds
Lighting: Interviews Arri Sky Panels, Recreations mainly Arri HMI’s
Processing: Colorlab
Color Grading: DaVinci Resolve
