Back to selection
“I Made Sure My Presence and Camerawork Reflected the Difficult Position They Were Put In”: DP Amy Bench on Shooting The Librarians
The Librarians, courtesy of Sundance Institute. With a style influenced by her work with documentary director Albert Maysles as well as shadowing DP Emmanuel Lubezki on The Tree of Life, Amy Bench wanted her work on Kim Snyder’s Sundance-premiering doc The Librarians, about a group of Texas librarians fighting censorship, “to shoot in the way that showed audiences the urgency, alarm, and fear felt by librarians and students in Texas.” Below, Bench, whose previous credits include the 2016 Sundance title Holy Hell and the 2015 Berlinale Silver Bear-winner Bad at Dancing, discusses those influences, anonymizing her subjects, and for what scene she brought in a second camera.
Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this job?
Bench: The “Krause list” had been recently introduced in Texas, listing 850 books to be banned in schools– mostly on the basis that they discussed race and/or gender, and there was a group of librarians organizing against this censorship movement. It was around that time that I was introduced to director Kim Snyder, who was looking for a Texas-based DP for the project. I’ve been making work in Texas as a DP and director for over 20 years and have become a known cinematographer for verite, social justice storytelling. I was connected to Kim and her team (producers Cynthia Kane, Janique Robillard) via Erica Deiparine Sugars at the Austin Film Society. I had seen Kim’s film Us Kids and was drawn to the intimacy of the footage with Sam and the other young Parkland activists; I felt that her approach to story was something that resonated with my own passion for intimate storytelling. So Kim and I met, and I loved her energy. I was excited to be invited to begin production a few weeks later.
Filmmaker: How did you want your cinematography to enhance the film’s storytelling and treatment of its characters?
Bench: My artistic goals on The Librarians were to capture an intimate verite style, and to shoot in the way that showed audiences the urgency, alarm, and fear felt by librarians and students in Texas—and also the absurdity of the “Krause list.” I kept the camera nimble, becoming an active participant when librarian Suzette Baker– one of the first to be fired over refusing to remove books from the library– gives a tour of her former library. She giddily shows a children’s book, A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo– about a male bunny couple– still on the shelves of the Llano Library, “where we keep our pornography,” she tells the camera wryly.
My verite camera work focus is one of my strengths as a documentary cinematographer, capturing both improvised moments, sensitive interviews, and fly-on-the wall observations. I wanted the look and the feel of these shots to bring the viewer directly into the participants’ experiences– and to ensure the cinematography supported the film’s thesis. Many of the people in the film that we interviewed and followed were directly targeted by members in their communities—they were librarians, students, and citizens who had a stake in protecting access to knowledge in their communities. I was very aware of the fact that we needed to be sensitive to the positions they were in and while filming with them I made sure my presence and camerawork reflected the difficult position they were put in, as we see both their vulnerability and their strength.
Filmmaker: Were there any specific influences on your cinematography, whether they be other films, or visual art, of photography, or something else?
Bench: My very early mentor, the legendary Albert Maysles, for whom I worked in the 2010s, has continued to be an influence on my work. Albert’s groundbreaking work in fluid, sensitive, and intimate camerawork, as well as approaching each project with care, taught me to value relationships with the people both in front of the camera and behind the scenes. And that leading with curiosity can lead to magical, human moments that teach, inspire, and entertain. I carry those lessons in my practice today.
I also bring in narrative influences to my work. I’m a big fan of cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki’s work, having had the opportunity to shadow him on Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life early in my career. Similarly to Albert, he is known for his use of continuous, uninterrupted shots. Lubezki employs natural light to great cinematic effect, often “taking away” light to produce subtle modeling on characters’ faces. On every shoot, I reference Maysles’ and Lubezki’s influence in my approach: from where I place the camera, when and how I move, and how I manage light—both natural and artificial.
Filmmaker: What were the biggest challenges posed by production to those goals?
Bench: Having an urgency to film but also a respect for what the protagonists were experiencing are often hallmarks of verite filming and something we considered constantly. We wanted to capture the librarians’ stories through intimate empathy and respect their need for privacy.
One of the biggest challenges and opportunities for The Librarians were how quickly things were progressing and that many librarians wanted to keep their identities hidden. Some interviews we filmed in silhouette to anonymize librarians who had been targeted; these black-and-white interviews tie into lovely graphic animation done by Tal Kantor in the finished film. School board meetings and court hearing dates were unpredictable, which meant that having one cinematographer for each scene was not always possible. Producer Janique Robillard had a knack for tracking what was going on, and I helped identify additional cinematographers to cover when I was not available. She and Kim were concurrently working on another film in Florida– and while there, expanded The Librarians to cover stories in Florida and a few other states. DPs for those scenes were Paulius Kontijevas and Derek Wiesehahn.
Filmmaker: What camera did you shoot on? Why did you choose the camera that you did? What lenses did you use?
Bench: I shot primarily on a Sony FS7ii, and a Sony a7iii when needed as a second camera. I like the FS7ii for its variable ND, which is super useful when going between indoor and outdoor settings, an incredibly necessary feature to have when filming a long verite day. I think this was the first camera to have this ability, and was why I transitioned to it when it was released.
Filmmaker: Describe your approach to lighting.
Bench: When I’m thinking about lighting in documentary, I’m always wanting to approach it from a way that the film participants feel at ease and the camera can move freely, not having to navigate around a bunch of gear. For a night scene where I filmed a group of students from Granbury ISD in conversation around a pizza in one of the students’ upstairs hangout spots, we used a single Aputure 500 in the corner to give a soft glow to the students’ faces. This allowed a warm, intimate feel to the conversation about identity and what books meant to those students from marginalized communities.
Filmmaker: What was the most difficult scene to realize and why? And how did you do it?
Bench: I would say the school board meeting in Granbury, where we filmed Weston Brown and his mom Monica Brown speaking passionately on both sides of the issue provided one of the biggest opportunities for the film, because it was a poignant reminder of the way our politicization has gone so deep as to fracture families. We didn’t know what to expect at that meeting, but Kim and Janique foresaw that it would be a key scene in the film. We planned ahead and had two cameras covering (whereas most other scenes in the film utilized a single camera), so that we could simultaneously film Weston and his mom as he addressed the school board. I’m really proud of how that scene worked out, because we were there for some very raw moments. In fact, Weston’s mom breaks the fourth wall, filming me—and I played with that a bit when she comes outside. I whip-panned from filming an interview Weston was doing with a reporter, to his mom—whose camera was also trained on me. I think the sudden camera movement and the unsettling idea that dissent is being documented is really chilling, and works to great effect in support of the premise of the film. This scene supports an anonymous, silhouetted librarian’s statement early in the film’s opening: “I never thought that this would happen. We felt like everything we were doing was being watched.”
Filmmaker: Finally, describe the finishing of the film. How much of your look was “baked in” versus realized in the DI?
Bench: We shot in Slog 3 to allow room for grading, and selected lenses and filtration during production to accomplish looks that can’t be achieved digitally.
Technical Information
Film Title: The Librarians
Camera: Sony FS7ii
Lenses: LeicaR primes, Angenieux 24-70mm
Lighting:
Processing: S-log 3
Color Grading: Nice Shoes
