Authors — Matt Mulcahey
-
It Comes at Night DP Drew Daniels on New Lenses, Old Dogs and Using Actors as Bounce Cards
As the end credits rolled after my screening of Trey Edward Shults’s It Comes at Night, a perturbed woman behind me angrily groused, “This is bullshit. WHAT comes at night?” In her defense, the mesmerizing trailer for the film from A24 certainly leads you to believe something is in fact coming at night — a concrete something, not a metaphoric something. But no horrific, plague-mutated creatures ever arrive at the red door that separates the apocalyptic outside world from the isolated home of Paul (Joel Edgerton) and his family (wife Carmen Ejogo and son Kelvin Harrison Jr.). What does come […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Sep 29, 2017 -
The Color of the Future: Roger Deakins on Blade Runner 2049
There isn’t much left that legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins hasn’t done behind a camera. He’s shot science fiction, war movies, biopics and westerns. He’s dabbled in gorgeous black and white and lensed a Bond film. He’s forged rewarding collaborations with the Coen Brothers, Sam Mendes and Denis Villeneuve and worked with Scorsese and Sayles. So, is there anything remaining on Deakins’s cinematic bucket list? “What I really like doing is small personal dramas,” said Deakins with a laugh. “I don’t really like action films. I like films about people. I would’ve loved to have done Ken Loach’s films or movies […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Sep 14, 2017 -
DP Andrew Droz Palermo on A Ghost Story, Shooting 1.33 and That Pie Shot
The polarity between director David Lowery’s $65 million Disney film Pete’s Dragon and the micro-budgeted A Ghost Story has been noted repeatedly in reviews and profiles. But the man behind the camera on A Ghost Story has a unique career trajectory of his own. Cinematographer Andrew Droz Palermo made his feature debut with Adam Wingard’s tone-mashing home invasion horror flick You’re Next in 2011. He followed that by co-directing a documentary (Rich Hill, an affecting character study of Missouri teens living in poverty) and a narrative feature (One and Two). Palermo is back in director of photography mode on A […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Aug 10, 2017 -
“Every So Often a Train Would Come Rumbling By and the Set Would Shake”: DP Doug Emmett on Shooting HBO’s Room 104
An octogenarian couple returns to the hotel room where they spent their first night together — it’s a logline that would typically preface an elegiac rumination on love and mortality. But by the time that set-up arrives in the season finale of HBO’s new anthology series Rooms 104, it seems just as likely to give way to horror or violence…or interpretive dance. That’s the joy of the newest Duplass Brothers creation — each episode begins as a blank slate capable of unexpectedly evolving into any genre or tone. The 12-episode series — which debuted last Friday night — unfolds entirely […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Aug 1, 2017 -
“Was Everything in Focus?”: Wonder Woman DP Matthew Jensen on Shooting 35 and Digital and How Tequila Sunrise Inspired His Career
I have to admit I can no longer distinguish 35mm film from high end digital cameras when I go to the movies. I can spot 16mm or anamorphic lenses, but the line between digital and 35mm celluloid has become impossibly blurred. Wonder Woman cinematographer Matthew Jensen can still spot the subtleties, but for Jensen the aesthetics of film are only one of the reasons he enjoys working in that format. “It’s very hard to tell the difference, especially when you’ve gone through a DI (digital intermediate) process and you’re projecting digitally. We have some shots that are digital in Wonder […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Jul 18, 2017 -
DP Henry Braham on Shooting Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 with the First Weapon 8K Vista Vision Full Frame Camera
Compared to the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with its squeaky clean Captain America and solemn United Nations accords, the Guardians of the Galaxy — a rogues’ gallery of smugglers, thieves and assassins — are outliers. Yes, by the end of Guardians Vol. 2 the titular team are two-time galaxy savers. But for Rocket, the genetically enhanced trash panda voiced by Bradley Cooper, that just means they can jack up their rates. Guardians’ departure from the status quo of Marvel’s ever-bloating Avengers coalition – which they will no doubt eventually be subsumed by – extends to behind the camera as […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Jun 8, 2017 -
Surveying Inner Landscapes
In the current climate of conglomerate studio entertainment, the Holy Grail is no longer the summer tentpole or the once fabled franchise. It is now the “shared universe,” a property capable of infinite expansion across an ever-enlarging landscape of consumption platforms. No outfit has embraced this new paradigm more than Marvel, whose television and film empire spans multiple networks and studios. As a product of FX and Marvel Television, Legion belongs to that universe, yet the new series from Fargo creator Noah Hawley feels like its own creature — not an offshoot or a spinoff or a cog in a […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Apr 13, 2017 -
DP Toby Oliver on Get Out, Cheating the Sunken Place and Color Grading Trailers
Sometimes you have to go where the market pushes you. And after nearly twenty years behind the camera, the market suddenly wants Toby Oliver to shoot horror films. The Australian cinematographer lensed three fright flicks last year alone, all for the low-budget genre juggernaut Blumhouse. He’s practically become Blumhouse’s version of Hammer’s in-house DP Jack Asher. The most recent of Oliver’s horror efforts to hit screens is Get Out, a Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?/Stepford Wives hybrid in which black New York photographer Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) travels upstate to meet his white girlfriend’s family (Allison Williams and parents Catherine Keener and […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Apr 7, 2017 -
“Hitler Was Treated There”: DP Bojan Bazelli on A Cure for Wellness, Alexa XT Studios and Abel Ferrara
Cinematographers right out of film school often get their feet wet by shooting short films, music videos, and commercials – brief subjects with lower budgets and ample room to experiment and make mistakes. There was no such toe dipping for Bojan Bazelli. He was dunked directly into the river of cinema and legendary New York auteur Abel Ferrara did the baptizing. The Yugoslavia-born Bazelli was just out of film school in Prague when Ferrara came across the DP’s thesis movie and tapped him to shoot his Romeo and Juliet variation China Girl (1987). Over the next decade Bazelli lensed 17 features, […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Mar 8, 2017 -
“The Bike is Going to Hit the Camera!” Chad Stahelski on John Wick: Chapter 2, Stair Falls and Other Stunts
“How can the same shit happen to the same guy twice?” moans John McClane in Die Hard 2. It’s the question at the heart of every high concept action movie sequel. Failing to adequately answer it is how McClane’s New York everyman cop ends up in Moscow, or why half of Bryan Mills’ family gets kidnapped in the Taken series. Following up John Wick poses a similar conundrum – how do you motivate a retired hitman whose bloody swath of revenge is initiated by the death of his wife and the murder of a cuddly puppy? Do you have his […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Feb 10, 2017
