Cinematographers
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“Day Car Work on Stage is Really Tough”: DP Larkin Seiple on Wolfs
On the set of Wolfs
It seems strange to call a $100-plus million dollar Brad Pitt and George Clooney movie a return to a director’s roots, but in a way that’s exactly what Wolfs is for Jon Watts. Like his breakthrough feature Cop Car—a spartan… Read more
“The Budgetary Challenges of Getting a Dead Squirrel Puppet”: DP Sam Davis on Dìdi
Izaac Wang in Dìdi
In the opening scene of Dìdi, the titular 13-year-old and his friends film themselves blowing up a mailbox and making a run for it while laughing hysterically. It perfectly encapsulates director Sean Wang’s view of adolescence as “the worst version… Read more
“Fear Lives Behind Your Back”: DP Andrés Arochi on Longlegs
Andrés Arochi and Osgood Perkins on the set of Longlegs
Andrés Arochi’s cinematic indoctrination began at a Blockbuster Video in Mexico City when he was 12-years old. Stuck at home for the summer after being grounded for his grades, Arochi spent those months binging the offerings in his local Blockbuster’s… Read more
“I Had to Light Seven Rooms in Two Hours”: Giovanni Ribisi on Moving from Acting to Cinematography with Strange Darling
Strange Darling
Battered and bloody, a blond woman — “Lady,” played by Willa Fitzgerald — in prison garb races across a field. A rifle-toting “Demon” (Kyle Gallner) chases her into an Oregon forest. From there, the balance of power shifts several times… Read more
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Color in Black and White: DP Robert Elswit on Ripley
“It’s the light! Always the light!” exclaims a priest to the murderous Tom Ripley (Andrew Scott) as they bask in the glory of a Caravaggio painting in Netflix’s new adaption of the Patricia Highsmith novel The Talented Mr. Ripley. There are a multitude of exquisite facets to cinematographer Robert Elswit’s work on the series, including the formal compositions that embrace the Italian setting’s architecture. But, more than anything else, it’s the light as Elswit harkens back to classic noirs, 1960s Italian cinema and the canvasses of the great masters of chiaroscuro. Elswit earned an Oscar nomination for his black and […]
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“You Don’t Have a Lot of Control Over a Head Exploding”: MaXXXine Cinematographer Eliot Rockett
After the 1970s grit of X and the Technicolor sheen of Pearl, Ti West and cinematographer Eliot Rockett turn to the 1980s with MaXXXine. Shot with the same combo of Sony Venice and Vantage MiniHawks, the L.A.-set story finds adult actress Maxine Minx’s big break into mainstream films curtailed by a series of giallo-esque murders. With the movie freshly out on VOD, Rockett spoke to Filmmaker about the concluding chapter in the trilogy. Filmmaker: Ti talked in an interview about how MaXXXine is his first film shot in L.A. despite living there for 20 years. X and Pearl were both […]
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“Playing in the Best Sandbox Ever”: DP Chris Teague on The Acolyte
Set a century before The Phantom Menace, The Acolyte follows a Jedi master (Squid Games star Lee Jung-jae) and his former apprentice (Amandla Stenberg) as they hunt for a killer who’s dispatching Jedi. The new series holds a distinction that no other live action Star Wars saga can claim—not the half dozen Disney Plus shows or the eleven feature films, not the Star Wars Holiday Special, not even that Ewok movie with Wilfred Brimley. The Acolyte is the first live action story set in the heretofore unseen High Republic era that served as the zenith of Jedi influence and power. […]
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“Shooting on Film Remains Somewhat of a Black Art”: DP Adam Stone on The Bikeriders
After eight years—much of them spent developing projects that never came to fruition—Mud and Midnight Special filmmaker Jeff Nichols is thankfully back with a new movie. That means cinematographer Adam Stone is back with a new movie too. After meeting Nichols at the University of North Carolina School for the Arts, Stone has been behind the camera on all six of the director’s features. Every one of them has been shot on 35mm, including the pair’s latest collaboration, The Bikeriders. Lensed in and around Cincinnati, the movie takes its inspiration from the photographs and stories in Danny Lyon’s titular 1968 […]
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Holding the Chicken: DP Rob Hardy on Civil War
In Civil War, the United States has splintered into four clashing factions, but if you’re expecting a treatise on the country’s ideological divide from British writer-director Alex Garland, this is not that movie. America’s dysfunction is secondary to examining the toll on the journalists covering the conflict. The story follows a quartet of correspondents (including jaded photographer Kirsten Dunst and green Cailee Spaeny) as they travel to the war’s front in Washington D.C. in hopes of landing an interview with the embattled president (Nick Offerman). Cinematographer Rob Hardy, who’s lensed all of Garland’s projects since the novelist/screenwriter turned to the […]
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“Anamorphic Just Looks More Like a Movie”: DP Nick Remy Matthews on I.S.S.
When war breaks out on Earth, the kinship between Russian and American scientists aboard the International Space Station (including Ariana DeBose and Chris Messina) is shattered when both sides receive orders to take over the station by any means necessary. What follows is a taut chamber piece of ratcheting paranoia and betrayals, shot in 32 days in Wilmington, North Carolina partially on an I.S.S. replica originally created by NASA. After a theatrical release earlier this year, the movie is now available on VOD and Paramount+. Cinematographer Nick Remy Matthew talked to Filmmaker about counterintuitively shooting anamorphic in tight quarters, spending […]
