Cinematographers
Interviews - Cinematographers
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From 2nd Unit to Second Shoot: DP Pierce Derks on In a Violent Nature
Abel Ferrara has said, “In movie making, money is no excuse. It doesn’t cost anything to set up a cool looking shot.” In a Violent Nature is the embodiment of that credo. A deconstruction of the slasher genre, the movie tells a familiar story from an unfamiliar point of view as the camera stays with its undead killer Johnny (adorned in a vintage fireman’s mask and armed with a pair of logging hooks) as he traipses through the forest from victim to victim. The film poses the question, as director Chris Nash puts it, “What if Gus Van Sant directed a […]
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“I’m Not Into Embracing the Digital Look”: DP Ben Fordesman on Love Lies Bleeding
After setting her directorial debut Saint Maud in a fading English seaside town, London-born filmmaker Rose Glass turns her gaze toward the American southwest for the neo-noir follow-up Love Lies Bleeding. Set in 1989 and shot in New Mexico by Maud cinematographer Ben Fordesman, the film follows the violent repercussions when a nomadic bodybuilder (Katy O’Brian) falls for a small-town gym manager (Kristen Stewart) with a family full of criminals (including gun-running dad Ed Harris). With the A24 movie out today on VOD, Blu-ray and UHD following its theatrical run, Fordesman spoke to Filmmaker about emulating film on digital, pick-ups […]
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“Obviously, We Couldn’t Get Three Sandworms for That Day”: DP Greig Fraser on Dune: Part Two
Dune: Part Two picks up directly following the events of its predecessor, with young Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) taken in by the Fremen after being marooned in the desert of Arrakis. However, cinematographer Greig Fraser was not content to merely continue where he left off. After winning an Oscar for the first film, Fraser shuffled his tool bag by adding the Alexa 65, an assortment of colorful new glass and an infrared sequence set in a gladiator arena on Giedi Prime. It’s not surprising considering Fraser’s history of experimentation, which includes pioneering virtual production work on The Mandalorian and reintroducing […]
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“Dolly and Slider Inside, Steadicam Outside”: DP Mac Fisken on The Last Stop in Yuma County
In The Last Stop in Yuma County, an empty pump at an isolated desert gas station strands a collection of characters (including a pair of bank robbers and knife salesman Jim Cummings) at the adjoining roadside diner. Written around the standing sets available at Four Aces Movie Ranch in Palmdale, California, the feature debut from director Francis Galluppi was partially funded by the sale of producer James Claeys’ house. That provided enough budget for a 20-day shooting schedule, a cast of familiar genre faces (including Richard Brake, Gene Jones and Barbara Crampton), a few epic needle drops and one talented […]
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A Film To Read: Matiás Piñeiro, Tomas Paula Marques and Gabi Saidón on You Burn Me
New York-based Argentinian director Matiás Piñeiro’s work is without a doubt, a celebration of intertextuality. After continuously exploring the female roles in Shakespeare’s comedies from 2011’s Rosalinda up until 2020’s Isabella, he was drawn to a text which seemed impenetrable, admitting he had no clue how to film a poetic dialogue. In order to collect the shots for the adaptation-film-collage that would become You Burn Me, the filmmaker traveled between New York and San Sebastian (where he teaches at the EQZE film school, Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola), which gave him the possibility to “develop the material, watch it and think […]
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“Congratulations, That Shot was Terrible”: DP Matthew Temple on Late Night with the Devil
I typically have two problems with found footage horror movies. First, it’s often hard to believe the characters wouldn’t simply drop their cameras once the body count begins. Just as the haunted house movie must present a sufficiently logical reason for the inhabitants to remain once the voices start whispering “get out,” the found footage horror movie must posit an acceptable rationale for why the cameras keep rolling. Second, the subgenre’s veneer of reality often means some of filmmaking’s most effective tools—score, editing, composition—are sacrificed on the altar of verisimilitude. The premise of Late Night with the Devil alleviates both […]
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Shooting in ILM’s New StageCraft Volume Virtual Production Facility: DP Pierre Gill on Percy Jackson and the Olympians
In the first season of Disney+’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians, the titular teenaged demigod and his compatriots travel across the country, with stops from St. Louis to Las Vegas, on a mission to prevent war among the Greek gods. However, cinematographer Pierre Gill and his crew never left the vicinity of Vancouver. Percy Jackson is the first show to use Industrial Light & Magic’s new 20,000-square-foot StageCraft Volume in the Canadian city. Gill estimates 30 percent of his episodes were shot in the virtual production environment on its 95-foot LED wall. With the show now streaming in its entirety […]
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“A Frankenstein Set of Lenses”: DP Matthew Libatique on Maestro
25 years ago, Pi—a $70,000 indie about an obsessive mathematician shot on 16mm black and white reversal stock—put cinematographer Matthew Libatique on the map. In the intervening quarter century, Libatique has earned three Academy Award nominations and shot multiple films for Spike Lee, Jon Favreau, Joel Schumacher and Darren Aronofsky. He helped inaugurate the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Iron Man and dipped into the D.C. sandbox with Birds of Prey. He’s shot horror movies, westerns, sci-fi flicks, war dramas, biopics and whatever genre mother! falls into. But what Matthew Libatique hasn’t done since Pi is shoot a film in black […]
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Women in the Wilderness: How Nat Geo’s Queens Aims to Close the Gender Gap in Natural History Filmmaking
When National Geographic’s Janet Han Vissering and Wildstar Films’s Vanessa Berlowitz got the idea to make Queens, a six-part natural history series about female animals made by an all-woman production crew, they knew it would be a challenge. Only something like five percent of wildlife filmmakers are women, a number far short of the 20 to 30 percent average across the entertainment industry overall. They didn’t know how hard it would be, though. “On the camera side, before Queens there were probably about five women who’d had the opportunity to get to the ‘premium wildlife’ level of work,” Berlowitz explains. “There […]
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112 Days in Iceland: DP Florian Hoffmeister on True Detective: Night Country
The diversity of cinematographer Florian Hoffmeister’s output makes it difficult to typecast him. The German DP won an Emmy for his work on a BBC version of Great Expectations and followed with the Rowan Atkinson spy spoof Johnny English Strikes Again. Then, in succession, he lensed the Scott Cooper horror flick Antlers, the Apple prestige drama Pachinko and Todd Field’s Tár, picking up an Oscar nomination for the latter. But with True Detective: Night Country, Hoffmeister returns to a previous specialty–unsettling subzero horror. Hoffmeister’s work on AMC’s The Terror followed an ill-fated 19th century artic expedition. He’s back to frigid […]
