Shutter Angles

Conversations with DPs, directors and below-the-line crew by Matt Mulcahey

  • A clown in a Santa suit wields a chainsaw. Christmas with Art the Clown: DP George Steuber on Terrifier 3

    Movies are a uniquely collaborative art form. A painting, a novel or a song can be created in solitude, but you can’t make a commercial narrative film by yourself. That said, the original Terrifier came about as close as you can get: Writer-director Damien Leone is also credited for producing, editing, special make-up effects, visual effects, sound design and props. In addition to putting up money, producer Phil Falcone served as UPM, AD and stunt driver and also assisted with the effects. As for cinematographer George Steuber, he was the entirety of the camera department. He operated, pulled his own…  Read more

    On Dec 19, 2024
    By on Dec 19, 2024 Cinematographers
  • A man sits at a tilted office desk partially buried in sand. “We Needed Crazier Ideas”: DP Mihai Malaimare Jr. on Megalopolis

    During his storied career, Francis Ford Coppola forged relationships with some of film’s most renowned cinematographers: Gordon Willis, Vittorio Storaro, Bill Butler, John Toll and Jordan Cronenweth all shot multiple projects for him. But with Megalopolis, Mihai Malaimare Jr. becomes Coppola’s most frequent collaborator behind the camera. They first met when Coppola came to Malaimare’s native Romania to shoot 2007’s Youth Without Youth, the beginning of a low-budget experimental phase for Coppola that included the Malaimare-shot Tetro and Twixt. Even then, Coppola was already dreaming of his quixotic passion project Megalopolis, showing Malaimare concept art and B-roll of New York…  Read more

    On Dec 11, 2024
    By on Dec 11, 2024 Cinematographers
  • “Day Car Work on Stage is Really Tough”: DP Larkin Seiple on 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 and sinewy 2015 neo-noir made for $800,000 that impressed Marvel enough to land Watts a trio of entertaining Spider-Man movies—Wolfs is a lean, propulsive story that unfolds in a single day with no use for superfluous exposition. Clooney and Pitt star as lone wolf fixers who reluctantly team up when a tough-on-crime district attorney (Amy Ryan) ends up with a…  Read more

    On Oct 4, 2024
    By on Oct 4, 2024 Cinematographers
  • A teen boy holds up a small video camera at a skate park. “The Budgetary Challenges of Getting a Dead Squirrel Puppet”: DP Sam Davis on 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 of yourself, having the best time of your life.” Set in 2008 in Wang’s hometown of Fremont, California, the coming-of-age story follows a Taiwanese American teen during his final summer before high school. Though not strictly autobiographical, the film was inspired by Wang’s own adolescence and the making of it was awash in familiarity. The main character’s bedroom scenes were…  Read more

    On Sep 16, 2024
    By on Sep 16, 2024 Cinematographers
  • A man with headphones around his neck explains a shot to a camera on a film set. “It Sounded Like a Good Title”: Jeremy Saulnier on Rebel Ridge

    In Jeremy Saulnier’s breakthrough films Blue Ruin and Green Room, the writer-director thrust protagonists into violent cacophonies they weren’t equipped to navigate. With his new Netflix actioner Rebel Ridge, Saulnier centers his story on a hero much more adept at meeting force with force. The film stars Aaron Pierre as a Marine hand-to-hand combat expert who comes to a small southern town to bail out his cousin. Before he can do so, his bail money is confiscated by the corrupt, militarized local police force (led by chief Don Johnson) via a bogus civil asset forfeiture claim. Confrontations—both verbal and physical—ensue.…  Read more

    On Sep 11, 2024
    By on Sep 11, 2024 Columns
  • A cinematographer and film director stand around a film camera on a set. “Fear Lives Behind Your Back”: DP Andrés Arochi on 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 small section of American arthouse cinema. The next summer he worked for his uncle to save money for his first stills camera. By the time he was 17, Arochi was shooting music videos and beginning to direct experimental films. Now, he’s behind the lens on his first narrative feature Longlegs, the well-received box office hit about an FBI Agent (Maika…  Read more

    On Aug 23, 2024
    By on Aug 23, 2024 Cinematographers
  • A man stands in the center of two staircases leading left and right outside an old building. 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…  Read more

    On Aug 16, 2024
    By on Aug 16, 2024 Cinematographers
  • An Asian man in Jedi costume poses in front of a camera on a forest set. “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.…  Read more

    On Jul 31, 2024
    By on Jul 31, 2024 Cinematographers
  • Two white men, one behind a 35mm film camera, on a film set, captured in black and white. “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…  Read more

    On Jul 11, 2024
    By on Jul 11, 2024 Cinematographers
  • Two women walk past a helicopter that's crashed din a parking lot. 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…  Read more

    On Jun 21, 2024
    By on Jun 21, 2024 Cinematographers
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