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Roger and James,
Question: In your experience, how much of the “Hollywood look” of many of your movies is lighting vs. camera vs. post-production, vs. just your own skill/experience?
Take, for example Sicario or No Country for Old Men. Do you think you could get the exact same look for all the daytime interior shots if limited to only using some Aputure LED lights, a DSLR camera, and basic color grading? If not, how close do you think you could get?
Reason for asking: I’m earlier in my cinematography journey and want to have the right mindset when comparing my attempts to implement techniques of yours that inspire me. I don’t want to ever make excuses (if only I had an Arri or the right lights), but on the other hand, I don’t want to call good, honest attempts a failure because I can’t get the same quality out of my LED light that one does out of, say, and HMI or Tungsten lamp. I see youtube videos of “Roger Deakin’s favorite setup” all the time where they proceed to make something that looks not even close to the reference shot.
Would love your thoughts. Thanks and Merry Christmas and Happy New Years to you both!
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Hi! In my experience…
The look is a combination of ALL factors. The specific lights, grip fabrics, sunlight (if present), lenses, camera sensor / film stock, what the script says, what the director wants, the DP’s subjective preferences, color grading, post production, how much time there is on the day to work, (and on the delivery end…) projection, the screen you watch on, the light in the room while you watch etc. Many factors.
Re: The Sicario question, can you get the exact same look with a DSLR and aputures? In my opinion no. Can you get something pretty good with those tools? Yes. Maybe you can get a similar look to a Day INT from Sicario. There are trade offs with every piece of gear you choose.
“How close do you think you could get” is subjective so I can’t really answer that.
If you are early on your journey, know that you can definitely make powerful images with very basic tools. Most professionals will tell you it’s less about WHAT equipment they’re using and more about HOW they’re using it. There are obviously exceptions to that rule, but for the most part if you’re trying to shoot indie narrative projects, you can get creative with what you have and make great stuff.
If you get the chance to be on bigger film sets and watch how they use bigger more expensive gear, you might find that they’re using everything the same way just at a larger scale.
Hope that helps
Drew
Local 728 GafferI see youtube videos of “Roger Deakin’s favorite setup” all the time where they proceed to make something that looks not even close to the reference shot.
Don’t worry about the quality of LEDs these days…it is better than HMI and on par with tungsten. YouTubers failing to recreate scenes is not about the quality of the light but the relationship in size, distance, power, placement, diffusion ect of the lights to the subject/scene. There’s also a huge skill (and probably experience) gap.
The same goes for cameras. The gap between latest generation semi-pro hybrids and traditional digital cinema cameras is already too small to matter much. What does matter is the transformation from sensor data into a display space. You can take the same data from a cinema camera and make the image feel and look terrible or gorgeous. We cinematographers don’t like to admit it but it does make a decisive difference. Roger has one of the best transformations ever made with his custom Alexa LUT, which basically is an extremely sophisticated film emulation. The trick is to have it in place before shooting (loaded into the camera). A solid transformation will not demand a lot of grading in post as the look is already established and all decisions during shooting have been made under it. That is different than shooting with a standard transformation (e.g. standard Rec.709 LUT from manufacturer) and then changing the look afterwards.
One more thing as to why YouTubers fail to replicate scenes: In my opinion Roger’s biggest strength is not even lighting but to put the audience exactly where they need to be. I think it is impossible to replicate his intuition for that. I also think it is more significant than his lighting, even if that sounds crazy. I’m sure if he would shoot a film only with available light, it would still have that capturing quality. Putting the audience exactly where they need to be to witness a story unfold is his superpower in my opinion.
I think that Roger’s style is an example of “Total bigger than the sum of the parts”. With the same equipments and lights and the same naturalistic approach i think one can obtain the same visual effect, but it will be still miss something i think. As Stip suggested, It has a lot to do with camera movements and placement, but in general i think the story plays a big role in It. Think to Jesse James death’s scene. Perhaps It’s not technically impossible to recreate something similar. But when you see It in the movie, with the story that far, the music, the actors talent (they tell an entire story with just theit eyes in that scene) , their movements together with the camera ones, the angles that Roger used, etc etc. One can create the same scene from a technical point of view, but you need a great story and great actors to create the same emotion and you need a cinematographer like Roger to know exactly how to transform this emotion in a movie frame.
And by the way, we know Roger’s admiration for Tarkovskij’s movies and for the emotions they convey in an almost abstract way: i think this explains a lot. I think that emotions and instinct are important aspects of Roger’s approach, maybe even more important than the lens or the camera or the Digital vs film debate or whatever (at least It’s the impression i have, only Roger can actually explain his approach and i think the new book It’s the best way to Discover that) .
Having all the best, or the same identical equipment wont get you similar results. It’s the intention, prep and experience that get those visuals and emotions to come through. With a team effort. If you gave me the same exact car an F1 driver uses, I wouldn’t even know how to use it let alone race it well. And the same, if you gave me the same equipment package (and crew) Roger had in a given scene, I would not get the same result. Even the most experienced DPs would not get the same result. Everyone’s perspective will just be different. Then this goes back to experience and vision on the flip side of things. Roger has shown examples of only using bounce and negative to make a shot work, and it looked great. It’s not the gear stopping us from getting a good and/or stylized look. Though I too would love access to some 20ks and a big crew for a shoot haha! I wrote this because it was a good reminder to myself as well
I’d like to think that what you’re seeing is an effect of the specific choices being made. I don’t think that it’s as easy as, “give Jimi Hendrix a different guitar and amplifier and he’ll sound the same”–Like yea, it’ll still sound like Jimi Hendrix, but it’s not exactly what you heard on that record.
You know that photographers style because of the format, the lenses, the film stock, the subject matter.
And it’s all the incremental decisions that add up by all the different departments that make for good cinematography as well.
Lastly I might say that cinematography can be heavily influenced by the Director they’re working with. Take Darius Khondji for example. He shot Eddington and Marty Supreme, but you would’ve never guessed it was the same cinematographer. So a cinematographers approach might/will change with different Directors.
Gear does matter to a certain degree. If you need to re-create a hard sun for a building that never faces the sun, it’s going to be VERY difficult to do it with an Aputure 600X or something unless you’re only shooting close-ups or are in a very small room with small windows.
Work within your limits and use that as a personal challenge. It will scale.
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