(hip instrumental beat)
- I'm Carolyn Giardin welcome to The Hollywood Reporter
Cinematographer Short Cuts.
I'm here with Natasha Braier,
Rodrigo Prieto, and Cesar Charlone.
Welcome.
Cesar, you've worked with Fernando before.
- [Cesar] Yes.
- And in this case, to tell the story on the sets
and the locations, you took inspiration
from Michelangelo and other artists.
Would you describe that process
and how you planned it with your director?
- Yes, we were researching in which way we would go.
The natural thing would be, okay we're shooting
in churches and temples, so and we say,
okay which way can we go that is more honest
to the subject that we're talking about
and thinking of how the actors would behave,
and so we said, we should try to integrate them
to the place they are because it's such a delicate subject
that is in between reality and fiction because we don't know
if that dialogue happened or didn't happen.
We wanted to be as naturalistic as possible.
(piano music)
- Do you know The Beatles?
- Yes, I know who they are.
- Of course you do.
- Eleanor Rigby.
- Who?
- Eleanor Rigby.
- No, I don't know her.
- You know, Yellow Submarine.
- Yellow Submarine?
That's silly.
That's very funny.
- We searched quite a lot into Michelangelo and Botticelli
and the way they didn't light, they just flattened.
Considering that I had the possibility in post-production
of coloring and painting with the colors.
- Right.
- I proposed to Fernando and I did some tests
that I showed him and we went in that direction,
and what I would call a flat light, front light,
kind of what we always would say is wrong, flat light,
never, side light or whatever, no, no, flat light,
and let the colors help us separate and talk.
- Interesting.
And Natasha, in your film Honey Boy,
you were working with the lead actor,
Shia LaBeouf, who also wrote the story
based on a very personal experience.
What was the dynamic like to work with him?
- Well, the most challenging thing was to
kind of create a space and hold a container for him
to be very safe as he was going through this
very challenging therapeutic process almost
because he is playing the role of his father
and he's portraying the situations in his childhood
that really traumatized him, so he's really going
to the deeper wounds and he's going there
in front of all of us, so as a cinematographer,
for the first time I also had to consider a lot,
the emotional part for the actors
because it was beyond a method actor going into motion.
This was like a deep, deep process for him.
Good take, good take.
You did it, you did it, good job everybody, let's go.
Come here.
That's it.
No, it's gonna take another 20 minutes
to get the boy out the costume.
We banked three hours of school today, Kev.
You said it was over 10 minutes ago, it's been 30 minutes.
Get the man another watch.
- Dad, I was.
- Come here.
- I was getting the scene.
- Yeah, I don't care.
I don't care, come here.
(door slams)
Come here.
Child labor laws!
- Most of the time, he would not rehearse.
He would not even tell us what he's going to do,
where he's going to be in the space,
because he would just figure it out in the moment.
So we had to be very clever in how to set up the space
and prepare for every possible configuration
without stopping, without invading him,
without him even noticing that we are here
so that he can go through his process.
- And you were saying, in some ways,
with using dimmers, you almost lit in real time, right?
- Yeah, it felt like a jamming session.
Because he would lead, we would not know,
we had ideas like yeah, obviously he's gonna be
in the corner and the kid is gonna be in the bed
but he would always come and do something different
so I distributed always like practical lights
that were LEDs inside, like we made them and replaced them
and I had dimmers, so I was in the monitor
with all my dimmers, literally like a DJ,
and depending on what we was doing, I would just dim
and say, okay now that's gonna be the backlight,
this one I need to dim it down, and just do it on the spot,
usually during the take, because many times
there was not even rehearsals, so it was full adrenaline,
like you had to make the decisions on the moment,
but it was really like dancing,
really like dancing around him and the good thing is,
Alma, the director, she's really interested in emotion.
She's not interested in conventional narration,
so it didn't matter if we jumped the line
or if there's not exact continuity
from one take to the other.
What mattered to her, which was great
because it's what matters to me,
was the emotion in every moment,
just being in the exact place
where you need to be to support that.
- Right.
- So we could also be quite brave and bold and try things
and then the next day, Shia's trying to do
something totally different,
then we are trying something totally different,
so it really felt like a jamming session around him.
- Okay.
And Rodrigo, in your film, about the first half of the film,
you had digitally created Robert De Niro
and some of the other key performers,
you needed a special rig for that.
Would you describe your filmmaking process?
- Yes, this is a movie really about time,
about passage of time and what actually,
at the end of the day, what matters or what doesn't.
The story spans decades and of course that meant
that the characters, the actors, had to start young
and all the way to they're near death, right?
So it's easier with makeup, make someone look older,
but it's really hard to make 'em look younger
so we had to use visual effects to,
with the help of CGI technology, make them look younger.
So for that, we did have to create a three camera rig
that basically, for each angle,
so the main camera was the central one
with what they would call witness cameras on the side of it
and the visual effects would use all that information
to create the CGI versions.
(phone rings)
- Let me put Magee on the phone.
- Hello?
Hiya my friend, how are you?
Listen, I got that kid I was talking to you about here.
I'm gonna put him on the phone,
let you talk to him, okay?
All right.
- Hello?
- Is that Frank?
- [Frank] Yes.
- Hiya Frank, this is Jimmy Hoffa.
- Yeah, yeah, glad to meet ya.
- Well, glad to meet you too, even if it's over the phone.
I heard you paint houses.
- Yes, yes sir, I do, I do and I also do my own carpentry.
- [Jimmy] Oh, I'm glad to hear that.
- I wanted to convey the passage of time visually
so that, since the story goes back and forth,
so that immediately the audience could feel
that this is a memory or this is the present
or more or less a feeling of where they are.
So in essence the movie goes from a very colorful look,
which is Kodachrome, through Ektachrome,
which is still colorful but a little different
in the way it reproduces color,
to a very desaturated feel towards the end.
So in a way that the characters, when they're remembering
what happened, it's like the memory of the photography,
like the memories we all have of our childhoods
and the present, the reckoning let's say,
at their moment they're getting near death,
all this romanticism of their memories is gone,
so now the color is gone, too.
So that was a very important part
of the design of the movie.
- And what was it like for actors
like Robert De Niro and Al Pacino to work in this way?
How did it effect them?
- We made it so that it was the least intrusive as possible.
Three cameras for each setup is a big rig
and for all the dialogue scenes,
we shot with two angles simultaneously,
so that meant six cameras.
Immediately they got used to it
and embraced it and we just worked through it.
- Natasha, there's still a limited number of women
who are serving as directors of photography.
How did you break into the business?
- I went to film school, and after film school
I just started to do a lot of short films for free
and music videos and slowly I built up relationships,
like a network of directors and people that I worked with,
until a few years later I had my first break
on a very, very tiny feature film
which went to festivals and then people saw it
and that got me other films
and I was quite lucky to get started like that.
- Overall, how would all of you describe the state
of diversity and inclusion in your field?
- Well I think that it's something that's evolving
in just the world.
I do see in crews more and more diversity.
Sometimes you do have to push it
and I have participated in projects where
it's not exactly a requirement but it's hoped and expected
that you include greater diversity in your crew,
which sometimes is tricky, because indeed it's still,
it's not quite there, the depth of possibilities
in terms of crew of different genders
and race and nationalities and all that,
but that's, sometimes need to,
you were talking about seeding these things
and sometimes you do have to, you have to push it
a little bit extra so that then later it'll be simpler
because there will be automatically more diversity
because there will be more people
of every shape and form working, but right now,
it's not quite there so we do need to push it a little bit.
- Are you seeing more diverse and varied stories available
to you and certainly with streaming services available?
- I think so.
I guess we all read a lot of scripts and then,
deciding what movie you do or what project
but it's what's closest to your heart
but I do see that with the mediums that are now available
in terms of distribution and streaming and cinema of course,
there is a bigger market for specific stories.
People and what they go through and just diverse stories,
so I do see that there is that and it's an exciting time
'cause there is so many different possibilities
in terms of storytelling.
- And maybe stories that might not have been made.
- Exactly.
- A few years ago I'm sure.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, I feel we are ageist.
I'm dealing with a subject at the moment
and we're considering that in the gender thing,
we are like we were with slavery like 200 years ago,
when you would think that it was natural
and you would accept certain things.
I think today we're starting to realize
that we accept certain things that, no,
that shouldn't be like that.
So I think we are pretty far away still.
We have to advance a lot and listen a lot.
- I like what you say about listening
'cause I think that's the key.
Also we can assume what certain group of people will want,
but it's not necessarily the case.
And as you say, as machos sometimes we're like,
okay, so now how do I behave?
- Yeah.
- And it's just a matter of really listening
and paying attention to how other people feel
and that's part of storytelling, too.
It's really trying to get into the hearts
and emotions of characters,
which are based on real human emotions.
- As filmmakers, we have 10 times more responsibility
for the kind of stories we choose.
We can only do one or two movies a year
and I personally feel now that everything I do
has to be really part of this revolution
of deprogramming our old ways of thinking and doing
so that we can create a better society
and part of that problem, it was done by us, by Hollywood,
by the film industry, not even only Hollywood.
So I think now we have awareness of all of that
and that makes us really accountable
because we have the cameras, we have the power.
What's the next story we're going to tell?
And if we don't take a story
that is pushing people's programming
and reprogramming that and make us go further
as human beings, we're staying on the same place
and right now I feel like staying on the same place
is almost as bad as going backwards, like the times
are urgent and we have that big responsibility.
- Last question, would each of you share a lesson
that you learned earlier in your careers?
- You only know what's good two days after you've shot it.
So I joke when I give lectures,
I joke that my thing is not quality, it's quantity,
opposite to what you normally say,
I go for quality not for quantity.
But in my case, I prefer quantity on set
to have quality in the editing room,
because you never know, you don't know.
When you're shooting, you're so involved with so many things
that you only are gonna know if what you shot
was good, as I joke, afterwards, when you've had a shower,
you're sitting in a comfortable chair with air conditioning,
and looking at the screen and saying ah, that's the one.
- Interesting.
Natasha, what about you?
- I think probably the main one is to listen to my gut
and not so much to this.
I think from very early on, I tried to have
those kind of decisions and resonate
with something from my heart.
I love this story, I feel I need to tell it,
and then really listen to here,
but sometimes you hae a bit of conflicts
because something here is saying something opposite.
You should do that, you should be safer,
you should put this fill light or whatever,
and I think early on I've learned that the only thing
that was right was the stomach and the instinct
and I just respect that and don't mess around too much
with the logics of things.
- Okay.
Rodrigo?
- I guess, so many things, but one would be,
I used to, when I was finishing film school
and starting to shoot whatever it may be, movies,
and I would read a script and I would immediately think
of how I was gonna shoot it.
As I was reading the script and taking down notes,
ah okay, this could be this type of light
or this type of texture and really obsessing,
and little by little I realized that all that will come.
So I've let it go.
And I really try to read scripts
from a purely emotional level.
Not even, like resist the temptation
of imagining it visually.
So just feel it, just feel it
as if I'm reading a novel or whatever.
Of course, you see things, your mind's eye,
it's impossible to avoid it, but I see things,
not from a photography perspective, or I try not to.
Later I will, after I've discussed ideas with the director,
after scouting, after all these things.
So for me that was a revelation
and I think it's helped me enormously.
Also, communicating with a director
because then you're able to really listen,
as opposed to come in and, this is what I wanna do with it.
No, you then say, okay, what do you think?
What are you imagining?
And you listen, you listen, you then, based on that,
just start, now we bring into focus,
this is where we're going.
- Well thank you so much for joining us.
Really glad you could be here today.