What's up with the lens flares?
[LAUGHTER]
JJ Abrams is one of the most recognizable directors
on the planet.
With a long and storied career, both in film and television,
the man who resurrected Star Trek and Star Wars
has generated a legacy for himself
that is seldomly rivaled.
His bold visual style and action-oriented impulses
have seen him hailed as a visionary.
And yet, there was a brief period from 2009 to 2013
where he was obsessed with lens flares.
What was that about?
Oh, look, it's the lens flare.
It's my favorite thing.
[LAUGHTER]
Before we get too deep into today's episode,
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Prior to being one of the most famous filmmakers
on the planet, JJ Abrams was mostly known for his TV work.
Despite having written films early in his career,
like Regarding Henry, Forever Young, and Armageddon,
it was shows like Felicity, Alias, and Lost
that put Abrams on the map as a named creator.
Despite having directed multiple episodes of all three series,
a career directing feature films eluded Abrams.
That is until, as legend has it, Tom Cruise was watching
an episode of Alias late one night and had the idea
to enlist Abrams to direct the long-gestating
Mission:Impossible III.
I got exactly what you asked for.
Did you want something else?
That film was a massive success, which opened the door to Abrams
being courted by Paramount to resurrect
their other long-gestating flagship franchise, Star Trek.
Initially, Abrams was reticent about taking
on the project due to his lack of fandom for the material.
However, during development conversations
with writers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci and producer Bryan
Burk, the concept of how do you bring a little Star
Wars into the Star Trek world was brought up.
This was a concept and an aesthetic
that Abrams could wrap his head around and, frankly, excel at.
You needed each other.
I could not deprive you of the revelation of all
that you could accomplish together.
There are some elements of Abrams' Star Trek
which are decidedly cribbed directly from Star Wars.
Examples include the Kirk-Luke parallels, the rapidly paced
space battles, and the timeless themes of parental figures
pushing a wayward youth onto a path of greatness.
Despite there being an urban legend
that all the odd-numbered Star Trek films are bad,
Abrams' 11th, Voyage into the Stars,
was approachable and applicable to your average moviegoer
and longtime fans.
It was a massive success.
This is also the point at which Abrams came into his own
as a visual artist.
The main stylistic element that truly set the initial Star Trek
film apart and functioned as such a calling card for Abrams
as a director was its use of lens flares.
For those not familiar, a lens flare
is a now-common piece of filmic language
that happens when light is absorbed directly by a camera
lens and refracted by the lens elements,
causing shapes and bursts of color
to be seen in the final image.
It literally is just this aesthetic thing that I like,
which I absolutely am guilty of overusing
and realize that it can be insanely distracting.
In generations past, lens flares were looked down
upon in the filmmaking industry.
They were formerly perceived as imperfections and evidence
that the director didn't have enough time or money
to film a sequence correctly.
However, they were slowly embraced
as a stylistic flourish, and eventually became
an exciting way to visually spice up and otherwise bland
shot.
The gritty, grounded aesthetic that many films in the 1970s
used, like Easy Rider, was a major turning point
in the mainstreaming of lens flares.
It wasn't until Abrams took them on as a key piece
of visual language for both of his Star Trek films
that they fully entered the lexicon of something that was
worthy of paying attention to.
The reason why Abrams and company utilize them so heavily
in Star Trek 2009 and its followup Star Trek Into
Darkness is because they were used
to symbolize the optimistic future conceptualized by Star
Trek creator Gene Roddenberry.
There was this idea we had that the future was
so bright that it just couldn't be contained.
The camera literally couldn't contain the potential
of this new world.
In fact, not only did the production digitally
insert lens flares into shots, but they also
had multiple production staff members whose literal only job
was to stand off camera and shine flashlights
into the lenses in order to guarantee
they would get the bursts and refractions
they were looking for.
Even the film Abrams made in between the two Trek movies,
Super 8, a love letter to Steven Spielberg films,
featured many lens flares, some of which
had to be digitally inserted into sequences
because the scenes were shot at night,
and it wasn't possible to achieve in-camera flares.
In many ways, Spielberg's use of flares
in Close Encounters of the Third Kind
could be pointed to as the Rosetta Stone
for Abrams' obsession with them.
Nice flare.
See?
Isn't that better?
That's better than that.
While Abrams' other story and visual trademarks
are on display in all of these three movies,
it's the lens flare that sets them apart
from the rest of his work.
Abrams virtually owned the idea of incorporating them
into a scene for a solid half decade.
It's easy to understand how a director can
get fixated on a visual idea.
You're literally being hired to bring a story to life.
You've been paid to solve visual problems for the production,
to put your visual fingerprints all over them.
However, familiarity breeds contempt.
Making any piece of art, especially a film,
is a magic trick.
And the more people see how the trick works, the less wowed
they are by it.
The obvious sort of joke is that I overuse lens flares.
And that's sort of what I'm known for.
What's impressive about this story
isn't the fact that Abrams found something that worked.
It's that he stepped away from it.
Star Trek '09 had lens flares in practically every scene,
if not every shot.
One count estimated 721 flares.
While its sequel upped that number to 826 flares.
And The Force Awakens has seven in the whole film.
So why did he stop using them?
What pushed him away from a stylistic trope
that brought him fame, fortune, and cultural respect?
Simple, because his wife shook some sense into him.
No, that's not a joke.
You said that your wife told you to stop with the lens flares.
She was right.
There was one scene in Star Trek Into Darkness
that you literally couldn't see what was going on.
It was a very important emotional scene.
Alice Eve was somewhere behind this crazy lens flare glaring.
And Abrams's wife just looked at and said--
OK, I think this is it.
At this point, you have to absolutely stop doing that.
While rapid storytelling, witty dialogue, and an emphasis
on movement have always been a trademark
of Abrams' theatrical style, the fact
that lens flares took over his filmmaking vocabulary
and cemented itself into the popular consciousness,
enough that Stephen Colbert asked about it on air,
is a testament to how iconic a storyteller Abrams truly is.
Very few people working in the film industry
are associated with a mechanical part of the filmmaking process.
The list is basically John Woo with slow mo,
the Wachowskis guys with bullet time,
and Christopher Nolan with the--
[DEEP MUSICAL BOOM]
--sound.
Even fewer filmmakers are asked about it
publicly when they stop embracing that storytelling
trope.
Today, we're living in a post-lens flare world,
or at least JJ's post-lens flare era.
What does the future hold for cinema's golden boy?
Now that Abrams is out from under the stylistic template
of Star Trek and Star Wars, he has a genuine opportunity
to redefine his visual voice.
Fingers crossed that Abrams' knack for reinvention
doesn't stop at beloved franchises
and can extend to himself.
Well, that's all we have for this episode.
What do you think?
Is there another filmmaker who's as
associated with a specific piece of film language the way
that JJ Abrams is with the lens flare?
Comment down below.
And as always, please like and subscribe to Nerdstalgic
for more videos just like this one.