In this series I take a look at the careers of different directors by comparing three
of their films shot at increasing budget levels.
Quentin Tarrantino is a globally recognised director known for his uniquely stylised directorial
traits, which are easily identifiable throughout his filmography.
These traits include: snappy, crafted dialogue, paying homage to pop culture and film history,
provocative violence and non-linear storylines shot with an inventive, yet carefully formalised
camera on 35mm film using anamorphic glass from Panavision.
In this video break down the funding process and his approach to shooting Reservoir Dogs,
Pulp Fiction and Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, to identify the similarities and differences
between the three films.
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While working at Video Archives, which rented VHS movies, Tarantino also wrote screenplays
and deepened his cinematic knowledge by watching films...lots of films.
During this time he made his first independent feature, My Best Friend’s Birthday, in 16mm
black and white.
However a fire at the film lab would destroy most of the film which he’d spent 4 years
making, leaving only 36 minutes of unreleased footage remaining.
This film would go on to form the basis of the screenplay for True Romance.
With the $50,000 he got from selling his True Romance script, he planned to direct another
of his scripts, Reservoir Dogs, in 16mm with producer Lawrence Bender.
Bender got the script into the hands of actor Harvey Keitel, who, after reading the script,
came on board to star and produce.
The script then got accepted into the Sundance Institute programme which helped the film’s
development.
This, combined with Keitel’s involvement, enabled them to raise a production budget
of $1.5 million and attract a solid cast.
Tarantino played to his strengths by crafting the script around a low budget.
It features minimal locations, with most of the film set inside a warehouse, no large
budget set pieces and a contained story - designed to be shot with minimal resources almost like
a theatre performance.
The film, which revolves around a bank heist, cleverly uses a non linear script to avoid
showing the actual heist, which would be an expensive scene to shoot.
What the film did allocate its $1.5 million budget to was: its solid cast, a couple of
real locations, a standard crew of film technicians, film gear and 35mm stock.
Reservoir Dogs was shot by Polish cinematographer Andrzej Sekuła - his first feature.
He used Panavision and Arriflex cameras with the fine grain Eastman 50D film stock.
He shot on spherical Panavision Primo lenses, although the film was distributed with a wider
2.39:1 aspect ratio.
Shooting Super 35 saved the production money on film stock, which is eaten up more quickly
when shooting in the anamorphic format.
Sekuła’s lighting style is quite brash and stylised, not at all naturalistic.
Most of the scenes use strong direct light, probably from HMIs with minimal diffusion.
This creates highlights in the skin and strong shadows.
His sources sometimes even come from multiple directions, which can be identified by looking
at the shadows.
While some, who are acclimated to the soft, naturalistic lighting of today, may be put
off by this, others may feel that the brash, gritty lighting helps enforce the hardened,
rough tone of the story.
The camera covers the story in a similar style to the rest of Tarantino’s filmography.
He opts for a mix of traditional coverage of scenes in stable wides, mediums and close
ups with other more stylised custom shots.
Such as the opening diner scene which appears to be shot on a circular dolly or a scene
with Keitel which he lets play out in a long, extended take.
Coming off the success of Reservoir Dogs at Sundance, Tarantino met Danny Devito who took
an immediate liking to him and agreed to come on board as a producer on his next film.
He used the money he received from directing Reservoir Dogs to take a trip to Amsterdam
where he rented a room and wrote for 3 months.
Director and friend Roger Avary joined him there where he contributed the storyline about
the boxer.
In what became a bit of a contentious issue, Avary was reportedly paid $25,000 to accept
a ‘story by’ credit, so that Tarantino could maintain the prestigious ‘written
and directed by’ credit.
The concept for the script was based on mixing trite story conventions with a more realistic
contemporary world.
“[The idea] was basically to take like the oldest chestnuts that you've ever seen when
it comes to crime stories the oldest story about the guy's gotta go out with the big
man's wife and don't touch her.
You know, you've seen the story a zillion times.”
"Part of the trick is to take these movie characters, these genre characters and these
genre situations and actually apply them to some of real life's rules and see how they
unravel."
DeVito passed the script on to Miramax who came on board to finance with a budget of
$8.5 million under the terms that Tarantino could maintain final cut and the final decision
on casting.
Tarantino made the unlikely decision to cast John Travolta, whose career at the time had
gone through a bit of a dip.
After a lot of in-fighting at Miramax, who pushed for Daniel Day-Lewis, Sean Penn or
William Hurt to take the role instead, they agreed to Taranino’s casting demands.
Bruce Willis, a big star at the time, was so keen to work on the project that he agreed
to taking a supporting role and a drastically reduced salary - far from the reported $5
million he’d just made on Die Hard.
Sekuła maintained his role behind the camera and, with the increased budget, was able to
shoot in the anamorphic format this time.
Once again he shot on Arriflex and Panavision cameras with Eastman 50D stock.
They used the Panavision C and E-series anamorphic lenses, which Tarantino would often use throughout
his later career.
His lighting was similar to that in Reservoir Dogs, sculpting strong pools of hard light
from big HMIs which he pushed through windows or hit characters with directly, seemingly
without much diffusion.
This created a high contrast look with lots of hard shadows falling across the face or
against surfaces.
For day exteriors he didn’t seem to do much and was happy letting hard shadows cast by
the midday sun fall across faces.
A lot of Pulp Fiction again used classic angles and shot sizes, photographed by an operated
camera on a geared head off a dolly.
Although once again this coverage was mixed with inventive custom shots, such as extreme
close ups which draw attention to details, using a Steadicam for walk and talk sequences
and throwing in specific low angle and high angle shots.
They mainly used real locations, although the famous dance set piece at Jack Rabbit
Slims was a set constructed on a sound stage.
It was an expensive set build, which a large portion of the art budget went to.
So, Pulp Fiction’s increased budget was used to fund larger production design builds,
pay for a more well known cast and the anamorphic format over the longer production timeline
of the extended script.
Tarantino’s goal was to create a $25 million looking film on only an $8.5 million budget.
He did this by keeping the story at a manageable level by writing realistic, yet fantastic,
set pieces which took place largely through dialogue or performance as opposed to using
large stunts or locations.
Pulp Fiction won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, made over $200 million at the box office and
exploded Tarantino’s career.
He went on to make many higher budget films until settling down to write Once Upon A Time
In Hollywood.
Using the leverage he’d gained in his career, from a stream of financially successful films,
he managed to secure an incredible $95 million financing deal from Sony.
He would, as usual maintain full creative control, have final cut and receive an incredible
25% first dollar gross.
This is a rare agreement nowadays, where the filmmaker receives a percentage of the gross
box office revenue from day one, without having to first wait for the film studio to turn
a profit.
So what demanded this increased budget?
A large part of it was due to the increased scope of the story.
Robert Richardson, Tarantino’s regular DOP who was hired to photograph the film, described
the scope of the shoot:
“The vastness of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood was epic in its demands.”
“The many sequences required ranged from replicating fake westerns in black and white
to fake westerns in colour, as well as dance sequences from television and dark night shoots.”
“In this respect, it was one of the most complex films I have shot and it constantly
pushed me.”
The main storyline of the film was captured in Tarantino’s favoured 35mm anamorphic
format shot on Kodak Vision 3 stocks with Panavision anamorphic glass.
They used C, E and the modern T-series glass, which has a heavy contrast, sharper resolution
and increased close focusing ability.
The television series was shot with 5222 black and white stock in 1.33:1 with spherical zooms.
Selected home movie sequences were also shot on 8 and 16mm Kodak Ektachrome.
Richardson used the budget to craft the light in a very controlled way using large rigging
setups and lamps.
One example is the interior of the saloon set.
To control the level of ambient light seen when facing the windows and prevent the highlights
from blowing out, his team erected an enormous charcoal grid cloth over the street.
This prevented excess sunlight from hitting the background or buildings.
The scene was keyed by 3 18K HMIs on a truss held up by a condor crane, so that each source
hit a specific window.
Inside, the actors were filled in by booklighting a Maxi Brutes with muslin.
The largest lighting setup was a night exterior of a car on a stretch of highway.
For this extremely expensive shot they closed down a piece of highway from dusk till dawn
and erected 9 80’ condors.
Each condor had 2 Arri T12s, which created pools of hard light and softboxes containing
24 1Ks to fill in the areas between the pools with a diffused fill.
On top of these enormous lighting setups, the additional budget also paid for an all
star cast of some of the most expensive and in demand actors, a variety of real locations,
large art department builds, a big Los Angeles technical crew to setup the complex rigging
and lighting, and expensive grip equipment from crane shots to shooting car to car action.
Quentin Tarantino is a director who has stuck to strong stylistic trademarks throughout
his filmography.
From Reservoir Dogs to Once Upon A Time, his movies are suffused with snappy lines, pop
culture references, great Hollywood casting and acts of violence shot by a visually inventive
camera.
The financial limitations of his earlier films drew interesting creative solutions from him,
such as using a non linear narrative which eliminated the need to shoot large, prohibitive
scenes.
Like many iconic filmmakers, he has seen a steady rise in budget throughout his career.
This has enabled him to write larger scripts free from budgetary restrictions.
Whatever he can imagine he can probably get the budget to shoot.
This may or may not be a double edged sword, as less money sometimes necessitates coming
up with creative solutions which may make a film even stronger.
Even though it’s unlikely to ever happen, I would personally love to see Tarantino produce
a film set in modern times at a lower budget level, which is where I feel he most thrived
in his career.
Regardless, his filmography is undisputed and will go down in the popular culture canon
of movie history that Tarantino himself so ideolises.