Talking about composition and shot construction
is such a complex subject, isn't it?
Because how do you divorce composition from lighting?
- Those projects we're dealing with shadows.
There's an intensity and there's an equilibrium
between the acting and the way the actors are moving into light.
♪ Cinematography Techniques - Intro ♪
- You know, on a film like "Prisoners",
I like something that cuts the frame
and focuses the audience's attention.
I like that sort of technique really
whether you're shooting through door frames.
"- Where's my daughter?"
- Or whether you're cutting a frame with an object.
In a way, on something you want them to be looking at
and simplifies the frame but also
creates the idea of a threat.
Creates the idea of somebody watching.
One of my favorite moments of "Sicario"
it's probably the final scene between Benicio and Emily.
"- I need you to sign this piece of paper."
- Because it's a scene that was totally written differently.
"- It basically says that everything we did
was done by the book.
- I can't sign that."
- And then the way we approach it with light.
Where Benicio was backlit.
"- Sign."
- And her evenly lit.
There's something about the conflict of the movie
that is expressed through light in that moment.
And it's by far one of my favorite scene of the movie.
"- I can't sign.
- You would be committing suicide, okay?"
- I think it's probably one of my favorite scene we've done together, Roger.
- Yeah, that's also probably I've said before I think
that's my favorite scene in the film
because it's so simple.
It's interesting that we're both talking
about a scene that's two people sitting at a table in a kitchen on a set
that cost about 10 grand you know
meanwhile there's all the
rest of the film people on the bridge to El Paso and
traveling through Mexico city and the whole bit.
"- No, no, no, no, no, no, no."
- But we're talking about one little scene.
I don't think it's necessarily stronger to be on a close-up
for a scene than it is a wide shot
with tiny little figures.
It's all about context.
- I think that there's this dictatorship of the close-ups in cinema.
I think it's beautiful. I love the power of close-ups.
But there's something about seeing the vulnerability of a character in the landscape.
And their relationship with space that cannot translate in a close-up.
- Yeah, I think it's sensibility
and you have a uncanny knack of knowing
when a wide shot will hold
it starts to mean something else.
It's no longer just an establishing shot.
It becomes something else
and if the camera's moving in slowly
it actually means much more.
There's one particular scene in "Sicario"
that people ask me a lot about
which is is the scene between Josh and Emily
after they come back across the border.
And all the SUVs pulled through a hope.
They get out and they have that argument.
"- Got a little nutty, huh? - Nutty? Yeah, yeah.
That was illegal. You want to start a war?
You're a f*cking spook."
- The wide shot was only the shot we'd made for the convoy pulling up
and them getting out.
I thought when we set it up,
we said, 'Okay, we'll think about coverage if we need it after'.
"- Don't sell yourself short, alright?"
- But you let that take play
and they're kind of small figures in the distance.
And it's all played in the wide shot.
"- What is is what happens when they dig in. This is it.
- What am I doing here?
- What you're doing here is you're giving us
the opportunity to shake the tree and create chaos.
That's what this is."
- I thought the shot was cinematically meaningful
seeing all the group of men going back inside the building
and leaving her behind.
There was something quite powerful.
- You don't know where it's going.
I mean you have an idea where you want to go
but you don't really know what the shot is
and where it's going the look of the film
until it's actually there and happening.
And all those people together with the actors and the sets.
And then suddenly the camera rolls and you think
'Oh that's what it's really going to look like'.
- I mean yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely.
Chaos of life always brings something new.
Yeah, yeah.