With The Batman, there's filmmaking and production elements across the board that stand out
in a genre which traditionally involves more of the same. Director Matt Reeves and
cinematographer Greig Fraser, went for something vastly different to what we usually see
in comic book films. And because I've continuously discussed my thoughts on the use of effective
cinematography in this film, I thought now that the film had been released on HBO Max and that
I'd had a chance to watch it again, I wanted to discuss what makes it so effective. From
it being used as an extension of character, to the simplicity of it, there's many distinct
ways in which Fraiser has gone about capturing this new take on Batman. In this video essay,
I'm going to be disucssing Greig Fraser's cinematography in The Batman, and how it stands
out from the comic book film photography we see many projects today. But before I get into it,
if you want to keep up to date on any of my future content on The Batman, it's sequels and
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lets dive into my video essay on The Batman's cinematography.
So fresh off of his oscar win for Dune, cinematographer Greig Fraser has given us some
more stunnning work with Matt Reeves The Batman. He reteamed with the filmmaker following his
photography on Let Me In, and like the previous work with Reeves, they wanted to make sure that
this film was extremely focused on the main character. The cinematography had to capture
Bruce Wayne’s point of view, and with ‘Let Me In,’ we very much saw that approach with
the character of Oskar. And not to mention that both films share a similar approach to filming
dark scenes with moments being lit up by individual or limited sources of light,
and also the borrowing of the shots in the car crash scene that was featured in that film too.
Matt Reeves has gone on record saying that he wanted to work with the cinematographer
since their success on that project, and both of them have a similar and emotional response to the
lighting of the scenes they capture. But what made this more of a challenge on The Batman was
that with Covid having took it's toll on the filming and production, they had to come up
with strategies to film certain sequences that made it in to the final cut. And this included
the use of ILM's Stagecraft technology, which involved shooting scenes in front of huge
LED screens that could be adjusted to exactly the right background image or in the case of camera
movement, motion. While watching the behind the scenes documentary that came out last
week, it's seen that this technology has been rapidly evolving in the years that it's been
used on big budget productions and one of them even involves Fraser's work on The
Mandalorian. Fraiser saw how advanced this method of filming shots could be, how realistic
the outcome and also how managable it could be in the form of lighting darker frames.
Matt Reeves said that "one of the difficult things in a movie with VFX is getting the light
to be just right in the foreground of a shot, and using Stagecraft allowed them to tweak the
light or time of day in a way that will make it fully believable. And the shots in the movie of
Batman and Gordon at the Batsignal, Bruce driving through the Gotham streets at the
start of the film and much more were all done using this Stagecraft technology. It's a way
of evolving past just putting an actor in front of a green screen and it resulting in badly lit
subjects, or background environments and textures that look completely unrealistic.
This is yet another reason why it stands out from the crowd of comic book movies that are made on
bigger budgets and don't put enough work into capturing the believability that should be
focussed on in relation to some of films central ideologies. Having badly lit shots, overly CG
ones or heavly composed frames with less real components to work with doesn't do much for
the longevity of the art you put to screen. And while Fraiser, Reeves and the team were limited
at times during this shoot, they clearly put the effort in to capture something more real and
something that visually is still more believable. Whether that's through filming in actual
locations or on Stagecraft using realistic environments and shot imagery.
Having a greater esssence on grounding the cinematography will instantly aid the type of
filmmaking that revolves around making Robert Pattinson's Batman the emotional focus I was
getting to before. Greig Fraser's cinematography in The Batman is essentially an extention of
character. In particular, all the technical decisions were ultimately at the service of
the performances, and this was a challenge that they had to make choices around
in getting the audience to really connect. One of the cinematographers
biggest challenges was finding a way to display Batman's almost nocturnal existence
as well as the ideals of darkness that tests both him and Gotham City in general. Bruce Wayne is
that of the shadows and with this being a detective noir film set mostly at night,
there needed to be a detailed approach in how they would go about shooting the previously sketched
frames. In an interview, Greig Fraser said "my concern was that it might be hard to see anything,
so I collected images in a document for Matt Reeves and myself, I called them Dark but Light,
and those references informed certain decisions, like making sure there were almost
always pools of light or bright areas in the frame.” And a lot of those lighter areas involved
making the main subjects in frame much more visible, that of the characters primarily. If
we look at Fraser's oscar winning cinematography on Dune last year, we instantly see a greater
pattern too. That movie dealt with using either natural lighting or light devices on set
to capturen a sense of authenticity. There wasn't that typical blockbuster CG shots that have no
shadows on the characters or a sense of realism in the way they are lit up in front
of a green screen. On Dune, they even went to the extent of using sandscreens to make sure
that there would be no glare and that the shots were all of the right colour that they should be.
Lighting only works better that way too and like on Let Me In and The Batman, it shows
that the cinematographer put a lot of thought into making sure the lighting was just right,
and therefore serve the final quality of the image in different locations.
Another method used to capture the sense of emotional and character driven cinemtography
was especially the use of POV shots. Something that was again seen in Let Me in. Apart from the
obvious examples of Batman and Riddler both using binoculars in opposingly reflective scenes,
they also had moments like that of Batman walking through the crew of officers to get to the
crime scene of the dead mayor. In this long walk we see the points of view from both Batman
and the GCPD officers, immedietely creating this sense of tension and a quite fresh
relationship between them. We end that moment with an officer anxious over letting him into the crime
scene and the commisioner himself confronting our caped crusader over him being there
too. Having this cinematography used in this way as a buildup to those moments gives us so
much information without much dialogue at all. It shows that Reeves, Fraiser and the whole team
were more in snyc with the little details in both the frame and the characters it captures.
And speaking of the frame, the feeling and movement of Greig Fraser’s work gave the added
kinetic energy to sequences like that of the batmobile car chase, which without, could have
just served as a cool action scene. The camera placement, whether up close with Batman in the
batmobile or on the side of the vehicles as the choatic nature of the scene plays out,
is connected so perfectly to the psyche of Bruce Wayne. It essentially
acts as an extension of the dark knight’s obsessiveness
to chase down the criminals that come under his use of vengeance. The point
of view here is more open to the audience perception, with cameras mounted on both
vehicles and placed on the lap of both characters. But the nature of it and the way those scenes were
filmed and edited, makes it all the more a connective tissue to exactly the kind of
rage that Batman is on a process to overcome during the film's runtime. It really is a great
combination of strategic positioning, supplied lighting and point of view driven work that
makes it stand out from the many action scenes we'd see in comic book films today,
that a lot of the time are simply there to give us the necessary moment of action. It seperates it
from that and becomes fully attached with the character it's presenting onscreen.
And the key to crafting this compact visual approach was primarily in the simplicity of each
shot that Greig Fraser filmed. The cinematographer spoke in interviews for the film about
how you need to focus and simplify the image, especially when we have shorter attention spans.
That image needs to communicate exactly what it needs to a short period of time, allowing
the audience to work out exactly what is happening and the context of a moment. And as we see in The
Batman, they tried to capture each moment or scene through as few shots as posible.
The camera stays with the actors, often used in POV positions and the movement of it
is limited. It frames everything that is important whether that be the perception of Batman or the
communicating of something crucial to the story. It moves only when it has to so that
the audience can focus on what is happening in the scene. And as Fraser spoke about in one of his
many interviews, "the visual language of this film expands further through the use of urban lighting
that feels “very sodium vapory and very fluorescent.” They use very bold and telling
colours to light the frame whether that be the shades of black that take up most of them
or when various shades of red are used too. It's the perfect way to communicate the atmosphere of
scenes and the building of a relationship onscreen, and then shooting that using the types
of movement and setup that Fraiser did, gives the whole film a distinct personality. The Batman
is a beautifully shot picture with moments of simplicity, and it's clear that the focus is
on the story rather than the spectacle, making this superhero film quite the example that
stands out. There's nothig wrong with the way the more conventional comic book movies are filmed
and don't see this as a dig towards them. But I do think there is room to put more effort
into the way shots are composed, how design choices are used to frame a sense of character,
world-building and overall tone. I think at times it seems lazy when you plonk a few actors in
front of a green screen, and don't make much of effort to make it look like those actors
are actually there. It can take you out of it, especially when
some of these films deal with real human issues and more important themes.
It would be better to see more of an effort put into how the cinematography frames it all. But
after examples like The Batman, there is a hope that more comic book films can really have their
own visual language and craft images that are well thought out and built to last longer.
But that was my video discussing Greig Fraser's cinematography in The Batman. For the
photographer, lighting the image yet also keeping the darkness to aid the characters, was the main
challenge in filming this story. It becomes difficult when the main character wears a dark
suit in a city that’s dark as noir even in the middle of day. But some of the examples I've
discussed, meant that he was able to really capture the essence and tone that Batman should
be connected with, and overall, it set a complete feeling mood throughout the film. Many comic
book projects tend to jump around in tone and filmmaking, with the cinematography and editing
shifting around in a quite wacky way, and that can really take you out of it at times. Not
all the time depending on the project but I do see it more than often. But The Batman had
a focussed approach across it's production and the cinematography is no exception. Greig Fraser
and Matt Reeves chose to shoot The Batman using digital on custom-designed anamorphic lenses
and they were setup to the specific look they wanted for the film. It was big format
photography that allowed them to see exactly what they were getting and they adjust aspects
and the lighting on the go. Taking the shot digital footage, transferring it to a film
negative and then ultimately scanning it back into digital, allowed for a much more noir-esque
finish too. This was something similar to the process that the cinematographer opted for
with Dune, and it's now resulted in two of the most beautiful looking blockbusters in years,
shot by the same cinematographer. It was all about visually immersing in you in a world and
using techniques that would fully capture that across the board. I'm excited to see what Fraser
does next with his cinematography not just in The Batman sequels but also in other
projects, because after Let Me In, Rogue One, Dune and now The Batman, he's proven that he's
a composed cinematographer, fully interested in capturing the story and characters on the
page through effective imagery and lighting. But what do you think towards how The Batman was shot
and what are some of things that you picked out in certain scenes surrounding Greig
Fraser's cinematography. Let me know your thoughts down below in the comments section.
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