(upbeat music)
- Thank you for joining me, I'm Carolyn Giardina.
Today we have Chayse Irvin,
who shot BlacKkKlansman,
Linus Sandgren, who shot First Man,
and Matty Libatique, A Star is Born.
So, first question.
The director and cinematographer relationship
is obviously one of the most important on the set,
but what happens when you don't agree?
How do you say no, or how do you have that conversation?
[Matty] There's a lot of different ways
to deal with that one.
(laughter)
[Linus] There's a lot of politics in it, right?
How you work with people in general.
You need to have a great relationship with a director.
I think, normally, I try to figure out
how the director works, and what he likes,
and I like to try to adapt to that director's
style of working,
and hopefully you don't get so many situations
that are huge conflicts.
It's usually rather, in certain situations,
you may have conflicts, and then, yeah,
you have to solve it.
- In your case, First Man was your second collaboration
with Damien Chazelle, you shot La La Land previously.
How did the two of you like to work
and have those conversations?
- It was sort of a 180 from La La Land to do First Man
because Damien didn't want to do,
his style of doing La La Land was very much
like a whimsical musical, right?
In First Man,
he wanted it to be very realistic
and emotionally immersive.
- Apollo 11 Houston,
let us know when you've entered LM,
closed up the hatch, over.
(thumps and clanks)
Eagle, this is Houston, we see the optics zero switch on.
Before you take some marks, don't forget to
cycle it back off and on and then on, over.
- For us to work that through, we just had to
talk a lot about his visions
and try to figure out how this film
can be told in that type of way
and develop that together.
And over time, in prep,
you sort of find the language of how you do things,
and hopefully that works together, right?
That's how you have to sync with each other.
- Chase?
- Spike and I had great chemistry right off the bat.
So, when it came to those scenarios
where maybe opinions weren't aligned,
it was mostly something that we were always
respectful of one another.
He and I, I think we mainly work off our intuition.
I've noticed that Spike
would always be there way earlier than anyone else,
and I think he would really meditate on
what the day's work was, and what he wanted to achieve,
and different ideas and experiments
that he was interested in doing.
- I've established contact and created
some familiarity with the Klansmen over the phone.
I'll continue in that role,
but I'll need another officer,
surprise, surprise, a white officer to play me
when they meet face-to-face.
- That's my point exactly.
- Chief, black Ron Stallworth over the phone,
white Ron Stallworth face-to-face,
so that it becomes a combined Ron Stallworth.
- Can you do that?
- I believe we can, with the right white man.
We can do anything.
- When it came to executing it,
it was really me trying to be as vulnerable
and sensitive as possible to what we were doing,
and in those moments, kind of,
after maybe one or two takes, really trying to digest it
and feel like if was good enough for what you were doing.
And maybe we would disagree on a particular thing,
but it was never, it was always love, you know?
It was never animosity or hate or anything like that.
- Sure.
- He knew I cared.
- Well the main thing is that you have the same goal,
you're trying to tell the same story.
And I think the conflicts happen
when people divert from that.
Going into the preparation,
you really need to get on the same page.
If a director's trying to do something different
that's outside of what you've done with them before,
it's incumbent upon us to actually help them get there.
So the ideas have to flow,
and then there has to be some kind of foundation
and agreement to what you're trying to accomplish.
And then when those conflicts,
conflicts usually arise when there's a deviation
from what you guys had talked about.
Or a miscommunication about what's important in the scene.
It's really important to listen, you know?
Sometimes, we just talk.
And arguments on set in general,
not just between directors and DPs,
it's because nobody's listening to the other person,
they're actually just talking.
In both these cases, it's the same thing.
A director-DP relationship that already had
a visual idea of how to make the film,
and if there's any conflict,
it's probably just a miscommunication.
If you listen to it, you could figure out
how to get out of it.
- [Carolyn] Now, in your case, this was Bradley Cooper's
directorial debut, so what was it like planning
and starting the collaboration with him?
- I had never worked with an actor who was also in the film.
I'd worked with plenty of actors that turned director,
but this was another level for me.
I just wanted to support him,
knowing that he wasn't going to be at the monitor
looking at things.
He wore many hats, this was a guy who was
producing the movie, was helping write the film,
was going to be number two on the call sheet,
and he's also directing it.
So the least I could do is actually pay attention
to what he's doing as a performer as well as a director.
- Almost every single person that I've come in contact with
in the music industry has told me that my nose is too big,
and that I won't make it.
- [Jack] Your nose is too big?
- Yeah.
- [Jack] Your nose is beautiful.
Can I touch your nose?
- Oh, my gosh!
- Let me just touch it for a second.
♪ Good Lord, I feel like I'm dyin' ♪
(bluesy music)
- [Matty] I was trying to help him
by being the best filmmaker I could,
and giving him the freedom
to experiment with where the camera goes.
But then, I got that sense because I just talked to him.
Sometimes the director gets away from you in prep
because they're pulled in many directions,
and for us, we're just trying
to bring 'em back into what we're trying.
We're here sort of guarding the gate of filmmaking,
amongst all the other things that are happening.
When the director's getting pulled
in a different direction in prep,
you've just got to pull 'em back into our world.
And I think that's important.
We did that, we made time for each other in prep,
and I think that's why there was a successful relationship
coming out of that.
- Yeah, that's key.
- This year, we see a director,
Alfonso Cuaron, serving as director of photography on Roma,
and we've seen other examples of that recently,
such as Paul Thomas Anderson
with Phantom Thread.
What are your thoughts on
the director serving as the director of photography?
- I don't like to be out of a job,
but Alfonso's a talented, talented filmmaker.
And at the end of the day, we're filmmakers.
Digital technology is such
where they don't have the burden of exposing film,
so it does open it up a little bit to creativity
for somebody who isn't necessarily a cinematographer.
But the people you're mentioning
are really well-versed in technical things.
- Yeah, and they all have their methods
of how you want to work, and if you are that type of person
who can handle, perhaps it's easier for him
to actually sit by the camera and do the lighting
to communicate his story.
My experience with directors, the ones I work with,
is that they also need us to have a partner
to communicate and collaborate with,
to create the visual storytelling.
There's directors that are scoring their own music
and cutting their films and stuff,
so they do a great job, too.
I think it's tricky.
Sometimes I love to operate, so I put an operator off
to not work on a film because I like to operate.
Like on First Man, I actually operated A camera,
and on Battle of the Sexes I operated A camera,
while on La La Land, I had operators
because it depends on how I want to tell the story
and when I feel it's important for me
to be closer to the actual making of the image,
and sometimes it's better to have someone else do it.
I guess in this case, it was a very intimate story for him,
and very personal, and perhaps he felt
it was more immersive for him
to be actually doing it himself in a small way, somehow.
I don't know the backstory, but I think we're all filmmakers
and the most important part is to make it
your process you want.
- I also feel like PTA and Alfonso Cuaron
worked with total masters for so long.
- Of course, yeah.
- So that informs a lot of the language that they're using,
and just aesthetics, aesthetic view.
Any time I work with a director, I'm so much informed
and I learn so much about cinematography
just based off of simple things of divergent thinking
because they're having a totally different perspective
than I would have.
- They also have the added advantage,
they've cut movie after movie, so there's an efficiency
to what they're able to do with the camera,
because they're the ones that sit in the editing room
and we don't.
So when Alfonso Cuaron or Paul Thomas Anderson
is sitting there, they probably already have an idea
of how they're going to enter a scene and exit one.
The camera's kind of a shared object
by the cinematographer and director, anyway.
It stands to reason that directors now,
with today's technology, they could shoot their own movies.
Not in all cases, it depends on the screenplay.
Like in this one, it seemed like it was
tailor-made for that.
- Now, another thing that's obviously
been discussed a lot this year,
is that women are really underrepresented in your field,
and about having more diversity.
Do you personally make efforts to hire more women
and a more diverse crew?
- [Matty] Diversity in every way.
- Yeah, in every way.
- [Matty] It's good to have different perspectives,
and different cultures, and we should take advantage of it.
It's become more and more common
to be able to hire minorities as well as gender,
so yeah, of course.
I think that's a movement that we should all support.
I think everybody's doing it.
- [Linus] Absolutely.
- Are you seeing changes already?
- Yeah, I get a lot of inspiration from
having women around the camera, just the different POV,
different way of working, less testosterone, you know?
I don't know, I'm a very sensitive person just in general.
All my best friends growing up were women,
so I've always felt way more comfortable
in that kind of environment.
I haven't seen that kind of growth in gripping and electric,
but in camera, definitely.
I've worked with focus pullers and loaders,
and all that stuff with women.
- [Carolyn] Last question I'd like each of you to answer.
If you could work with any director,
who would you like to work with, and why?
- [Matty] Oh, man.
Can you pick a dead one?
(laughter)
- [Carolyn] Yes!
Who do you have in mind?
- I don't know, I want those guys to go
so I can compete about it. (laughs)
- I'm curious on these guys that shoots themselves,
actually, what they don't need from us.
It would be interesting to work with a director
who usually works by himself.
That would be interesting.
I mean, there's so many interesting.
It's always like you learn so much
from each and every one.
Every one are different humans and different people
and have different way of working.
I really just appreciate all that
different inspiration you get from them,
and you learn so much from all of them.
- I think if you can push each other.
Any time I've come on to a project,
I feel like I've garnered an aesthetic view
that maybe is so different than somebody else's,
simply because my experiences as a human being
that I've absorbed,
and all these sensory things that I'm trying to express now
can become unique.
And when you're working with a director
who has that as well, a particular taste,
those together can either clash
or they can become something really unique.
- Yep, totally, it always becomes something unique,
I think, with different people doing things together.
- And who you worked with in the past
also speaks to who you are at the time
you're working with somebody new, and vice versa.
I like the idea of working with somebody
who maybe works in a genre that I don't work in,
but does it in a very interesting way,
like a Wes Anderson or somebody.
I don't do comedy, but he does the type of film
that I haven't done before.
He does it in very stylized, specific directorial way.
But it's hard to name one person.
- Well we need to wrap up,
but thank you so much for joining us.
- [All three men] Thank you.