One thing about lens choices
it's sort of psychological.
How do you want the audience to feel?
What's their perspective on theimage you're showing them?
What's the effect you wantto create for the audience.
And then language is not somethingwritten down by filmmakers.
It's something experienced in the worldby us as we translate what we see.
"- Get busy living.Or get busy dying."
Cinematography Techniques- Intro Music
I always liked primes'cause I like the fact
that it forces youto make a decision
where you're goingto put the camera
and what lens are yougoing to put it on.
Very few films were really gone outsidethe sort of palette of lenses
I know I would normally use.
Standardly, I would kind of like anover-the-shoulder would be a 32 or 35.
A mid-shot would be 35 or 40.
Standard close up whereit would be a 50.
And a big close upwould be a 65 or 75.
A lot of peopleshoot a lot longer.
A lot of peopleshoot a lot wider.
I'm looking at Chivo and shooting "TheRevenant" on a 12 mil and a 14 mil.
I tend to usually have a zoomlens in my package on a film,
but then sometimes you want aparticular shot that is a zoom shot.
It's such a sloppy thingto say,
oh, well, we'll justput it on a zoom,
so we don't have to move the camera,we can go in for a close up.
"- Relationships never work.
Why waste my time?
- What makes you say that?
- It's not that easy, Johny.
- Well, you shouldbe happy, Mark.
- Yeah, I know lifeis too short."
- You've gone in on a hundred milon a zoom to shoot a close up
instead of moving the camerainto somebody on a 50 mil.
But then that all balances out withwhat's the perspective of the film.
If the film is from one character'sperspective, for instance,
you want to shoot themon the wider lens.
If the person they're talkingto is not the main character
you don't want them to featureso much,
then maybe you shootthem on a longer lens.
So they feel like it's more from theperspective of your main character.
"- Hey.
You've been gettingon fine without one.
- What's that matter?
- A soul."
- "1917" - we had to use one lens.
We had to use one lensbecause it was one shot.
We are very thankfulfor this camera.
Thank you very much.
And so we deliberatelydidn't do a wide lens.
We didn't want that feelingof seeing the whole world.
I made a long discussionwith Sam about
how we were goingto narrow it down
and actually use it so there wasslightly less depth of field.
We didn't see aroundthe characters.
So we basically endedup shooting on a 40,
which was equivalentof maybe 42.
So we acted like a wider lens.
But you still have that sense ofslightly focused on the character
where they'll drop offonto the backgrounds.
"- Move off!"
So many films nowit's about coverage.
"- Just photograph everything".
- But those films that we reallylike, those classic films weren't.
John Ford never shot coverage.
He shot the shot hewanted, you know.
He tracked out the door with JohnWayne into a wide emptiness.
That was very specific.
Obviously, they didn't havethe technology we have now.
They don't have the way ofmoving the camera we have now,
but look what they created.
Real stories withhuman emotions.
Anytime, I talked to a directorI haven't worked with
and I get approachedabout shooting a film.
I say, well, how doyou like to shoot?
Do you like zoom lenses?
Do you like multiple cameras?
I remember discussingwith Joel and Ethan
"The Hudsucker Proxy" wasquite a stylized film.
It was quite exuberantin the camera moves.
There was quite a lotof wide lens work.
Deliberately for the reason tomake the camera feel active
and make a lot of the spacesseem bigger than they were.
Everything wanted to be slightlylarger than life in a way.
And then when that filmdidn't do so out of the box
they decided to do "Fargo", which issomething they had in mind for a long time.
And it was very lowbudget.
"- So we got a trooperpulls someone over.
We got a shooting.
These folks drive by.
There's a high-speed pursuit.Ends here.
And there's thisexecution-type deal.
- Yeah."
- The thing about the lenses was theywanted the feeling of it being
almost like a documentary reconstructionof something, you know, true event.
So we talked about shootingthat slightly longer lenses.
We didn't alwaysshoot on a 40 or 50 mil.
But it was slightly longer lensesthan it had been on "The Hudsucker".
35 or 40 mils was more standard for us.
"- So where are you girls from?
- Chaska.- Le Sueur.
- But I went to highschool in White Bear Lake.
Go Bears.
- Oh, yeah?- Yeah.
Yeah, is that useful to you?
- You betcha. Yeah.
- Yeah."
- When I was shooting documentariesI used to shoot on a 60 mil.
I just shoot on a 59to 57 short zoom,
which is a great little lens.
But then when I started doing drama,I moved to shooting on prime lenses.
One of the first films Idid was a super 16 film.
And I took a load ofcontact stills lenses
and had them adapted to workwith an AATON 16 mil camera
to just to get the bestquality image I could.
I don't like artifacts.
I don't like flares.
I don't like vignetting.
If I want to destroy theimage or create a vignette,
I'll do it as a particular effectwith a particular lens on Jesse James.
Years and years ago, I was doingan effect in a cinema short it was.
And I wanted a sudden vignettingeffects and I had an old stills lens.
So I took the front element of and put it infront of a standard 50 mil lens
for 35 mil film camera.
And just play with the distance and stuff awayfrom the lens to get that sort of effect.
So when we did "Jesse James",that's why I talked to Otto Nemenz
about manufacturing somethingsimilar in that idea.
One of the other aspects of alens I don't like is breathing.
When you pull focus.
I've kind of done a lot of films, like "BladeRunner", where you're not moving the camera
and the film playson a long shot.
Held over quite alot of the action.
And there's nothing worse
if you're pulling focus and suddenly thewhole edge of the frame is swimming.
Without being a salesman forARRI and master primes.
You do not see them move.
"- Where the hell have you been?- Enjoying death."
That's the lens choices, the frameit's what's in the frame,
the balance of the frame, whetherit's a formal symmetrical frame,
whether it's off-balance.
It's such a complex palettethat you've got to play with.
Colors, light.
That's what's wonderfulabout it really.