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Tuesday, Nov 24, 2009
Interviews with some of today's leading cinematographers -- the real magic-makers of the movies -- suggest that George Lucas' overhyped "digital revolution" is mostly marketing buzz.
Jul 3, 2003 | The way we see movies is about to change -- tomorrow. Or maybe the day after that. Then again, it might not happen until sometime next week. But according to what we've been told -- by the media, by some filmmakers and, perhaps most significantly, by the people who actually manufacture the necessary equipment -- we do know for sure that digital technology is poised to revolutionize the moviegoing experience.
But not many people have asked the essential question: How are these movies going to look?
The best people to ask are the ones who have the most at stake, the people who have built careers and reputations on knowing what it takes to make a movie look just so. Cinematographers are at the vanguard of the changing technology; many of them are familiarizing themselves quite rapidly, and happily, with digital editing processes, for one thing, particularly in the case of movies that feature lots of special effects.
But last summer a controversial, and not exactly astutely researched, Los Angeles Times article depicted contemporary cinematographers as a bunch of aged Luddites quaking in their boots as they face an onslaught of bright youngsters brandishing fancy new digital cameras. At the center of the article was "Star Wars" emperor George Lucas, who had invited a group of big-name directors -- among them Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Zemeckis, Oliver Stone and Steven Spielberg -- to his private screening room to sell them on the wonders of digital technology.
The article was essentially just another version of the "Film is dead" rallying cry -- a triumphant shout that's been around for so long now that it's more like a feeble cough. Film isn't dead, although it is of course changing, and changing fast. But the Los Angeles Times article, and others like it, suggested that today's cinematographers are nervous about those changes, when in fact, they'd be the first to acknowledge that staying on top of them is part of their job. How many photographers, of any stripe, do you know who don't jump at the chance to fool around with new equipment? The cinematographer's artistry depends on knowing what tools to use -- digital or otherwise -- and when to use them.
Steven Poster, a former president of the American Society of Cinematographers, calls it a kind of alchemy. "It's what we do, the magic of deciding, 'I'm going to use this kind of film stock for this, or this kind of digital camera, or this kind of technology or technique. I'm gonna use these lights, I'm gonna make it look like this.' We have to stay abreast of these developments at all times. There's constant learning within the field, of knowing what our tools are capable of."
The problem isn't that cinematographers don't like digital technology; it's simply that they know what its current limitations are. There has been plenty of hype surrounding digital technology as it's been used in filmmaking. And there are certainly pictures, like the first two entries in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, that wouldn't look half as beautiful as they do without the use of that technology.
But remarkably few people have bothered to ask cinematographers -- the people who should know best -- what the technology's current strengths and limitations are. People like George Lucas like to think they're on the vanguard of these new methods and modes of filmmaking. But it probably hasn't occurred to most moviegoers that the "Film is dead" movement may be more strongly driven by forces in the marketplace than by artistic considerations.
In other words, there are some big corporations that would like us to think that digital filmmaking is ready for prime time. And cinematographers may be the last line of defense between those massive marketing forces and the rich visual heritage of movies. Even though most moviegoers think they know what cinematographers do, it's likely they don't even know the half of it. But in the rapidly changing world of filmmaking, their role as preservationists -- as preservationists of the quality and vitality of images -- is more important than ever.
When Terri Gross interviewed cinematographer Gordon Willis for her National Public Radio program "Fresh Air" last fall, she introduced him by playing a few clips from movies he'd worked on: Marlon Brando's opening scene from "The Godfather"; an exchange between Woody Allen and Diane Keaton in "Annie Hall" that captures the sparks flying between their his-and-hers non sequiturs.
You'd think that audio clips would be the worst window into the work of a cinematographer. The surprise lies in how vividly we can see those scenes just by hearing them. You can't hear Brando's voice in that clip without picturing the hollows of his eyes, both as empty and as full as undersea caves. And the mere sound of Keaton's and Allen's tentative chatter resurrects visions of a muted '70s New York skyline cloaked in smog and romance -- we can't distinguish one from the other, which is precisely the point, their commingled beauty is so intense.
You can't take the measure of a cinematographer's work just by listening to it. But if a sound clip can serve as a miniature testimony to the resonance of a cinematographer's images, it can also heighten the ways in which moviegoers sometimes take the cinematographer's job for granted. In one sense, cinematography should be invisible, since it exists mainly to serve the story that's being told. But movies don't shoot themselves. Unless a movie features lots of pretty natural scenery, moviegoers -- and sometimes even people who are themselves involved in the making of movies -- don't always recognize how much thought and care goes into making the kinds of images you can actually hear on the radio.
"Even within the enlightened community of fellow filmmakers who are not cinematographers," says cinematographer John Bailey, "there has been this confusion or misperception of cinematography as pretty pictures." Bailey's 30-year career has included numerous collaborations with the director Paul Schrader, among them "Cat People," "Mishima" and 1999's lovely but little-seen "Forever Mine." Bailey says viewers tend to be most easily impressed by the prettified Ivory-Merchant aesthetic: "I'm not picking on Ivory-Merchant, but they're kind of a shorthand example -- in other words, period films, beautiful costumes, lush landscapes and impressive exterior photography."
But, Bailey says, that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with cinematography, other than the fact that you put a camera there and capture the whole thing on film. "I think a cinematographer's foremost requirement is to use all of the visual aesthetic skill that he or she has to find a style," he says, "a combination of aesthetic and technique to enhance, enlighten and expand the dramatic, emotional and narrative momentum of the screenplay. In the same way that the screenwriter uses words to tell the story, and the director uses the performances of the actors to reveal the subtext and the nuance of it, the cinematographer uses all of the tools that he or she has, focused through the lens of the camera, to reveal and enhance and expand the story."
