The Cinematographer’s Voice: Insights into the World of Visual Storytelling (Web Exclusive)
Edited by Lindsay Coleman and Roberto Schaefer. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2022. 315 pp., illus. Hardcover: $95.00, Paperback: $32.95.

Reviewed by Declan McGrath

In their introduction to The Cinematographer’s Voice, editors Lindsay Coleman and Roberto Schaefer begin by laying out a strong, empirically based case for the contribution of cinematographers to filmmaking. Stills from the music biopic Sid and Nancy (Alex Cox, 1986) and the science-fiction epic Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017) show an aesthetic continuity. This is despite differences in terms of director, genre, and production date. The common denominator is that they were both shot by Roger Deakins. Stills from Meet Joe Black (Martin Brest, 1998) and The Revenant (Alejandro G. Iñárritu, 2015) show a similar visual echo. Both were lensed by Emmanuel Lubezki. The inference is clear: at least in these examples, the cinematographer is the prime authorial voice in terms of a film’s look and thereby key to its creation.

Cinematography has never stood still. Many of the twenty-three interviewees discuss how technological advances have impacted their craft, particularly at the start of the twenty-first century, a period when the changeover from film to digital became inevitable. Nowadays, a commonly used phone can produce results equal to what once required a team of trained technicians using equipment so expensive that it could be afforded only by generously budgeted productions. Furthermore, in the age of the Internet, the technical know-how of cinematography is no longer the preserve of a small group of specialists.

Perhaps the most immediate impact on cinematographers of this increased availability of equipment and knowledge is that it is no longer a given that directors must hire a director of photography. It is likely more filmmakers will follow the path of practitioners like Steven Soderbergh, David Lynch, James Cameron, Robert Rodriguez, and Paul Thomas Anderson, all directors who take a hands-on approach to the framing and lighting of their shots. Alfonso Cuarón used Emmanuel Lubezki to stunning effect on Children of Men (2006) and Gravity (2013) before acting as his own cinematographer on Roma (2018), a film marked by the sweeping camera movement and careful choreography so associated with Lubezki.

The overall negativity expressed by the interviewees toward digital technology is striking. They are particularly unconvinced about the look created by digital cameras. The book’s main weakness in this regard is that the interviews were conducted between 2012 and 2015. Digital technology has advanced in the intervening decade and cameras have become more sophisticated and generally accepted by most cinematographers. Meanwhile, Mauro Fiore’s enthusiasm for the possibilities of 3-D (he had just won an Oscar for Avatar, 2009) seems somewhat dated in 2023. It is a pity that the interviews have not been updated to reveal how the views of the cinematographers have changed and adapted along with the technology over the past decade.

The interviewees regularly berate how the role of visual effects has expanded enormously, to the extent that it now regularly supersedes the work of the cinematographer. Nowadays, any image can be transformed or even created from scratch in postproduction. Just because a cinematographer has a credit on a movie does not mean that he or she is responsible for its final look. Javier Aguirresarobe complains that he finds it painful to watch a film from The Twilight Saga series that he lensed, Eclipse (2010), because the warm night images he created and shot were replaced with a radically different cold blue-moon cast in the final color grade. Yet even when a cinematographer has overseen and signed off on the final color grade, these digital developments allow images to be radically manipulated and changed at a future point. Peter Suschitzky shot The Empire Strikes Back (1980) but is unhappy with how it looks now on Blu-ray and DVD. It was transferred to those media long after he worked on it and, as he objects, “they’ve upped the contrast, made it lighter than the original was. I can’t say I’m happy about it. I don’t see the point.” 

The truth is that neither a director, a cinematographer, nor anyone else in the production, can control how a film is finally viewed. Most of a film’s eventual audience today will stream films on large-screen televisions and monitors whose manufacturers generally aim for high luminance and color saturation. That satisfies the consumer who has been conditioned to regard the best image as one with the widest color gamut, the brightest highlights, and the sharpest image. As Peter Deming (Lost Highway, 1997, and Mulholland Drive, 2001) points out, even black-and-white images, frequently used to evoke an older era in cinema, are now expected to be much more contrasty and punchier than they were for most of the previous century. So, while a cinematographer may be using 1970s lenses, seeking precisely the opposite qualities in their pictures, the viewer at home has the technology to change that look.

The cinematographers interviewed are, unsurprisingly, contemptuous of this trend. John de Borman (The Full Monty, 1997) states that “images more often than not get uglier when they are sharper.” John Mathieson (Love Is the Devil, 1998, and Gladiator, 2000) also complains about the digital image being too sharp and overly saturated with primary colors, asking, “I mean, are we supposed to be like hawks or night predator animals?”

The fact that the interviews were conducted in the first half of the last decade is given as an excuse by the editors for its unfortunate paucity of female cinematographers. It is true that many more women now work as directors of photography. The editors explain that they did interview female practitioners, but they were not included in the book, which seems somewhat strange in this era now so sensitive to the inclusion of voices from historically underrepresented groups. It would be good to have heard how female cinematographers have negotiated working within this most male of all film departments and how they succeeded in breaking though. One woman included is Claire Denis’s regular cinematographer, Agnès Godard (Beau Travail, 1999, and 35 Shots of Rum, 2008), who dismisses the suggestion that her camera “sees” men as a woman would see them (the editors may be thinking of the lead characters in Beau Travail whom Godard refers to as “sculptural men, beautiful men, and mysterious men”). “Is there a feminine specificity in the images I make? If there is, I don’t know in which way…I’d like to think about differences related to the supreme variety of human beings, men and women included.”

The book includes detailed descriptions of how particular lighting effects were thought up and then created. A glossary at the end of each chapter explains the technical terms relating to lenses, film stock, types of light, postproduction processes, and so on. The reader can easily skip over anything that feels too specialized. In any case, for all the technical talk, it is noteworthy how often emotion comes up. As Rodrigo Prieto (The Irishman, 2019) puts it, “There is a lot of technique involved, a lot of technology, but all of that disappears for me when I’m on set. I forget all that and feel this space, feel the energy, and try to reproduce that energy with the wavelengths of light and color.” The biggest takeaway from these interviews is the sense of having spent time with a group of craftspeople and artists who display an inspiring level of inventiveness and enthusiasm.

Perhaps what is most inspirational is how many of these cinematographers remain open to possibilities throughout their careers and refuse to get stuck in one way of thinking, whether technical or artistic. Agnès Godard says that she welcomes newness and adventure as she ages: “I want to keep away from me the idea of having knowledge, because I think it is dangerous.” Christopher Doyle (Chungking Express, 1994, and In the Mood for Love, 2000) displays a passion for his art and craft that explodes off the pages. In an era when the technology to make films is available to most of the world’s population, he proclaims the precedence of having something to say beyond technical mastery—“People now are extremely ‘cinema savvy.’ But being cinema savvy is not what it is about. It’s life savvy, which is what it is about.” There are no fixed ways of doing anything. As Doyle says, “The kids think there’s answers, but there’s no answer…whether it‘s about life, or religion, or what you eat, or how you eat, or the ecology of the environment, there’s no answer. But the questions are important.”

Declan McGrath is a filmmaker and author of two books on the craft of film production in the Focal Press “Screencraft” series, including Editing and Post-Production and Screenwriting.

Copyright © 2023 by Cineaste Magazine 

Cineaste, Vol. XLVIII, No. 2