Filmmaker Jimmy Chin Breaks Down Epic Nature Scenes from Movies | GQ

the fire inside the cave might not be the best idea because hey it melts all the snow and then drips onto your fire and then your fire goes out and then the smoke would probably smoke you out but fire as a light source amazing look at that shot hey gq i'm jimmy chin and this is the breakdown [Music] [Applause] 127 hours this is clearly a very critical moment and seen in the film as aaron ralston falls into the canyon and i know aaron was there um consulting on this so trying to make it as accurate depiction of what happened to him i'm sure for danny the director this you know how do we establish what happens to him like really give a sense to people like what actually happened how he fell what's going on the pacing of the scene is really cool there's this principle action when he takes the fall they show his you know a cutaway of this totally different you know item his headphones like falling slow motion onto the ground and then you really get a view of without having to describe it what happens and that's hard to do you know without someone actually saying it and really making it feel like okay this is real i love the moments when he looks up in the sky it's like this this one scene is like paced it's got a lot of different kind of um really cool pacing in it then it's quiet really trying to get into the head of of aaron here and or at least in the real character of aaron but of what it must be like to kind of realize in this moment you're trapped and like taking in his environment like he's assessing where he is and those shots kind of get into the character's head like oh where am i basically establishing i'm trapped in this place they have a lot of different camera angles like there's a top-down shot that's like really cool and establishes like he's in this narrow passageway there's some shots just like real close up on his arm to really show how it's wedged in there and then it shows this point of view you know as he looks up to the sky all of that a storyboarded out to really establish like what happens here and i think they do a really wonderful job here the revenant [Music] the fire inside the cave might not be the best idea because hey it melts all the snow and then drips onto your fire and then your fire goes out and then the smoke would probably smoke you out but fire as a light source amazing look at that shot i'm not sure if they had any other light sources in the shot of the cave but it draws the eye to this little cave it gives you a real sense of the setting and the scale of the place and the landscape and clearly shows he's he's just trying to survive the night often times the best ways to survive are not necessarily uh the greatest um for cinematographers i deal with that a lot where you're like oh we're on the side of a mountain and i'm shooting you're like this shot would be absolutely mind-blowing if they were a little further out on that ridge and profiled against the sky and that's not um usually uh something i can suggest because you're in the middle of a climb the best shots are shots that you wouldn't normally see just standing at eye level you know like that's what we all see all the time and so with the camera you can kind of you're really looking for a shot that brings the audience into the moment and you know if you want to get creative like moving the camera somewhere other than like the normal eye level like you're trying to find shots that are low that give a different perspective than you normally see i'm kind of a believer in in creating shots that don't necessarily draw attention to a shot you really want to have the shot be in service of the story and the moment and the film [Music] using you know what i i think is a great technique which is getting in really tight feeling really intimate with leo you know in that moment but then also doing these huge big expansive shots to give you a sense of scale in the environment he's in just overall stunning shooting in these kinds of environments where it's very very cold extremely tough on crews you know because you're not just dealing with you know managing you know the personnel and the crew and and their safety and equipment you know in this kind of environment is really hard to manage oftentimes you know you have to keep the batteries warm because they they completely deplete when when they get really cold so you're constantly carrying batteries either on yourself like in your pockets sometimes we'll tape hand warmers around the batteries to try to keep them warm there's just a lot of considerations in terms of how to prep your cameras how to prep your crew i know from what i've heard and read you know that this was an extremely difficult shoe i did run into um the director uh in iraq at one point and he told me that he watched meru and showed meru to his crew referencing meru that this is really hard filming conditions um maybe shaming them into thinking that their conditions weren't as hard but that's what he told me it's amazing how much of your life is spent either especially in these cold environments melting snow and ice for water and like moving solar panels to follow the sun when there's sun if there's sun battery power is like this constant issue uh out out in the field when you're on remote expedition shoots i don't think um they had that problem on the revenant though because i think they had other resources and opportunities to charge their batteries into the wild [Laughter] funny enough i i actually climbed kilimanjaro with emile hirsch spent a few weeks with him if this was storyboarded out for the dp a lot of the conversation would also be okay how are we going to get each of these shots we're going to block it out but really what's most important to me is like the intention of this scene this is the nuts and bolts of like what we need to establish experiencing the isolation with this character being out there um he has kind of a moment of levity in the scene i feel like you're kind of you're you're experiencing the the landscape and being isolated in this huge place you kind of move inward as the character moves inward and then it finishes with him kind of like stepping out and then like being back in this amazing wilderness and it's this shot of like absolute awe and beauty and it just ties up that scene so perfectly the beauty of shooting up north in alaska in like the spring is that the days start to get really long but the sun stays really low on the horizon so you have like a lot of really good shooting hours and beautiful light for a good part of the day you know the worst light then the most challenging light to shoot in is especially when you're just using natural light is when the sun's straight above you and it's just like you know everybody's eyes are black because the contrast of it's just bad light you never really want to shoot in that but when you're when you're shooting outdoors in these kind of environments you're often relegated to what's available and the best light during the days are in the morning and in the evening this is really beautiful kind of saturated probably sunset or maybe sunrise shots you know looks like there's a little cloud cover but enough for light to get through so everything's kind of painted with this like very really saturated colors that's kind of the light that you you you know always aim for or dream of on expedition shoots you don't have the luxury of like getting things set up and facing the right way for the best light and you kind of have to make do with what you have when we were shooting with alex on free solo let's say for instance he couldn't climb el cap in the light because it'd be a lot less friction it's you're hot it was always challenging because he would be climbing in this really shady wall and then the the ground below would be like really really bright hot light and so every time you're framing a shot you're trying to like deal with this huge range of of dynamic range of light you know blasted out blown out mid-day light on this like you know really bright ground below and then this really dark shady wall that's always kind of a challenge indiana jones and the last crusade [Music] [Music] [Music] i'm often thinking about angles and how how to shoot something to to tell the story a bunch of the earlier shots in here you know shot from the ground kind of looking up and whenever you have like these shots looking up you really make the the characters you give them a certain amount of weight because you know like if you're shooting portraitures it's the same thing it's like shooting them straight on is one look but when you when you dip below the eyeliner and you you place someone up high it's like visually putting them on a pedestal right so you can portray people a certain way just by the angle of how you shoot them in this case this shot from above that really establishes that's kind of cool there's some foreground elements the people are framed perfectly there's these kind of like leading lines that draw your eye into where these main protagonists are and then you have like this perfectly lit monument there is a lot of contrast i think they wanted the light on on the main monument that they see there that can be really challenging um is figuring out like okay well how are we going to shoot this what time of day are we going to shoot this this is the only time it's going to get light but it's going to be extremely contrasty and then oftentimes what happens is like okay you kind of establish like which things you're going to prioritize as getting this light during the day and then you kind of lean into whatever you're you're given so you know when they come through the canyon there um it's kind of shady it is dramatic you know they they come out of the the shade into the light and it's kind of like this moment when they come into the light figuratively and and actually physically you know discovering this spot and then if i was looking at this through an expedition mindset i i start looking at the walls on either side of that monument and they look like there's there's probably some pretty good climbing there too lord of the rings return of the king [Music] [Applause] [Music] when you're in a helicopter shooting a shot like this it's not just the camera person especially one with this big of a move the aerial dp um is making calls on the radio with the pilot as well and they're probably sitting together or at least dp sitting in the back seat of the helicopter being like okay crab left crab left grab left and it just means that the helicopter is kind of crabbing like rotating around this thing and it's trying to keep one level so you know these kind of shots the the heli pilots have to be as good as the dp in a way and usually they're a team so they work together a lot i'm sure peter jackson had resources to to have like a very very good aerial dp and a very very good heli pilot so very cool shot just kind of wrapping around and then they kind of pull back that's probably the hardest shot in there shooting in the mountains is in particular is is very difficult for aerials um because the mountains just topographically are obviously like very mountainous so that means that there's a lot of air moving especially in the evening and in the mornings when there's like a differential between the air temperatures so that means there's uplifts or down drafts those happen to be the best time to shoot in the mountains for light there could be a ton of turbulence i mean these gyro stabilized cameras are amazing they have like 16 gyros in it so even when the helicopter is kind of bouncing around but you know if you're trying to do a really steady move in the mountains and you're like moving over a ridge that then has like huge updraft like it's complicated there's there's a lot of things that you have to think about when you're when you're when you're filming aerials in the mountains and it's dangerous and you need really high-powered helicopters probably like a b3 which just means like a type of helicopter that's got a lot of power because the air is thinner at altitude and there's a lot less lift for the helicopters sometimes when we fly aerial shots in the mountains we really trim down the crew take strip down the helicopter make sure most of the weight is just for the dp that pilot maybe the aerial director and then the big gyro stabilized system camera system prepping for something like this this is it'll probably start on a storyboard and then the dp and the director and then the heli pilot are all probably sitting down with the a.d and everybody else but principally talking about like what are they trying to achieve in this shot then how are they going to achieve the shot and oftentimes you know when we have something like that's this complicated we'll focus on like okay this is what we want to achieve this is how we're going to do it we're going to do a safety shot which is like kind of our most kind of conservative way to shoot this shot and until you get that kind of safety shot in the can um you're not trying like all kinds of other stuff but if you feel really good about getting you know i think we have that shot and then you've got a little bit more budget or time in the moment because you know if it's like an insane sunset or like in this case like crazy cloud scenario which might or might not be cg once you've got your safety shot and you feel like you've nailed that then you can move on to like trying a few other shots that you might have in mind or the dp really wanted but didn't want to risk you know blowing the shot point break this is a shot at chopu which is a very notoriously huge and gnarly uh gnarly wave i remember hearing a few friends who were on this production as as the surfers or running safety on this thing when point break was being made a lot of people i guess in my sphere worked on it this is big you know kind of action adventure sports movie so a lot of people in the industry got the call and to come shoot on this project they brought in kind of the best of the best who shoot each of these individual sports which is definitely a smart idea because a this is what they shoot they know the angles they know all the different ways it's been shot what are options and what are not options because sometimes the director might come in and be like so i want this shot and as a dp you you really try to to get that shot but you know there are limitations to places like this or activities like this in terms of how you can shoot but you're always trying to push you know what's a new angle that's never been shot before and and what what would it take to get that shot and then you try to figure it out when you bring in a uh someone who does shoot this stuff it it serves multiple purposes again because they know all the angles they've shot at chopu a ton of times a ton of seasons they know when the rights you know they're tracking the swells they know when it's going to be huge they know what seasons there's all kinds of things that are tied into shooting you know at a place like this because it has to be perfect conditions which is challenging you know it's like you can't just make this thing happen and have the wave breaking as big as it is right there you can keep it authentic and and hopefully they're also consulting on like this is what they do this is how they would be on the boat this is what they would wear this is how they would talk this is you know these are the things that they should be talking about if they're on the boat i'm sure they have all kinds of consultants not just you know the dp talking about it but the you know having someone who shoots this sport this lifestyle this place uh has huge advantages lawrence of arabia it's incredible to see you know how much space you're given in this shot it's quiet there's only a few words spoken but you know there's so much tension that happens just in the way that they shoot it there's all the suspense in what this figure is and who that figure is coming through the the mirage there it's interesting because the like in the sahara and in desert landscapes like this the the landscape is really uniform this happens up in the um in in like huge snowy places like and plateaus on like in tibet as well everything is so uniform in color you know it's sky and sand or sky and snow so when there's any thing that breaks that up your eye is drawn to it and in this case you have this like perfectly framed figure all clad in black breaking up this like very desolate landscape and so you know your eyes immediately drawn to this thing and you can't tell what it is the character can't tell what it is but it's coming towards you and seems like imminent danger shooting in the desert has its challenges too you know one of the things that has gotten me and and um happens i'm sure on productions instead of dealing with rain and moisture and like lenses fogging up you're dealing with this really fine dust particles that get into all the mechanics of the of these lenses and they somehow infiltrate everything managing sand is one issue and you get these sandstorms uh like in the sahara the the harmon winds come in and it's just you can't really see and it blows this ultra ultra fine dust sand and it penetrates everything like these zippers break because you can't even so there's there's challenges there and then the heat is can be debilitating as well the beach [Music] [Music] in general we're small crews um and pretty low profile when we're especially in like remote locations when we're shooting bigger commercial shoots or shoots where you have like 50 to 100 or you know you do have to think about you know how you're going to impact an area particularly if it's in the wilderness so you know i think there's just like basic principles of like leave no trace i'm sure that now there's a lot of restrictions and guidelines about coming into a place like this but when you're shooting in countries where there's there's fewer regulations you kind of have to take it upon yourself to kind of you know mitigate your impact and kind of carry that ethos of leave no trace and and making sure that you know you're leaving an area the same or better than you found it thanks so much for watching these clips with me hopefully you learned something and until next time

Channel: GQ

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Keywords: 127 hours, breakdown, climbing, el capitan, free solo climbing, free solo movie, gq, gq breakdown, gq jimmy chin, gq magazine, gq the breakdown, indiana jones, into the wild, jimmy chin, jimmy chin 2021, jimmy chin breakdown, jimmy chin breaks down, jimmy chin free solo, jimmy chin interview, jimmy chin the breakdown, lord of the rings, rock climbing, the breakdown, the lord of the rings, the revenant, Cinematography, free solo, survival, expert, explains, explainer, outdoor, movie

Id: oQ4_IW69cLg

Length: 23min 4sec (1384 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 30 2021