How Lawrence Sher Filmed JOKER // Behind the Scenes

all right so we're starting a new series uh where we're gonna break down movies commercials um all sorts of stuff but with the people that actually worked on it so uh the first one is going to be with like an up and coming um just like starting I just shot some small stuff like uh The Hangover movies uh War Dog Godzilla um what else was there like I don't know Joker Garden State yeah that's nothing that's another Indie indie film small stuff this is the first episode of how they filmed that where we break down movies TV shows and commercials with the people who were actually there making it telling the real true BTS the secrets of what happened on set and how they created these incredible filmmaking masterpieces that First Take collapses to the ground which is what you see in the movie day three perfect and he just turns Todd and he goes all right I think that's a wrap and first up we have the legendary DP Lawrence sure and we're breaking down one of the most iconic movies Joker [Applause] what's up guys all right this is you can't even look at this what is this Larry I want to give it to you man I want you to flip through here you got 60 seconds I'm gonna I'm gonna put a stop okay yeah we just finished like a month ago can I show the front cover no yeah I just don't know I got a fake shirt oh no there's shots on the back wait we gotta find a way for you have to be at a a oblique angle to not uh it says Joker Folia Duke probably I do it means crazy for two I just realized what I'm getting myself into you can't do this together well yeah because if you stay too long you'll know everything that happens in the movie we gotta make sure 60 seconds for real eh yeah here we go go oh my gosh oh my goodness I'm wasting time I'm wasting time oh my God I'm seeing too much already I feel it this is the secret knowledge that uh I'm not supposed to know of oh my gosh what are we at what are we at Larry County eight seconds you might want to flip ahead you can't see any of this that's it no more that's all you get oh that's like you can spend a whole day with uh you'll have a chance in a year and a couple months when can we do that shot breakdown we'll do it uh November 1st all right I'm here I'm coming back in October so we're gonna talk about Joker Joker you just showed me stuff that I'm not allowed to see about the future we're gonna talk about the camera that you use the lenses that you chose and we're gonna break down a few of your favorite scenes because we want that secret knowledge sure I want to give the audience a little bit of what I just got uh we'll go as deep as you want let's talk about camera what camera did you guys shoot the joke around and why yeah we shot most of the film 80 90 on the Ariel Lexus 65 we started guns the big guns we brought out the biggest sensor in the world um I had shot that camera on Godzilla and I'm worth another small time micro indie film uh and that also so had it already been out you know it was like a movie that had you know a film that had used that film and I remember even legendary at the time we did Godzilla was like no we know this camera but in a weird way the camera was like uh it had like a stain on it because it had done that movie The Great Wall which was also a legendary film and they're like yeah we shot with a different reasons big dumb camera and that movie failed miserably like sometimes you're like is it anamorphic that hurt the moon where did we that's like one of my biggest questions Larry is like so much money and time and some of the most talented people filmmakers on Earth make something and it just doesn't turn out and what why I didn't do the Great Wall but certainly legendary was like this is not like so they weren't 100 on board on shooting necessarily with this massive sensor so you had to convince I had to convince him on Godzilla why why were they just I think I think because it's like it's expensive it has like a lot of media management stuff so do we really need this a lot of things exactly that it's fundamentally like as Bob Weinstein once said a director friend of mine was like I need a million dollars to do reshoots he's like is it gonna make the movie better and he's like yeah he goes well make me more money and it goes I don't know and he goes I don't give a [ __ ] I don't give a [ __ ] if it makes the movie better I want to know will make me more money which is always hard it's all about the money yeah so what what made you want to fight for it then well I the minute I saw that huge sensor it it spoke to and this is really why Joker ultimately why I think we shot with it was it spoke to this idea of portrait photography of that you know in Intimate scenes between two people yeah the way you have like a large format still camera Mia or whatever I had a large format camera in 120 or even larger film 4x5 or you know Ansel Adams eight by ten yeah that sensor and the idea that you're shooting wide shots on an 80 millimeter or that kind of idea I thought was gave an intimacy and almost a three-dimensional palette to the movie so the idea of shooting on Godzilla we did anamorphic on Joker we knew we were going to shoot 185 from the start that was not really a question between Todd Phillips and myself what was what was the we bought 185 like we shot all the hangovers two three five spherical rarely had shot at Todd Shot uh anamorphic I think he did on Starsky and Hutch and maybe school for scoundrels but generally speaking all the movies I'd worked with them due date all the hangover movies and War Dogs all all spherical but together we both were like 185 feels like the movie maybe because we knew it was going to be a lot of close-ups it wasn't so much about scope as much as intimacy that was we're in agreement there but then film was really where we thought this is what we're gonna do so what lenses did you end up with then our lenses were a mess our lenses are like that's not what we like to hear yeah you didn't have it all figured out Larry I had none of it figured out because you know early days in the world of area 65 because so much of area 65 then becomes about coverage yeah you probably don't have that many to choose for very few choices particularly in 2018 or 2017 maybe when I first started prepping the movie we shot in 2018 there's dnas which are great but dnas at times weren't fast enough close focused enough there were some issues like that so I went to Airy rentals where you get the cameras from uh because you can't buy a area you can't just go to the store and be like oh God but a 65 please yeah it's like the way Patterson did where they don't sell them it's very proprietary freaking Airy but they obviously sell lfs and all that but a 65 you still can only rent yeah and and so that was a big part of it uh so obviously we had some dnas this ad DNA which is a really great lens was a was a Workhorse for us and I think we had a 28 DNA and we had some other ones but in between it was honestly reverse engineering our camera package or a lens package based on need so speed what what is fast enough because we want to work a lot with available light okay and in in locations where we didn't want to do a lot of lighting yep uh close Focus because we knew it was movie and you want to be close you want to be physically close because particularly since now you're shooting a you know a 60 or an 80 mil Lens two feet away yeah because it's a wider field of view yeah you want that to be able to close Focus to two or whatever two feet yeah there's a huge difference in the feeling of like actually having the camera close or just being a little bit further away and zooming yeah I don't know if you guys know that but I mean it's like there's a fundamental difference to the audience's psychology that's why we're on 16 mil right now because I want the people to feel like they're here with us they're hanging out that's exactly right and that was a big criteria it's like we knew physically the camera would be closer so the close Focus matters and so we had Arie uh and my camera assistant Greg uh Irwin basically search out lenses that would cover the sensor and cover really for us 185 even though we shot the full 2.2 sensor we knew we were mostly working in 185 uh and so we had cannons and we had leica's and we had we had this nikor 58 which even on the new Joker and really we bounced a lot of those lenses over the new Joker along with some spoke lenses that autonomins built that are these old hasselblads that they now call autoblods which are like all full frame yeah really close focus it could be a little faster Auto but they're working on that but generally speaking these sort of like lenses that we had which ran all the way from like a Aries signature 350 to a Leica 280 to uh like a 100 not like a 90 macro 50 Cannon it you name it right 35 Canon CP so when you're testing these lenses out what do you look like what's like this is the one instead of this one vintage-ish right which what does that mean it just means not perfect right and that was the specific look for this film I wanted it to feel like a lot large piece of of like going into the movie was movies representing 1981 Gotham which is you know we were shooting in New York yeah so I grew up in 19 you know I was born in 70 81 I know it vividly I know what New York felt like I was just outside the city in New Jersey so I had a really good memory of that so I wanted to feel like that kind of movie so it's like okay what kind of lenses were built in that day so not looking for super sharp new lenses new glass some of the older that was a criteria so looking for imperfections was a good thing yep but really A lot of it was also oh good it's close focus it covers it's like just functionality by the way you know not everything is not creative in a weird way the functionality of lenses is a huge part of the choice right sometimes the biggest decision functionality plays more of a part in a weird way of My Lens choices than you would think and I get a little bit like lens fatigue there's so many lenses and honestly uh it's so hard to differentiate them it's just not a tool to help you so you end up bringing six sets into the lens into the prep and and there's you know there's differences but I get why Deacon stays with Master primes I get before I went you know away from Panavision a little bit it was such a beautiful thing to just shoot on Primos Primo zooms and I never had to make that decision ever again yeah now it's like 150 lenses to choose from it's a lot all right so we know what camera lenses let's break down some of your favorite scenes or I don't know scenes that you thought were interesting before we get into your favorite scenes tell me a little bit about your philosophy kind of your pre-production like you you're starting to prep for a movie how do you go about things because I know nothing about that and I think it'd be interesting yeah so first up get the script and then I read it of course that's usually that's important yes yes and I immediately start thinking of I start basically two files right I start a file that's very it's like my Bible and it's basically I'm going to create a tool uh with the help of some guys that will help this a lot more but until then it's a very sort of manual process of like a Word document or whatever and I basically rewrite the script into each saying has each scene has a page okay right and and and within it has all these categories yep and those categories I start taking notes right from the start and that's high level stuff like feeling like one will be just a category called creative one will be camera grip electric special effects straight to the like yeah how do we do it the crane shot I'll just put crane okay a lot of it is just first instinct as I'm reading the script for the second time and then the second thing is just is starting to build like a deck of visual references right yeah so back in the day I would go to a used DVD store and I would rent or buy this is way back in the day I know what I'm saying DVDs yeah well it is it's 20 years ago easy maybe longer 25 years ago um and then I would go to a bookstore called Arcana which is in Los Angeles still exists and I would look for you know maybe photo books or you know sort of those kind of references anything I thought might be inspirational for the movie and sometimes I'd buy a book that's just great as a piece of art yeah that might have one shot that's referential yeah but it was something you know something to inspire you if I was doing Dukes of Hazard I went and bought like a a book uh about like you know there was all photography from the south right Mississippi and just to get a Vibe for things that might inspire me and show that and then I would create screen grabs from the movies of things that were conversation starters or inspirational shots or something that might help me start to organize my thoughts about how to shoot Vegas or how other people have shot Vegas so I could think about different ways of shooting Vegas whatever it would be and then from that came this program called shot deck this website called shot deck which I started building simply because we I needed it to exist in a way that was searchable and functional and scalable and and now I use that to basically do that reference stuff there was no tool for you so you just made it yourself and now you've given it like given the power to us mere mortals I'd be like that's like that's kind of what happened here well because I figured if I needed it other people needed it that's right yeah and and we're also in need of a better more efficient tool like that but even today like even for the new Joker this happens on every movie I'll think like oh man this movie doesn't exist on shot deck so I'll break them down myself right so you know there'll be a brand new movie I think we literally just released one from the heart which is an old friends for Coppola movie um and I broke that down for the new Joker and and because I wanted it to exist so it was part of the conversation right whether that was images ended up really influencing the new one in part maybe they did they became a conversation starter for me and Mark Friedberg the production designer and Todd as we scouted in those early days and so even if it's not sitting there as a reference that you're going to take on set and go I want it to look just like this it's just like brain food yeah it's like dream food and that's really the main thing so what I'll do is I'll literally and you can see in here I can't see anything larious I know it's just kidding I think I explained you it doesn't record the dirt yeah people at home won't see the dirt I mean you can see how literally dirty it is probably if you get the right angle but I'll start a master deck that'll let's say be Romeo which is the working title for for the first Joker and I'll start creating decks for locations wait first hold on where does Romeo come from you know every movie generally has like a working title yeah and and where is wrong well the second one the working title is Juliet okay you gotta feel for it yeah I got I got a little bit of a okay sorry sorry Todd knows where Romeo came okay it was called Romeo and uh so this is what you're doing like right you can even on here like if you go to all my decks you can see like my master deck for Romeo and in there literally I start with all kinds of things I'll build the deck just for composition one for tone one for lighting one for close-ups one for composition overheads and then I'll start building some things there yeah so composition or you know is just a deck that I started building from the start right I can right away that's interesting I can see you can start to see inspiration yeah exactly okay yeah so you'll see there's just like this shot from Dr Strangelove was like a very early shot I'm not sure this kind of a shot maybe in Joker yeah but it just intrigued me as a thing right so it was like hallways or Reflections and mirrors that reflection of mirror shot never shows up in the movie yeah but it was just things that like often I'll start with brow shots I'll start with some movie I've never heard of and anything that captures my attention I'll just start to you know pick out and populate the deck sometimes they never get referenced right just things to sort of feed them it's interesting because if you showed me any one of those single frames I wouldn't think Joker right away right but you showed me this board I'm like okay I understand like what like um I get the you know yeah so I do that basically for for all across the movie you know color references you know and and then it becomes something we share with each member of the crew so I can send this deck this master Deck with all the sub decks to the production designer even to the ad has an account so Todd of course and they're adding their problems well because the props I'll say oh you know we need this journal and we'll have some references of journals or you know costume Department every department has an account and then we share with them stuff that then they can add notes to or I can send this to Todd and say hey pick five shots to really grab your attention and what's so effective for that is no matter who you are even if you've got a lot of Acumen in describing stuff even if you're working with a colorist that knows everything about color yeah sometimes showing the thing is going to be way faster to explain what you're looking for hard to translate what's up here without showing like trying to describe it in words it could be interpreted oh I like extra Headroom like Mr Robot but how much yeah yeah you know but if somebody starts like if you say hey just find a bunch of compositions that you like or over the shoulders that you like you're going to learn a lot if they build a deck of what grabs their attention and you as a DP can interpret that much better because you start to like see oh man they're really gravitating towards closer overs you know where the the person over the shoulder that you're focusing on is in the center of the frame right those kind of over the shoulders yeah where the you know as opposed to spread overs you know where you're spreading the frame across them yeah and it and they may not even know that they're communicating all this information to you but you can figure it out by all the ways in which they they choose things working with Todd do you think this so I assume this came this came early days Todd and I would talk about this all the time that there should be thing yes and then when they had 5 000 shots we would you start to use it on like War Dogs was the first time this was early early beta when you just started coding it and so for those early days it'd be like oh well we're going down to shoot El Centro for our worst stuff that's supposed to and we also shot in Morocco oh well let's look at other movies that were shot in El Centro so right American Sniper or you know uh a lot of these other sort of movies that take place in the Middle East and so it was a great reference of like oh that's how they did it let's try this differently Let's uh you know yeah I feel like that collaboration is probably way easier for you guys now versus like when you started out working together well every movie I'd worked on at some point it was like remember that movie remember that shot yeah and it just didn't it yes you could go to Google you could go to some other places but to get not just that shot but other shots that were in the same setting or the same environment or the same shooting location yeah that was what we were just typing it out and looking it up instead of going to the DVD store getting the DVD oh yeah I remember when we were making Godzilla king of the monsters we were like we were having a conversation me the director and the writer well you know this is one of those scenes that happens in every movie like this science fiction movies where it's a lot of jargon sitting around a computer kind of like we are now yeah and like oh well you know that's like basically in every Bourne movie yeah so he yells the director he goes out to his assistant go ran every Bourne movie and cut out every one of those scenes well we by five days later we'd already figured out how we were gonna shoot it it took it yeah at the ready yeah so um so yeah and I gotta say every like professional director DP that I've talked to recently they they all use shop deck everybody well or they at least know of it and they're like I've used it before for sure but I think in a way because like I always say well Roger Dickens doesn't need this this site to get a job uh it's really the filmmakers students you know younger filmmakers to me that's the thing that I wish I had because not just as a pitch deck tool or whatever it is but really because it's just a place for inspiration that's still I go on just about every day because now because we have such a great team scaling it and putting all the movies in there are movies that are curated by our team that I've never even heard of so it's a Discovery Place for me too I find that we get uh our film on the movies on someday what's that I think I'm sick I think I'm sick yeah it's a movie it's as long as it's a movie it's a proper movie it's more than 80 minutes long it's good yeah we curious that's a baby yeah I mean from what I saw in the trailer it looks like it's got some great images yeah let's get some let's get some of your you the most memorable favorite whatever something something scenes go in here yeah so a good example of you were asking about lenses before and even the choice of lenses and even when we're talking about proximity you know the opening of Joker where he's we find him in his sort of the employment center where they send the clouds out and he's putting on his makeup this proximity thing you know this lens here on this shot is r58 which is like our favorite lands right so the 58 it's a Nightcore it's a t13 super fast close focus is to I think 11 inches so yeah real close really close this is probably 18 inches but that intimacy that physical proximity to Joaquin here makes a huge difference it's like a weird reaction to these shots where you're kind of like you're kind of like disturbed by it but it's especially because you're so CL you would never be that close to somebody doing something like that well yeah because really open the whole point is like we're telling the story of Arthur Fleck so everything is about his world so even the guys that are around talking you know all this sort of other clowns that are getting ready they're all in the periphery right so everything here is meant to stay with Arthur physically close to him yeah when we cut to the next scene which is when we find him out now in Gotham Square you know which is like Times Square uh with his going out of business sign we now make conscious effort to get further away right like now he's part of a much bigger World we're distant from him and seeing the world the way others see him right which is just like a speck a Fleck yeah for that matter yeah uh just in the middle of a sea of of other people right so hence longer lenses further away so now now we shot with multiple cameras as opposed to the single camera obviously once you get two or three feet from somebody gonna be hard to shoot many many multiple cameras but interestingly enough this over the shoulder generally was shot at the same time as this we would cross shoot a lot yeah and that's just for a performance sake just so that Joaquin didn't have to do it a lot of times yeah it's also anything Joaquin did never rehearsals nothing like that you were seeing it for the first time live so you just wanted to make sure if he did it once and he never wanted to do another take we got it so I would that must have been an experience oh it's so fun and even more this new one's even more like that all right so it's the best thing about it because he's such a great actor but it's also exciting it was exciting I think even for for Lady Gaga for Stephanie to be in this environment where it is like shooting something live in a way yeah it's like a performance in a different kind of way you're not you know super super fun way to make it go back and I've heard you talk about the the oh yeah that that well that's a good example though right now we did shoot this probably three times but on the second take first of all he's he's like ripping his mouth apart right which obviously is is too many times yeah and this this little tier of makeup that fell down his face I just remember when we shot that thinking well if that doesn't make the movie I'd be by yeah that would be crazy that was incredible I mean everyone sort of looked at each other like that was cool that was magic yeah and we would think that you guys did that no no no that was for sure plan it's got some symbolic significance that they thought of beforehand and their Geniuses no the symbolic significance which is like in this shot here is I remember seeing this meme online where and you can kind of see it here where those two eyes and this little like shadow of the thing yeah look like the Batman and I've seen it and I go wow that does really look like the two eyes of the sorry was this planned no but that's a perfect example of the internet creating something where I'm like God I wish I could say that because you really start to see it no that's all I can say of course that's just these are geniuses how did you come up with that that's that's cool I love that is undefeated uh yeah in that regard I was like that's pretty cool no no that was not planned oh for sure um but anyway so in this the whole the idea behind the scene was to put ourselves at a distance see him as he's seen in the world so we're shooting with three cameras long lenses even zooms now so that we can get even further away on Long Lane you're shooting multiple cameras because you can now because you're farther or because just functionally having to in that location whatever whatever you know what it is it's all it's Auto because you can it's something you can see in Ridley Scott oh Tony Scott of course is one of the benefits of being on longer lenses is they don't get in each other's way yeah and the nature of how we shoot anyway it's not like we suddenly change everything when we go in for a close-up we just keep shooting and so we're not doing a lot of cleanup we're not changing we're not bringing in a bunch of lighting yeah so we can shoot something on a very long lens and a close-up as well as something wide at the same time and if they stay out of each other's way and so Ridley Scott will do it with eight cameras you know and I'll shoot entire scenes head to toe and get basically every piece of coverage by just just shooting with such long lenses yeah and I love it we started doing that with Todd and I going back to due date and the hangovers and we just like some of that long lens style yeah so in this case this hero shot here of him is you know is with a crane sort of away from the other cameras on a longer lens like the 150 yeah or even this shot might be on the 280 but even this shot here is at least as long as a 150. similarly you can sort of feel the sort of separation from us from him yeah and the idea was to take it all the way through there and also there's a just a versamillitude that happens when you're shooting on a longer lens further away right it's like it's the fly on the wall perspective that I think really really has a psychological effect on the audience you know where you you feel further because you're further away you feel like you're witnessing something the way we witnessed yeah what's happening over there those kids are chasing somebody what is that yeah yeah so further away as opposed to if you have like the the um you know the complete freedom to put the camera anywhere which we do because we're making a movie it just has a little bit of a different psychology yeah um and the only time we break that so now we're traveling on a grip tricks which is you know like a little electric car and we have a small jib arm with a stabilized head so this is one camera there and we are leading the other can so this is a stabilized head here this is another camera uh on a on a Steadicam but also you know a longer lens and it's not until we get into the alley and it's not until even after the alley that we finally break and go back to a wider lens and it's only when he's on the ground after the kids have beat him up and that's because it's his perspective or now like he's now alone because they've left him yeah and we're now trying to get right back to the sense of connection with this with this sad man who's you know who's just trying to get by and he's getting signed stolen and he's getting beaten up and all this sort of stuff that's going to sort of put us in in his frame of mind this all this overhead shot here you know in a way maybe it's like I do remember consciously thinking well we're not making a comic book movie yeah but one thing I appreciate about comic books and certainly graphic novels is that you are telling the story frame by frame yeah and even though we don't use storyboards we're not big on that we do shot lists I did like the idea of like trying to find in every scene a frame that could help tell the story yeah and so this would be maybe it's a little bit Dutch maybe in the style of comic book but subtly there's a later shot that when the when you know young Bruce Wayne dies in the traditional you know scene where his parents get shot in the alley that we sort of repeat a little version of this shot as well but this little shot here where the camera pulls away from him is we're back to that 58 millimeter the favorite ah so this is a low techno crane it's like the technocrane 30 I think I recall super on just super low yeah exactly like we may have even we did this a lot on the new movie but we may have even done which is sometimes you have to do is basically flip the camera upside down so the lens is even lower on the ground because even if you put it in low mode on like a librehead which is what this is it still doesn't get you low enough so you can under sling it and sort of like Get It even even further such a good perspective I love it you know what's so weird about this shot and I see right here flower you know water comes out of it um right yeah when we were shooting it because we were rushing because we didn't have a lot of time yeah we were barely gonna get this shot to make our day so you're in the Heat of the Moment I'm just trying to make sure technically we got it we get enough takes that little bit of water that comes out I never saw when we were making it oh really I only saw it when I saw it on the big screen I was like oh my God there's like literally like a squirt thing coming out of his flower and it was only until seeing the movie on the big screen when I was color time and nobody planned for that no no that obviously there's water in there but what's funny is there was something between Todd and Joaquin interesting he never had to communicate to me yeah because it didn't really matter for like you know but and and because we're pulling back and we're getting further away and I'm looking at on a monitor yeah they operate yeah I just never noticed it was a nice little surprise yeah it was great I was like oh that's a nice touch yeah um great scenes for you like that some of those scenes are like as soon as somebody says Joker like those scenes like they're just like burned in your brain and if you go back to that original Bible that I talked about those were some of the earlier notes right like um you know let's shoot longer lenses multiple cameras I think I even had in there like add a third camera on this day you know uh add grip tricks because I knew he'd be running and we'd ever yeah so all those sort of early days of like even figuring out special equipment I would put in early in the Bible and they the Bible never never stops yeah the Bible continues all the way through shooting because that's what we use to organize our thoughts the whole way through and that's the Bible is to keep things cohesive so it doesn't feel like everything the Bible is right or it's honestly like a Dropbox for ideas so I never erased anything in the Bible I might exit out right I'll create a shot list and then when I when I have time with Todd to create a new shot list I keep my old shot list and then I write Todd's shot list or I write a new shot list but it just it's a depository for like so I always remember what my first idea was yeah and then I always have just a bunch of information but but functionally it becomes the first start of like creating a special equipment list because invariably you're organizing them movie the A.D the line producer everybody needs to know how many crane days you need yeah how many extra camera days you need do you need special lenses so it's just it's it's a functional piece a lot yeah it's a lot in a movie it's like half the time I'm gonna go back to shooting my YouTube yes I have a GorillaPod I got a microphone 60 to 35 a7s3 yeah I have to think a lot about like what there's a lot of moving parts of this yeah it's a it's a it's a it's a it's an undertaking every movie in terms of the logistics and so a lot of your job is logistics during prep yep because that's really what you're spending most of the time doing is making sure everything's prepared for the day of shooting yeah and then the day of shooting is pure fun and creativity mixed with abject like stress and fear of like one failing and two like running out of time because time is always when you're shooting yeah yeah that's the one thing that I learned from the the feature film that we did was that like if you have the logistics and all that stuff set and you're good with that then there's room for like the art Artistry and all that but if you don't have the the logistics and all that no chance for Artistry no that's that's exactly that's a perfect way to describe it a really good point because even that goes towards flexibility right if you make a plan you could throw that plan out yeah but because the plan was made under a time of less stress and more time yeah that's that idea of like longer lenses this and that right that that will still come through the next plan when you have to throw it all away because the idea the emotional idea where you have time to think about it that's the most important thing to come across yeah so when everything changes you still want that to be to you know and I'm sure working with walking like things aren't always planned and so like you have to just like no and you throw and also you don't have control right one of the first notes I made about this shot which is like the wide shot and this whole scene was like noon bright sunlight sweating like but again I didn't have control of the weather yeah and we're not gonna like wait till it's a sunny day and you know and it rained halfway through this so you got cloudy Moody I got cloudy but also was like oh [ __ ] if the rain comes then yeah so like and the sun came out at a point yeah yeah you can just go I can't control these things so that's not not going to be part of the plan is yeah it's a sunny day yeah but that's fine because in a way it's better and sometimes that's the best thing that happens for you yeah all right let's move to the next scene sorry guys for the longest video ever but I think we're like we're 40 minutes into the second we're just gonna put this the whole thing uncut I always thought there'd be edited I can talk underwater no I love this I don't even I don't even care if I love this is awesome this is so good yeah so this is a good time people have also just planned versus trying to figure it out you know this in every movie certainly that I've done there's always scenes that are sort of logistically the thing that you keep kind of returning to right you're like how are we going to do it here's the idea we want to do but how the heck do we do that exactly and so this is obviously incredibly pivotal scene in the movie where he's just gotten fired from haha's after the gun falls out of his pants in the hospital with the kids and we find him on the subway these kids are picking on a girl they end up started picking on him he shoots two of them chases one into an alley it's like changes his yeah path right it's literally the most important pivotal moment scene and when Todd and I talked about it besides Logistics stuff he said you know I just want it to feel a bit like a fever dream and me having grown up in Jersey just outside of Manhattan and riding on a lot of subways but also prepping the movie or riding on subways yeah he's sort of always obsessed with how Subway light changes sometimes you go through a tunnel sometimes you go through a station sometimes the lights turn off and this idea of fever dream I kept saying well I want full control over this Subway yeah and which logistically is tricky well it's impossible except if you build the subway yeah so you built the subway station we built a mile and a half yeah exactly how you do it yeah that's Hollywood guys yeah yeah now you can take over a Subway there's like one track in New York that you can actually oh really and we shot like later when he shoots the cops and all the other Jokers are in their masks and he's trying to sort of get to Murray Franklin that we shot on a real Subway yeah and that was going back on the same track and if you wanted lights to go off and on you literally flipped a light switch you had somebody in another car with like a master switch and you go like kill them like this and that's how you like control the lighting but you don't control anything else no fancy that's just yeah and it's like you have you basically have to reset it's like doing a real live driving shot and and intuitively Todd and I were like that's not gonna work for this scene there's too much important acting going on too much control so then the idea is okay will you take a subway car you put it on stage yeah you put black out there you put some Chase of LEDs you make it feel like and that also has worked I've done it it's been done in good movies yeah but for me it was still feeling like it was gonna feel a little cheap yeah and a little bit compromised it's a little too poor man's yes a little bit yeah and also blue screen would have sucked because then suddenly all you're feeling is the the artifice of the stage yeah particularly for his performance that's what I was going to say for the actor like first time going on a uh like going to a volumetric wall and like I instantly I realized for actors this is incredible like to see to be able to like be in the space versus just a green screen or blue screen behind you like that changes everything changes everything it's kind of the most the thing that makes it the most value right yeah is that suddenly they don't feel like they're in a movie they can feel like they're on a real Subway so did you guys put volumetric like whatever and this is also one of the things that is tricky about you know being a professional cinematographer on let's say bigger movies the logistics making the special equipment this is all part of the job it's all the nature of the beast but also kind of like bartering and negotiating for things that weren't part of the original budget so the first step is like I think we should build a volume yeah the second step is no we can't afford it this is what's in the budget third step is how do we afford it yeah fourth step is we'll kill a shooting day okay we'll do that fifth step is find the prg panels and negotiate with them to put it in New York which is very expensive yeah and then start like literally this is when you become an engineer along with like the LED guys at prg you start figure out how many panels we'll need how big it's going to be how it gets rigged then the line producer goes this is getting too big we can't afford it figure out another way then you fight some more and you go back and forth like this problem for like a month and a half that's all so much of filmmaking is just problem solving like how do we like you know and like yeah there's an aspect of like creativity in that but it's just like how do we make this it's the best part of the job I mean the creativity is of course awesome yeah but in a way and it's the best part about the cruise that that we're able to work with and to me everyone who goes into filmmaking generally has that Spirit yeah like a can-do spirit and a problem solving Spirit like everything is like improv you know an improv it's like yes and because the minute you say no everything stops yeah I feel like everybody I work with and everybody who I've worked with over years their General attitude towards life is yes yeah and that's what happens so it's like okay how do we make this work the next step here was well how do we get plates yeah because in order to put something on the volume need plates yeah the subway plates are what's actually showing up that's exactly right so now we need the path that they're traveling on that's going to go on the Windows outside of their of the car which is now a box sitting on stage yeah and the subway people in New York were like well you can't shoot plates anymore since 9 11. huh yeah interesting so I started trying to shoot plates with my iPhone and then like a better camera out the window but they weren't working that great because you couldn't shoot them like as a yeah as like with enough to like put on this yeah but they were great references yeah so this is where again collaborators like our VFX supervisor Edwin we both were like well how do we do this so then we thought well what is movies except for 24 still frames a second so we started going to Subway platforms and made a panorama so we shot we'd walk two feet to the right shoot another frame two feet to the right shoe another frame straight up photos that's it just a huge Panorama that was like four seconds long if you treated each one like a frame and then it's looping or and then we put it into a timeline and then we put five timelines one was like a sodium vapor subway station one was a white Subway tiled station one was just a sea of Flores fluorescence made in Photoshop and then we could basically in real time push a button and change what the background was while he was performing so like here is this is a scene where they actually pull up to the subway and you can see in the background here the subway the pla like so now we're pulling up to a station and you start to see it slow down yep that's literally the video content player we like are manually slowing it down and then stopping it and that's just a still back there yeah and then that woman gets off the the station and we ramp it back up until it gets back up to speed and then here those lights going off and on we're doing on a dimmer of course and we're just killing them yeah sort of in real time not on any sort of like cue that's been set just based on feeling or just watching the scene so this was all shot single camera Jeff Haley was our operator uh again this is the 58 our favorite lens and uh and and now we have full control so I can control the lights inside and turn them off and on as it will I can also control what's outside those those so as they start to take off and now they're back up to speed and the Train's moving along you I can now change it to a white tile station I could change it I could turn the lights off to create tension and yeah and all that stuff and so it was like magic yeah we were sort of DJing the scene as we were making it so all those like little fluorescents out there are just still still shots on a timeline now when you see that you see some of it do you see do you see what we see or do you see it as like well those are fake or like no because you've done it so well that you don't even see that oh it's just a photo yeah I mean I think the hardest part was will Todd be happy yeah Joaquin be happy because I hadn't really done this before right and and I sort of pitched it not necessarily knowing if it would work so we only had the night before it actually finally see this timeline idea and what we learned is it didn't look sorry you had the night before night before and that's when they got months before yeah no no no because first of all they every time every day you have this equipment there is like a hundred thousand dollars cash again my producer was like we can't afford this month ago so so every single moment mattered so it was like I don't know 5 p.m the night before we were shooting where we realized there's something about the background that doesn't look right and we realized it was missing motion blur oh yeah I had to like add motion blur overnight and then reprocess it so it wasn't until the morning of shooting that we could finally go is this going to work or not yeah um but what was great is Joaquin and I mean when you were on it you felt motion sickness you felt like you were on a subway really and Joaquin loved it and a scene that we had two days to shoot we basically shot in a day so it also saved it the logistics and then you have more time for Artistry that's exactly right and it made the whole shooting of it way more seamless and allowed us 360 and we could just keep him in the performance and really make a difference and I think that that's a combination of technical stuff helping hopefully you know the artistic side of it in a really good way and so good they're negotiating and the sort of like the bigger part of or one of the biggest parts of of being a cinematographer which is collaborating with people and yeah and working with people where you don't kill each other it kind of makes me happy that you're saying things like we didn't have budget oh there's never by the way there's never a budget big enough every movie I love it I've done 200 million dollar movies three times they still um like you can't afford it trust me you can never there's not a movie that has ever been like anything you want boss but you know a lot of times for you know my my like level of filmmaker it's like well if I had you know we could do whatever we want but it's like it's nice to know that like no it's always there's always going to be limitations it's always going to be the same problem solving a little bit different obviously but like man yeah I love it well the worst part is I don't have the if I had because I can't use that excuse yeah you can't even go like oh I've only had one now it's just a test of are you good or not that's exactly right now there's no excuse yeah it's like I can't believe they made such a shitty movie for 200 million dollars yeah that that for sure uh I'm sure has been said many times not about this one all right let's let's go to the last last one uh we got we're at 52 minutes now you're not great there's editing no no no editing YouTube you see how the sun went down we could we can adjust the uh just a little bit but we're good we're good oh you guys don't have a good app for that no this scene right so this is like a little scene post killing those three guys the Wall Street three as we would say on the call sheet um he then runs out of the he runs out of the subway if he first he has to chase down this one guy and make sure he's not going to tell anyone take him out so he ends up so this is a transition so we're on stage this is now our stage and then you can still see an inner cut of real subway car so this is stage real subway car so that little cut right there went from stage on one cut to a real subway car in the other so this is real subway car this real subway car and now we're in a real subway platform to make this transition happen um and then he basically shoots that guy and then runs to the bathroom and the bathroom obviously that's an iconic people I've talked about a lot but this scene there was something I really was interested in um in shooting in this little like chasing scene that on paper is a little bit of just exactly that it's just transitional it's just a way to get him to the subway yeah and I remember because on like the second or third day of shooting in the alley outside of hahas this shot here right is this third day of shooting okay right end of the day we've already shot inside and it's Joaquin kicking something behind a dumpster the script says he's kicking something is it a dead animal is it a person is it a trash bag we have no idea that's the First Take he basically tears his his like ACL yeah and he basically collapses to the ground which is what you see in the movie and then he says so he actually got her in collapses or he just what do you see here day three day three perfect and he just turns Todd and he goes all right I think that's a wrap we end up shooting another take with his double didn't work but what we realized because Joaquin would never tell anyone you see him grabbing his knee yeah he [ __ ] his knee up bad and he lived with that busted knee the whole movie and all the running scenes with all the stuff shoes uh so cut to this scene and it's like a Friday night everyone's tired and Todd God bless him is like a perfect uh like he has a real Keen sense of what he needs and what he doesn't need but he's also just like he's he's he we don't shoot long days we don't shoot a lot of like that you know yeah so it's a little bit of like and on this day I remember him going God do we need the scene and I'm like I we need the scene partly because I was like I think we need the transition for the like what I would say would be like an emotional like energy burst yeah between the two scenes but he was making an argument like but I could cut this out of the movie and we probably still would work yeah and this is where a little bit of my selfishness was like yeah but I had this idea of like this shadow on the wall it was like this idea from early days that I still want to accomplish but also in the Bible it's in the Bible but also I was like I was like I think you could shoot this scene all of what we need this day which was a whole day of work in four hours so I said if you can give me four hours I'll do everything we need and I we created it all me and my gaffer Steve Ramsey and all my whole team we basically figured out a way to LeapFrog every shot we needed on this night exterior so that we could finish before lunch yeah yeah and he's also like and Joaquin can't run and so I'm like well he doesn't have to run at high speed because the nature of how we're going to shoot it we'll never know yeah and so I'm like and so I say to Joaquin I go don't worry about it you can run it whatever speed you want yeah we're gonna shoot it with two cameras leading you a wide shot with the crane on a stabilized head and then a longer lens at the same time and he goes and I go just uh let us set the pace with the camera card he's like there's no it doesn't matter if he literally was like he couldn't walk when the camera goes like action there's no stopping him and there's it's like every bit of pain either goes away or he suppresses it because and then even after the first take I'm like you never have to run that fast again every time faster and faster and it's funny because the inspiration for that shot not that you know we took it exactly but I remember Todd and I both were like this leading shot which is really an emotional frame in the movie of him running towards camera and really like yeah almost releasing it our reference there was that this is America Donald Glover you know Charles Gambino yep even though if you went to that child's Gambino shot which is Awesome by the way it lasts forever yeah it's not the same angle it's not that yeah it was the emotion of that shot that we really there's something there that was like a talking point for Todd and I how did Todd feel after then once you guys did this was he alive I mean it's in the movie yeah if if he was like I don't need it it wouldn't be in the movie yeah no I think it was just it's like it's to some extent it's not even it's the part of the job is like recognizing yeah that like on this day the best thing I could do was be fast right yeah and I and then for me it was like could I be fast and also get some of the stuff I want to accomplish creatively but the speed was more important because it was dealing with like you know Joaquin and Todd both were at a place this the the movie is very exhausting particularly for Joaquin yeah where you know you could make an argument to get rid of it and and yeah but instead it was like okay I could be we're tired let's just skip that sometimes oh man yeah I can only imagine and and particularly when you're outside in the elements when we're inside we could go we're tired yeah come back the next day and do it yeah yeah when you're out doing the location stuff you know you're not coming back the next day yeah hey gotta get done yeah man Larry all right we're at we're exactly 60 Minutes that was it is that how YouTube works yeah that's 60 Minutes 60 Minutes 60 Minutes no I thought it just shuts down no you can put more ads on it after 60 minutes that's perfect good dude thanks so much for uh doing this with me uh I'll be back when uh yeah oh man I can't I can't wait uh yeah thanks so much for your generosity your time and thanks for making freaking shot deck hey thanks for using it thanks for uh thanks are we gonna give him like a code or something like that is there like a like a free trial or something well these are some trial you don't even need a credit card two week free trial but we'll give a discount code I'll try to convince him for a discount oh no they'll be a distance all right thanks so much on the next one I guess see you guys thanks can I get another peek of that book yeah sure yeah foreign

Channel: Matti Haapoja

Views: 580,494

Keywords: matti, haapoja, travel, feels, tutorial, filmmaking, photography, photo, premiere, film, cinema, cinematic, learn, drone, gimbal, camera, sony, canon, panasonic, videographer, youtuber, vlog, vlogger, vlogging, lifestyle, gear, tech, joker, lawrence sher, larry sher, cinematographer, bts, behind the scenes

Id: 227R6H0nRS4

Length: 55min 13sec (3313 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 20 2023