In this series I take a look at the careers
of different directors by comparing three of their films shot at increasing budget levels. Quentin Tarrantino is a globally recognised
director known for his uniquely stylised directorial traits, which are easily identifiable throughout
his filmography. These traits include: snappy, crafted dialogue,
paying homage to pop culture and film history, provocative violence and non-linear storylines
shot with an inventive, yet carefully formalised camera on 35mm film using anamorphic glass
from Panavision. In this video break down the funding process
and his approach to shooting Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Once Upon A Time In Hollywood,
to identify the similarities and differences between the three films. This video was made possible by the fans on
Patreon. If you would like to support the channel and
get early access to these videos please consider supporting by following the link in the description. Otherwise, liking or commenting would also
be a great help. While working at Video Archives, which rented
VHS movies, Tarantino also wrote screenplays and deepened his cinematic knowledge by watching
films...lots of films. During this time he made his first independent
feature, My Best Friend’s Birthday, in 16mm black and white. However a fire at the film lab would destroy
most of the film which he’d spent 4 years making, leaving only 36 minutes of unreleased
footage remaining. This film would go on to form the basis of
the screenplay for True Romance. With the $50,000 he got from selling his True
Romance script, he planned to direct another of his scripts, Reservoir Dogs, in 16mm with
producer Lawrence Bender. Bender got the script into the hands of actor
Harvey Keitel, who, after reading the script, came on board to star and produce. The script then got accepted into the Sundance
Institute programme which helped the film’s development. This, combined with Keitel’s involvement,
enabled them to raise a production budget of $1.5 million and attract a solid cast. Tarantino played to his strengths by crafting
the script around a low budget. It features minimal locations, with most of
the film set inside a warehouse, no large budget set pieces and a contained story - designed
to be shot with minimal resources almost like a theatre performance. The film, which revolves around a bank heist,
cleverly uses a non linear script to avoid showing the actual heist, which would be an
expensive scene to shoot. What the film did allocate its $1.5 million
budget to was: its solid cast, a couple of real locations, a standard crew of film technicians,
film gear and 35mm stock. Reservoir Dogs was shot by Polish cinematographer
Andrzej Sekuła - his first feature. He used Panavision and Arriflex cameras with
the fine grain Eastman 50D film stock. He shot on spherical Panavision Primo lenses,
although the film was distributed with a wider 2.39:1 aspect ratio. Shooting Super 35 saved the production money
on film stock, which is eaten up more quickly when shooting in the anamorphic format. Sekuła’s lighting style is quite brash
and stylised, not at all naturalistic. Most of the scenes use strong direct light,
probably from HMIs with minimal diffusion. This creates highlights in the skin and strong
shadows. His sources sometimes even come from multiple
directions, which can be identified by looking at the shadows. While some, who are acclimated to the soft,
naturalistic lighting of today, may be put off by this, others may feel that the brash,
gritty lighting helps enforce the hardened, rough tone of the story. The camera covers the story in a similar style
to the rest of Tarantino’s filmography. He opts for a mix of traditional coverage
of scenes in stable wides, mediums and close ups with other more stylised custom shots. Such as the opening diner scene which appears
to be shot on a circular dolly or a scene with Keitel which he lets play out in a long,
extended take. Coming off the success of Reservoir Dogs at
Sundance, Tarantino met Danny Devito who took an immediate liking to him and agreed to come
on board as a producer on his next film. He used the money he received from directing
Reservoir Dogs to take a trip to Amsterdam where he rented a room and wrote for 3 months. Director and friend Roger Avary joined him
there where he contributed the storyline about the boxer. In what became a bit of a contentious issue,
Avary was reportedly paid $25,000 to accept a ‘story by’ credit, so that Tarantino
could maintain the prestigious ‘written and directed by’ credit. The concept for the script was based on mixing
trite story conventions with a more realistic contemporary world. “[The idea] was basically to take like the
oldest chestnuts that you've ever seen when it comes to crime stories the oldest story
about the guy's gotta go out with the big man's wife and don't touch her. You know, you've seen the story a zillion
times.” "Part of the trick is to take these movie
characters, these genre characters and these genre situations and actually apply them to
some of real life's rules and see how they unravel." DeVito passed the script on to Miramax who
came on board to finance with a budget of $8.5 million under the terms that Tarantino
could maintain final cut and the final decision on casting. Tarantino made the unlikely decision to cast
John Travolta, whose career at the time had gone through a bit of a dip. After a lot of in-fighting at Miramax, who
pushed for Daniel Day-Lewis, Sean Penn or William Hurt to take the role instead, they
agreed to Taranino’s casting demands. Bruce Willis, a big star at the time, was
so keen to work on the project that he agreed to taking a supporting role and a drastically
reduced salary - far from the reported $5 million he’d just made on Die Hard. Sekuła maintained his role behind the camera
and, with the increased budget, was able to shoot in the anamorphic format this time. Once again he shot on Arriflex and Panavision
cameras with Eastman 50D stock. They used the Panavision C and E-series anamorphic
lenses, which Tarantino would often use throughout his later career. His lighting was similar to that in Reservoir
Dogs, sculpting strong pools of hard light from big HMIs which he pushed through windows
or hit characters with directly, seemingly without much diffusion. This created a high contrast look with lots
of hard shadows falling across the face or against surfaces. For day exteriors he didn’t seem to do much
and was happy letting hard shadows cast by the midday sun fall across faces. A lot of Pulp Fiction again used classic angles
and shot sizes, photographed by an operated camera on a geared head off a dolly. Although once again this coverage was mixed
with inventive custom shots, such as extreme close ups which draw attention to details,
using a Steadicam for walk and talk sequences and throwing in specific low angle and high
angle shots. They mainly used real locations, although
the famous dance set piece at Jack Rabbit Slims was a set constructed on a sound stage. It was an expensive set build, which a large
portion of the art budget went to. So, Pulp Fiction’s increased budget was
used to fund larger production design builds, pay for a more well known cast and the anamorphic
format over the longer production timeline of the extended script. Tarantino’s goal was to create a $25 million
looking film on only an $8.5 million budget. He did this by keeping the story at a manageable
level by writing realistic, yet fantastic, set pieces which took place largely through
dialogue or performance as opposed to using large stunts or locations. Pulp Fiction won the Palme d’Or at Cannes,
made over $200 million at the box office and exploded Tarantino’s career. He went on to make many higher budget films
until settling down to write Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. Using the leverage he’d gained in his career,
from a stream of financially successful films, he managed to secure an incredible $95 million
financing deal from Sony. He would, as usual maintain full creative
control, have final cut and receive an incredible 25% first dollar gross. This is a rare agreement nowadays, where the
filmmaker receives a percentage of the gross box office revenue from day one, without having
to first wait for the film studio to turn a profit. So what demanded this increased budget? A large part of it was due to the increased
scope of the story. Robert Richardson, Tarantino’s regular DOP
who was hired to photograph the film, described the scope of the shoot: “The vastness of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood
was epic in its demands.” “The many sequences required ranged from
replicating fake westerns in black and white to fake westerns in colour, as well as dance
sequences from television and dark night shoots.” “In this respect, it was one of the most
complex films I have shot and it constantly pushed me.” The main storyline of the film was captured
in Tarantino’s favoured 35mm anamorphic format shot on Kodak Vision 3 stocks with
Panavision anamorphic glass. They used C, E and the modern T-series glass,
which has a heavy contrast, sharper resolution and increased close focusing ability. The television series was shot with 5222 black
and white stock in 1.33:1 with spherical zooms. Selected home movie sequences were also shot
on 8 and 16mm Kodak Ektachrome. Richardson used the budget to craft the light
in a very controlled way using large rigging setups and lamps. One example is the interior of the saloon
set. To control the level of ambient light seen
when facing the windows and prevent the highlights from blowing out, his team erected an enormous
charcoal grid cloth over the street. This prevented excess sunlight from hitting
the background or buildings. The scene was keyed by 3 18K HMIs on a truss
held up by a condor crane, so that each source hit a specific window. Inside, the actors were filled in by booklighting
a Maxi Brutes with muslin. The largest lighting setup was a night exterior
of a car on a stretch of highway. For this extremely expensive shot they closed
down a piece of highway from dusk till dawn and erected 9 80’ condors. Each condor had 2 Arri T12s, which created
pools of hard light and softboxes containing 24 1Ks to fill in the areas between the pools
with a diffused fill. On top of these enormous lighting setups,
the additional budget also paid for an all star cast of some of the most expensive and
in demand actors, a variety of real locations, large art department builds, a big Los Angeles
technical crew to setup the complex rigging and lighting, and expensive grip equipment
from crane shots to shooting car to car action. Quentin Tarantino is a director who has stuck
to strong stylistic trademarks throughout his filmography. From Reservoir Dogs to Once Upon A Time, his
movies are suffused with snappy lines, pop culture references, great Hollywood casting
and acts of violence shot by a visually inventive camera. The financial limitations of his earlier films
drew interesting creative solutions from him, such as using a non linear narrative which
eliminated the need to shoot large, prohibitive scenes. Like many iconic filmmakers, he has seen a
steady rise in budget throughout his career. This has enabled him to write larger scripts
free from budgetary restrictions. Whatever he can imagine he can probably get
the budget to shoot. This may or may not be a double edged sword,
as less money sometimes necessitates coming up with creative solutions which may make
a film even stronger. Even though it’s unlikely to ever happen,
I would personally love to see Tarantino produce a film set in modern times at a lower budget
level, which is where I feel he most thrived in his career. Regardless, his filmography is undisputed
and will go down in the popular culture canon of movie history that Tarantino himself so
ideolises.
As someone who has a toe dipped in the industry, the lighting stuff was particularly interesting. I think that's maybe what the average viewer underestimates the most. Lighting is complicated, and absolutely integral to every single innocent-looking shot.
Was hoping the video would focus a little more on the technical side of filmmaking instead of production trivia.
It lists the equipment used, but doesn’t really say what different types of camera bring to the table, what an anamorphic lens does, the tricks used to create the illusion of a higher budget etc. It’s a shame because I love the idea of the video.
This was an exceptionally well made and informative video!
My mind was blown when he showed the photo of the lighting setup for the night driving scene in Once Upon a Time...why would they need to light the entire highway with those giant crane lights when the highway lights are already there and turned on? It can't just be because the street light color temperature was bad because it looks like there was significant color grading done on the scene anyway. Are the street lights just not bright enough for the lenses they are using? I wouldn't expect that to be the case, with such expensive glass... but it must be...
I can't imagine how much that scene cost to light just to make it look like it was lit by the street lights that are actually there :D
Can’t fully explain why but out of all the Tarantino movies “once upon a time in Hollywood” is the one I like to rewatch the most
Is that Hiroshi Yoshimura playing in the background? How obscure!
Still baffles me how much money it costs to film. 1 million for Reservoir Dogs? The hell he had to pay the state half that money for using locations? Did the rest go to props,effects and cast?? I honestly want to know
Me, who knows nothing about actual film production: "Ah, 5222, of course".
I wonder what the first two come out to be with inflation.
Such an awesome director