The BEST Cinematography Advice From Roger Deakins (His Philosophy of Cinematography)

[Music] it's not just do it because it looks pretty that's the problem i mean that's a problem with all cinematography you don't ever want to go on a location scout thinking first primarily where's the light coming from that's that's death i think there's times to move the camera there's times to follow a character and there's times to stay back and allow that character to observe that the audience to observe that character within the space [Music] i think photography's not about creating beautiful shots it's about creating a film that sustains the feel all the way through without you know without without bringing taking the audience without losing the audience yeah i mean that's the trick and i think if you know if somebody says oh well that was a really great movie that's what i want to hear not oh wasn't that a brilliant shot or wasn't that brilliant you know a brilliant brilliant camera move or brilliant photography because then i think really that's it's taking the audience out of the film they've not really seen the film as a whole piece you know yeah i mean it's also like when somebody says oh i love that shot and i go oh dear that's wrong man isn't it you shouldn't love a shot not not first off it should all be part of a whole that's that's my feeling you know so simpler as simpler i think it's usually better yeah especially if you haven't got a big budget you know in a way that's my failure because you shouldn't really nothing should specifically stand out you're trying to put the audience in a world that they're immersed in and everything should flow as a piece i think people confuse pretty with good cinematography what was it freddy frances says there was good cinematography and bad cinematography and then there's a cinematography that's right for the movie and i often feel that actually people if reviewers don't mention your work it's probably better than if they do it means it actually works because the film is a piece and you don't i've never really been big on technology technique i mean maybe technique but not technology you know what i mean i i don't know much about workings of a camera um i know about you know rgb lab work and stuff but i don't know much about pixels where they come from and how they exist and you know i enjoy reading about it but go straight through i i know i you know i love images and telling stories with images and how you move the camera and framing what difference does a you move the camera that way that little bit what what difference does that make to the effect it has on an audience are lights here or it's a light here or so here what is it here or you know it's back here what difference did what diff what do those differences how do they affect the scene and their audience's perception of the story and their immersion in that story that's what's interesting not whether it's 8 mil 70 mil alexa red camera i don't iphone i don't really care you know that's that's that's part of it but it's not the essential part of it they aren't very much to the mind if you've got sometimes you can have too much stuff you can have too much technology and too much surrounded by so much crap you never actually get the film made you know i mean i really think that happens a lot you know i don't like to flash i don't like to use a lot of filters i mean i just like life to be the way i see it you know without you you're you're dying it goes back to what i really wanted to do when i first started was i mean i love seeing things and picturing things i love the way reality is and i just want to sort of take reality and record it really you know rather than play around with it what you do you make the best of it which i again i think i'd draw on my documentary experience to to make it work because i know actually you can make a film without any lights without anybody you know just with the camera if you had to you just have to be careful choose your light and choose your moment and choose the angle in a sense that you know you don't want to have bigger stench ostentatious camera moves and stuff it's it's much more what's happening within the frame it's a more subtle thing than that really i think anyway but whether that comes out in the result i don't know that that's where i kind of come from in a way sure i think there's times to move the camera there's times to follow a character and there's times to stay back and allow that character to observe that the audience to observe that character within the space you know what i mean i mean he doesn't always want to be wandering around with a steady cam uh you know sometimes it's actually a distraction sometimes it would be stronger just see keep this camera static on a wide shot you know sometimes it'd be bet the actor sat down and you just looked at his face instead of he's wandering around all these wonderful locations that's the balance you know that's just that's the trick my philosophy of cinematography and and when sometimes i see cameras doing these amazingly elaborate things i think well why you know when i go back to antonio jean-pierre melville when the camera moves there's a really deliberate point to what it's trying to say to the audience by doing by making that move or creating that composition and i i think we we tend to forget how powerful imagery can be in that way you know how it can be used to to to bring more to the table and you know there's some of the parts you know i've said this a million times with people when i was shooting in a rock and roll and all right videos and stuff if the band was no good you would move the camera as much as possible but i was filming muddy waters once and i didn't want to move you know or bb king you don't move the camera because why do you need to because that performance is so magnetic you just want to look at that face and and the guy so i think that's you know that's that's a silly anecdote but i think it does play to you know if you're if you're shooting a great performance you don't want to move the camera in a way that's going to distract the audience from being in that character's mind you know with that character do you you know so simplicity is the best way to go really i don't think i have a style i've discovered ways of lighting that sort of work for me you know like i look at this lighting it's great but i wouldn't do that you know to me and i'd do it a different way but that's all personal but that's not really a style i don't think i have a naturalistic style i i hope i have a style that suits the the project that i'm on i mean i work on a film set on a new movie and i think it feels like i've never done it before like i'm learning you know so i i don't think i've got a style any any way a film looks as a product of the prep on that look on that film and how that sort of developed as we've gone along it's also also not necessarily about creating total realism i think there's a difference between in a way naturalism and realism i mean you go out in the moodle at night that's not what you imagine it looks like if you really study it that's not what the audience necessarily expects to see in a film or that's not necessarily what you actually want to show them because you want to concentrate on a certain aspect and you want to you know create a certain mood so and you're not the thing is with lighting you're not always trying to completely represent reality in fact often far from it um but for me anyway i want to create a reality yeah i want to put the audience in a world that they believe that appears like it behaves the way the real world does to their eyes the light behaves the way it does in the real world uh it's not something that suddenly they jumps out there's suddenly two shadows from one sun or or you know all those multitude of color lights with no justification i i don't i don't like that sort of world i like to create a world that the audience can be immersed in and can believe it but it's not necessarily the world that i see out here now you know that's the difference and that's especially i think applies to night shooting and and it's very hard to recreate exactly what night looks like because your eyes behave so differently in low light levels you know so it's a very interesting um issue really what is what is real and what is the what is the way you want to create for the audience what do you want to create for the audience you know i think it's a mistake in that sense to try and create something that's ultra realistic or ultra naturalistic to the world we actually see at night i think you create your own version of it really how you interpret it and like you were saying i i don't really like a frame where everything is kind of so dark it might be realistic unnaturalistic it's muddy and dark and that's what you would see if you're out there on a really black night with no moon and a cloudy night sure but do you want to show the audience that i don't know you know so it's your interpretation of it i like it to feel real and i like feeling the ca i like within the scene somewhere to know see that practical or see the window to know the justification for the light in the space my peeves is that so often you you're taken out of a film because it it's not that the lighting is too stylized or anything it just doesn't feel real i don't know where that light is coming from i don't know why it's there you know um you often see a wonderful blue backlight and you think well where's that coming from uh it it's not like it's wrong it's just not justified lighting i think all cinematography should should kind of like just dissolve into the movie somehow shouldn't take you out it shouldn't be um something that stands out in any way you know the danger is that that that takes too much priority over the script and the director's wishes and the scene you don't ever want to go on a location scout thinking first primarily where's the light coming from that that's death you really want to be feeling does this work for the feel of the scene can you imagine the actors in this space can you imagine the blocking i mean you might have had long discussions with the director prior to doing a location scout about maybe specifically about scenes and how you imagined shooting them like whether you're going to do a scene in a big wide shot and allow the characters to move within the space or is it a more dynamic scene where you want to do a lot of cuts and maybe it's a lot of close-ups so that you think about the space in in those terms first i love what connie hall used to call happy accidents you know you're in a set and suddenly the light starts slashing through a window and even even if you don't use that natural light you suddenly think now that's it i didn't think of that so you maybe cut that light off and put a lamp to do exactly the same thing so you can have consistency conrad hall was great on this he was great on this he said you know he sometimes you really want his films to look ugly to to to capture something that we don't really that we normally shy away from in making movies you know ugliness can have a certain beauty as well it's a strange sort of dichotomy going on there really you you have to spend the time in prep you have to think it out you have to work it out technically it becomes like a you know you write a battle plan i mean the sequence i'm talking about in um no country i spent you know mornings and nights going down looking at locations and figuring exactly what shot i was wanted to do on what time of day and i'm then i fitted a whole chart of these shots as to when i wanted them shot because some of them were done with the second unit and we were doing something else and some of them were done at the beginning of the day at the end of the day so there's a whole jigsaw puzzle and you plan the angles i mean the whole that whole thing was storyboarded although i mean we changed things on the day but you have a basic plan of action every day you're going to start the sun comes up here we're going to start with these shots and at midday what we can do these in the car and then as the sun goes down we can shoot this way i mean i don't think i've ever been on a film where you've had something in your head and the final product has been it challenges you it challenges you and it changes the final result and that's probably a good thing because i don't think there's anything worse than going in with this sort of set idea of what it should be and then it's just like you're doing it like painting by numbers you know the old painting by numbers things that you used to do you know that's not yeah it's not fun but it's also i don't think creatively interesting i like to have thought things through in my head beforehand but also i also love spontaneity i don't want to be tied down to something i mean obviously on certain situations you have to have often you have to put a rig up you have to know somewhat basically what you're going to do otherwise i mean you just know where you're gonna do some of these things on the day obviously but i i do like on the day to feel that um i'm open to what happens on the set and i think a lot of people still look at lighting in this way um which was a front light key light back light fill light kicker light you know um but that's not really that's not really with the essence of lighting that's that's the way of creating an image that you have in your head so it's the image that you have in your head that's more important than the technique if that makes sense so i think to really understand light and be able to light you have to understand how it makes you feel you could light it a million ways but what do you want the audience to feel that's the important thing what's the script what's the story what's the scene what's the individual shot you're shooting and what do you want the audience to feel with by what you do with the camera that's what's important not you know key light feel like backlight you know and and i think we're all guilty of starting to light and think that's nice oh well i put a little kicker on here a little backlight oh then i can put a little card here or bounce something in the eye then i'll do this and you realize you've just destroyed you've destroyed it it's become some piece of confectionery instead of something that's really simple and direct and that's what i kind of go back to looking at people's stools photographs and what you like and for me the best stools photographs it's kind of the ones that just strip away all the things that might the photographer might see on the periphery of what is around them and concentrate on that one little image that says more than you would if you showed it in a big wide shot with a lot of other things yeah well i i've got a very strong feeling about lenses and personally i'm sitting here talking to you and you're filming me from over there on the shoulder and i'm probably a single where i'd rarely do that because i think you know the camera wants to be to me i would shoot singles inside here unless it's for a particular effect and then i'd drop back off and be more observational with a shoulder in i mean i think it's a totally different effect to an audience looking at somebody on the end of a 100 millimeter lens as opposed to some somebody it's been being shot on a 27 close to or 21. i mean it's just the the the same as your relationship in real life to somebody i'm saying this close to you i'm not i'm not seeing you from over there on a long lens you know uh so i i don't think we take that into account as much as we should really now the thing about the lens choice it's this sort of psychological thing and again i said like i say it's the the effect you want to you want to create for the audience how do you want the audience to feel what's their perspective on on the image you're showing them and that's why i mean i don't like shooting multiple cameras most of the time obviously you have to do it on certain stunt shots or um or sometimes it's good to do two camera we did quite a bit of two camera work on um dead man walking but um i think you have to consider why you're doing it and what that effect is not just do it because it looks pretty that's the problem i mean that's the problem with all cinematography there's danger with any cinematography not with all symmetrical danger with any cinematography is that you get swept away by the prettiness of something the attractiveness of something the coolness of something oh if we move the camera like this it's really clever or this light looks great but then oh this looks better on a longer lens because it's all out of focus and we can put something in the foreground it always looks really pretty but is it right does it really help the story you know it becomes for its own sake that's the danger i'm not saying everybody does it but that's the danger and i sometimes have to stop myself

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Keywords: Roger deakins, cinematography techniques, roger deakins cinematography, deakins, video essay, cinematography, lighting, cinematic lighting, best cinematography, cinematography tutorial, director of photography, cinematographer, roger deakins interview, roger deakins oscar, cinematography tips, what is cinematography, roger deakins masterclass, roger deakins on lighting, roger deakins movies, cinematography style, film lighting, Filmmaking tips, Filmmaking techniques

Id: p6zWyxNrHO0

Length: 18min 37sec (1117 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 18 2021