Based on the 1952 novel The Price of Salt, Carol tells the story of the relationship between two women, an aspiring photographer and an older woman going through a messy divorce in the 1950s. Director Todd Haynes brings the intimacy and the sensitive to the story with the help from cinematographer Edward Lachman. Lachman, who has worked with Haynes on Mildred Pierce, I’m Not There, and Far From Heaven, has brought his own distinctive style to the film with his choice to use Super 16mm instead of going the digital route. It’s not the first time that Lachman and Haynes went the 16mm route, the duo also used the same camera for the HBO mini-series, Mildred Pierce. By employing the use of a camera that’s unusual in most Hollywood films, Carol stands out among the rest, cinematography-wise. Deciding to stick with film for Carol, the cinematographer wanted to invoice the atmosphere and the feeling of the 1950s and the movies that came out during the time. Sticking with Super 16mm, Lach...

  Emmanuel Lubezki for Birdman "The whole movie was thought-out to be shot, the way it is shot. It’s not something that happened posteriorly, it was how Alejandro wrote the movie. His other movies are very cutty, sometimes he uses multiple cameras. His movies are wonderful and beautiful, but he wanted to do something different with "Birdman." I don’t think we could have done this movie a year or two years ago. The ALEXA camera and the ALEXA M especially, allowed me to do handheld for so long. The fact that you can record media for so many minutes and also that the video system gets an image that is so clear for the director…It allowed us to do the movie. Otherwise, I think it would have been probably close to impossible. I wanted the movie to look as naturalistic as possible. We did not use movie lights. It’s all light bulbs. All the lights that you see in the set are the lights that are lighting the scene. These cameras allow us to do that because the dynamic range of t...

  Director Joe Talbot and screenwriter Jimmie Fails met in grade school and became close friends as teenagers. Talbot convinced Fails that his family’s story was worthy of a 90-minute-plus run time. They have a shared love of movies, skateboarding and their multigenerational connection to the city. Fails and Talbot have made their debut. Their films provide commentary on issues plaguing the Bay Area, such as gentrification, racial tensions and race relations. They join the cinematic wave of contemporary Bay Area filmmakers whose projects focus on these issues. Cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra shared "We spent a lot of time going through references for the film as well as scouting iconic locations, but what it came down to was devoting ourselves to creating a beautiful, romanticized, modern-yet-nostalgic vision for the city. We picked impressionistic times of day to shoot our exterior set-pieces, and sought out areas that reflected the tone and energy of each scene. The locations...

I Am Love was developed by Guadagnino and Swinton over seven years. It was shot on practical locations in Milan, San Remo and the village of Castel Vittorio, near the French border. The filmmakers’ visual touchstones included Gustav Courbet, Russian Constructivist Kazimir Malevich and Italian painter Giovanni Boldini. "We wanted the feel to be rich and majestic but not luxe,” says Le Saux. “We didn’t want something that would look like a commercial, with too much light, too much brilliance.” “From the beginning, we talked about the two worlds,” recalls Le Saux. “The world of the Recchis is strict, with more contrast, wide angles and a colder feel in the characters’ relationships. For the countryside, Luca wanted natural light, longer lenses, more close-ups and no depth-of-field, and we strove to be open to catching everything that happened on set.” The Villa Necchi Campiglio was designed by Milanese architect Piero Portaluppi and is now a museum. The Filmmakers had to use natural ...

  Yorgos Lanthimos is the Oscar-nominated director of "The Lobster" and "Dogtooth". His movies generally deal with characters pushing the boundaries of the systems around them. In "Lobster" he envisions a world in which being single is illegal and lawbreakers are transformed into animals of their choice. While that may sound absurd, it’s also typical for Lanthimos. "So this film, for me, was mainly about having a certain kind of voyeuristic look to it.  We decided to just try and keep the camera as much as away from the actors as possible and not have it in their face.  Usually we had the camera either lower or higher than their eye lines. We used long lenses, and a few times very wide-angle lenses—extreme choices. We created a visual language that we felt was particular to this film."  Thimios Bakatakis’ cinematography captures through deep-focus shots, muffled sepia-like colours and wide angle shots the sombre mood and the lugubrious atmosphere...

  “High Life” portrays a different sort of expanse—the vastness of outer space—resulting in an absence of sound that may seem emptier yet is no less nuanced and revealing. Cinematographer Yorick Le Seaux talked about his collaboration with Claire Denis and how her ideas and insticts make her a great director. "Claire usually doesn’t like to move the camera much. Her ideas and instincts are what make her a great director. While shooting High Life, she would walk in the middle of the set as an actor would to feel the scene from inside. She can feel where the energy is, and where the best camera angles will be. She lives from the inside of a scene, so whenever she would say certain words to me, or give me even the slightest indication that I would have to follow her lead, I would." Claire wanted the film's yellow-tinged lighting to look organic, so the last 3 to 5 minutes of the film were shot in 35mm. "Our scenes that take place in small rooms and small beds called for...