By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com
Weather or not: the light of many Worlds
Variety profiles 2005 lensers, including Declan Quinn; Phedon Papamichael; Rodrigo Prieto and Janusz Kaminski.
Kaminski: “It has to feel real to me… The biggest challenge to any cinematographer is to tell a story that reflects the written material and to have the ability to fully understand what the story is about and then find the cinematic style and the individual storytelling that the cinematographer brings into the process. The trick is to fully immerse yourself and be able to enrich the story through nonverbal language, which is what cinematography is. Occasionally you see a movie that is completely inappropriate visually, where somehow you feel you are looking at romance, but there is no romance onscreen. Or you feel that you are looking at a movie about beauty and there is no beauty in the photography… Frequently as a cinematographer you end up restraining yourself.”
The New World took advantage of inclement weather to an unusual degree, writes Variety’s Anthony D’Alessandro, with the shoot surviving “four hurricanes, a tornado, floods, gale-force winds and a Virginia heat wave. All of these conditions contributed to Malick’s design for capturing the harsh environment encountered by the natives and settlers. “The motto of the film was to allow accidents to happen; to capture the slowness of life, the changes of season, the awareness of rivers flowing and the shifting of clouds,” says World lenser Emmanuel Lubezki. When Lubezki interviewed for the job, he convinced Malick that the only way to achieve a naturalistic look was to shoot the exteriors without any lights. “Terry’s response was, ‘Are you crazy?'” … But hurricanes gave way to gorgeous skies. And the soft light from overcast conditions proved perfect for capturing actors’ faces… Above all, the least of Lubezki’s worries was matching shots. “There’s an absolutely incredible shot where big clouds with thunder and [lightning] are rolling in, and the camera slowly moves into Pocahontas’ face. The frame tells you everything that’s happening inside of her.” [Jon Bonné of MSNBC has an overview of Malick’s career here.]