Oscar Blitz 2024 – Cinematography

When I first started learning about media and communications, it was so I could work on my high school’s public access broadcasts of football and basketball games. It was like, the one advanced thing we had going in this semi-rural community. All of our home games in the three major sports had full-on productions where you could watch the game from home (this was especially awesome during the harsh winter months) with full commentary like it was ESPN or something.

I was incredibly excited to learn how TV cameras worked, how to assemble them, how to interpret different settings and effects in the viewfinder, and even though what I saw was in black-and-white, I knew it was going out to the entire region live and in color. It was the coolest thing I ever got to do, until my senior year when I actually got to call a couple games.

This carried on into my college years, where I studied TV and film while also working for the university’s AV department. I would occasionally get hired out to grab a camcorder and record lectures and guest speakers for certain classes. For the first month of each semester, the law school, which had its own mock courtroom with a closed circuit feed, would “rent” me to run their control room and record their introductory trial law classes and moot court competitions. You could tell which kids spent their youths watching Law & Order, because they were the ones who learned real quick that real proceedings don’t play out so dramatically. The professor took an almost manic glee in objecting to every imitation “gotcha” moment, because no judge would actually allow such theatrics in an institution where facts and effective argumentation of theory rule the day.

I also learned a hard lesson between my studies and part-time job. I was NOT cut out to be a cameraman. I had been fascinated with them ever since I first saw a home video camera that my uncle brought with him when he, my aunt, and my cousins visited us in the summer of 1990. The idea of capturing living moments rather than still photos is part of what put the Hollywood dream in my head at such a young age.

But the reality of the art and science behind the craft was more than I could really process and retain. This was especially true when it came to lighting design. To this day I can’t tell you how to properly light a scene, even if it’s just for a simple interview. All I can do is look into the camera and see if I get what are called “zebra lines” that tell me that the shot is too bright. No mater how many times my teachers and bosses tried to drill it into me, it never stuck, and it wasn’t for a lack of trying.

I think about that a lot when it comes to the Cinematography category. A film’s director is typically the one with the creative vision, but it’s the Director of Photography who actually executes it by running the cameras and getting the shots that the filmmaker comes up with, either in his own mind or by sketching out storyboards (I also suck at drawing, so that was never going to work out for me either).

While I’ve never really attempted to do it beyond student films, I’m pretty sure that if it came to it, I could direct. I can imagine angles and scenarios and shots that I’d want to see. But I’d have a bitch of a time actually doing it. Whenever I think of this, I’m reminded of an anecdote Kevin Smith shared during one of his famous An Evening With Kevin Smith specials. In one of them he told a story about when he worked on Cop Out, a job he took because it meant working with Bruce Willis. The two ended up butting heads a lot on the set, particularly in one scene where they were changing the camera angle, and Willis wanted to know what lens was going to be used for the shot. Smith held up his fingers and thumbs to make the rectangular shape that people use to frame the shot they want, but he couldn’t tell Willis exactly what lens that required. “You don’t know your lenses?” scoffed Willis incredulously, sending Smith to his DP David Klein (who worked on most of Smith’s movies to that point) to ask what specific lens. Klein basically replied that it didn’t matter, and asked if Smith demonstrated the “close-up” finger square that he had already done. This is because they had an understanding of each other’s role in their work. Smith thought up the shots, while Klein handled the technical aspects. Willis found this to be both amateurish and stupid.

But that’s me, too. I can come up with an idea and describe it, but I sure as shit can’t draw it or figure out the logistics of actually filming it. That’s why I remain ever impressed by what cinematographers can pull off. There are some directors, like Steven Spielberg, who have that true “cinematic eye” to sort this out themselves. They know what they want, and they can tell their DP to just point and shoot. That’s about as far as I’d ever get in that regard. If you put me behind a TV camera, tell me where to point, and how far in to zoom, I can probably fake it enough to make it seem like I’m not totally incompetent. But beyond that? Yeah, I’m fucked.

This year’s nominees for Cinematography are…

El Conde – Edward Lachman

This is one of only two feature films up for the Oscars this year that I did not see before nominations came out. The other one is Robot Dreams, which I will hopefully see this weekend (private screening, I have an RSVP “ticket,” but it’s first come first serve when I get there, so I’ll have to show up early to ensure good line position, and even that might not be enough, as members of the theatre where it’s playing get priority). I had initially ignored it as part of my “Big Red N-velope” miniseries on Netflix’s FYC campaign, as it was in Spanish but wasn’t submitted for International Feature, so I assumed it was out of contention. How wrong I was.

A satirical allegory positing former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet as an immortal vampire who yearns for his own death while his children fight over his estate is an absolutely batshit idea, but Edward Lachman does some incredible work making it feel legit. The black-and-white photography gives the whole affair an aura reminiscent of the classic Universal monster movies of the 1930s and 40s. You can picture Jaime Vadell as a sort of counterpoint to Bela Lugosi, just as ruthless as Count Dracula, but with none of the charisma. It’s a fantastic visual irony that Lachman puts front and center in almost every scene, especially in the Wes Anderson-esque center framing of the characters as they’re interviewed by a nun assigned to assess the assets (say THAT three times fast).

And then, in an inspired runner, just about every exterior scene on Pinochet’s compound keeps an ominous guillotine somewhere in the shot. Cited as the impetus for Pinochet’s former identity to fake his own death and escape the French Revolution, the beheading apparatus serves as a deliciously wicked Chekhov’s Gun throughout the film. Lachman only makes it a focal point when needed, but it’s almost always there somewhere, visible in nearly every outdoor shot. It is foreshadowing at its best, to say nothing of the literal shadow play that the gothic motif invites in this setup.

Killers of the Flower Moon – Rodrigo Prieto

All five nominees in this year’s field have multiple nods to their names, but no wins. If anyone can make the legitimate claim of being “due” for a victory, however, it’s probably Prieto, who has the most cumulative near-misses, having previously earned distinctions for The Irishman, Silence, and Brokeback Mountain. How he lost to Memoirs of a Geisha I’ll never know, which isn’t a knock on that film, it’s just that Brokeback is on another level in this regard.

When it comes to Killers of the Flower Moon, the trick is creating a sense of contrasting scales. For the scenery, Prieto’s job is to make the vast land swaths that make up the Osage Nation’s oil fields come off as small and almost exclusionary. The Osage, like many indigenous people, were forced from their ancestral lands into much smaller reservations and isolated communities. It just so happened that this disproportionately tiny homestead happened to sit on huge oil wells, giving them an unforeseen degree of wealth, and sadly inviting the crimes and tragedies that befall them from the greedy and murderous who now suddenly want this piece of earth as well. It’s kind of like the last slice of a big pizza. Any single piece might not seem that important, but when there’s only one small bit left, if you’re still hungry, you want it, even if you’ve already had plenty. It’s the idea of claiming it just to deny it to others, and Prieto has to convey that through sweeping exteriors that show the scope of the land while condensing the action to small pockets within it, which he does quite effectively.

The flip side of that is to make the more intimate moments seem that much grander. It’s amazing how interior shots in the Osage homes are blocked, packing a large amount of players into a relatively small space. This is particularly highlighted in a scene at Mollie’s house, where the camera tracks children playing and adults moving through what appears to be just a handful of rooms, but there are so many people in motion that it feels like dozens are entering and exiting the frame. Similarly, before the explosion that takes out another of Mollie’s kin, several members of the family are crammed onto a narrow staircase, and afterward, when Ernest breaks the news to his wife, she’s holed up in the cellar, utterly beside herself with grief. So many big moments of the film come from such small environments. It’s fascinating to watch.

Maestro – Matthew Libatique

Libatique arguably had the most variables to deal with when shooting Maestro. He had to film in different aspect ratios as well as a mixture of black-and-white and color. He had to use grainier textures in some scenes to give the footage a look evocative of the time period where it’s taking place. He had to balance slow, delicate pans and sweeps in some dramatic moments with fast-paced, frenetic one-takes to match the exuberance of Bernstein’s early career. The man had a lot on his plate.

But honest to God, my favorite shot in the movie, really my favorite single shot of all of 2023 cinema, is one that’s simple, understated, and beautifully brilliant. When Leonard and Felicia get married, the ceremony is filmed from a distance, through a garden shrubbery arch, with the two centered just beyond, the arch establishing the depth of field to frame them as if they were standing underneath it.

This is just poetic and gorgeous. The periphery of the shot is full of light and life, but within its center are just two people looking at each other and declaring their love. It’s a perfect metaphor for how big the world can be, where the lives of two individuals don’t amount to a hill of beans, as Rick Blaine would say, but for this one moment, they are the center of the universe, the only thing that matters. I damn near wept at how stunning this shot is. It’s just a long distance medium shot with some hedges, but it says something more profound than anything else in the entire freaking film. If Maestro has a chance to take home any hardware on Oscar night, it’s right here, because of subtle bits of genius like this.

Oppenheimer – Hoyt van Hoytema

Something of a combination of the last two nominees, Oppenheimer requires a solid mix of color and lighting schemes, as well as a clear sense of scale. We are detonating an atomic bomb after all. It also had the added challenge of incorporating practical, on-set visual effects and pyrotechnics into the equation.

The bulk of the work ties in to the film’s central metaphor of the potential for scientific discovery and the cold reality of data and results. The color scenes are mostly large and expansive, showing the dramatic undertaking of building Los Alamos, the collaborative process of developing the bomb, and of course the serenity Oppenheimer feels in the outdoors. There’s a particularly great shot early on when he attends Neils Bohr’s lecture, in a room packed with students and teachers, but you can still see how big the space is. Even more intimate moments get this broad treatment, like his walk in the woods with Albert Einstein, or the first sex scene with Florence Pugh, which is a much more “open” and active scene as compared to Emily Blunt’s vision of her in the hearing room, where she’s tightly wrapped around him, riding him in his lap. The whole affair is capped off by my second favorite shot of the year, the final test and the blinding light that bombards Oppenheimer in the bunker.

Contrast this with most of the black-and-white photography, dealing with the binary truths post-Trinity. Quarters are much closer, even in bigger settings, like the debate between members of the Atomic Energy Commission around a single table where views are obstructed by a centerpiece, or the almost claustrophobic settings of the Senate committee room and the antechamber off to the side where Lewis Strauss awaits his fate. These shots intentionally suck the color – and thus the possibilities – out of the room, an ironically quite imaginative way to demonstrate a lack of imagination on the part of some of the characters.

There are exceptions to both sides of this setup, but the basic defaults are solid, further aiding the viewer in following along with Christopher Nolan’s epic, just the latest opus in which he toys with timelines like a cat with a ball of yarn. It takes a lot of discipline to properly convey these ideas, and van Hoytema acquits himself admirably.

Poor Things – Robbie Ryan

I can’t remember the last time I saw someone get as much mileage out of a wide angle lens as Robbie Ryan does in Poor Things. Whether shooting in black-and-white or color, 4:3 or widescreen, the action is constantly punctuated (and sometimes punctured) by the fish eye lens effect, making the viewer feel like a literal fly on the wall for the duration of the story.

It’s the sort of creative silliness we’ve come to expect from Yorgos Lanthimos over the years, testing the limits of tried and true conventions to get the audience out of its collective comfort zone and looking at the world through new angles, some of which are profound, some of which are bonkers, and many of which are both. The wide angle shots are but the first step in this process, because in addition to the voyeuristic effect, there’s also a scientific track, as Bella is put under a figurative microscope so that we can vicariously scrutinize her actions.

After she escapes from Godwin Baxter’s home, the perspective shifts, and Ryan incorporates more shots from low angles (particularly the dance scene with Mark Ruffalo). This gives the proceedings an almost Monty Python level of surreal absurdity, but it also serves a thematic purpose. We’re watching Bella “grow” as a person, even though she’s an adult woman the whole time. Early on the camera tends to be at eye level or above, giving off the impression that she’s a child, matching her mental acuity at the time. But as she sees more of the world and becomes increasingly and uncontrollably independent and wise, she is filmed from a lower position, allowing the 5’6″ Emma Stone to become something of a towering figure in her own narrative. It’s a relatively simple touch, but it’s done to tremendous effect.

And just for good measure, each of the acts is broken up by title slate shots where Bella floats on a chunk of brain. You know, just for shits and grins.

***

This is by far the hardest category to judge to date. Literally any of these nominees could win and they’d inarguably deserve it. This is what every contest should be every year, a knock-down, drag-out fight among truly superlative equals, where no matter which one you pick, you can’t possibly be wrong. This is a race where the difference between first and fifth is measured in decimal points, not degrees. The overall quality of the films runs something of a gamut, but the camera work in all five is superb. There’s not even a hint of disappointment in the bunch, making this the best class of nominees I’ve seen in this field in a long time, possibly ever.

My Rankings:
1) Maestro
2) Oppenheimer
3) Poor Things
4) El Conde
5) Killers of the Flower Moon

Who do you think should win? Vote now in the poll below!

Up next, it’s our second video breakdown of the season, as the box office behemoths get their moment in the spotlight. It’s Visual Effects!

Join the conversation in the comments below! What shots and scenes blew you away last year? Have you ever tried your hand at camera work? Have you ever seen a technical category so evenly matched? Let me know! And remember, you can follow me on Twitter (fuck “X”) and YouTube for even more content!