Black-and-White on The CineBlog

Frances Ha: The Agile Monochrome

Thu, 04 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Shooting a film on the streets of New York City is usually a logistical nightmare. You need permits, massive lighting trucks, and an army of production assistants screaming at pedestrians to stop walking. Noah Baumbach wanted the kinetic, authentic energy of New York, but he refused the nightmare. He chose a different weapon for Frances Ha: guerrilla filmmaking.

The DSLR Advantage

Baumbach shot the film using a compact Canon EOS 5D Mark II. By utilizing this unobtrusive DSLR camera, the production was able to shoot on active streets, in crowded subways, and inside cramped apartments with unprecedented agility. They captured real-world environments that larger setups could never access without fundamentally destroying the spontaneity of the location.

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night: The Geography of Illusion

Wed, 27 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

When a filmmaker has no money, geography is usually destiny. If you are shooting in California, your film looks like California. But in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, Ana Lily Amirpour executes a masterful act of geographic illusion. She shot the “first Iranian vampire Western” not in the Middle East, but entirely within the bleak, industrial oil towns of Taft, California.

The Anamorphic Disguise

Amirpour bypassed the ruinous cost of international shooting by weaponizing her camera. Working with cinematographer Lyle Vincent, she utilized anamorphic lenses and aggressive, high-contrast black-and-white photography. By stripping the color from the California desert, she removed its recognizable identity.

The Lighthouse: The Geometry of Madness

Fri, 01 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Modern filmmakers are obsessed with the widescreen. They believe that a 2.35:1 aspect ratio automatically lends their mundane drama “cinematic scale.” But width without purpose is merely empty space. In The Lighthouse, director Robert Eggers and cinematographer Jarin Blaschke understood that the geometry of the frame must dictate the psychology of the characters.

The ‘One Rule’ Constraint: The Orthochromatic Trap

To achieve a genuinely transportive, weathered aesthetic, Eggers established a brutal set of constraints: the film had to be shot on 35mm black-and-white stock, using 1930s Baltar lenses, in an agonizingly severe 1.19:1 aspect ratio.