SXSW is the most important independent film festival of the United States nowadays (some people think Sundance still has that honor, but we think Sundance stayed in the 90s and needs to be renewed).
This year, there's been a panel about independent cinema with directors of photography, and the great
Filmmaker Magazine has made a 10-point summary that we considered important to sum up and tell you. Here we go:
1.
Let the camera create the atmosphere.The DSLR revolution is not only about light, optics or speed, but also about size. More reduced shootings, in different spaces and the creation of much more intimate environments can be done with such small cameras. The actors are less intimidated by them and one can shoot with several of them without being in the way of each other. This has been one of the keys of the shooting of
our feature-film. Thanks to it we could shoot a very ambitious film in these hard times with all the locations we had.
2. The lenses are the key. Try to find a good director of photography who knows them well and invest money in having good lenses. Use the one you need each time even though they are different brands, but try to make the film uniform. In any case, after the several-year impasse in digital cinema, where everything looked like TV, cinema has come back. Knowing the narrative effect that every lens produces with the different diaphragm and shutter aperture is one of the most important tasks for a director.
3. Location. Location. Location. Choosing the right location, with its own atmosphere and something to tell so you can add layers to the story, means almost 50% of the film if you don't have money enough to have big lighting and camera equipment. Tarkovski used to talk quite a lot about the importance of creating the right atmosphere in the set, because that would be passed on to the negative through the actors and the technicians. This is one of the reasons I decided to shoot in Latvia and Russia instead of Spain, and I firmly believe that this is what has made the film looking as well as it looks, being 100% credible. It doesn't matter the amount of time you lose locating or the money you spend in a location scouter, it will be worth it.
4. Shoot neutral. This is a tip given by PJ Raval, and it means shooting in the most neutral way in order to have more options afterwards, in post-production. It is one of the few we partly agree with. Luis Enrique, my director of photography, and I decided to look for a final look in the camera, not to leave most of it to post-production. This was mainly due to the fact that we were using 5D and 1D, that have less range when post-producing and telecining, partly because we feel that magic created in a set cannot be the same as what experienced in a editing room, so we wanted the image to get all the things we felt in that moment regarding light, our spirits and our surroundings. (On the other hand, the next tip by Clay Lifford is the opposite of this, and it says what we are saying).
5. Embrace your limitations. It's the same as the classic: If you cannot beat them, join them. I think this is the tip every director and DOP should keep in mind once and again, and not only apply it to their work, but try their team to also understand it. In The Cosmonaut, for instance, we had a huge budget limitation, which restricted the possibilities of the arts team, the lighting and the wardrobe. One of the main decisions we took was shooting all the indoors with long focals (never less than 50 mm, and normally from 85mm onwards). The result is spectacular and cinematographic, and the lack of means is hardly noticed.
6. Keep it simple. Bresson, who I consider the best film theorist ever, has a quote in "Notes on Cinematography" that I carried in my pocket every day during the shooting: "The faculty of using my resources well diminishes when their number grows". Focus your attention in one problem at once and dedicate 100% of the attention to it. Try to reduce the problems to the minimum possible. Make things easy as much as you can in order to do right the ones you have to do. Try the circumstances not to outstrip you. This tip is fruit of The Cosmonaut's experience. We planned a very, very ambitious film (shot in a foreign language, for about 11 weeks, even though we just had a tenth of the budget of a conventional film, with more than 80 different locations, sequences with thousands of extras, science fiction... and our first feature-film). Luckily, everything went perfect thanks to the team, but it could have been a complete disaster. The effort and risk were worth it, but it is important to be careful, and to try to step on a safe ground as much as possible.
7. And I'm going to add a last tip of my own: Don't be afraid.
Don't be afraid of making a mistake, of failing, of not making it perfect, of not making your first film a master-piece, of not knowing something, of finding it in the way, of changing your way if necessary. All this is part of the process of creating, and that's how memorable films are made. When the uncertain becomes certain. But remember this, try to surround you by people who support you in that emotional roller coaster that making a feature-film is, and don't let you go by technique, by the "this is how we do it in cinema". Trust your instinct and don't be afraid.
Update: Related to some of the points above is this interview with the director of photography of Like Crazy, a Sundance-winning movie shot on DSLR cameras, like ours. Very worth reading.
