He calls them the cleanest he could find. Throughout the film, the cinematographer uses the same ARRI Alexa Mini LF with his favorite ARRI Signature Prime lenses. The last shot of “Empire of Light” by Sam Mendes, 2022 Image source: “Empire of Light” by Sam Mendes, 2022 Starting afresh. Hilary has a breakdown after the break-up with Stephen. Most of the time, they get little space and air to breathe as the story moves forward, so an occasional open composition provides relief to the spectator, manipulating the highs and lows of our emotional response. Sam Mendes, a quote from the interview with ASCĪlthough “Empire of Life” uses the wide Cinemascope aspect ratio, Roger Deakins often locks characters between bars, lines, or other geometrical frame elements. Stephen breaks through that wall, and we watch her exhilarated rise and then her descent into darkness. The way she (Hilary) is pitched against the larger world, alone in large spaces, or held behind glass or within the cube of the concessions stand-in a private world, detached from people. Images credit: Searchlight Pictures.Īnother powerful element of Deakin’s visual grammar is where he places the characters within frames. Some of the stills with reflections, or shot through glass. It looks like a consistent pattern: an ongoing reflection not only on Hilary’s self-perception but on the cinema as a medium-what it does with us, and how close it comes to actual life. There are a lot of mirrors in this film, as well as shots through windows and glass doors. Image credit: Searchlight Pictures Clear and on-point framing A film still from “Empire of Light” by Sam Mendes, 2022. But just through the picture’s composition, cutting her reflection in half, pills on one side of the frame and her unhappy face on the other, tells us so much within seconds. We don’t really know the main character at this point, and we most definitely haven’t heard about her schizophrenia or mood swings yet. Every one of them has its place and meaning, beautifully constructed to illuminate the story. The subtle cinematography of Roger Deakins here is pure poetry-the type of literature that the protagonist Hilary likes so much. Why would he get an Oscar nomination for this, you may ask? A film still from “Empire of Light” by Sam Mendes, 2022. He didn’t need to: the classic approach was the best decision for this quiet and slow-paced story. And that’s how it looks: in the composed “Empire of Light”, Deakins did nothing new or eccentric to reinvent camera moves, or to introduce an extraordinary color palette. As the director explains in his interview with “American Cinematographer”, this time they deliberately decided on shooting scenes more conventionally. “Empire of Light” is nothing like the last work of Deakins and Mendes “1917” – an Award-winning World War I drama, which was made to look like a one-take movie. Classic approach to the cinematography on Empire of Light This is a story about ordinary people in turbulent real-life situations, and that’s where the intimate and subtle cinematography of Roger Deakins performs wonders. Yes, it’s a character-driven drama about the lonely, middle-aged, cinema manager Hilary (performed by Olivia Colman), but it also touches on mental health problems, sexual exploitation, gender equality, and even on racism in Great Britain in the early 80s. That’s true for “Empire of Light” as well. And nothing happens without light.” A quote from the film explains cinema projection principles, but it also reminds us that there is invariably much more beneath the surface. “Spark between the carbons makes the light. It should be interesting to dive into how the subtle cinematography of Roger Deakins reveals its powers to illuminate a rather average-as some reviewers call it-story. The film received mixed critical reviews and only a modest amount of festival recognition. Among them is legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins, who has earned his 16th Oscar nomination for his last collaboration with Sam Mendes on “Empire of Light”. The 95 th Academy Awards are coming up this week and we continue to look at some of the nominees.
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