This year’s Academy Awards will showcase a variety of beautiful films with cinematography. Here’s your guide to each and where they shine.
Warner Bros
The 91st annual Academy Awards ceremony is almost here, and the Academy’s fateful initial decision to pull the live airing of some awards (like those for editing and cinematography) provoked a backlash and reversal that reminded everyone how central quality cinematography is to filmmaking as a whole. In a year with some truly breathtaking uses of camera work, color, and lighting, voters have a rough choice ahead of them. Here’s your primer on this year’s nominees for the big award.
Łukasz Żal – Cold War
Camera: ARRI ALEXA SXT
Lens: Zeiss Ultra Prime series, Angénieux Optimo zooms 24-290mm, 19,5-90mm and 45-120 Lightweight
Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War is set in Cold War-era Europe, beginning in 1949 and following the turbulent love story of two musicians yearning for creative freedom in the West yet often separated by borders and their own troubled backgrounds. Cold War is unique for being filmed in high-contrast black and white in the Academy Ratio, a nearly square frame (1.37:1), giving the film a classic feel.
DP Lukasz Zal explained the black and white choice:
“In Poland, there was no color in those days, in those years. Everything was black and white… the idea from the very beginning was that first of all we wanted to make this different than Ida [the DP and director’s previous collaboration]… the idea was to have a very contrasted look in this movie because the story was very contrasted, the relationship was very contrasted and very tumultuous and messy. Going back and forth, meeting each other, betraying each other. So there was this idea that, visually, the movie should be very contrasted. We wanted to have a strong black and a very bright white.“
Robbie Ryan – The Favourite
Camera: Panavision Millennium xL2, ARRICAM Studio, ARRICAM LT
Lens: Panavision Primo Spherical 14.5. – 100mm / pv 10mm/ pv 6mm
Yorgos Lanthimos‘ ode to the strangeness of 1700s royal love triangles, The Favourite, was shot on 35mm film using natural light. DP Robbie Ryan had worked with natural lighting before (on American Honey), and he credits his success here on the choice to film in 35mm in a larger castle (whose windows created soft directional light) and on Kodak film stocks.
Another notable element was the film’s use of wide and ultrawide angle lenses, adding a layer of distortion often missing in period pieces, alongside an atypical use of low angles to create a sense of strangeness.
