Cartier-Bresson’s “decisive moment” is, arguably, the most famous advice for making excellent photographs of a particular kind, i.e. pictures of people living their lives. It’s advice embraced by street photographers with documentary and/or journalistic intent.
The dogma of Terrence Malick — a director of fiction films — is a very different beast. It’s about cinematography by a very particular director of very particular sorts of films. My goal for myself is to discover how these can work together to… what? Define my style? Help me (further) develop my style?
As much as I can say now is that I have these two guys in my head when I’m working. Let’s examine the dogma and where I agree, disagree, and amend.
1. Shoot in available natural light: Or whatever light is available 🙂 But, yes.
2. Do not underexpose the negative; keep true blacks: I’m not exposing negatives, and I have a great deal of control in the both the camera and the editing software to take care of this. So, yes.
3. Preserve the latitude in the image: Always seems like a good idea to me for nonfiction.
4. Seek maximum resolution and fine grain: Yeah, maybe. Where I differ on some of these is in the necessity, in my opinion, to produce some ratty video as a rhetorical response to a particular situation. It’s an authenticity move. Trauma and mayhem in nonfiction shouldn’t look too polished. For example, here’s a still from the Oscar-winning White Helmets. The full movie is available on YouTube. Also see number 13 below.
5. Seek depth with deep focus and stop; compose in depth: I like working close with wide lenses just as Malick does. So, sure. But I also love isolating subjects — especially details — using longer lenses and razor-thin depth of field. The two can mix well, in my opinion.
6. Shoot in backlight for continuity and depth: Or just because it looks good 🙂 The fiction director can plan for this. The nonfiction director cannot. But, yes, I use this situation when available to me. Lighting in active nonfiction moments (as opposed to interviews) is a situation to be dealt with.
7. Use negative fill to avoid “light sandwiches” (even sources on both sides): Since I stick mostly to natural light and minimum manipulation ‘cuz, ya know, nonfiction, I really don’t care much about this one.
8. Shoot in crosslight only after dawn or before dusk; never front light: Sure, but also never say never. I only have the luxury of capturing reality when, where, and under the conditions it happens.
9. Avoid lens flares: Why? Never mind, I’ll do what I want 🙂
10. Avoid white and primary colors in frame: I have to deal with what’s actually in the scene. Also, black & white 🙂
11. Shoot with short-focal-length, hard lenses: OMG yes!
12. No filters except polarizer: Sure.
13. Shoot with steady handheld or Steadicam “in the eye of the hurricane”: Depends. Watch the first several minutes of White Helmets and tell me how those scenes would change the film if shot with a Steadicam. That’s an exercise, by the way, that I gave to my documentary film students to teach them that, sometimes, ratty chaotic video is the best. Then again, the eyes of hurricanes are calm. Hmmmmm…
14. Z-axis moves instead of pans or tilts: Sure.
15. No zooming: Disagree. But it is always best not to over-do it. Now, define over-do it 😉
16. Do some static tripod shots “in midst of our haste”: Still wondering about this one. In the context of Malick’s work this just seems like an issue for a fiction jockey.
17. Accept the exception to the dogma: Agreed.
Posts in this series:
Visual Style Conveyed in Words — Maybe | Frame by Frame (rhetorica.net)
