Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki Talks The Revenant
Speaking with Variety, Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki discussed his work on The Revenant, his latest project after his Oscar award-winning work for Gravity and Birdman. With The Revenant, Lubezki may be looking at a record-breaking three wins in succession at the awards night.
"I can tell you a lot about this shot," Lubezki said of the bear scene in particular. "I think in this shot you can see most of the ideas of how we shot the movie, in the sense that we wanted to have a movie that was very immersive, very visceral, and to have a certain naturalistic base, a foundation that is naturalism...
"So we didn't use artificial light... and we used very, very wide lenses... to be able to immerse the audience and to be able to tell the intimate together with the environment, to be able to capture the close-ups and the surroundings at the same time and allow the audience to be immersed and to pick what they want to see within the frame."
"And we used a lot of moving cameras, either handheld or steadicam cranes, but the camera is constantly moving. We did a lot of these shots that we call the elastic shots where we go from a very objective view from the audience's point of view, to a very subjective point of view that is the point of view of the character..."
"[In the bear scene] he turns his face and the camera describes the geography. It shows you how he's tapped between the mother and the cub that in a way is an echo of the story of Glass, that is the story of parenthood, that is the story of a father that is protecting his kid. And this is a tragic moment where he's between the mother and the cubs and the mother feels threatened and attacks him."
The scene took inspiration from a real-life bear attack that took place, where a man fell into a cage at the zoo. "When we saw that we knew that our hypothesis of not having cuts was a good one, that it was going to make it more powerful."
Regarding digital versus film, he said "I love film. The only thing is I would say it's getting harder and harder to project and it's harder to print. Though I don't miss film projecting. I always hated it."
Source: Variety
