Excerpted from IndieWire
1. The director himself becomes the DP
Originally, the director wanted to use his college classmate and three-time Oscar winner Emmanuel Lubezki as the DP, but because the shooting date was extended to 108 days, the director/screenwriter Alfonso Cuarón, who studied cinematography, went into battle himself.
2. Black and white
A really bold choice. Cuarón explains it this way
It's not a vintage black and white. It's a contemporary black and white. When the idea manifested, it was about the character Cleo [Yalitza Aparicio], the tune was memory, and it was black and white. From there you can change things.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter he said
I wanted a digital black-and-white that would embrace digital, not try to hide the digital quality of it, with amazing resolution and amazing dynamic range and amazing definition."
Personally, I feel that because of monochrome, the challenge to lens language is higher, and maybe it is more free. It feels like those plaster statues seen in Italy, pure white. And every inch of texture, every fold, every detail can be savored for a long time.
3. Panning
The 380-degree panning of Cleo turning off the lights is really impressive, and the blocking control is amazing.
When Cleo is turning off the lights we have 45 different cameras positions, the camera can't be in one place and panning. It was a floor with lines everywhere. Even before bringing in the actors it was about sorting out the timings. But the actors had to have the flexibility to improve.
4. Lighting
The director explains the theater scene
EL: Inside the movie theater with interactive light, you shoot naturalistically with a lot of depth. That combination is not simple. It requires that you have a deep stop and that means you need a lot of light. In this particular scene you can see what’s being projected, see the lighting on [the characters], there’s a fill light, so you can see who they are. Then there’s a big change of light. This scene, even for a very old tested cinematographer, is a nightmare. How did you do it?
AC:I don't want movie lights. I want the scene to be lighting everything in sync with the projection. Projecting 35 mil is not enough light, 65 we can't afford, we don't have a big F stop. Shoot 35 open as much as possible, with the F stop you lose the depth the field. So you need power. The solution of how do it was informed by “Gravity” LEDs. We changed the screen for LED lights that would be projecting, and then replaced later in post-production for 35 mm projection. To reach our characters, on top of the screen there was a smaller LED with lesser intensity that was in sync. And also I rounded a bit on the sides. The challenge was the change of light when the lights come up.
5. The drowning scene
That scene when I saw Cleo save the two kids was really catchy
It was also luck. For the beach scene, we had to build a jetty, and put a techno-crane to keep the same height. And the day before we shot, tropical storms weakened the jetty. Every time we tried to shoot the scene the cameras would derail. I wanted to have six takes before the sweet spot of the light. We couldn't get anything, it was derailing 45 seconds after saying action; we would get the beginning. Luck. When the sweet spot came the camera didn't derail and we have the only good complete shot. I didn't want to keep on going. I was afraid of safety and also because the light was not worth it. Do a lot of prep so you can be bit luckier!
6. No music
That was part of the design from the get-go. It's described in the screenplay and one of those things that you follow through.
Finally, a few words
- Lubezki said "The camera becomes almost like a consciousness revisiting the story. The camera knows something the actors do not." The director will set the lights the night before and then direct + the shooting is too bad
- I like the clip rhythm of Dad driving home and backing up over the shit
- The sense of distance of the background foreground is very good
- The most memorable line in the film is when my mother said to Cleo our women siempre estamos solas
- This film reminds me of Hirokazu Koreeda and Adèle's Life, maybe because the film directed by Hirokazu Koreeda is also slowly but fascinating without music, and Cleo's eyes are similar to those of Adèle's ECUs A fight is too powerful.
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