Cinematography from the sublime to the meh (Skyfall v. Spectre)

While I don’t want to carry on about how Spectre was a disappointment after Skyfall, it’s been instructive to look at the cinematography of the two films, and think about why the former fails, and what made the latter so satisfying. Spectre’s director of photography was Hoyte van Hoytema, who did Interstellar and Her, among others. He suggested to director Sam Mendes that they could get a nostalgic, more romantic feel by using 35 mm film, rather than digital equipment like the Arri Alexa DP Roger Deakins used for Skyfall. Unfortunately, I think it turned out less nostalgic than stultified, less romantic than old-fashioned. The bar was high, though; Roger Deakins is one of the most well-regarded cinematographyers, and his genius is all over films like The Shawshank Redemption, A Beautiful Mind, Kundun, and all the Coen Bros’ best (O Brother Where Art Thou?, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, etc.). Three things marked Deakins’ style for me in Skyfall: the gorgeous lighting traversing palettes across locations, the quiet or very smoothly moving camera that didn’t sacrifice clarity for action, and the framing that balances movement within each shot without resorting to the heavy-handed center framing that’s becoming all too common in action films.

While Skyfall’s colors stood out (the deep blue of the skyscraper scenes in Macau, for instance, or the vibrant reds in Shanghai, or the chilly desaturation on the Scottish moors), the lighting was the real accomplishment: this was a film about mirroring and self-reflection, Bond seeing himself in others and examining his own psyche, and it used a constant motif of glass and mirrors to get that across. Nothing puts pressure on lighting design like filming so many glass walls: how the fuck did they get so many shots like this without the camera showing up in a reflection?

This perfect control of the camera shows up in its movement, too. It doesn’t move just for the sake of moving, but in order to give us clear and meaningful angles on the action; steadicam is used only when necessary to follow a moving target through a scene, and I don’t remember a single gratuitous handheld shot. (So many directors are addicted to handheld as a way of communicating tension and immediacy, when really, that should be obvious in your actors and story, and only subliminally reinforced with a shaky camera.)

As for framing — dear god, do I love how Deakins frames stuff. For instance, slap a golden ratio grid on the shot above:

Or how about a golden spiral on this crucial shot of Bond doing some self-surgery:

Or golden triangles, which are all about vectors of energy along the diagonal, governing this shot of Q giving Bond extra sass:

Or these two shots of Bond and M at Skyfall, which a lesser DP might have made more rigidly symmetrical:

Rather than slavishly centering these shots, Deakins makes sure the figures sit along those organizing grid lines (rule of three, golden triangles) where the greatest visual energy runs. It’s about energetic balance, not static symmetry.

In the end, that’s what ruined the cinematography in Spectre for me: the GODDAMN CENTER FRAMING. Just watch the trailer: it seems like every shot puts the subject smack in the center, and keeps it there no matter where the camera moves.

When I first saw the trailer, I thought, well, they’ve chosen the most striking shots, because centering is so dramatic, and especially if you’re watching on a phone or computer screen it has great impact. But no, it’s every-damn-where in the film, I’d say at least 60% of the shots, and what’s impactful in small doses is deadening in overdose.

These shots illustrate the downside of static framing. The center line of both frames lies right along the edge of Q’s body, with one man on each side of the frame, but no real balance or dynamic tension between them.

The men’s heads are on the same level, and oddly they seem the same size, though one character’s closer to the viewer. And I can’t figure out what visual principle might have organized the frame. Rule of thirds doesn’t really work:

And the golden spiral might, but while it seems to focus attention on Bond’s face, Q is closer to us and larger, dominating the screen and deadening the sweep of the spiral:

And no matter how you orient them, golden triangles cut across uninteresting portions of the image and don’t make sense of the space:

Feh, I say, feh. I know there are good ways to use centering; it can be a signature quirk for Wes Anderson, or a way to keep extreme action clear for Mad Max: Fury Road, but it seemed to serve no purpose in Spectre. It’s not actually that bad, it’s just, like so much else in Spectre, not very interesting or deep.