Cinematography Spotlight: Matthew Libatique, ASC
Back in the old days, when I only went to brick and mortar stores to buy my movies and music, I would come across the saying that everyone has heard or uttered at some point; don’t judge a book by its cover. I would ‘blind buy’ CDs and DVDs based on the quality of the art on the cases. This figurative leap in the dark reaped great rewards for me; I discovered some of my favorite bands and some great films along the way. Of course, I also suffered my fair share of disappointments.
One day I committed to a ‘blind buy’ that would leave a lasting impression. I watched the film alone — based on the certificate I thought it was best to err on the side of caution. Once it was over I felt unclean; like I had seen a nightmare made possible by the weakness of the vulnerable and their exploitation by the powerful. I was unprepared for the horror of watching Requiem for a Dream.
Despite the effect that watching Requiem for a Dream had on my naive younger self, I would later come to recognize that my feelings towards the film were very much intended by its director, Darren Aronofsky. If there’s one recurring theme that I can infer from Aronofsky’s films it is the fragile nature of the mind and body. Whether physically or mentally, internal or external, we are all in danger of breaking apart, of being torn down. We are all frightened animals struggling to survive in a confusing, cruel and unfair world. The visual design in Aronofsky’s films enables his themes and stories to be realized with the intensity and emotional impact he wishes to convey.
With the exception of one film, Darren Aronofsky’s long standing cinematographer and filmmaking partner has been Matthew Libatique, ASC, and during his career as a director of photography that has spanned 20 years, Libatique has also had a recurring partnership with not one but three more directors:
- Jon Favreau on the first two installments in the Iron Man franchise and Cowboys and Aliens
- Joel Schumacher on Tigerland, Phone Booth and The Number 23
- Spike Lee on She Hate Me, Inside Man, Miracle at St. Anna, Passing Strange and Chi-Raq.
The desire of these four directors to continue working with Libatique establishes him as a trusted, talented and invaluable member of their filmmaking teams. His body of work appears to defy and innovate beyond the styles and trends seen in the filmmaking of the 21st century with sincerity and aplomb; in my mind Matthew Libatique is one of the masters of contemporary cinematography.
What is readily apparent when watching Libatique’s photography is his daring to experiment with format against convention, which can be seen as early as his work on Darren Aronofsky’s debut Pi and later during their third film working together, Black Swan. Shooting Pi on 16mm 7276 Plus-X and 7278 Tri-X black and white film negatives captured the paranoid world of the central character and the distorted reality surrounding him. Over a decade later Libatique captured Black Swan with the Fuji Vivid line of film stocks in Super 16mm (500T 8647 and 160T 8643) with the desire for a ‘craftsmanlike’ texture found in the grain and colour separation. With a non-traditional, minimal crew select scenes shot on the New York subway were captured using Canon 7D and 1D Mark IV DSLR cameras because of their ability to capture images with greater sensitivity and for their unobtrusive low profile inside unclosed shooting locations. The fusion of 16mm and consumer level high definition video work to visually ground the story with a documentary feeling of authenticity at the same time as madness is consuming the main character in the film.
Libatique’s photography for Joel Schumacher’s 2000 film Tigerland is a personal favorite of mine. Set in an American boot camp during the height of the Vietnam War, Libatique and Schumacher wanted to make the film look like it was shot in the 70’s, in the same vein as the newsreel footage seen on American televisions at the time. Against the reservations of 20th Century Fox, the cinematographer and director elected to shoot Tigerland in Regular 16mm and optically blow-up to 35mm film prints to achieve maximum film grain (digital intermediates wouldn’t be viable until several years after Tigerland was first released).
When the story takes its characters to the titular location towards the end of the film, the photography becomes even more extreme; the daylight scenes are washed out and night scenes are crushed to ink black. The result is an effective emulation of the verite style seen in period footage 30 years previous; with imperfect handheld photography and the recreation of combat cameramen oftentimes fighting for an exposure.
With the industry change from 35mm photography to digital platforms, Matthew Libatique has continued to use and push both mediums, from the pseudo-biblical depiction of Noah in 35mm to his using the Red Epic Dragon on F. Gary Gray’s N.W.A. biopic Straight Outta Compton and Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq. Regardless of the digital changeover, the focus of Matthew Libatique’s photography throughout his career has been to find the subjective truth to serve the story. His manipulation of film stock, and later digital technology, is an instrumental step to achieving this ambition.
Libatique’s approach to lighting and photographing a scene is to create a natural and unobtrusive space for the actors to deliver their performances. Whenever possible he will leave the floor space of a set open to allow actors a freedom of movement and improvisation. In the first and second Iron Man movies, Tony Stark’s beach house set is a mixture of practical interior lights and a large cyclorama that can be altered to provide bright daylight or nighttime ambience; the set is free of film lights and provides Robert Downey, Jr. and his co-stars the feeling of inhabiting a more natural space. Another element to this ‘stylized reality’ is Libatique’s choice to underexpose actors by 1 or 1½ stops below key:
“Key light doesn’t feel genuine to me…. I wanted it to feel as if we’d just walked into a location and found that lighting. One way I do that is by trying to keep the faces down”
From smaller budget films to the blockbuster budgets of films like Iron Man, Libatique is unafraid to light and shoot dark. In Darren Aronofsky’s metaphysical fantasy The Fountain, the story’s themes of death and reincarnation are represented through visual metaphor, where the golden light of life stands in sharp contrast to the shadowy void of death within the frame. In many scenes, the characters are isolated in darkness, surrounded by the inescapable fate of death, mirroring the struggle of Hugh Jackman’s several incarnations over a millennium to save the life of his dying love.
The intention of Libatique’s lighting and photography is clear — the appropriate application of tools and techniques is applied to each film to best serve the emotional qualities of the story.
Before the first frame of film passes through the gate or the first byte of data is captured from the sensor, Libatique stresses the importance of research, influences and the deconstruction of a film before production begins; and because each film is different he no longer uses a system for preparation, but takes each new project on its own merits and its own challenges.
When presented with a project, Libatique says he wants to deconstruct the screenplay to see where the visual style of the film is derived, whether it is through characters, themes or the structure of the story itself. This is frequently done by Libatique through diagrams that break down the story scene by scene and color coding based on character arcs or by time of day as it’s written in the script. He breaks down the whole film in order to identify the visual construct of the film and act as a guide during photography.
During preparation, Libatique uses a multitude of sources for inspiration depending on the film and director, using photographs, paintings and other films as a starting point for the visual aesthetic of a film. For the design of Black Swan, Libatique referenced narrative films such as Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Colours trilogy and the documentary film Dansaren (The Dancer) for ideas about composition and camerawork. Unique to Black Swan , he also drew inspiration from fashion and an off-Broadway play for their theatrical and thematic qualities that were appropriated and integrated into his concepts for the film’s visual palette.
It is a tenet of his approach to cinematography that the craft has to “stay in step” with street culture and newer, emergent digital platforms that are showcasing the newest wave of artists across mediums. Matthew Libatique has displayed during his long career a constant drive for growth and invention — not only in his own work but for filmmaking as a whole. He displays the new sensibility of cinematography not as a secretive, enigmatic skill of the elite; but as a shared, democratized and evolving art form.
Recommended viewing:
Pi (dir. Darren Aronofsky, 1998)
Requiem for a Dream (dir. Darren Aronofsky, 2000)
Tigerland (dir. Joel Schumacher, 2000)
Inside Man (dir. Spike Lee, 2006)
The Fountain (dir. Darren Aronofsky, 2006)
Iron Man (dir. Jon Favreau, 2008)
Black Swan (dir. Darren Aronofsky, 2010)
Straight Outta Compton (dir. F. Gary Gray, 2015)
A Star is Born (dir. Bradley Cooper, 2018)
Sources:
American Cinematographer — May 2008, “Heavy-Metal Hero”
American Cinematographer — May 2010, “Armor Wars”
American Cinematographer — December 2010, “Danse Macabre”
American Cinematographer — May 2013, “Retro Style”
American Cinematographer — April 2014, “Raging Waters”
American Cinematographer — September 2015, “Street Knowledge”
Cinematography, by Mike Goodridge and Tim Grierson
(note: this is only a partial list — additional information was obtained from further books, documentaries and articles but these details weren’t available at the time of writing)
