The Curious Case Study of Christopher Doyle
How The Legendary DP’s Short Filmography Takes Us Back To The Basics of Cinematography
Legendary DP Christopher Doyle has been called an enigma. A rockstar. A much-needed breath of fresh air to conventional cinematography. Plus, he’s got more than a few choice words about…well, everything. And while he’s most well-known for his feature length collaborations with Wong Kar-Wai, Zhang Yimou and Gus Van Sant, it’s his prolific short film output that speaks best to a style that is often imitated but rarely equaled.
Doyle is most revered by film industry colleagues and aspiring DPs for his auteur-like command over the liberated and poetic camera. And rightfully so. Everyone from Youtube’s The Nerdwriter to the BBC Culture Show has analyzed his master craftsmanship.
But for a first time DP on a short film project, Doyle’s greatness can seem overwhelming and unattainable.
That’s why Doyle’s short films are actually the best place to start. Believe it or not, this revolutionary, ahead-of-his-time DP has some things to teach aspiring short film cinematographers about the basic principles of lighting and shot selection…
Choose The Context Of The Image Before The Format
As a first time DP on a short film, it can be so tempting to get precious about every frame beforehand. There’s RED vs. Arri to consider, then the kinds of lenses, and so on and so on. While it’s important to be prepared and to want the best equipment there is, the One Perfect Shot craze has put a premium on having a tight and meticulously composed shot every single frame.
That’s why Christopher Doyle’s 2012 music video Linda Linda is a breath-of-fresh-air reminder to us all that shots can look (and also be) completely organic and impossible to replicate. They can also technically look wrong and still be the right choice. (And if you’re wondering why we included a music video in a short filmography, just listen to Stanley Kubrick’s thoughts on TV commercials as the future of cinema).
There are moments in this music video that seem nearly incomprehensible. The camera is blurry, and seems out of frame.
Yet, there is something so right about what Doyle is doing.
How could this be?
Because he leaves us with images that are powerful only within the context of the whole music video. Take the first and last shots of the music video. They are merely reflected imitations of one another, yet the tinting of the second nearly blows it out of frame.
Those most worried about whether they should shoot their project in 4K or higher will probably bristle at the lack of clarity here. Yet a high-def image in any of these sequences would take away the mystique, the sense of everything (memories, the human subject, the papers she throws around) fading and deteriorating before us.
Always let the context and intention of the short film determine the type of image you are looking to capture. It’s clear that Linda Linda director Tsien-Tsien Zhang wanted a hazy, nostalgia-infused feeling to the video. So Doyle responded with cloudy fish-eye lenses and blurred, uncanny camera motions. Just because Doyle could have shot this on sticks in Ultra Panavision 70 the whole time, doesn’t mean he should have.
Never go for the most beautiful image, or the one you see going viral. Go for the image that’s right for the story being told.
Simplify Light Sources Whenever You Can
DP legends like Chivo Lubezki have made shooting in all natural light the standard for capturing epic neo-realism. On the other end of the spectrum are DPs like Larry Smith whose notable partnerships with Nicolas Winding Refn (Only God Forgives and Bronson) rely heavily on extremely stylized and un-natural lighting setups.
But honestly, for most short film projects relying on much smaller budgets, something in-between the naturalistic and the stylized wins out every time. The simpler and more intentional your light sources are, the easier it will be to manage your image (and the less production design or post production manipulation you’ll need to make it look good). Take cues from Doyle to see why short film budgets and bare-bones lighting setups go well together.
In 2014’s Northern Ireland Screen production I Am Here, Doyle shoots a 15-minute afterlife dream sequence of sorts. A dead man faces both those he’s left behind and those he’s joined. With such a supernatural premise, you’d expect some serious theatrics and larger-than-life lighting choices…
…yet Doyle knows what kind of budget he’s working under, and chooses to keep his sources simple and restrained. Had he swung for the fences and tried to make a gonzo dreamscape, filled with wild, bravura choices and light sources coming from every which direction, the post production budget needed to match his vision probably wouldn’t have been available on a film this size.
Notice how Doyle establishes the simplicity of this supernatural-natural hybrid world. The title shot has a single diffused light against the wall.
Next, the main character’s shadow falls over the wall and goes across through the light source before disappearing again. Could Doyle have ratcheted up the intensity of the light sources here? Sure. He could have created strange flashes or strobes too, to signal to his audience that this is in fact life after death.
Instead, Doyle’s image is stripped-down, simple and extremely effective. The Shakespearean theme of “life’s but a walking shadow” gets most clearly (and literally) communicated by Doyle’s choice to not go for it all or to “try something weird.”
This is similarly the case with the film’s ending. The faces of the dead watch our main character reunite with his family. Their cold, empty eyes are perfectly communicated in the softly-lit woods. The key light gets most presence here, creating quick shadows over the dead family’s faces.
The end title sequence eventually reveals back-light unnoticed in the previous shot. But the back-light is essential here, for it adds the proper dimension and space in a scene meant to communicate the endless portal that is death and memory.
If a great master can use a short film budget and create more with less, so can all of us.
Let Every Shot Be Motivated By A Human Subject
It’s tempting in any short film to include shots that do not include your main character, either literally or even by suggestion. For example, establishing shots and insert shots are commonly unmotivated by the protagonist’s perspective.
But in short films, time is precious. Any frame not impacted by your main character’s journey is frankly a wasted frame.
Just look to Christopher Doyle’s choices in A Good Story to see his commitment to this basic idea.
The film’s storyline follows Helga Landowsky, who’s doing whatever she can to convince an antique shop owner to give her a broken jug full of sentimental value, free of charge.
Given the jug’s importance to the tension of the film (and its symbolic representation of Helga’s deepest desire), it makes sense that Doyle would choose to feature the jug in several shots. In fact, some would want to get “experimental” and somehow make this object its own character. But in our first introduction to the jug, Doyle curiously pans right…
…where Helga’s fingers reach out to touch it. A shot of the jug turns immediately into a shot motivated by Helga’s story.
Doyle does incorporate shots of just the jug without any human characters, but whenever he does, he makes sure to capture it from Helga’s perspective. Notice the jug’s distance from us, the sense of inevitable inaccessibility. It seems just far enough for us not to be able to grab it, yet we can’t not be drawn to its dynamic nature.
In other instances, Doyle foregrounds the jug and complements the frame with Helga’s profile. His ability to constantly find creative ways to visually interpret the relationship between the jug and Helga helps lend to the film a singularity and forward trajectory that less inventive shots could not have accomplished.
At the end of the film, when Helga walks out of the antique shop having made peace with not having the jug, Doyle still makes us see the jug in frame. In fact, in this instance, the role has reversed: Helga foregrounds, while the jug is in sharpest focus.
So whenever you face an establishing shot, an insert shot or some other scene without a human subject motivating it, ask yourself what Christopher Doyle would do.
See A Good Story and other award-winning short films on Miniflix.TV today.
