American Cinematographer - January 2018 - 14

The willingness to take creative risks, whether large or
small, is part of the equation for any filmmaker who hopes
to make a lasting mark.
When those risks pay off, the results can be exhilarating, and the payoff for audacity is plainly evident in
Guillermo Del Toro's new feature The Shape of Water. It
was surely not so easy to pitch and pull off a dramatic
fantasy involving an interspecies romance between a mute
heroine (Sally Hawkins) and an amphibian (Doug Jones)
who bears a more-than-passing resemblance to the Creature From the Black Lagoon, but the enthusiastic response
from the audience I saw the movie with - this past
November in Bydgoszcz, Poland, immediately following
the closing ceremony at the Camerimage cinematography
festival - seemed to indicate that Del Toro's mashup of Cold War subterfuge, classic monster
movies and black-and-white Hollywood musicals has international appeal.
Cinematographer Dan Laustsen, ASC, DFF was tasked with creating a visual style that
artfully mixes multiple genres, and he managed this feat in spectacular fashion - while also
shooting the movie in chronological story order, with a constantly roving camera. Lausten's
evocative lighting is one of the picture's noteworthy strengths, and he credits Del Toro for
allowing him to apply light as a strong storytelling element. "In the Hollywood films of the
Forties and Fifties, the directors and cinematographers used dramatic lighting for storytelling,"
the cinematographer tells Jean Oppenheimer ("Love on the Run," page 36). "We have gotten
away from that in the past few decades. Today, everybody talks about shooting with as little
light as possible - or even without any lights. My attitude is to tell the story with light. It is
an incredibly powerful storytelling partner."
Of course, in less-adept hands, filmmaking chutzpah can go hysterically awry. The
production of one of cinema history's "best bad movies," The Room, is affectionately and
hilariously chronicled in The Disaster Artist, directed by James Franco (who also stars as Tommy
Wiseau, the whimsically misguided auteur who wrote, directed and starred in The Room).
Cinematographer Brandon Trost was enlisted by Franco not only to visually adapt Greg
Sestero's memoir about the making of The Room, but to painstakingly emulate the amateurish look of Wiseau's legendary cult film, which somehow cost a mind-boggling $6 million to
make. "It's not like The Room is a great-looking movie," Trost relates in a Q&A with Iain
Marcks ("Burden of Dreams," page 90), "so when we emulate it, it really feels like a lowbudget movie, and The Disaster Artist feels like a different movie on top of it."
Ambition, inventiveness and finesse are on ample display in this month's other spotlighted projects. Darkest Hour, a handsomely mounted World War II drama centering on the
political rise and steely resolve of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, benefits from the
refined eye of Bruno Delbonnel, ASC, AFC ("At All Costs," page 54); Downsizing, an arch,
sci-fi-inflected saga about cash-strapped characters who shrink themselves to 5-inch size,
required Phedon Papamichael, ASC, GSC to play clever games with scale ("Get Small," page
68); and Curb Your Enthusiasm, HBO's showcase for the existentially peevish grievances of
beloved curmudgeon Larry David ("No Filter," page 80), finds Patrick Alexander Stewart
"following the comedy" with three cameras deployed to create the show's faux-documentary
style.

14

Stephen Pizzello
Editor-in-Chief and Publisher

Photo by Owen Roizman, ASC.

EDITOR'S NOTE
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - January 2018
