American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 18

Production Slate
Toby (Chris Pine,
far right) enlists
his brother,
Tanner (Ben
Foster), in a
desperate plan
to hold onto
their family's
farm in the
feature Hell or
High Water. The
movie was shot
on location in
New Mexico,
standing in for
the screenplay's
sunbaked Texas
backdrop.

Desperate Measures
By Jon D. Witmer

Mexico, standing in for the story's Texas settings. Nuttgens spoke
with AC in the weeks following the movie's premiere at this year's
Cannes Film Festival.

Brothers Toby (Chris Pine) and Tanner (Ben Foster) have a plan
to save the family farm and turn it profitable for Toby's children. That
their scheme comes at the expense of the Texas bank that's set to
foreclose on the property only makes it that much sweeter. But when
the brothers put their plan into action and embark on a series of
armed bank robberies, people inevitably get hurt - some even die
- and a Texas Ranger (Jeff Bridges) becomes determined to stop the
boys in their tracks, come hell or high water.
Written by Sicario scribe Taylor Sheridan, Hell or High Water
marks the sixth feature collaboration between director David
Mackenzie and cinematographer Giles Nuttgens, BSC. "David felt a
massive obligation to the script, to be able to give the background to
motivate the actions that start this terrible chain of events," Nuttgens
tells AC via Skype from his home in Spain. "The narrative is that the
farmlands dried up, so David was absolutely obsessed with the idea
that we should feel the heat, [the characters'] pain, and the sense of
abandonment and desperation that drives them to go on this bankrobbing spree."
Principal photography spanned 35 days in the summer of
2015, with locations in and around Clovis and Albuquerque, New
18

August 2016

American Cinematographer: Did you know from the
outset that you'd be shooting in New Mexico?
Giles Nuttgens, BSC: It had been determined that we
would be shooting in New Mexico because the state has greater tax
incentives than Texas. But David had this idea in preproduction to
travel to the places in Texas that are written in the script. So David,
location manager Jonathan Slator, production designer Tom
Duffield, line producer Kate Dean and I spent a week together to
understand both the visual and sociological environments we were
trying to create for the film.
What camera and lenses did you shoot with?
Nuttgens: We shot ArriRaw with an Alexa XT Studio, which
is basically a film camera with a digital backend; I'm used to judging
lighting through the optical viewfinder. We shot anamorphic with
[Vantage Film] Hawk V-Lites. They are very gentle in terms of contrast
and relatively sharp at wide apertures, with a very gentle [falloff] in
terms of depth of field. Most of the exteriors were shot with the
Angenieux Optimo 56-152mm [T4] A2S lightweight zoom, which is
probably the sharpest 'Scope zoom ever built, and with a focal-length

American Cinematographer

Hell or High Water photos by Lorey Sebastian, courtesy of CBS Films.

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - August 2016
