American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 32

◗

A New Testament
into topics such as environmentalism, the
nature of religion, and the creative
impulse.
The filmmakers elected to work
primarily in the Super 16mm format for
the 40-day shoot, using Kodak Vision3
200T 7213 film stock. Libatique also
employed 35mm Vision3 200T 5213 for
certain visual-effects shots, and Red Epic
Dragon camera arrays to capture dayand night-exterior background plates for
later use by the visual-effects team.
"Analog film spoke to Mother's
earthy, bohemian qualities, as opposed to
the synthetic quality of digital,"
Libatique muses. He adds that as digital
cinema began to gain a foothold in the
motion-picture industry, film-stock
manufacturers started optimizing their
product lines for image clarity and resolution. "Now 35mm feels almost too
clean," he says. "Darren wanted to see
grain, and 16mm is an automatic read.
You know you're not watching a digital
image."
Preserving the film stock's texture
meant shooting with sharp lenses. "The
only frustrating aspect of 16mm is that
there are very few choices," the cinematographer laments. "I tested wideangle 35mm Primos, but ended up
renting 16mm [Arri/Zeiss] Ultra 16
primes from Mels in Montreal, which
sub-rented them from Otto Nemenz in
Los Angeles. We used Ultra 16s on Black
Swan [AC Dec. '10], so I knew what they
did; I was searching to see if there was
something better, but I didn't find it."
Mother! demonstrates Aronofsky's
continued penchant for telling his stories
from a subjective point of view, a technique he began exploring with Pi (AC
April '98). On that film, the director
reflects, the subjective style "came out of
having a very limited budget and only
one actor. When we did Requiem for a
Dream we had four characters to follow,
which added complexity - split screens
and all these other ideas of expressionism. The Fountain [AC Nov. '06] moved
into more of an objective space, and then
The Wrestler [shot by Maryse Alberti; AC
Jan. '09] and Black Swan brought me
back towards subjectivity. But Mother! is

Top and above:
The house
belonging to
Mother and Him
was constructed
in two forms,
one on location
in a field
outside
Montreal, the
other on a
soundstage.
Right: Libatique
and writerdirector Darren
Aronofsky chart
their course
with the aid of a
floor plan.

32

November 2017

American Cinematographer



Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - November 2017

Contents
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - Cover1
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - Cover2
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 1
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 2
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - Contents
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 4
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 5
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 6
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 7
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 8
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 9
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 10
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 11
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 12
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 13
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 14
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 15
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 16
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 17
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 18
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 19
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 20
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 21
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 22
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 23
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 24
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 25
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 26
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 27
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 28
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 29
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 30
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 31
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 32
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 33
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 34
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 35
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 36
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 37
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 38
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 39
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 40
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 41
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 42
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 43
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 44
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 45
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 46
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 47
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 48
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 48a
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 48b
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 49
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 50
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 51
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 52
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 53
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 54
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 55
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 56
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 57
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 58
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 59
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 60
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 61
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 62
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 63
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 64
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 65
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 66
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 67
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 68
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 69
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 70
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 71
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 72
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 73
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 74
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 75
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 76
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 77
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 78
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 79
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 80
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 81
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 82
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 83
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 84
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 85
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American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 87
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - 88
American Cinematographer - November 2017 - Cover3
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