American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 44

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Villeneuve's Vision

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merican
Cinematographer:
Sicario is your second film with
Roger Deakins, after Prisoners.
Denis Villeneuve: Sicario is a
film that I had to make with Roger; I
don't know if I would have made the
film without him. I had finished
doing Prisoners and I wanted to
pursue our relationship; I wanted to
go further, visually.
Much of the violence in
Sicario is hidden or occurs offcamera.
Villeneuve: I wanted to have
the same approach to violence that I
have had in my previous films, which
is to seize the victim's point of view. I
wanted to show the brutality of
violence, without glorifying it or
creating too much of a spectacle.
Although the story is about
fighting the Mexican drug lords,
there are also allusions to waterboarding, and the film seems to ask
the question of whether the end
justifies the means.
Villeneuve: Sicario is not about
drug cartels; it's about how America
deals with its enemies. There is also
the theme of a world where the traditional rules have been lost. But I have
to stress that the film doesn't offer any
answers; it only raises questions.
Tell us about preparing the
film with Roger.
Villeneuve: I used to like to
improvise on set. Storyboarding is
something I developed by working
with Roger. It was a very pleasant
process, and became part of our
dialogue. It's a way of refining the
style of the film. We also studied
photographs and locations, and spoke
a lot about the story.
Do you always follow the
storyboard?
Villeneuve: The storyboard is
really a tool that brings freedom on
the set. Sometimes we followed it
rigorously and other times we tore it
up, perhaps inspired by an actor's
ideas. Roger and I are both very flexible on set.

October 2015

What did you and Roger
discuss in terms of the look of the
film?
Villeneuve: There is a power to
the naturalism of Roger's lighting that
touches me deeply, and from the start
there was this desire for naturalistic
lighting. There was also the idea of
being inspired by the brutality of the
sun, and by the colors of the desert in
that part of New Mexico. Mexican
cities are also full of strong colors, and
Roger and I knew we had to embrace
them. I know that Roger was very
inspired by the photographer Alex
Webb, who has done extraordinary
work with color. So there was this idea
of either going into earthy desert colors
or a radical explosion of colors. I had
never allowed myself to do that before,
but I trusted Roger to go to these
extremes.
The border-tunnel sequence is
wonderful, with its mix of normal,
infrared and thermal images.
Villeneuve: In that scene, we're
following a young agent who knows her
own world but doesn't know much
about the other side of the border. We
wanted the audience to feel destabilized, to feel like they were going underwater, diving with the characters, [and
so] we had the idea of mixing different
image textures.
The night-vision images were
obtained by putting a special adapter -

American Cinematographer

an image enhancer - on the Alexa,
which allowed us to shoot in almost
total darkness. Roger put a huge bounce
very high up with one tiny lamp bouncing on it, to create a very little moonlight, so that we could see the ground a
little bit. We were all in the dark, and
only the Steadicam operator could
really see anything. We spent three
nights shooting in this darkness. I loved
that experience, that total absence of
light.
We also shot with this thermal
camera from FLIR, a box that looks like
something out of a Fritz Lang sciencefiction movie. The idea was that the
thermal camera would be the point of
view of Benicio's character - a more
sophisticated camera that would allow
him to go further in his quest. We also
wanted to create a rhythm in the
sequence, to create a visual tension
between the different cameras.
Any final words about your
collaboration with Roger?
Villeneuve: I have to be honest:
Roger is much more accomplished than
I am. Artistically, he's a master, and I try
to stimulate him as best I can. It's
completely selfish on my part, because I
learn with every shot - about rhythm,
about camera movement, about the
dynamics of the frame. I'm always
learning with him.
- Benjamin B

American Cinematographer - October 2015

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