American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 62

◗

Unholy Alliance

Top and middle:
Bulger meets up
with (from left)
John Martorano
(W. Earl Brown),
Mickey Maloney
(Mark Mahoney)
and Steve Flemmi
(Rory Cochrane).
Bottom:
Takayanagi lines
up a shot while
Cooper looks on.

way he composes and lights and moves
the camera is all about the world we're
creating."
Takayanagi was born in Tomioka,
Japan in 1974. He was a college student
without a career plan when, at a local
bookstore, he stumbled across Masters of
Light: Conversations with Contemporary
Cinematographers by Dennis Schaefer
and Larry Salvato. The book sparked an
interest that quickly caught fire, and
Takayanagi soon moved to the U.S. to
study film and English at California
State University, Long Beach. Later,
while attending the AFI Conservatory,
he shot the short film Shui Hen, directed
by his friend Maximilian Jezo-Parovsky,
which won him the ASC John F. Seitz
Heritage Award.
Takayanagi's big break came
when he was hired as 2nd-unit cinematographer on the Japanese portion of
Alejandro González Iñárritu's Babel,
followed by similar gigs on Kevin
Macdonald's State of Play and The
Eagle, and Ryan Murphy's Eat Pray
62

October 2015

American Cinematographer

Love. He credits director Gavin
O'Connor for giving him a chance as
main-unit cinematographer on Warrior,
after which, in short order, he shot Joe
Carnahan's The Grey and David O.
Russell's Silver Linings Playbook.
Cooper and Takayanagi spent a
month and a half in preproduction on
Black Mass, starting in March 2014.
Together, they went over the script by
Mark Mallouk and Jez Butterworth,
based on the book Black Mass: The True
Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the
FBI and the Irish Mob by Dick Lehr and
Gerard O'Neill. The filmmakers did not
assemble a shot list, focusing instead on
the emotion of various story points.
They did, however, storyboard the more
complicated action sequences.
They also looked at the work of
Americana photographers Walker
Evans and Robert Frank, as well as that
of Joel Sternfeld, who took scores of
innovative color photos starting in the
1970s. Movies from the '70s also
provided inspiration, including Francis
Ford Coppola's The Godfather and The
Godfather: Part II, and Alan J. Pakula's
All the President's Men (1976), all shot by
the late Gordon Willis, ASC. In particular, the latter film's newsroom set
inspired the approach to the FBI offices
in Black Mass.
"Our credo was to approach the
film as though we were making it as a
contemporary film in 1975," Cooper
notes. "The Seventies are difficult to get
right. Often the camerawork is flashy,



American Cinematographer - October 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - October 2015

Contents
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - Intro
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - Cover1
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - Cover2
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 1
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 2
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - Contents
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 4
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 5
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 6
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 7
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 8
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 9
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 10
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 11
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 12
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 13
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 14
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 15
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 16
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 17
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 18
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 19
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 20
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 21
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 22
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 23
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 24
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 25
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 26
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 27
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 28
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 29
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 30
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 31
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 32
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 33
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 34
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 35
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 36
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 37
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 38
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 39
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 40
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 41
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 42
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 43
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 44
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 45
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 46
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 47
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 48
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 49
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 50
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 50a
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 50b
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 51
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 52
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 53
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 54
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 55
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 56
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 57
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 58
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 59
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 60
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 61
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 62
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 63
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 64
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 65
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 66
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 67
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 68
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 69
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 70
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 71
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 72
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 73
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 74
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 75
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 76
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 77
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 78
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 79
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 80
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 81
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 82
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 83
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 84
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 85
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 86
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American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 88
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 89
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 90
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 91
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 92
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 93
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 94
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 95
American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 96
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