American Cinematographer - December 2019 - 66

Natasha Braier, ASC, ADF
brings cinematic lighting and an
improvisational shooting style to
Honey Boy
By Patricia Thomson

You can't get any closer to a script than Shia LaBeouf did
with Honey Boy. The story, which the actor began writing
while he was in court-ordered rehab, toggles back and
forth between a fictionalized version of LaBeouf at ages 12
and 22 - as a child actor under the supervision of his overbearing, alcoholic, ex-rodeo-clown father, and as a young
action star who lands in rehab after a car crash. Moreover,
LaBeouf chose to play his father, the cause of his diagnosed
PTSD.
"It's film therapy," says Argentine-born, Los
Angeles-based Natasha Braier, ASC, ADF. "There's nothing more powerful than reenacting the most dramatic
moments of your life. A lot of people write about them in
scripts or books, but few get to act them out. You're usually
acting out somebody else's trauma." Though when
LaBeouf assumed his abuser's perspective, she notes, "he
wasn't doing it in a therapeutic context. He was in the
middle of a set that was expecting him to be professional
and do what an actor does. The pressure was remarkable."
LaBeouf had reached out to director Alma Har'el
66

December 2019

after watching Bombay Beach - her poetic documentary
about poverty and manhood in the American West -
whose trio of subjects includes a bipolar boy who was the
child of an alcoholic, as was the director herself. LaBeouf's
meeting with Har'el led to several collaborations prior to
Honey Boy, beginning with "Fjögur Píanó," an extended
music video for Icelandic band Sigur Rós in which LaBeouf
costars. He subsequently executive-produced and
financed Har'el's LoveTrue, a genre-bending documentary
that interlaces its protagonists' stories with actors playing
younger versions of themselves.
LaBeouf's Honey Boy screenplay was heavy on
dialogue and light on direction. "In parts, it felt almost like
a play," the cinematographer says. "Shia was really clever
giving his script to Alma. By choosing the right person, it's
not going to be just a filmed theater play. It's going to be
the visceral experience she proved she can do in Bombay
Beach."
A photographer and cinematographer herself,
Har'el's visual lyricism struck the right chord with Braier,
who's known for her expressive lighting on such features
as Gloria Bell, The Neon Demon (AC July '16) and The Rover
(AC July '14). "I liked Alma's way of approaching things
from an emotional, visceral, raw [perspective] that is very
poetic - and very similar to mine," she says. "If the director had been someone with a more conventional body of
work, I wouldn't have done the movie, [because I would
have assumed] that there's nothing here for me to do. But
I knew I was with somebody who wanted the best part of
me."
➔

ASC 100th Anniversary

Unit photography by Monica Lek. Additional images provided by Natasha Braier, ASC, ADF.
All images courtesy of Amazon Studios.

Father
and
Son

American Cinematographer - December 2019

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