Chris Doyle Talk

Manu Anand · July 21, 2004

Just attended a Q&A sesssion with Chris Doyle who was visiting New Delhi for an Asian Film Festival as we are having a Wong Kar Wai Retrospective.

The Q&A wasnt totally cinematography oriented as a lot of people in the audience werent cinematographers. And the organisers had asked him to talk more generally than specific technical stuff.

Have been watching one Wong Kar Wai film a day :)

Anyway

Chris has just shot two films with the Fuji Reala500D and was very very happy and was joking that the Fuji folks ought to give him some beer for saying that.

He showed some clips from a film called" three " which was shot a lot day for night... but the interesting thing was the day for night was green and not blue like we are used to seeing.

Chris' take on that was that it depends on the city each city has a different night aura some cities are golden some blue some green... it depends on the city.

Someone asked him about DIGITAL. Chris' response was that he feels that the video folks are getting it wrong by trying to look like film. he felt that its a different medium and the evolution of it cant be like film. it has its advantages as well as disadvantages. It has to find its own line of evolution and its own space.

Talked about "days of being wild" Shot 320T pushed two stops and sometimes with as much as four filters infront of the lens.

Lots of anecdotes from Fallen Angels and Happy Together.

Talked about music and..... Repetition..... Movement...... Suspense...... Frame......... all elements that like in cinematography exist in Music.

Looking at In The Mood For Love the above makes perfect sense.

Wong kar wai's most oft said sentence to Chris" Is that all you can do Chris?"

Also saw the film he shot last year in thailand" called last life in the universe"

2046 has taken five years to make....and is reportedly beautiful.

One could go on and on but each film is a seperate topic

All in all a fascinating talk.

Manu Anand

New Delhi

Wendell_Greene · July 21, 2004

Thanks Manu! Like many others here I'm a fan of Doyle's work. Please post more information from the Q&A as it comes to mind.

Manu Anand · July 22, 2004

I've asked the organizers for transcripts of the talk. They were a bit worried about giving it to me, anyway if i manage to convince them Ill upload them and you all can have a look.

Manu Anand