Analyzing famous DPs

[Daniel Moore]

First, Micheal Bay's DP has a very unique aesthetic, to the point where I know its a Bay film within seconds of watching the footage. I think the guy's name is Mitchel someone. I love his esthetic. What does he do that makes his work, well, his work. What might he do that other DPs don't do?

 

Next, I look at Kaminsky's work, like The Terminal, Munich, and Catch me if You Can, and he's using the same lighting arrangements for all of them it looks like. How would you describe that? What does he do differently than other DPs? I noticed he uses a lot of Key and Fill, and there doesn't seem to be too much depth in the shots.

 

Third, Roger Deakins- his work just looks "golden" and warm to me. Maybe he uses a lot of gold bounces? How would you describe his techniques? Thanks.

 

Note- whenever I think about ways to articulate cinematography, mostly the basics and my own jargon come to mind, for example, "heavenly" would be aperature is opened a lot so you get that high key blasting white light, but I know there's also a lot of technical stuff involved that I don't know, and I also don't know how much technical info is necessary to articulate a visual style.

[Tom Jensen]

Michael Bay goes through DP's like I go through underwear. The man is insane. You are thinking of Mitch Amundson who shot Transformers. John Schwartzman did a number of films with him, I know Amir Mokri worked with him. He came out of music videos. Very talented but a little difficult.

[Daniel Moore]

Michael Bay goes through DP's like I go through underwear. The man is insane. You are thinking of Mitch Amundson who shot Transformers. John Schwartzman did a number of films with him, I know Amir Mokri worked with him. He came out of music videos. Very talented but a little difficult.

 

Yeah, Amundson did do Tranformers, but he must have also done The Island, Transformers 2, and a bunch of commercials, because the lighting/esthetic of all the footage I've seen has that DP's touch, as opposed to Bad Boys II which to my memory didn't have any particular stylism that stood out to me.

[Guest Stephen Murphy]

Yeah, Amundson did do Tranformers, but he must have also done The Island, Transformers 2, and a bunch of commercials, because the lighting/esthetic of all the footage I've seen has that DP's touch, as opposed to Bad Boys II which to my memory didn't have any particular stylism that stood out to me.

 

Nope - Mauro Fiore did The Island and Ben Seresin did Transformers 2. The asthetic you're refering to is simply Michael bay's style and all the DPs he's worked with have managed to work within that style while retaining their own fingerprint on each individual project. I would have said Bad boys 2 had a similar asthetic to Bays other movies i.e high contrast lighting, saturated colours and hyper kinetic camera moves and edits, except that it was shot super 35 instead of anamorphic, and had a bit more grain then bays other movies.

[fabio pirovano]

Nope - Mauro Fiore did The Island and Ben Seresin did Transformers 2. The asthetic you're refering to is simply Michael bay's style and all the DPs he's worked with have managed to work within that style while retaining their own fingerprint on each individual project. I would have said Bad boys 2 had a similar asthetic to Bays other movies i.e high contrast lighting, saturated colours and hyper kinetic camera moves and edits, except that it was shot super 35 instead of anamorphic, and had a bit more grain then bays other movies.

 

 

Good words,Same happen for Tony Scott's,he can't leave his Clichè and I noticed that Bay sometimes grab something from him

Edited September 2, 2009 by fabio pirovano