Robert Richardson's cinematography

Valentina Caniglia · June 1, 2004

Hi everybody,

I recently saw a short film from BMW shot by Robert Richardson. I admire his cinematography he is great in wherever he shoot. I was in particular impressed by the wonderful job he did on Powder Keg a short film series of BMW.

I notice that he must have done a bleach by pass on a high speed negative such as a 500 or an 800 with a S16mm.

if anyone of you knows more about how he treated the negative, how much he overexposed and what pecentage of bleach by pass he used please pass me this information if you can.

Also, I saw what he did with the B&W on Kill Bill. There is a kind of glow on the highlights which accentuated the contrasty look that is great.

if you know how he did that I would love to know.

I would like to contact him by e-mail but I had hard time to find his info.

If anyone knows how to contact him would be really useful for me.

Thank You

Valentina

Michael Nash · June 1, 2004

I think he must have done more than just bleach bypass on "Powder Keg" -- the grain was REALLY pronounced. I'd guess he underexposed and push-processed the negative, as well as skip-bleached the negative. And since you typically want to underexpose about a stop when doing a skip-bleach on the negative (to compensate for the buildup in density from the silver), that means underexposing two or three stops from the film's normal ASA, depending on how much you want to push. But it also could have been like you suggest; a high-speed stock with no push and skip-bleached.

But if I'm not mistaken, when you "skip bleach" the negative you either "skip" the bleach bath entirely or you don't -- I don't think there's any partial retention of silver on the negative. Positive processes like Technicolor's ENR or Deluxe Labs' ACE use a second bath of black & white developer to put silver back onto the print, and this amount can be varied in percentages. But this deepens blacks instead of burning out highlights; and since this project went straight to video there's no reason to believe there was ever a print made.

Which of course brings up the obvious -- a lot of the look could have been created in telecine, although I would expect someone like Richardson to control the look on the film as much as possible.

Regarding Richardson's trademark toplight glow, we've discussed it many times here so check the archives. Basically it's a combination of a bright toplight with some form of lens diffusion, usually a Pro Mist filter but he also uses nets on the lens for the same effect.

Wendell_Greene · June 1, 2004

Robert Richardson, A.S.C., shot "Powder Keg" in 16mm using an Arri Sr-2 camera and vintage Angieneux lenses. "I wanted the unique qualities of those lenses, and searched until I found them" explained Richardson.

Both Richardson and Director Alexandro Gonzalez Inarritu ("Amores Perros"," 21 Grams") felt neither digital images nor 35mm film could provide the texture they both wanted for the commercial and so they decided to use a 16mm color positive film, the daylight balanced Kodak Ektachrome 160 asa film. The camera was handheld 90% of the time to add to the visual tension.

"Powder Keg" was shot over nearly a 10 day period on practical locations in Mexico ."Richardson also chose to shoot mainly in natural light which he controlled with black fabrics and other devices, knowing he could further crush the black and the reduce the color palette in telecine. Light was mainly motivated by the sun, and the car was moving and turning. Sometimes he lit the actor portraying the photojournalist through the front window, masking the light coming through the side windows with black fabric.

"I felt this commercial took me back to my roots" Richardson says. "We didn't have to be concerned about matching shots like it was a feature film."

More exact information on this commercial can be found in the July 2002 issue of ICG.

Michael Nash · June 1, 2004

I checked Inarritu's commentary on "The Hire" DVD and he confirms Ektachrome, but doesn't elaborate. It appears to be cross processed, with the color probably drained in telecine. Typically cross-processing leaves behind pretty saturated color, which is why we probably guessed skip-bleach-neg first time around...