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Janusz Kaminski and Gordon Willis


Ant_GT3

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I am making a documentary on these 2 DOP's for an assignment and I was just wondering what people thought of their styles, and how they compare? and why?

 

Also can a director work with a DOP too much to be able to change the DOP's original style??? e.g (Steven Spielberg)?!

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I love the work of both Kaminski and Willis, but these two guys are pretty different. Kaminski has certainly done an occasional "Willis" look but that's because there isn't much stylistically that Kaminski hasn't tried. Willis is much less show-offy basically; he would never go for all the lens flares combined with nets on the lens, the extreme wide-angle lenses, the shutter angle changes, etc. Kaminski is more like Robert Richardson than anyone else, part of a trend to incorporate some of the stylistic flourishes seen in commercials and music videos. Willis is stately, reserved, generally naturalistic, likes static frames, more like an art still photographer or a painter. Probably one of the more extreme works of stylization by Willis was the brilliant "Pennies from Heaven" work he did, but even that is not as extreme in terms of lighting and filtering effects as something by Kaminski or Robertson.

 

I've certainly borrowed from the tone of Willis' work in some of my stuff with the Polish Brothers, especially the static framing and sense of darkness and gloom, but otherwise, most modern movies go for more extreme effects than Willis would probably approve of. Roger Deakins shares some similarity to Willis in terms of keeping the lighting simple and natural, uncluttered in feeling. Some of Darius Khondji's more subtle work as well.

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Willis' work in "The Devil's Own" is great, although I find "Presumed Innocence" to be a little more involving visually of his last works. But "Devil's Own" was anamorphic, I seem to recall, and Willis is a master of the 2.35 frame (just as he is with the other frames!)

 

Three things tend to be dominant in his work: the power of the carefully composed static frame to create tension and show inter-character dynamics (look at "The Godfather" films especially); the overhead softlight technique, which is less warm and romantic most of the time but almost unsentimental and clinical when combined with a lack of fill light, like you are examining these characters under a microscope; and the pervading sense of darkness and gloom on the edges of the frame, with the few exceptions.

 

I wish "Pennies from Heaven" was out on DVD. Or is it?

 

Willis was a Panavision user but apparently had his own set of old lenses he liked to use most of the time -- I can't recall if they were Baltars or old Cookes. Apparently he tried other lenses like the Primos but always ended up using his old lenses. Seems odd -- you'd think his personality would demand the sharpest most up-to-date lenses possible, but I think it was part of his style of keeping things simple that he'd rather use more forgiving lenses than think about filtration to soften them.

 

I remember his comment during the height of the Fog-type Filter craze started by people like Geoffrey Unsworth, Ozzie Morris, and Vilmos Zsigmond, that someone should take a hammer and break everyone's filters because they had no conceptual idea behind the use other than being trendy (he wasn't referrring to the guys I mentioned but their imitators more, I think). Yet he used them occasionally (and admitted to it) like the Low Cons used for the flashbacks in "Godfather 2".

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Willis kept (and perhaps still keeps) his converted Super-Baltars at Panavision New York, which used to be General Camera. There's a 300mm Panavision E-series with his name on the side that Panavision paid for but out of courtesy never rented out to anyone else.

 

I wasn't thrilled by the look of The Devil's Own and also prefer Presumed Innocent, but I think you could also look at the production histories for those films as well for part of the reason. Presumed Innocent was a very controlled, organized shoot that filmed mostly in the studio. The Devil's Own did a lot of location work and was rewritten numerous times during production, causing the shoot to shut down a number of times and sending them months and millions over schedule and budget. I'm certain this trickles down into the photography as well as Willis was unlikely to excercise the type of control he usually has over his work.

 

Compare this to the control he was able to achieve in Bright Lights, Big City. The original director and DP (husband & wife) were fired after a week of shooting and production shut down for just one weekend before James Bridges and Gordon Willis began shooting from scratch. Willis had worked with Bridges before (Perfect, The Paper Chase) and I'm sure the director called his old friend to help him out in a bind. The film certainly has the Willis look.

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Do you think Willis will continue his solid and stable style while Kaminski will try and develop his style and experiment?

 

Should Kaminski start working with other directors than Steven? As they have worked for eachother for so long, has Kaminski slipped into Steven's style?

 

Obviously a DOP has to create what the director wants but can their style change over time towards the style of the director if they have worked together for such a long time? Is this a good or bad thing?

 

In your opinions, how has Kaminski's style and Willis's changed over the years and why? What patterns seem apparant? Why?

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Willis is retired so its pointless to ask if his style is evolving. I'd say that Kaminski has had more photographic influence over Spielberg than the other way around, other than perhaps the use of the wide-angle lens, but Kaminski may have been doing that before too. Spielberg has always liked lens flares but Kaminski has gone to town with that approach. Spielberg likes smoke on the set but Kaminski has admitted to the fact that he likes it even more than Spielberg. So I think it's an example of a DP encouraging a director to take more stylistic risks -- such as skip-bleach processing 800 ASA film as for "Minority Report." But I'm sure it mutual encouragement with Spielberg pushing Kaminski. Considering the interesting photography that has resulted from their collaboration, I'd say that it has not harmed either one of them.

 

Sometimes the only way for a DP to evolve a bold stylistic approach is to work with directors that trust them and support them, over multiple projects. Bertolucci and Storaro would have never achieved their greatest work of the 1970's separately. Sven Nykvist and Bergman also worked together to develop their visual approach.

 

Certainly if the director tends to make similar movies over time, it begins to limit the cinematographer. Robert Richardson has done more VARIED work since he stopped working with Oliver Stone (although a single Stone movie contains a wide variety of looks in itself) but the later films have generally not been as good, script-wise ("Four Feathers", "Snow Falling on Cedars") and this can ultimately be a limitation too.

 

I'm not sure what a bad collaboration would be though in terms of the famous director/DP teams -- they are probably famous because the work turned out well. The bad collaborations tend to not exist after one film together.

 

I'm not sure why you are trying to forge a link between Kaminski and Willis though. Seems arbitrary. Kaminski at heart is an Impressionist and Willis a Realist like Hopper or Wyeth.

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I have only seen Kaminski's films, and a few of Willis' thats why Im asking other people opinions!!

 

Basically I think that Kaminski takes risks in his techniques that pay off when Willis just kept with what he was happy with and did not really want to advance?!!

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Basically I think that Kaminski takes risks in his techniques that pay off when Willis just kept with what he was happy with and did not really want to advance?!!

I'm trying to understand how someone who openly admits to not having taken the time to actually watch all of Willis' outstanding work(much less study them in detail) can nevertheless reach the conclusion that he didn't take risks and didn't want to advance.

 

Why? Because he's never used an digital Intermediate, Bleach bypass, cross processed reversal, used a ton of filters, experiment with shooting 45 and 90 degree shutter angles, or any of a number of other techniques which people "think" makes you a great cinematographer?

 

Willis took major risks in his cinematography, the most notable example when he lighted Brando in the first Godfather using toplight, obscuring his eyes. F.F. Coppola constanty being told by Paramount executives at dailies that the film was "too dark".

 

Discussion comparing the work of one outstanding cinematographer with another from a different generation is as pointless and counterproductive as comparing Mickey Mantle with Alex Rodriguez.

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Basically I think that Kaminski takes risks in his techniques that pay off when Willis just kept with what he was happy with and did not really want to advance?!!

Not to echo Wendell Greene's reply, but advance to What ?

 

I'd rather say Willis is a classicist, if I had to, I guess. That is no vice, though...

 

-Sam

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Willis was quite the maverick in his day and very cutting-edge in terms of his use of underexposure, his low-key, naturalistic lighting style, and his ability to make the cinematography of an entire movie adhere to a cohesive visual design. But he was not a show-off, he was not flashy, he believed in visual restraint, understatement, and refinement. His images have an abiding power that are timeless. He evolved a way of thinking about images over many years, some of that time during the period before he achieved fame for "The Godfather" films.

 

Willis was experimental for his generation and Kaminski for today's -- but Kaminski is building on the work of Willis.

 

Willis is one of the most significant cinematographers in film history and signalled a major change in the way American movies were shot. To me, Willis and Storaro are the two people most responsible for the way movies have looked in the last 25 years.

 

It is too early to tell if Kaminski will achieve a similar level of historical importance to the growth of the art form.

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I sound like a broken record, but Klute shot by Willis is lightyears ahead

of its time and probably one of the best shot thrillers, if not films, of

all time. Just check where Willis puts the camera on that last helicopter

shot! Brilliant!

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I'm not disagreeing that Willis is a classicist, although in the 1970's some people might have disagreed if they were using the term to describe "classic" Hollywood studio photography, which Willis was not doing. He is a classicist in the broader sense, borrowing from traditions in painting and art photography.

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From what the guys at Pana NY have told me, Gordon Willis picked his favories from among the older, MKII (non-Zeiss)lenses, shunning the Primos. Although apparently not a user of diffusion, he preferred older glass and softer, grainier film stocks, ie 5296 and 5298. I had the honor of seeing him speak at my school as a first year film student and even as I was a complete novice then, I still recall his strong opposition to Kodak and lensmakers "trying to make things too perfect." I just wish I had the opportunity to see him a few years later when I could ask much better questions and gain much more from what he was saying. I still think he has an occasional 2 or 3 day workshop at SVA (Maybe one per year). Argh, if only I had the dough to do it, even though I've now been out of school for as long as I was in it. Damn, what I'd give to pick his brain for an hour.

 

ps: Jack and others at Panavision NY have many stories of Willis' 'glory days' and the incredible standards he expected of his equipment, not to mention what he did when those standards were not met. As a side note, I was also told that Willis gave all his meters away to aspiring cinematographers after he retired.

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