Cinematographer Oliver Curtis, BSC, who shot Death at a Funeral, talks about camera moves, lighting and finding the right look for each film.
Oliver Curtis, BSC’s work consists of an eclectic filmography with feature films such as Death at a Funeral, Owning Mahowny, The Wisdom of Crocodiles, and many other films ranging from comedy to drama to documentary. Most recently he completed work on the comedy movie, Virgin on Bourbon St. directed by Clare Kilner and starring Rob Schneider and Jenna Dewan. In this candid interview, Oliver Curtis, BSC shares his insights, talks about filmmaking, and shares tips related to camera moves, lighting, and finding your first shot.
When did you discover your interest in cinematography and begin to explore cinematography?
Oliver Curtis, BSC: I originally studied still photography.
I’ve always had still cameras ever since I was about five years old. I had a Box Brownie. So way back I’ve always been doing photography, I never really thought about it. It was just always there. I went to Kodak Instamatic and then Zenit-E. I’ve always been taking photographs.
And then I studied photography at ‘A’ level, had a Foundation course, like an arts foundation course, and I just majored in photography. And it was from that I really got a good understanding of film stocks and exposure and so on. From there, I then applied to film school in London. It was a college called the London College of Printing at the time. It’s changed its name, but it was a very high on film theory rather than practice. And as a consequence, I ended up shooting everyone else’s films, because I knew how to use a light meter [laughs], and I knew my way around a film camera. So, I had a lot of practice whilst I was at college, although the college itself was not very geared up for technical tuition. So through that and then after I left college I was still very much sort of winging it and just finding my way through my mistakes really. No one really ever taught me how to light.
After that, I got into documentaries. Shot a lot of documentaries for the BBC and Channel 4. Shot mostly on film at this time, which is like the early to mid-80s. Documentaries were a fantastic education in terms of learning to think on your feet. Working with natural light, available light. Shooting hand-held, composition, working quickly. It’s a great film school in itself. But it came a point when the sort of work I was being offered in fiction was getting more and more demanding. And there was a point at which I got offered my first feature film, having shot a number of short films. And I realized that I couldn’t do this part-time, you know. It’s too difficult, it’s too complicated. So I decided to just really focus my efforts towards being a cinematographer.
But because of that route in through film school and then through documentaries, I never assisted, I was never a first AC or focus puller, I was never a loader. So I’ve never really seen anybody else work or anybody else light. So, you know, I’m still teaching myself to this day. [laughs] Not really had the benefit of anybody else’s tutelage.
So it’s not a path or career path I could necessarily recommend to any student. It just happened to be the way I got into the business.
A popular question among startup filmmakers is ‘how do you get your foot in the door?’
Oliver Curtis, BSC: It’s not very helpful to say it, but I don’t think there’s any hard or fast rules. Because some people work their way through a film crew, some people just make a short film and blast their way in through sheer force of talent. Other people become sort of protégés. I couldn’t say that there is one way. Certainly, I couldn’t say that mine was a prescribable way of getting into the business. It’s just what happened to me really. What you have to be armed with, whichever way you go, is an enthusiasm, a passion for the medium that is broadly photography and cinematography. To know film history, to know films, to understand how they developed, to understand how the aesthetic of films has evolved. So that when you meet people in the business who are more established than yourself who might be able to offer up opportunities, so that they see you have that glint in your eye and that passion and that energy. But also to be practicing it however in whatever capacity. Do your own stills, do your own films, do your own videos. Show that you have a hunger to do it. Setting aside ‘low budget’, setting aside amateurish production values. What people want to see is a passion I think.
Speaking of amateurish production values, what would you say are things that startup filmmakers should avoid?
Oliver Curtis, BSC: That’s a difficult one because, you know, you’ve gotta make your mistakes. I wouldn’t call it amateurish. What you want to do is avoid convention. Less convention is what’s being asked of you. And that can be something in terms of the way you light a face, or the way you frame somebody, or if you are a director as well, sort of the clichéd, hackneyed plotlines. The thing to avoid is the obvious. That’s what I think. Whether it’s in cinematography or direction or writing, people have a hunger for originality. That’s the key. So I think it’s less about making mistakes and avoiding making mistakes, because you can’t. And it’s more about just having a blind faith, if you will, about just going forward and just trying to push the envelope a little bit. At the same time, establishing a really solid technical knowledge is very important – as a producer said to me very early on, it’s easy to show you’re talented but much harder to prove you’re competent!
When did you begin working with director Clare Kilner?
Oliver Curtis, BSC: I met Clare when she was looking for a DOP for The Wedding Date. And to be frank, my agent at the time said, ‘You know, Oliver, you’ve done enough art house… Hey, let’s do some box office.” [laughs] I’d never done a romantic comedy, and if you’ve looked at my work up until that time, it’s pretty sort of left field. So, I thought, ‘Well, okay. I’m open to it. I’m interested in every form of storytelling.’
Anyway, I just met Clare, and we just hit it off. It was a sort of kindred spirit. We had a blast on The Wedding Date, and we remained friends and collaborated ever since. We just last year did this, best described as a ‘college, frat house comedy’, Virgin on Bourbon St. Very, very low budget. Quite silly and playful. A genre piece. Which, again. I’ve never done anything like that and was curious to know what it would be like to shoot it incredible quickly, incredibly low budget, but to try and produce something that was very much part of that sort of ‘college American campus’ college comedy. And basically, because Clare was directing it, I’m there.
When you build a relationship with a director, you’re willing virtually through hell and high water to keep working with them because it’s such fun. Once you get to know a director, you’ve got a shorthand there. And I love it when directors come back for more because you’ve got a shorthand, you can work more quickly, you know what they like, you know the personalities. And, it’s a very rewarding experience. Clare and I, she’s back in London, we’re hoping to do another film, an adaptation of “The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole,” which is a successful book from the early 1980s in Britain.
By the way, I really liked your movie, The Wedding Date.
Oliver Curtis, BSC: So, it was your cup of tea then. If you look at my features list on my website, it’s a pretty schizophrenic bunch, you know. To be a cinematographer, I think, is to be able to apply yourself in different ways to different scripts and have different solutions for different scenarios. I’ve always found it could be a double-edge sword. Sometimes people want a cinematographer who lights softly, or another cinematographer who’s great at hard light, or very in-your-face, stylized work. And we can name many, many different cinematographers who you can put into those different brackets.
I dunno. I seem to have quite an array of styles to a point at which, I suppose, you found I don’t have a style. I just approach a movie in a way I think is the right way to do it for that director with their vision in mind.
You said that Virgin on Bourbon St. is a low budget film. What do you mean by low budget?
Oliver Curtis, BSC: That’s a good question because low-budget – it’s a moveable feast, isn’t it? It’s relative to what you’re trying to achieve. Because half a million dollars or a million dollars is very low budget for an action adventure film, but it’s a lot of money for an art house film set in one room.
So, it was low budget for what we were trying to achieve, which was a film that transcended the budget.
One of the things that I agreed with Clare and the producers was that I wanted to shoot something that looked like it cost $4 million rather than whatever it did, which must have been a good half of that. So I made sure we had framed it a certain way. I tried to light it in a certain way, to give it that sort of polish. I didn’t want it to feel low budget. And inevitably, circumstances whether schedule, speed of shooting, loads of different influences will seep through those best intentions and leave their imprint. So I don’t think I’m kidding anybody saying that it is a multi-million dollar production, it’s certainly not. But, it’s good to be able to have that mindset when you need to be able to think about the budget as a flexible thing, not a fixed, given immovable object.
I did a movie four years ago in Italy called Unrelated. It was for a friend of mine. She had no money. It was an ensemble piece about a group of English people on holiday in Siena, Tuscany. She said, ‘Look, it’s more of a workshop piece, do you want to come and stay in Tuscany for three months free of charge and have some fun.’ I said, ‘Of course, sounds great.’ I wanted to get away, so I took a Sony Z1, which was the best little camera that was around at the time. So we shot this little movie. I controlled the light where I could with grad filters; I used mirrors to punch sunlight in through windows. I shot interiors in the middle of the day and let the windows and doorways burn out when I was outside and tried to shoot the beginning in the end of the day. And yeah, it was fun to do. You just work with the limitations of the budget, the schedule, and the technology. I didn’t expect to ever see that film, but in the end it won the Fipresci Prize of the London Film Festival, it won The Guardian newspaper ‘Film of the Year’ [laughs]. It’s been a huge success for this director. I have to gulp quite hard when I see it projected 30-foot across in every cinema in London because we shot on a Sony Z1, which is an interlaced system, and it’s a tiny chip and fixed lenses.
So, it shows you that an interesting film, a film that people will want to see is not dependent upon necessarily lots of lighting, lots of production value, lots of money. It’s about the story. It’s about the performances. And it’s about how it’s told. So, you really need a director who understands that and can achieve a lot.
Was it only one camera that you used for Unrelated?
Oliver Curtis, BSC: Two Sony Z1’s, sometimes we double barreled on set because the acting was very much improvised. So I sort of set up a wide shot and then had a longer lens on the other camera. It was useful because the tapes could run half-an-hour, whatever, and let it evolve. Let the scene evolve in front of our eyes. It was an interesting piece.
If you could share three camera movement tips to new filmmakers around the world, what would they be?
Oliver Curtis, BSC: Learn to occasionally open your other eye when you’re looking through the viewfinder.
You should be able to use your peripheral vision, not just close your eye and look through the viewfinder. It’s very important to get that glance away from the camera. I learned that from documentary work. You’ve gotta be able to use both eyes, even though you’ve got one eye glued to the viewfinder.
If you operate as well as light, a good grip will help you with this, but when you’re doing a complicated dolly move, learn to make sure you’re comfortable at the end of the move. When you rehearse it, you want to be comfortable in the end. Uncomfortable in the beginning is fine. ‘Comfortable at the end’ because that’s when you’re usually going to have to hold the frame. So just rehearse it so that once you’ve done your move, your feet are solid, you’re comfortable, you can hold the frame.
When you’re working with directors and actors who don’t really like to put down marks, they don’t know where they’re going to stand, or they’re basically missing their marks – and that happens a lot – some very good focus pullers can do this: if you’re shooting some actors and you’re shooting across the room – say you’ve got a wall behind camera – if the focus puller goes to the wall either left or right, they’re at tangent to where you are, they can then spot with their 2nd AC marks on the wall across from them.
And then they can see, therefore, where the actors are in relation to the marks on the back wall. They can pull focus by seeing where the actor’s head is in relation to the marks they’ve put off-camera on a wall on a piece of show card or whatever is on the wall out of shot on the left or right of camera. Camera, 90 degrees, focus puller, subject to the middle, so it’s like a little triangle. The focus puller is no longer by the camera, they’re actually across the room. It’s quite a skill and takes some practice, but it’s a phenomenally useful thing to be able to do.
If you could share three lighting tips to new filmmakers around the world, what would they be?
Oliver Curtis, BSC: Don’t be afraid of hard light. Not everything has to be soft. One of the most beautiful light sources can be a single hard source. I use that a lot on beauty commercials and shampoo commercials.
By all means, use a light meter, but think of a light meter’s reading as a point of departure. It’s not the Bible. If you know your film stock, you can take the light reading as a reference. I often come away from having taken a light reading near a subject or wall and my meter is saying whatever it is. The meter tells you one thing. It’s what the relative values are at the scene – if the brightness of that scene at that spot in relation to banded exposure, being 18 percent reflectivity, the exposure doesn’t have to be placed there. It’s up to you to decide where you want to place the exposure and how you want to treat the characteristic curve of that film, that particular film stock. So, don’t feel that, ‘that’s what a meter says, that’s what you have to do.’ It’s not always the way to go. Over- and under- exposure are fantastic tools to feel free with.
Another tip is, when you read the script and the dialogue, and you’ve got actors come into the room – Actor A comes into room, followed by Actor B. So many times we’re blocking a scene with the actors and director, and the biggest instinct of all is to find your first shot where door opens, the frame shows them coming in through the door, dialogue begins, camera pans or covers them [coverage] and the people are on camera. They’re in shot from the first moment of that scene just because that’s where the dialogue starts. Well, one of the most interesting ways of beginning a scene is perhaps with the actors ‘out of shot’. Think about whether it’s necessary to have that dialogue on camera. It’s very much a director’s call, but a lot of directors forget this. They are concentrating on the actors’ faces. And it might just be that you can say, ‘Well, actually, let’s just hold on this kitchen sink, or these pictures on the wall, or this view. And then, maybe let’s dolly back. Maybe let’s just gently pan away, and we hear the dialogue, we hear the actors come into the room, and then they come into frame for the particular beat or moment.’ And I think that’s a really good skill because it just means that you get into a more cinematic storytelling. You’re giving more information because they can hear what’s being said, and maybe you don’t need to see the actors’ expressions at that time. You can be then looking at other things that could help establish a scene. Foreground things of importance whether it’s a McGuffin, or whether it’s a view, or whether it’s a color or texture. It’s an interesting thing to do that. You look at a scene, and think, ‘I don’t have to have the actors on camera all the time.’ You don’t have to cover every bit of dialogue on camera.
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