Dunkirk's Cinematography

The 2017 World War II thriller about the evacuation of British and Allied troops from Dunkirk beach.
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if you guys actually want to talk cinematography and directing techniques, Nolan’s done a number of POV shots i can think of - just not the showy kind you guys are talking about

there’s a particularly rousing one on Miller’s planet that corresponds to a massive Zimmer music cue (you should all know what shot i’m talking about)

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okungnyo wrote:I agree, it would look kind of cheap and ill-fitting with the classical style he is going for in Dunkirk.
What is a classical style and how does Dunkirk have it?

Anyway, we already know we're getting POV shots inside the cockpits. And Interstellar had some POV shots too. Actual GoPro styles shots won't ever happen.

My big question is if Dunkirk's cinematography will significantly improve upon Interstellar's drab, ugly aesthetic.


-Vader

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Vader, you just ain't a Hoyte fan, are ya? Though in the case of Spectre, I tend to agree with your opinion there despite the technical prowess on display...

I quite like the "drab" aesthetic Interstellar has going on; I found it fitting for the dusty, dying society on display. That being said, I would've liked to have seen some slightly cleaner looking photography inside the space ships.

Dunkirk won't really be much different, I suspect. Like in Interstellar, I think Nolan and Hoyte are taking the dirty photochemical look and running with it. A decent sized chunk of the footage we have so far doesn't exactly have popping colors or anything. But maybe I'm misunderstanding your use of the word "drab".

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I think Hoyte is a fantastic DP, way better than pfister

Loved his work on tinker, tailor and spectre

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Vader182 wrote:
okungnyo wrote:I agree, it would look kind of cheap and ill-fitting with the classical style he is going for in Dunkirk.
What is a classical style and how does Dunkirk have it?

Anyway, we already know we're getting POV shots inside the cockpits. And Interstellar had some POV shots too. Actual GoPro styles shots won't ever happen.

My big question is if Dunkirk's cinematography will significantly improve upon Interstellar's drab, ugly aesthetic.


-Vader
Mr. Nolan is known for handheld photography, which contributes to the raw realism feeling of his movies.

But judging from the footage in the trailers, he seems to have mixed it up and locked down the camera for some fixed, wide shots that we don't usually see from him.

That's classical to me, at least compared to his usual style. :P

And I see now that he has already employed POV shots before, just not in a showy way, as Michaelf2225 has said.

By POV, I guess I understood it to mean shots like the one in The Hobbit or the one in Transformers where the camera is attached to a soldier's gun.

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Vader182 wrote: will significantly improve upon Interstellar's drab, ugly aesthetic.
Either you're going to go into some vague pseudo film analysis shit with this or you simply did not prefer the intentional drab worn down feel of the film (which doesn't coincide with "improve"), which is fine.

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Michaelf2225 wrote:Vader, you just ain't a Hoyte fan, are ya? Though in the case of Spectre, I tend to agree with your opinion there despite the technical prowess on display...

I quite like the "drab" aesthetic Interstellar has going on; I found it fitting for the dusty, dying society on display. That being said, I would've liked to have seen some slightly cleaner looking photography inside the space ships.

Dunkirk won't really be much different, I suspect. Like in Interstellar, I think Nolan and Hoyte are taking the dirty photochemical look and running with it. A decent sized chunk of the footage we have so far doesn't exactly have popping colors or anything. But maybe I'm misunderstanding your use of the word "drab".
Interstellar is really overexposed and has intense light sources. It's a bad combination. Obviously I get the "ON SALE: USED" look to Earth and the ship interiors, but I feel like Hoyte took Nolan's intention and amplified that to Interstellar's detriment. The terrible exposition scenes in the first act (all of the NASA garbage) would probably play 99% better if it was bathed in Wally's warm lighting style that has a natural sexiness to the image. The production design can still capture the drab look he wants but there's a happy medium Hoyte did not discover.

(I strongly feel the production design's dour look is excessive too; the ships need bigger windows and NASA more design for some Kurosawa flair, ie backgrounds intensify drama of foreground)

What I really want is for Dunkirk to fully embrace a tableau style. Nolan's struggled with his indulgence in over-plotting and clumsy exposition dumps versus a tableau style starting with Inception, and Dunkirk hopefully erases that tension in his own work and is more purely built around tableau style storytelling.

ALSO general PSA: don't use terms if you don't know what they mean. None of what's described above is a "classical style."


-Vader

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Oku
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He found inspiration in Mr. Lean's epic Ryan's Daughter and the trailers seem to indicate that, so can't it be called a classical style?

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Vader182 wrote:Interstellar is really overexposed and has intense light sources. It's a bad combination. Obviously I get the "ON SALE: USED" look to Earth and the ship interiors, but I feel like Hoyte took Nolan's intention and amplified that to Interstellar's detriment. The terrible exposition scenes in the first act (all of the NASA garbage) would probably play 99% better if it was bathed in Wally's warm lighting style that has a natural sexiness to the image. The production design can still capture the drab look he wants but there's a happy medium Hoyte did not discover.

(I strongly feel the production design's dour look is excessive too; the ships need bigger windows and NASA more design for some Kurosawa flair, ie backgrounds intensify drama of foreground)

What I really want is for Dunkirk to fully embrace a tableau style. Nolan's struggled with his indulgence in over-plotting and clumsy exposition dumps versus a tableau style starting with Inception, and Dunkirk hopefully erases that tension in his own work and is more purely built around tableau style storytelling.

ALSO general PSA: don't use terms if you don't know what they mean. None of what's described above is a "classical style."


-Vader
yeah, that's fair enough

I mostly love what Hoyte did with Interstellar, but now that you mentioned what Wally's lighting for the NASA scenes likely would have been, you got me thinking...

Tableau would be good for Nolan; some of the beach shots look to be composed in a way that suggests they'll be held for longer than we're used to with him, and when he points to silent films as a big inspiration, I get the sense he's really trying to compose scenes in a totally different, encompassing, visual way. For someone who has been accused of telling and not showing for a few films now, it'd be a good move.

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Spert wrote:I think Hoyte is a fantastic DP, way better than pfister

Loved his work on tinker, tailor and spectre
They both have their strengths. Loved Hoyte's work on Her. He is great and I'm looking forward to seeing what he does with Dunkirk.

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