Edward Lachman

The one thing that a director like Todd Haynes has said about me, is that I don't fall back on one style. That I try to reinterpret the imagery through the storytelling, through the script of what makes that script unique in itself. And I think that partly comes out of art school because I studied different forms, and thinking about how different movements in the art world created whatever they did. And so I understood that, or tried to understand that images are created out of a certain political, social, and even economic means. So for me, what's fun is how I reinvest my ideas through the script, or through the storytelling, to try and find its own language.[2013] Show less «

My gaffer and myself were the only people old enough working on I'm Not There. (2007) that were around in the late 60s and 70s. So the references that the director Todd Haynes was referencing, he understood, but we actually lived it [laughs]. I went to art school in New York at the time, so I was very much in that world. But the other aspect of "I'm Not There" that was engaging for me was that we referenced the independent or European cinema of the 60s and 70s, of the Godard's and early New Wave films like À bout de souffle (1960) and Vivre sa vie: Film en douze tableaux (1962). And later from the Neo-realists to directors like Fellini that were breaking away from Neo-realism and reality towards more subjective, personal cinema. So we actually, literally, referenced that specifically. The scene where Cate Blanchett is one evolution of Bob Dylan who's trying to escape his stardom and fame, and his fans, and the responsibilities that come with being a rock star references the scene in 8½ (1963) where Mastroianni is escaping, or trying to find his next film and feels the pressure of his creative process and things that are being imposed on him. Todd referenced not only the world that Dylan was living in, and how he influenced culture, but also how culture was influencing Dylan through cinema, through the politics of the Vietnam War. So these were all elements in the film that underline the storytelling, because how do you tell a story of a mythological story like Dylan?[2013] Show less «

The conceit with Carol (2015) was to reach for naturalism, from shooting almost entirely on location to the stitching in Cate Blanchett's clothes. This approach was different than what Todd [director Todd Haynes] and I were reaching for with Far from Heaven (2002). That was a Sirkian look of the fifties, a world of artifice and manufactured expressionism, which is an entirely different approach to lighting...[2015] Show less «

[on Carol (2015)] We opted to shoot in 16mm. We wanted to reference the photographic representation of a different era. They can recreate grain digitally now, but it's pixel-fixated. It doesn't have this anthropomorphic quality in which the grain structure in each frame is changing. The actual physical grain of film adds another expressive layer that is impacting the surface of the characters' emotional being. It has to do with how film captures movement and exposure in the frame - finer grain for highlights and larger grain for lower light areas - that gives a certain emotionality to the image that feels more human. I really believe with "Carol" that people would feel something different than if I had shot it digitally. The other important thing for me with film over the digital is the way color is portrayed. For example, if I have a cool window and warmer lights inside in the digital world they don't mix the way they do in film. With film grain, there's a crossover and contamination between warm and cool colors that I don't find digitally. Digital lacks a sense of depth in color separation the way it does in film. In film, there's these three layers, R,G,B. For me, it's almost like an etching where the light is eating into the negative when it's developed, and even though it is microscopic, it gives a depth to the image that I always feel is lacking digitally. [2015] Show less «

Often in period films there's tendency to over-romanticize the era. For example, why are the cars always clean in period films? Didn't they have dirty cars back then? Why is all furniture from that exact period? People own things that are 10 years or 20 years old. Why is it when you look through a window in a period film they are always clean? Why are we always in these perceived golden tones of the past? Simple things like that make an enormous difference. There's almost this revisionist idea that it was always a better time than we live in now. With Carol (2015), we did everything possible to not over-romanticize the period. This was a world that was coming out of World War II, where there was a great deal of insecurity. Todd Haynes wanted to reference the pre-Eisenhower period in naturalistic way. People refer to "Carol" as a melodrama, but Todd likes to think of it as a period love story. We looked at the time not through its cinema, but through its photographers that documented New York. We looked at mid-century photographers like Ruth Orkin, Esther Bubley, Helen Levitt and Vivian Maier. These women were documenting an urban landscape as they wavered between photojournalism and art photography. We also looked at Saul Leiter. He was a street photographer, but he was more like a painter. Leiter's photographs created layered compositions that are obscured by abstractions, subjects were only partially visible as his images were filled with found objects, textures and reflections. By using Leiter's approach, we are not only creating a representational view of the world, but a psychological one. The characters are hidden, but we still see them through sensual textures of reflections, weather and foggy car windows. For example, by seeing Therese (Rooney Mara) in doorways, partially viewed through windows and reflections, it's like she's just coming into focus on her own identity and her ability to form a relationship out of love. It's a visual way of showing her amorous mind - a way of letting us into her interior world. (...) The mid-century photographers were also experimenting with color photography at this time and we wanted to reference ektachrome still film stock. With early ektachrome, there wasn't a full range of color spectrum as is there is today. Ektachrome had a cooler rendition: the colors were less saturated and tended towards magentas, greens and cooler hues, so we referenced that feeling. [2015] Show less «

[on lighting strategies in Carol (2015)] My philosophy of lighting is we weren't using theatrical lighting like studio or stage lighting. We were lighting the spaces. It was important for me to use naturalistic lighting. In Far from Heaven (2002), I had to make the Universal back lot look theatrical, there was an artifice to it. In this, I was on real location creating naturalism. Cincinnati was so wonderful and was so caught up in that period that we didn't have to create something that wasn't there. [2015] Show less «

[on experimenting with compositions in Carol (2015)] I like to think of compositions as the architecture of the space that creates the frame. The architecture of the frame can imprison the character and make a statement of their own emotions. I never feel like we're in a close-up medium-long-shot world. I'm always looking with Todd for framing that incorporates the emotion of the scene in that space. Where you put the camera in its height in relation to space is about point of view. To me, the camera is about where you're telling the story, about who's point of view, and how you see stuff. Do you see it from Carol's point of view or Therese's? We're playing with how a frame affects the emotions of the character. I'm trying to make adjustments of the camera with their own movement and flow. [2015] Show less «

[on using Super 16mm for Carol (2015)] We wanted to capture the feeling of a different time period. You feel there's something underlying and subjugating the image. The fine grain and highlights are constantly moving from frame to frame, and the grain becomes almost another skin for the characters. This is something that lacks when shooting in digital. Film is a chemical process and digital is an electronic process, and the chemical one is closer to the human condition than electronic. [2015] Show less «

[on why he shot Carol (2015) on Super 16mm] Film grain. Even 35mm negative is so grainless that it almost looks digital when you go through a DI. And the same can be said obviously for the digital world. When you shoot digitally they can add grain to the film, but it doesn't operate the same way. In a digital world, everything's pixel-fixated in the same place. Grain moves. It has, I think, an anthropomorphic lity]. I like to feel, like, a pulsing of something living underneath the surface of the image. So by referencing Super 16 I felt it could harken back or it could give a reference to the way you could look at a photograph from 50 or 60 years ago, that the grain structure was different back then. And Super 16, through a DI, through a digital intermediate, would feel like looking at a photograph from the past. So that was the real idea. Then this feeling of another layer of seeing their emotions through grain captured, I thought, another emotional quality of their performance. [2015] Show less «

[on Kodak's new Super 8 camera] The first camera I ever picked up was the Super 8 camera and it's still a joy to play and experiment with. There's always a sense of discovery with the form. I've actually used it in a number of feature films including My Family (1995), Selena (1997) and I'm Not There. (2007). [2016] Show less «