BSC Expo 2023. The Artistic Side of Things.

Well, it’s here once again. BSC Expo, the place to be if you’re an aspiring DOP or filmmaker in general. For the uninitiated, BSC Expo is one of the biggest events on the industry calendar, at least in Europe. It’s a great opportunity to test all of the latest equipment, get insider news about upcoming releases, talk to manufacturers about their products, network with friends and colleagues old and new and attend seminars from some of the industry’s top DOPs talking about workflows, career advice, their work, as well as theoretical and artistic discussions. It may seem like a tech show, but it’s really a celebration of the moving image and everything that goes into making film.

I was very excited to attend this year’s expo as I haven’t been able to attend for quite some time due to work commitments and the changes the industry has gone through in the last few years have been immense so I needed to catch up on what’s happening out there.

Ben Davis BSC

I have another blog coming all about my favourite pieces of tech that I saw but in this blog, I want to write about the artistic side of things. One of the seminars I attended, and the one that stuck with me the most was Ben Davis BSC discussing his creative choices and the process of shooting The Banshees of Inisherin. You can catch the film on Disney+ if you haven’t seen it. The film follows two central characters Pádraic Súilleabháin (Colin Farrell) and Colm Doherty (Brendan Gleeson) who live on a remote island called Inisherin off the west coast of Ireland at the tale end of the Irish Civil War. Colm abruptly ends his lifelong friendship with Pádraic with the only explanation being that Pádraic is too dull. To keep Pádraic away from him, Colm threatens to cut off his fingers each time Pádraic talks to him. The film is both delightfully funny and seriously dark and the cinematography really highlights this sense of isolation and loneliness that the characters express.

The quote from Ben that really stuck with me was “I think good artistic work should have some ambiguity to it”. That to me sums up filmmaking. All too often we are too focused on trying to explain things to people, trying to focus on one particular viewpoint or having scenes with too much dialogue to explain thousands of pages of backstory. It really comes back to the ultimate tagline for film: Show, don’t tell. If your characters are talking endlessly, it’s a bad scene. Film is a visual medium, so all you should be trying to do is show the characters’ actions and how they

are reacting to the situation in front of them. How your audience reacts is up to them, it’s their interpretation. If they find it funny, it’s funny. If they don’t, that’s fine too. If you try too hard to guide the audience, the work loses its impact. This is ultimately why so many commercials and corporate videos are as dull as dishwater and the best ones just show you something. Yes, the intention is different, to sell a product or service, but the principle is the same. Show people what you’re selling, don’t talk about it, because no one cares about your selling points…but back to the seminar.

Ben talked extensively about the concept of space, which was a running theme with a lot of other DOPs that spoke at the event. The idea of expressing conflicting scales within an expansive location. The Banshees of Inisherin has some incredible wide vistas which really help to illustrate the loneliness of the island, the wild untamed landscape with tiny cottages dotted about. Yet, the close-ups and interior sets are very claustrophobic and these two conflicting scales counterbalance one another. It shows how there is this small community that is very tight-knit and traditional yet they have all of this untamed space, they are lost, unsure of where to go next and feel alone. I think in one way or another, we can all relate to that. The cinematography is a perfect visual metaphor for the story that unfolds, which I won’t spoil here, but a film is always so much more interesting when the cinematography and story progression are woven together.

Ben’s discussion of space really got me thinking about how, regardless of the work you do, the space you are in is just as important for informing your story as the content you are capturing, as well as just being visually interesting. It helps to step back and really think about the project as a whole and how the scene you are currently shooting is going to tie into the rest of the film. Filming any project should never just be about coverage, getting shots for the sake of shooting. There needs to be an intention behind every shot and if there isn’t it doesn’t matter how good the lighting is, or how sharp the image looks, you just won’t be satisfied with the work because it doesn’t mean anything to you. The same applies to the space. If it’s not connected to anything, why are you there? Shooting less, with an idea and an edit in mind will always be more rewarding than shooting take after take just to give options. The editor is inevitably going to see things differently from you and the end result will be a mess, the story will be lost and confused.

The final aspect of Ben’s talk I wanted to touch on was when he discussed physically shooting the film, which was very inspiring. The Banshees of Inisherein is a beautiful film of high production value, but it may surprise you to know that it had a very small crew and in relative terms was very lo-fi. What I mean by that is normally on motion pictures with any sort of studio budget behind them the filmmaking methods start to become out of reach for most indie filmmakers or DOPs working on low-budget productions, corporate films, documentaries etc. If you’ve ever seen the images of Robert Richardson’s lighting setups for the highway scenes in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood you’ll know what I mean. However, in this instance, due to the shooting locations large lighting rigs, huge generators and more powerful fixtures weren’t an option for the crew because they couldn’t physically get them there, so everything had to be scaled down to the type of kit well within reach of most crews. Also shooting during the Covid-19 pandemic meant the crew had to isolate for 10 days beforehand so having a smaller crew was easier in that respect.

The film was shot digitally on the Arri Alexa Mini LF and Arri Signature Primes. Ben talked about comparing film and digital with the Arri 435 and Mini LF and approaching the grade with an interesting digital/film process. Basically, the film was shot digitally, given a quick grade, output to film and then the scan was graded. Greg Frasier had previously used this process on Dune and it was something I’d never thought about before. In theory, this should give the benefits of digital and film. In terms of lighting, it was usually a simple case of one large diffused light source through a window, practicals and natural light, that’s it. Ben’s philosophy was “Big window, big light. Small window, big light”. Push the light in through the windows and let it bounce around the room, let it be imperfect. This meant the crew could work fast, they were adaptable and could react to the changing weather to get the most out of their shooting days, filming a lot of scenes at dawn and dusk. Ben spoke about how shooting this way with natural light at certain times of day has an evocative feel about it and immediately conjures certain emotions, so you don’t need to do as much. Twilight is quite melancholy, while dawn is optimistic. If you were to try to recreate that look with a lighting rig, it would be incredibly complicated and time-consuming. The sun is the greatest gaffer after all. For me, shooting at twilight in the dying light is incredibly satisfying, especially in urban environments. Having multiple colour temperatures working against one another and not having the capacity to expose all of the image forces me to explore new options, to see what will work and what won’t. Sometimes having a dark under-exposed image is more effective as it allows the audience to see what they want to see. I know there is someone out there immediately thinking about using fast prime lenses and high ISOs to get exposure, but have you tried not doing that? Sticking at a native ISO and using a slower zoom lens at f3.2 or f4 might just give you the effect that you are looking for and also the flexibility to change framing.

For the night interiors, Ben talked about how he took inspiration from the Dutch masters and how they would centre people around a single light source. For the pub scenes, he broke the sets down into little vignettes and lit each of them individually using practical oil lamps on the tables as the centre point and augmenting that light with dedo lights hidden in the ceiling focused on the faces to even out the exposure. He didn’t worry too much about ‘perfect exposure’ and by letting the light fade off as it naturally would and exposing to the oil lamps, the final result was more authentic to a dark country pub in the 1920s.

I love this approach as it highlights that you don’t need to have the most expensive gear or tons of lights to be able to achieve beautiful images. It’s ok to allow your images to just exist as they are instead of worrying about every little aspect, trying to control everything and get everything perfectly exposed. A lot of the time we filmmakers are obsessed with perfection, the cleanliness of the image, dynamic range, multilayered lighting and getting the most out of the current generation of cameras. When really all you need is one big light source and any camera. The movement doesn’t have to be perfect, the lighting doesn’t have to be perfect, it just needs to be what you are intending it to be. Is the acting good? Great. Is the sound good? Awesome. Does the cinematography tell the story you want it to? Yes? Brilliant, you’ve got a film and it has merit.

Ben Davis’s talk along with many of the other seminars I attended really helped me reconnect with the reason I wanted to become a DOP in the first place. To make beautiful images and tell stories that mean something to me and put them out in the world. Working in Film and TV is a journey and the longer I’m at it the more I realise that you need to be constantly learning and adapting the way you work. Hearing different opinions, discussing the art of cinema with people and refreshing your perspective on how you do things, what you focus on and how you see the world is so important. You can never be an absolutist. There’s no one way of doing anything, whether that’s operating a camera, lighting a scene or grading an image. As long as there is an intention behind it, it’s art, so you can’t really be wrong. Years down the line you may look back on something and not like it anymore, but that is all part of finding your creative voice and it’s fine. The pressure to find your voice early on is immense, but I’m starting to realise that it will take a lifetime to find. It’s no wonder all of the greatest DOPs are in their 60s and 70s. Coming up through broadcast television and corporate productions, the processes and methodologies of the broadcasters or end clients are often what get filtered down into the workflows, but ultimately that doesn’t add anything. It’s noise. It only restricts your creativity and the way you view things by forcing you into a sort of tunnel vision. There are millions of ‘rules’ to cinematography, how many videos are there online on ‘How to light a cinematic interview’? You’ll watch these videos and come away thinking you need a softbox and big expensive light and a 4K camera and all sorts of expensive gadgetry. You’ll think that you’ll never be able to achieve what Ben Davis can or any other cinematographer can because you don’t have tons of equipment when really all you need is a story, a space and a vision, a reason to be filming.