DOP Case Study – Gordon Willis

Gordon Willis is a Cinematographer best known for his use of shadow, underexposed film and his trademark preference for filming at ‘twilight’ hour to create a warm glow. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest Cinematographers in film history because how he broke the mold with his unconventional and daring approaches to lighting and his taste for moody chiaroscuro which often dealt with underexposure. This put him as odds with Hollywood producers who said his images were “too dark” (Willis always maintained that it was “proper exposure”). Gordon Willis was also known for being a very passionate worker and creative mind, stories of how he ruled the set with his quiet but respectable nature but also instances where malfunctioning equipment were “accidentally” dropped on a hard concrete floor or ended up at the bottom of a river. He has worked on very well known films such as Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather Part 1-3 and Woody Allen’s Annie Hall and Manhattan. Born in New York in 1931 he was active as a cinematographer from 1970 all the way to 1997 when he chose to retire saying “I got tired of trying to get actors out of trailers, and standing in the rain”. In 2014 he sadly passed away from cancer aged 82.

The significant films he has worked include many that are considered masterpieces or classics of cinema history. These are Little Murders (1971), Klute (1971), The Godfather (1972), The Godfather Part II (1974), The Paper Chase (1973), The Parallax View (1974), All the President’s Men (1976), Annie Hall (1977), Interiors (1978), Manhattan (1979), Stardust Memories (1980), Pennies from Heaven (1981), Zelig (1983) — Academy Award nomination, Broadway Danny Rose (1984), The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), The Money Pit (1986), Presumed Innocent (1990), The Godfather Part III (1990) — Academy Award nomination and Malice (1993).

Three Filmmakers that Willis continually worked with through his career were Directors Francis Ford Coppola, Alan Pakula and Woody Allen. He worked with Coppola over the three Godfather films, with Pakula on three films and was Director of Photography on a total of eight Woody Allen films. It is during his collaboration with two of these Directors that Willis would create his most famous and influential work with The Godfather and Annie Hall. He also worked with Camera operator Micheal Chapman several times, who went on to be director of Photography on several Martin Scorsese films.

Famous Works and Lighting Style

In The Godfather (he turned down the film as first until Coppola told him it would not look the same without him) Willis created a look unlike any seen in Hollywood films up to that point. He used very low light, muted earthly colours and underexposure to create a secretive, somber atmosphere to the criminal underworld in the film. In the opening of the film the scenes go back and forth between a high key exterior wedding crowded with people to a dark interior with few characters, this showed Willis’ preference for not sticking to one colour palette the entire film and that he was not afraid to play with shadow and underexposing the interior scenes so we can barely see the actor’s face (something that got a lot of negative reaction from producers). His friend and fellow Cinematographer Conrad Hall liked to call him the “Prince of Darkness”. Discussing his work on The Godfather Willis said, “You can decide this movie has got a dark palette. But you can’t spend two hours on a dark palette. . . So you’ve got this exterior wedding going on. Now you go back inside and it’s dark again. You can’t, in my mind, put both feet into a bucket of cement and leave them there for the whole movie. It doesn’t work. You must have this relativity.”

Willis was known for lighting simply, with few lights, often just a overhead diffusing rig that he devised himself which cast a downward glow on the actors. In the opening scene of The Godfather he also used a lot of top light that caused the actors eyes to be in heavy shadow, in this instance the actor was the world famous Marlon Brando. The office scene is in heavy shadow and there are just spots of slightly diffused harsh top light around the room that the actors would walk through. This lighting strategy has first come about from the fact that Marlon Brando’s make-up primarily had to be lit from above but this style would be used in the following two Godfather films and even in some of Willis’ work with other filmmakers. During exterior night street scenes Willis would very rarely light the street, instead in a bold move he would wet down the street and use car/street lights on the wet pavement to reflect light and use that as the main lighting source (present in All the Presidents Men, The Godfather). This lighting style of course caused problems especially on The Godfather, if actors steeped off the mark or didn’t hit the mark right they would fall off into darkness. But Willis stuck to his style even when it caused heated arguments with the director who sometimes wanted the actors to be able to move around the set freely. When talking about this film other cinematographers such as Richard Crudo say “Until then, not a single movie had looked like that. By sticking to his conviction of shooting only what felt right, Gordon changed motion picture photography in a way that continues to influence everything we see in narrative features and television”.

Gordon Willis’ most remarkable collaboration with another director Woody Allen is Zelig, a fictional mock documentary. Imitating the style and tone of early newsreels, Willis ‘aged’ his own film stock by scratching and marking its surface, matching their footage seamlessly with actual newsreels from the 1920s and 1930s. In several astonishing shots, Willis superimposes Allen’s character, Leonard Zelig, onto the older footage, creating the impression that Zelig is actually a part of the newsreels and is conversing with well-known historical figures. Willis also used a variety of antique cameras and lenses used during the time periods depicted within the film to simulate wrinkles and scratches on the film negative to make the film look like it was truly filmed during that era.

Lenses and Movement

In terms of lenses and Camera movement Willis very rarely zoomed his lens and at times would not change focal length for a scene or an entire film if possible, believing that changing this would effect perspective in a way that destroyed the picture space. During the filming of the first Godfather only two focal lengths were used, the 75mm and Willis’ favorite the 40mm which he used for 90% of the shoot. Annie Hall was also primarily shot on a 40mm lens (it is also believed that Willis used the same focal length lens the entirety of the film The Parallax View and shot all close ups from the exact same distance). Willis would rarely use simple panning and tilting movements, if he did it would have to be such a part of the visual story that it would be invisible to the viewer. If an actor sat down in a scene the whole camera would move down with him (not a tilt), in a way sit with the character. He never used unmotivated camera movement or called attention to the camera itself. I came across the fact that you very rarely see the floor in a Gordon Willis film perhaps this was to do with his top-light style which would look too obvious if the floor was visible.

Common Photographic Method Examples and Scene Analysis

In this clip of from The opening of The Godfather we see Willis’ famous use of underexposure and direct top lighting. In the very first shot from the film we have a single character surrounded by almost complete shadow with only a single source of light hitting him from above. We also see in this scene Willis use the element of overexposed blown out windows, something that was never done in film if it could be helped to add a motivated back light on the characters. These aspects make the room seem somewhat darker and more isolated from what is occurring outside and help the transition from the exterior setting of the wedding to this enclosed office space.  As the camera slowly track out we see a another spot of light hitting Don Corleone’s desk and the front of his face. In this scene the 40mm lens are used for the closeups and Willis uses a Zoom for the very first shot that enables them to get  tight close ups of the characters while still being able to pull back to a over the shoulder of Marlon Brando.

In this Clip from a flashback sequence from The Godfather Part 2 we again see several examples of Willis’ common methods. In this clip we again see the use of overexposed windows as a back light on the characters. And even though the scene takes place during the day Willis still uses heavy shadows/underexposure to create depth within the image and create a original look to the images that were not the norm at the time. Also during this clip we see the classic Willis method of changing colour and lightning palettes within one sequence. The exterior and interior parts of the sequence look very different. The exteriors have a more brownish and milky sheen to it where everything is correctly exposed while the interior scene on the staircase has a more yellowish/brownish sepia toned visual aesthetic (something that was imitated in flashback scenes in many films since). During this scene the 40mm lens is used throughout to keep what Willis called same perspective of the visual space. These a motifs that run throughout Gordon Willis’ work and are the elements that he is remembered for.

3 SHOT SCENE

In the scene above I tried to shoot it in a similar way I believe Gordon Willis would have. In the coverage of Alani I shot the scene in heavy shadow and lit her with hard top light with some light diffusion, this created the shadows over the eyes that Willis was famous (and infamous) for. In hindsight I think I made the background too underexposed as it falls off into complete darkness too suddenly. For the shot of Lachlan I used the window as a back light while still trying to have shadow heavily present within the frame, I also planned to have the window totally blown out as Willis would but I wasn’t able to do this on the day. Again with this shot I tried to light simply, I used slightly diffused top light that created the eye shadows while using a small reflective poly to just slightly fill in some of the deeper shadows. In post I slightly saturated the image and added in some earthly brown/grey tones that Willis used in the majority of his films.

I shot everything on one Focal length. I went with a 50mm for my 3 shots, Willis’ focal length of choice was the 40mm and for tighter shots he went with a 75mm. I also tried to have both close ups shot from a similar distance as Willis did in The Parallax View.

Summary

Gordon Willis was a extremely bold and daring cinematographer who was not afraid to work with underexposure within scenes and let characters naturally fall off into darkness. He lit simply, usually from above in a way that portrayed the emotions and visual importance of that scene. He always used the camera as a tool to tell the story and would never do anything that took away from the story and characters, therefore he let the camera move with actors and the story. He didn’t try any fancy tracks or jib/crane movements within his films, the camera was usually placed where it could be someone’s perspective within the scene and he kept similar focal lengths throughout entire films to preserve the visual continuity and tone of the film.

Personally I found Willis’ style extremely interesting and unique for the time and I am excited to try some of his techniques and conventions. From Willis I have learnt not to afraid of underexposure, as a film student we are always trying to get everything exposed so we can clearly see it, everything has to be visible. But now I can see that we can experiment more with using shadow and underexposure as a way to tell the story and as a important visual element within a frame. I am also looking forward to experimenting with Willis’ lighting style, using a lot of top-light while trying to keep it simple and not restrict the camera or the actors (something Willis himself couldn’t really do). Probably the biggest thing I have learnt from Gordon Willis is that the Director of Photography shouldn’t just be a hired hand but a incredibly important and vital part to crafting a story and being involved in all aspects of the visuals and at the same time having the guts to make bold choices and stick to them and being confident enough in your own abilities and preferences to do that.