DUMBO/CAPTA I N MARVEL | DRAMA
O n a windy Saturday afternoon, I drive through the rubble-lined, potholed streets of Longcross Film Studios. A large block of polystyrene bashes my car as I drive up to Stage 2, where Ben Davis BSC is pre-lighting a set for the second unit. Davis works non-stop, film to film, back-to-back and, this month, two films he photographed – Captain Marvel and Dumbo – are being released almost back-to-back. It’s not unusual for him to work weekends in order to be ready for the following week, like he is today. Behind a long wooden table stands a monstrous black projector from the 1900s, curated and converted to xenon by Lester Dunton for the director, Matthew Vaughn, with whom Davis has already collaborated on Layer Cake and Stardust . This will blast images on one of the sets from Kingsman: The Great Game , a story about the origins of the Kingsmen set around the start of the first world war. Davis tells me: “Cinematography is changing, mostly driven by the way people are viewing things. So many people are watching on their televisions or on home projection screens, as well as in a cinema,
you were encouraged to make a thick, dense negative, but today, some DOPs are underexposing to create a softer image. These huge digital televisions are very powerful and you don’t get dark projection anymore. Also, tastes have changed; audiences are embracing things that are dark, and the studios, who used to complain about things being too dark, are less likely to object. I always ask myself when photographing something: ‘What are you shooting it for?’” Davis is shooting Kingsman: The Great Game with Arri 65mm digital cameras for a cinema release. “Every morning, I look at projected rushes, because there is an enormous difference between what you see projected and what you can see on a monitor. There are a whole range of subtleties in projection you don’t see on a monitor, subtleties in shadow and highlights, and nuances in colour,” he adds. “To me, lenses are the most important factor – the lenses and the lighting dictate the look of the film. Digital cameras are really just computers gathering data.” DUMBO Tim Burton’s soon-to-be-released version of Dumbo for Walt Disney Studios was “very challenging”, says Davis. “For me, the whole attraction was working with Tim. I’ve been doing this a long time and there is only so far I can go with my instincts and what I want to do with cinematography. I’m looking for directors to collaborate with and to inspire me. The best films tend to be the ones made with one distinct voice: an original voice. Sometimes, if there are a lot of voices involved, you end up with a product that is trying to satisfy many voices, many camps. “It was really interesting to watch how Tim conducted all these amazing creative people like in an orchestra. He had Colleen Atwood creating incredible costumes, and Rick Heinrichs as the production designer, and a great casting director. He very
so the way we are photographing films is changing. The way cinematographers photograph digital films and expose film negative is changing. When I started, Cinematography is changing, mostly driven by the way people are viewing things
IMAGES Shooting Captain Marvel and Dumbo were two totally different experiences for cinematographer Ben Davis
APR I L 20 1 9 | DEF I N I T ION 23
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