BLACKKKLANSMAN | FEATURE
“But there was one caveat: Spike said he shoots two cameras all the time, and that was new for me,” continues Chayse. “I always work two cameras, but never simultaneously. I overlap them so we keep shooting, keep moving forward and not waste time. I talk to the operators on coms, whisper to them if they have to adjust the composition. I had no rapport with these New York camera operators, I never worked with them before, so I was a bit apprehensive, and I always operate the camera myself. I need to be challenged and have that control. Cinematography is like jazz to me: I know what I’m doing when I’m there responding to things. In jazz, it’s called ‘in the pocket‘ or ‘in the zone’. Operating the camera puts me in the pocket and I can get in that flow. I have to add that I really enjoyed working with both camera operators, Rick Sarmiento and Kerwin DeVonish. “Actually, the film grew from within itself; the decision to shoot on 35mm film happened in the process of testing. Panavision has a plethora of different options, so I tested the Alexa XT, an Alexa Mini, the RED, the Dragon, ARRICAM LT and Panavision’s XL II. I tested anamorphic and spherical lenses. Panavision had some vintage Ultra speeds from the 70s. We tested different film stocks and I experimented with pre-flashing the negative and looked at the images in the DI suite. The final package was four cameras: two Panavision Millennium XLII cameras from Panavision NY, my own Arricam LT, and
ABOVE Adam Driver as Flip Zimmerman gets into the spirit of life as a Klansman.
anxious to get to the Yankees game where we sat behind the coaches. We got on really well,” he says. That might be because Spike’s Dad is a jazz musician, his mother and grandmother are teachers and educators, and Chayse’s parents are the same, in reverse. It is well known that Spike’s crews are like family; questioned about his choice of DOP at the press conference, Lee explained that neither his usual DPs, Matty Libatique or Ellen Kuras were available, so he wanted new blood and to work with a young cinematographer.
people to buy things’ and that clashed with his principles. He finally succumbed in order to meet new directors and experiment with new techniques. CAMERIMAGE BREAK Chayse says his big break was shooting Medeas (2013) with director Andrea Palloaro, that won Camerimage’s Best Cinematography Debut. The same creative duo made Hannah, which premiered at the 2017 Venice Film Festival where Charlotte Rampling won the Best Actress Award, but it was probably Beyonce’s Lemonade that proclaimed his unique talent to the filmmaking world. “I’m very attached to European cinema and have done more European projects than American. BlacKkKlansman was my first American studio film. It was very American and much bigger than the European films I usually shoot. I had never met Spike before and my agent called me in Sweden to say Spike wanted to meet me. I took a detour from my next job in Capetown to his office at 40 Acres in Brooklyn. “They handed me the wrong script to read, so I had only ten minutes to skim through BlacKkKlansman , which is not easy for someone as dyslexic as I am. It was hard to interpret the screenplay – whether it was a comedy or something very dark. Spike was
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