By Petr Navovy | Social Media | May 12, 2023 |
By Petr Navovy | Social Media | May 12, 2023 |
Sometimes a Twitter prompt comes along that hits you juuuuust right. That feels like it was written just for you. I have tilmmaker Sophy Romvari (Still Processing) to thank for providing exactly that the other day, by asking Twitter to ponder the most beautiful, digitally shot films of the last ten years. There’s a certain romance and nostalgia associated with physical film and the movies shot on it—something I readily admit to frequently indulging in—and while there are countless examples of lazy, flat, often downright ugly visuals in the digital era, there are also filmmakers out there, both new and more established, who do wonderfully rich, inventive work with digital cameras. This thread is a celebration of those people. Long may they reign!
The lighting and composition in Valérie Massadian's MILLA has always really stuck with me as a beautiful, organic example, even if it maybe lacks the texture of film she does so much with so little. pic.twitter.com/1drsqGEVQO
— Sophy Romvari (@SophyRomvari) April 16, 2023
Pedro Costa is the most gifted digital filmmaker in the world. He uses consumer grade digital cameras, with mirrors to enhance "natural" lighting. Via these methods he has crafted a cinema in which every individual shot feels like an epiphany. These are from Horse Money (2014). https://t.co/ro2uSUcFWw pic.twitter.com/swlffeMWJK
— Lone Audience of the Apocalypse (@PlurabelleG) April 16, 2023
Saint Omer is a recent favourite of mine. Cinematography by Claire Mathon who also did Portrait of a Lady on Fire on digital. https://t.co/j4g8j1ocBr pic.twitter.com/MEHn9ZbzGG
— ege (@egeofanatolia) April 16, 2023
Mati Diop’s ATLANTICS has an honestly supernatural eye for light sources that tends to get washed out in lesser digital work, and captures air quality without the shortcut of film grain. Diop is also just a genius, putting her images in compositional conversation thru the edit https://t.co/sI2PgDAXfw pic.twitter.com/e53MlHncPk
— helmet girl (@sbodrojan) April 16, 2023
Too lazy to go on about why I love it, but Sleep Has Her House!!! Also a nice little interview on it that gets into why digital (and an iPhone specifically) worked for this projecthttps://t.co/LQRFaBJp8O
— the morally corrupt juan barquin (@woahitsjuanito) April 17, 2023
shot composition, lighting, the clarity of images presented, a moody colour palette that doesn’t make everything look dark or washed out, some really clever choices made to show/obscure violence. just really masterfully presented + powerful images.
— real goblin caught on tape (@goth_vito_jr) April 16, 2023
Recent but Decision to Leave really floored me with how much depth and texture it accomplished via digital. I think it advanced digital filmmaking in really exciting ways. That first shot makes my head spin. pic.twitter.com/6kSUNexL4O
— Brandon Streussnig (@BrndnStrssng) April 17, 2023
Night Without Distance has stuck with me in how it gets depth and detail from a negative reversed image pic.twitter.com/KophViJI15
— R. Emmet Sweeney (@r_emmet) April 16, 2023
Spectacle just showed four from Scottish gallery-world filmmaker Rachel Maclean, who beat the forthcoming BARBIE to a bright, brittle, plasticine rendering of digital-native hyperreal femininity, sort of a visual equivalent of PC Music pic.twitter.com/U6WMFaPKzz
— Mark Asch (@MarkAschParody) April 17, 2023
There’s one moment that immediately springs to mind, and while the film as a whole is a hauntingly beautiful masterstroke, one particular chapter of @shannymurphy’s #Babyteeth was simply transcendent. I can’t quite describe what I felt, but it was like nothing else. 🙌🼠pic.twitter.com/Tcr3GipdJr
— Layke Anderson (@LaykeAnderson) April 17, 2023
Stuff that hasn't been mentioned yet: Pretty much anything Tsai's done, maybe especially the durationally enabled JOURNEY TO THE WEST. GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE (!). ONCE THERE WAS BRASILIA and DRY GROUND BURNING.
— Vadim Rizov (@vrizov) April 16, 2023
for me, Cold War, Vesper, and Tár (for which Field and Hoffmeister invented an entire "digital emulsion" process that will now be available on new Alexas)
— Michael Idov 🌻 (@michaelidov) April 17, 2023
probably the most beautiful (to me) is SLEEP HAS HER HOUSE by @ScottBarleyFilm a film shot on iPhone (!) that actually leans into the particular qualities of its format to make images that aren't trying to replicate celluloid, but rather exist as its own thing pic.twitter.com/aCbOWn4ll2
— Chris Osborn (@Chris_Osborn) April 16, 2023
Nope
— Bettinna #BwaKale (@bettinna) April 17, 2023
Director: Jordan Peele
DP: Hoyte van Hoytema
Shots were incredibly detail with great composition, large format cameras helped. Night scenes shot during the day with two aligned cameras: infrared & color, then VFX post, with VFX clouds looked so realistic. Impressive. pic.twitter.com/0OF3Jv8cT0
The Green Knight might have a claim. Shots that for other directors are just faces on air, Lowery likes to fill edge to edge. The matte backdrops are frequently gorgeous.
— heyincendiary (@heyincendiary) April 16, 2023
Burning (2018)
— dedeísmo (@dabadabaue) April 16, 2023
Shot digitally using natural light. pic.twitter.com/jxNio25smL
I remember reading Pedro Almodóvar saying the colors don’t pop on digital as much but PAIN AND GLORY and PARALLEL MOTHERS still offer some eye-popping colorful shots! pic.twitter.com/jphjyWxFqv
— Alex Bauer (@ambauer) April 16, 2023
There are so many but Bradford Young’s work for “Arrival” has to be up there. pic.twitter.com/jY84VG5jLz
— AMC_Vagrant (@amc_vagrant) April 18, 2023
Lucas Dhont's Close
— nicoðŸ³ï¸â€ðŸŒˆ (@nicodelort) April 17, 2023
lush and naturalistic colors, beautifully lit
can't find many good screencaps but the whole thing was true eye-candy pic.twitter.com/X5MFZB5ayh
Moonlight - incredible use of anamorphic lenses for these subjective, haunting closeups, and Laxton created a hell of a LUT before the shoot that doesn’t necessarily imitate celluloid but has deep colors and grains all the same. pic.twitter.com/rEfUg1lj4m
— Pete Lee (@kungfupete) April 17, 2023
2 samples… Only God Forgives, shot by Kubrick’s gaffer/DP Larry Smith, and Under the Skin, which used cameras designed specially for the movie to shoot the car scenes… pic.twitter.com/ODceydqwwE
— jamie stuart (@MutinyCo) April 16, 2023
The two that come to mind for me are NERUDA and LIKE SOMEONE IN LOVE - Both really utilise low lighting and embrace that digital aesthetic but at the same time have a really unique and vibrant palette. pic.twitter.com/ZebyfrPoU4
— Chris Elena (@Christoph_Elena) April 17, 2023
off the top of my head: Peterloo (incredible painterly interiors and landscapes but with digital crispness) and Rachel Getting Married (cheating by 5 yrs) (disarming in the beauty of its striking ordinariness) pic.twitter.com/Aa87z2oK5C
— Max Carpenter (@solexyoghurt) April 16, 2023
For me, it's Climax. Especially its wide range of colors. Also the long takes with the beautiful camera movements and coordination. pic.twitter.com/8kXST1OAnT
— Papp Balázs (@_pappbalazs) April 17, 2023
i know im basic here but for me it’s kogonada’s columbus. the camera is used to create small portraits of the space highlighting human interaction within the cities’ historically significant architecture. there is no film that makes a meal out of it’s setting so perfectly. https://t.co/seoEHcBCm1 pic.twitter.com/4uka4lo0Ny
— adam driver in michael mann’s “ferrari” (@stunninggun) April 17, 2023
My [chronological] list from the last decade. Tough to pick a favourite, but I'm finding myself especially taken with Anno's work recently. pic.twitter.com/8icbYyU5Bp
— Devan Scott (@SadHillDevan) April 16, 2023
The digitally-shot Portrait of a Lady on Fire is one of the most beautifully shot films I've seen. The colors of the skin tones and landscapes are so warm and lovely, and the compositions are simple but striking (and this first one's evocative of Ingmar Bergman + Sven Nykvist). pic.twitter.com/FnBjyyfJ81
— Michael Avolio (@MichaelAvolio) April 17, 2023