Lightning & The Revenant
Award winning film for best photography “The Revenant” inspired me to take these three shots, although I took them a couple of months ago there is a story behind them:
My dad and I took a hunting trip to Alberta, Canada. I remember getting there and thinking it was one of the most beautiful places I had ever seen and one of the coldest too. As we walked for hours through the snow I recall telling my dad that the landscape reminded me of the movie “The revenant”: the impressive sunlight that was reflected in the snow, the pine trees, the hunting gear and even the horses, it all matched up. As the days passed by, I took a lot of photos trying to make an impression of the movie, what I found most inspiring is how the natural lightning makes everything so dreamy, so vivid and so real. Take a second to analyze the pictures, it is incredibly hard to guess the time they were taken: the first picture was taken around 8 a.m., the second one at 5 p.m. and the third one at 7 a.m. The trip consisted of waking up at 5 a.m., taking long and stressing walks since the snow was up to my waist, looking for elks that never migrated from the north since a snow storm out of the ordinary blocked the way, freezing to what I thought was going to be my death and going back to camp when it was dark. Everything in those 10 days were extraordinary but one thing that I could not get out of my mind was the transformation of the landscape because of the natural light.
As mentioned earlier, the strategy I will be focusing on is the light, basing my analysis on the movie “The revenant” by Mexican director Alejandro Gonzales Irrañitu but for this case I want to focus on Emmanuel Lubezki´s work, who was the cinematographer for this movie. What inspired me to pick this film is how while watching the movie it almost feels like you where in it, it captures what we understand when we go for a hike or a walk through the woods, in some shots of the film even mud or snow splash the camara to try and make the audience feel as if they were there. Lightning was a focus while filming the movie, for starters, all light throughout the movie was natural light, Lubezki´s reason for making it this way was for the audience to feel what was really happening. While capturing the pictures I took in Alberta my focus was on transmitting emotions and appreciate the whole surroundings with what nature brings in, when contemplating the pictures, it brings emotions and makes a person appreciate the details, such as the sunlight starting to illuminate the mountain on the third picture, the colors that the sunset makes in the second picture, the feeling of being above the clouds in the first picture or even the trees at all angles. Lubezki´s angle for the lightning was to evoke quiet contemplation and admiration as well as to emphasize emotions of nature and build up images that are irresistible to swallow. On the film, we can appreciate shots of the natural such as animals, water drops from ice crystals, this inspired me to take the shot of the horses. The color palette at the film was very specific, it was determined by the time of the location and they wanted to create a particular atmosphere that brought out fear so they had to film when the sun hid in the mountains so the day looked colder and the light was bluer, which is what I did with my pictures, the shots I took were in the early morning or at afternoon so they could reflect what I was feeling: the coldness and mystery.
One of the reasons why lighting is very important is because of how camaras react to the light, it has become pretty clear to me that they do not capture what the human eye does, one typical situation that I believe the majority of people have experienced is wanting to take a photo of the moon, we appreciate and see something beautiful but our camaras decide that the only evidence of that should be in our heads or otherwise, one particular scene Lubezki mentions that it was quite rare and had never experience was one night that they were trying to film with the natural lightning of the fire and could not because the lightning of the moon was reflecting on the actors´ faces. Lightning also determines the mood of the scene, as mentioned earlier what Lubezki and I wanted to project was the fear and mystery. One key to create an outstanding film is to know the space you´re working at, since natural lightning is different everywhere, Lubezki mentions how they practiced their shooting in California and when they moved to Canada and started filming, the scenes were not coming out as planned because of the short days they had up in the north.
Some of the challenges that came along while I was photographing my trip and trying to make an impression of “The revenant” was the fact that the sun reflected on the snow and to my eyes which made it very difficult to take pictures in the day and I could not see if they were how I wanted them to be. Another challenge was the angle because the landscape was incredibly wide, so I had to choose which direction to photograph. None the less, because of the coldness I barely could move my fingers to take the pictures and sometime the weather was windy which made it even harder but because of this it felt more real and I had the opportunity to experience a little bit of what Lubezki was feeling. One of the revelations that came along while I was taking the pictures was the transformation of the landscape because of the natural light, one same spot can seem completely different in the morning, at noon and in the afternoon: the color of the trees, the angle the sun hits the mountain, the tone of the gear we were caring and much more.
While taking these three pictures, I tried to use Lubezki´s strategy to shoot when the sun was not at its brightest and always tried to hide the sun by blocking it with trees or the mountains. I also tried to use a blue tone developing it with the shadows I got from the nature. Lightning is a critical thing when taking shots of any kind and analyzing different movies with different perspectives of color palettes made me understand how it brings out the feeling and emotions that it wants to portray as well as the spiritual experience. When analyzing this film, it made me realize the beauty and the complexity of the natural lightning and its way of embracing the landscape and atmosphere as a whole.
