FIGHTING CHANCE

By Iain Blair

The long and fruitful collaboration between cinematographer Matthew Libatique ASC and Darren Aronofsky goes back to the very beginning of both their careers. Libatique shot Aronofsky’s directorial debut Pi (1998) and went on to collaborate with him on Requiem For A Dream (2000) , The Fountain (2006) , Black Swan (2010) , Noah (2014) and Mother! (2017) . Libatique received his first Oscar nomination for Black Swan, before earning a second Academy nod for his work on Bradley Cooper’s directorial debut, A Star Is Born (2018) .

Libatique’s latest collaboration with Aronofsky is the harrowing and heartbreaking drama, The Whale, which stars Brendan Fraser as Charlie, a morbidly obese English teacher who attempts to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter Ellie (played by Sadie Sink), for one last chance at redemption. It’s a haunting and sensitive performance, generating a lot of awards season buzz. Based on the play by Samuel D. Hunter, who also wrote the screenplay, the entire film takes place in Charlie’s small-town apartment, with most of the action happening in the living room. To complement this simple visual plan, Libatique shot the film with a spare but sympathetic eye, devoid of any unnecessary flourishes or histrionics.

I talked with Libatique, whose other credits include Phone Booth (2002), Iron Man (2008) and Iron Man 2 (2010), Straight Outta Compton (2015), Chi-Raq (2015), and Don’t Worry Darling (2022), plus Cooper’s upcoming Lenny Bernstein biopic Maestro, about the challenges of the shoot and his approaches to the cinematography and lighting. Films based on plays almost always try to ‘open up’ the action and make the material more cinematic, but this is happy to embrace confinement. How big a challenge was that?

It was big, and clearly a struggle, to position the camera in different places. The blocking really doesn’t change that much. We did things to try and get Charlie off the couch, like using the wheelchair. We only had one or two scenes in which he’s actually standing up and walking back to his bedroom, which showed the living space, but most of the time he’s just sitting on the couch. So where do we put the master? Where do we put the first shot of the scene? It took a lot of planning. And you also had to deal with the other characters…

Exactly. Where do we place these satellites? When you look at the general flow of the movie, you have the sun – Charlie on the couch – and then you have these other people who come into his orbit, like his best friend Liz, the young evangelist Thomas, and his daughter Ellie. So the placement of the couch more in the middle of the room instead of the usual against-the-wall spot was key.

You and Darren have developed a very kinetic, handheld camera look over the course of your collaboration. This has a far more classical feel to it in terms of composition than your last few films with Darren. Tell us about your visual approach.

Yes, it definitely has a far more classical feel. One of the first choices we made was to go with a 1:33 frame, as we realised that would help us deal with those other characters. It meant that we could hold Charlie in our overs as he’s sitting down, while everyone else is standing-up around him. So it was more of a practical choice than an aesthetic one, and we spent a week blocking every scene to make sure we had a variety of movement, even though he’s stationary.

Darren and I talked a lot about camera movement, but also light movement. The film takes place over five days, and we mapped it out so it’s raining on Monday, overcast on Tuesday and Wednesday, raining heavily on Thursday for the climax, and then it’s sunny on Friday when he finally gets redemption. That gave a language to the light we used.

How long was the prep?

Just three weeks, as I came straight from wrapping Don’t Worry Darling , but I’d had meetings before then with production designers, Mark Friedberg and Robert Pyzocha, to go over the set build at Umbra Studios in Newburg, New York. The idea was to wild/float every wall so we could move the camera wherever we wanted, but without it seeming like that. It had to feel like a totally real place and existence.

How did you make all your camera and lens choices?

I was inspired by the play’s minimalism, and I didn’t want the light to be noticeable, and to be very subtle. I chose the Sony Venice as I wanted to work at 2500 ISO as a base, and to use that sensitivity so as not to employ too much theatrical lighting in the space. The Sony Venice is so good for shooting in low-light as I knew we often would be, and I didn’t want to be intrusive into the emotional weight of what was happening in the story. For lenses I chose Ang é nieux Optima Primes which have a nice fall-off and give it a nice soft feel, which is exactly what I was looking for.

How did you approach the lighting, as it’s obviously crucial in bringing life to a single room?

Yes, as we were telling the story through the windows, which were minimal, we used a lot of ARRI Sky Panel 360s, as well as ARRI M40s, ARRI 20K Fresnels and ARRI Sky Panel 60s. Then we used a lot of Astera Titans and Astera Helios in the ceiling, some Luster lights for bounce, one Hudson

Spider, and Fiilex Q8 Box lights. My gaffer was John Velez, and my crew also included key grip Mitch Lillian, and 1st AC Aurelia Winborn. My DIT was Jeff Flohr, who I met him through the late, great Harris Savides ASC. He’s a great partner whenever I shoot in New York, and we created the LUT together.

Tell us about the shoot?

It was tough as it was only 25 days, which wasn’t long enough between moving walls and letting the performances happen. That sucked-up a lot of days, and then we had to deal with the constraints of shooting in a very small space and honouring the length of the film, around two hours. You’re shooting blocks and wides so it’s not static, and to set-up and light it and get all that coverage takes a lot of time. Luckily, Darren was able to do a fair amount of rehearsal before I got there, and without all that I don’t think it would have been possible.

What was hardest scene to shoot, and why?

It was the scene in which Charlie goes into the kitchen and just gorges himself. It was so emotional and raw. Brendan had been so amiable and relaxed up till then, and he has such a great spirit and is just so great to work with, but it was visibly so hard for him – with all of us watching – to do this scene. It was so awkward, almost akin to the awkwardness of doing a sex scene. When an actor has to go somewhere that’s so raw and difficult, it’s always so hard to shoot it.

What about the DI?

We did it with our longtime final colourist Tim Stipan over at Company3 in New York, over the course of about three weeks, and we also spent a few days working on it at Company3 in LA. It was a shorter DI than Darren and I usually do, because of the budget. I’m very involved but typically I don’t try to change the whole look of a film. It’s more a case of making sure all the cuts match and that they work really well together. We tried to use any windows to honour the language that we created for the overall visual look and the language of the five days in the story – rain, overcast and sun. I just wanted all that to be conveyed.

Did it turn out way you hoped?

Absolutely. I’m one hundred percent happy with what we did, given all the budget and schedule constraints. It’s obviously a very emotionally-heavy film, but the relationship between Charlie and his daughter isn’t that uncommon and, despite his literal physical weight, I think most people can really relate to that. It’s such a human story, and we set out to capture the great words that Samuel Hunter wrote and make a film of the play, and I think we achieved that.