May / 2010

Geoff Boyle BFKS
Talks About 3D

by Lance Carlson,
Assiocate Member

Noted British cinematographer Geoff Boyle BFKS was invited to lead the CSC’s first 3D workshop, held in Toronto in February. While he was in town, CSC associate member Lance Carlson interviewed him for Canadian Cinematographer.

We all feel that we know Geoff Boyle BFKS from the Cinematographer’s Membership List, but like most I had not met him in person. What surprised me was that this was his first visit to Canada. I was fortunate to find a relatively quiet hour to chat with him before the CSC 3D Workshop began.

Lance Carlson What film made a strong impression on you as a youth?

Geoff Boyle Lawrence of Arabia. Absolutely. When I saw it my reaction was, ‘Wow, what the hell was that?!’

LC What cinematographers have impressed you most?

GB I don’t think there is just one. I love Doug Slocombe [DOP on the original three Indiana Jones films] and David Watkin [Out of Africa and Moonstruck]. I was lucky enough to work with David. Greg Toland – my god! Also I think Billy Williams’s work was just wonderful [On Golden Pond and Gandhi]. I love his work.

LC What films or works of art have particularly inspired you?

GB The late [photographer] Bill Brandt’s work, with out question, particularly his gritty images in the mining towns in the North of England. Very dynamic. Very stark. [Photographers] Larry Burrows and Richard Avedon are others that really got my attention. And then when I started to look at how films were shot, David Watkin was just so different from anyone else. I just gasped and said, ‘How does he make it look like that?’ It was moody but bright, if that makes any sense.

LC What is the best professional advice you have been given?

GB I’ve had lots but I think the most useful was from a gaffer, a long time ago. When I went from doing talking heads with A Blond and three Redheads to being offered a whole slew of sports stuff and my first assignment was to shoot four indoor tennis courts. I turned to my gaffer, very experienced, and asked him, ‘John, what the hell do I do?’ And he replied, ‘Geoff you do what you have always done but bigger.’ That was absolutely the best advice I’ve ever had, because it removed the fear factor from how would you light this huge location. You just scale up the lights
and aim for the look you have always tried to create. Even now those words go through my head, and I that’s what I do. Do it bigger!

LC What is your take on current image quality? Are we there yet in terms of lens quality, high-res sensors, capture media that DOPs will still soften, diffuse etc?

GB No. Absolutely not. I look out a window and I want to be able to do that; to replace what I see there. So, we’re a long way from perfect image resolution, dynamic range and so on. The NHK 8K television system has the potential to be real good. Engineers who don’t really know what to do with it so far have shot the tests, but there is one shot they got of a field of sunflowers against a blue sky. Keep looking at it, and there is more and more detail. It’s beautiful. There’s confusion between image resolution and sharpness caused by edge enhancement, and I think very high
resolution is wonderful but it doesn’t have to be harsh.

LC What about the art and craft of cinematography?

GB Yes, a cinematographer is very much an artist, but also a craftsman. A cinematographer who says, ‘I’m an artist and I don’t have to know the technical background.’ Well, that’s BS. I mean the classic painters mixed their own paints, they stretched their own canvases; they knew the technology of their time inside out in order to create their images. So whether it’s to mix paint to go on canvas or to know which setting to put on a Red, we have to master the technology.

LC Did you choose 3D or did it choose you? Or was it a happy accident?

GB It’s actually one of those happy accidents. I’d been playing with 3D. I was shooting Mutant Chronicles with Thomas Jane, and he then read an article I wrote about the SI camera. It finished with a paragraph where I said this would be the ultimate camera for 3D because you would be able to move the camera in ways that 3D hadn’t be moved up to that point. Then Thom calls up and says, ‘Hey, Geoff, do you fancy shooting something in 3D?’ And that’s when I created hell on earth for Paradise FX because I wanted a rig that would run two SIs but within a Steadicam AR rig. If you talk to Tim, one of the partners, I’m not one of his more popular persons. One of his quotes is: ‘It was a simple job until Geoff
Boyle got involved.’

LC So do you feel 3D is really taking off?

GB Very much so. I think in the past 3D has been appalling. We have a problem now in that most people with 3D experience have worked on large format IMAX or event-type 3D projects, which is not what we want. We want a story-telling tool. It’s like if we were shooting sound for the first time. Everyone would be shouting, and if we were shooting colour for the first time everything would be saturated. We haven’t learned yet to just back off and to use de-saturization as a tool but in terms of 3D. There weren’t many 3D moments in Avatar and in reading the interviews with Vince Pace about the interocular that they used, it created a 3D environment that you became part of. The 3D moments in Avatar are relevant and part of the story.

LC Where did get your 3D training or was it self-training?

GB It was very much self-training, originally with stills. I would use a single camera and move it sideways at different interocular distances and I just experimented on landscapes around where I live on the southwest coast. And I learned a lot in prep and I give a lot of credit to Ray Zone, a friend of Thom Jane. He was wonderful. He said Geoff, ‘It’s really simple. Just don’t hurt people. Don’t make their eyes do anything that will hurt them. Apart from that, it’s all rubbish!’ That was a revelation because I was getting all this, ‘You can’t have anything breaking the edge of frame, it will destroy the illusion.’ And I said, you’re watching a car chase, but the experts were obsessing about the edges of frame and dust and stuff rolling towards the camera. It’s amazing! These are some of the things I will be talking about this weekend. The approach I’m recommending is very much only for drama and it could work for documentaries. But it wouldn’t work for IMAX and it wouldn’t work for event films. It’s much, much simpler than people make it out to be. I’m going to get them all to do things that hurt, so they have reference points.

LC What is the biggest hurdle with regard to utilizing more 3D in production?

GB I think there are two hurdles. One is that people will still keep shooting the event-type films where things come flying out of the screen at you and I believe the 2D-to-3D conversions that are being planned are really going to put people off 3D. The problem when you do this is that you don’t get 3D. You get cardboard cutouts with a foreground layer and a background layer. And that could kill 3D stone dead. That’s not what 3D is.
Three D should be a totally immersive experience.

Geoff Boyle. Photo by Joan Hutton csc

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