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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Describe the 1970's cinematography

David Mullen ASC said:
Old lenses can do a lot to make material shot seem older -- look at "Far From Heaven", shot on modern Kodak stocks, exposed normally... but mostly shot on old Cooke Panchros.
Click to expand...

"Far From Heaven" had a fantastic look. Todd Haynes films always have very interesting and inspired stylistic choices.

IIRC, the Christian Bale sequences in his "I'm Not There" have that "70's cinematography" feel (to me anyway) that the original poster is asking for.

EDIT: ... Or was that the Heath Ledger sequences? I need to see it again.
 
Trying to cram in my daily dose of RU for the day, and as such, may have skimmed over some posts in haste...so apologies if I'm repeating what others have already mentioned.

Of course in a decade of cinema, there will be a massive range of styles, so I find it's always best when discussing looks with a director to compile a list of reference images, both still and from cinema...something you can always go back to in order to help describe what you'd like to try with new material.

Beyond visual look, I think one of the key elements to 70s cinema and how it differs from much of what we see today is shot design. Of course, the editing process was very different back then, not to mention it was before the advent of MTV (and the oft-described editing style that came with it). Sometimes I feel people are simply too quick to cut away...

"The Taking of Pelham 123" was mentioned...watch it if you have a chance, and pay close attention to the shot design. Consider how many different "shots" they fit into a single move at times without cutting. I'd say that this sort of thing is becoming a lost art, as some people think coverage simply consists of static shots of varying focal length and insert shots. If you want an extreme example of long takes chock full of visual design and internal rhythm, check out Tarkovsky. Of course, a few bold examples of long takes filled with many different shots can be found in "Children of Men."

This isn't to say that establishing a rhythm through editing isn't an artful matter, but I've seen plenty of frenetic camera movement and cutting that can quickly turn into a jumble, thereby losing some of its desired impact/effect. And acknowledging the fact that the overall narrative rhythm can be found (or at the very least, firmed up) in editing doesn't mean one shouldn't be thinking about it and trying to establish it in the shooting stage.

Great thread, everybody...
 
A huge thanks for everyone's help and contribution.

My producer friend got what he needed from David's first post.

The rest has just been gravy for me to read all of this.

Makes me wonder if we should start a 60's and 80's thread. haha.

thanks again.
 
Question for David Mullen:

I know there is a thread dedicated for that, but since we're talking about 70's looks, and David seems to know many little details, I thought well...

I've always had a question regarding a sequence in The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976). In the sequence where they hurriedly cross the river on the barge, the whites are sort of blown out or more like they bloom. I've always wondered if this was a printing mistake, or the camera leaked light or something else, since the rest of the film doesn't really look like that scene. I know it's kind of an odd question, but it's always nagged at me.

Does anyone know about it?

Chris
 
QUESTION:

Why is 1970's style cinematography so often called in as a look or inspiration? (I've noticed it lately and now I'm wondering...)

I've never heard requests for 60s, 80s or 90s style cinematography. Does no one think these decades had style, or does it take 40 years to appreciate cinematography as a 'decade' look?

Certainly the creative minds involved in fashion, fine art, music, etc, have been mining these recent decades successfully as a 'packaged decade' feel/inspirations, but with cinematography, I almost always ONLY see yearnings for 'the 70's' look.

Any thoughts?
 
Matthew, I think it is because since the 70's we have better color negatives, that renders realilty more accurate, not like the constrasty old Technicolor.

David, correct me if I`m wrong.
 
If someone said to me, hey, I'd like to have "that 70's look" to the film, I'd nod and smile, knowingly, as if sharing a secret of perhaps the best era in motion pictures.

Then I'd consider the script, and ask, well, what do you think, The Last Detail? The Passenger? Close Encounters? Butch Cassidy? The Sting? Parallax View? Annie Hall? Don't Look Now? An Unmarried Woman? The Man Who Fell To Earth? Rocky? Taxi Driver? THX1138? Eraserhead? Young Frankenstein?

Hopefully, one or more these would mean something to them and we could then continue our discussion, and I could figure out just what the hell they mean by 70's look.
 
The movie I think of when I think "70s cinematography" is probably "Carrie." And that's not a compliment to the decade, mostly because my memories of the cinematography itself is so intertwined with all the terrible fashion trends and color palettes of the time.
 
Well, I love the look of old 3-strip Technicolor... I don't think Eastmancolor negative was any easier to light for when it arrived in 1950 -- it was about the same ASA.

I think we're interested in any decade of filmmaking that seems to represent the height of a certain style -- for me, the 1940's is one of those decades, the most interesting of the "studio style", which was somewhat baroque, elaborate, and glamorous. You had the German Expressionism borrowings in Film Noir, you had some of the most lush Technicolor movies being made, including those by Powell-Pressburger. The end of the Silent Era in the 20's is another "peak" in stylistic filmmaking.

So the 1970's represent a turning point after the decline of studio-era cinematography. It really started earlier in the mid 1960's, but mostly in Europe. You could say that it was an embrace of naturalism in photography, but reaching a stylized version of it that was distinctive by the 1970's. We've been in that ever since, what some people term "Romantic Realism" (naturalistic photography but at its most beautiful, a prettified realism), but you saw more variation in the 1970's than now. You had really "gritty" street photography like in "The French Connection" that only occasionally shows up in modern Hollywood movies. But you also had experiments in diffusion and desaturation back then that would be rare today. It was an experimental time, before the natural conservatism of studio heads re-asserted themselves.

But since most movies today aspire to a certain realism, it's no wonder that the 1970's are more of an inspiration than the theatricalism of the 1940's.

"The Making of Star Wars" book that came out by Rinzler is an example of the stylistic conflicts going on back in the 1970's. George Lucas hired Gil Taylor because he liked his semi-documentary lighting on "Dr. Strangelove" -- but he wanted a diffused look because he saw the movie has being somewhat of a fairy tale. So it was a bit contradictory, because Lucas wanted modern naturalistic lighting but a diffused fantasy look. So Taylor started using nets over the lens to soften the look when they started the shoot in the deserts of Tunisia. Just around the time, though, the studios were dealing with the bomb that was "Lucky Lady", which was shot with heavy Fog filters by Geoffrey Unsworth (who was Lucas' first pick to shoot "Star Wars"). The studio unfairly blamed part of the failure of the movie on Unsworth's foggy photography. So when they started seeing diffused dailies on "Star Wars", they told Lucas and Taylor to stop using lens diffusion. Lucas didn't want to listen, but when Taylor started shooting the scenes on the Death Star, he decided to pull all of the lens diffusion, justifying it that it made sense for the Death Star to look sharp and hard. Lucas was pissed off because he thought Taylor had caved into the studio executives behind his back and ever since then, was trying to get Taylor fired off of "Star Wars".

(It didn't help that Taylor and his crew weren't very impressed with Lucas -- I recall hearing Michael Crichton talking on a DVD about directing a movie in the U.K. called "The Great Train Robbery" right after that time and hiring Geoffrey Unsworth -- he said Unsworth went out of his way to treat him with respect and had his crew do likewise. It sounds like Lucas could have used that support... The good nature of Unsworth was probably one reason why most directors who went over to the U.K. tried to hire him. Unsworth was supposed to shoot "Gandhi" for Attenborough but died before that shoot happened.)
 
Indeed, David. To me, when people talk about "the 70s look" many times I've found they're actually referring to more of a "late 60s/early 70s look," like that of films like "The Graduate", "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid", "Midnight Cowboy", "Easy Rider/Five Easy Pieces" combo, "Carnal Knowledge", "Cinderella Liberty", "Deliverance", etc. The look of many late 70s films ("All That Jazz", "Star Wars", "An Unmarried Woman", "Jaws", "Kramer vs. Kramer") was, in my opinion, remarkably different than these earlier samples.

Your thoughts on that "late 60s/early 70s" vs "late 70s" variance, if any?
 
I think it was Bordwell who said that any new style was always exploited, overdone, and then modified until it fit within the conventions of classic narrative cinema, i.e. that technical devices be fairly "invisible" and serve the narrative. Excessive zooming is the most famous example of this, but even less-used tricks like jump cutting has become modified and worked into the common film grammar of storytelling.

So I see the late 70's, and by extension, everything since then, as being an example of the lessons / innovations of the late 1960's / early 1970's being incorporated into a more conservative narrative style -- you could say "corporatized" I guess. In a lot of ways, most stylistic innovations end up in commercials more than anything; they tend to be too aggressive for classic narrative cinema and its reliance of "invisible" techniques, i.e. style that is subservient to the narrative.

I recently watched the original "Rocky" again, and it struck me as a focal point movie -- half in the gritty street style of the early 1970's and half in the feel-good audience films of the late 1970's, sort of having its cake and eating it too. Apparently it started out, script-wise, as being much more of an "anti-hero" early 70's movies, but as the years went by as Stallone kept trying to get it made, it became more and more commercial as Stallone made Rocky more likable. So it seems somewhat skitzofrantic.

I also just watched "Carrie" for the first time, it also strikes me as somewhat straddling the styles of the head and tail of the decade, with its use of Fog filters and split-screens, its use of nudity, and its attempts to have some sort of psychological grounding for the fantasy.
 
Imitating the cinematography style of the 70's should be quite simple. Lots of wide shots and lots of slow zooms... and mustaches.
 
A lot of the 70's look is also about the colour palette (maybe more down to art department, wardrobe etc). They did some fairly wacky combinations back then...sometimes quite earthy colours and muted tones but also sometimes quite acid colours and quite unafraid to mix and match (a lot of people describe it as the decade that taste forgot (maybe we only tend to remember the better bits of it?)...personally I loved it but I'm biased :biggrin:)

A recent film that I thought looked incredibly of that period was "The Assassination Of Richard Nixon" with Sean Penn but again that was more down to spot-on props, locations and wardrobe.

I think the popularity of that period right now has a lot to do with that being the formative years for a lot of people now in their thirties & forties who are making their own movies and promos now...slight nostalgia maybe? It's the same with a lot of music now...a lot of the younger bands these days seem to be into the 80's sound they grew up with (euurrghhh...can't wait till we move on the 90's!)
 
I think David Wyatt makes sense with the nostalgia angle.

I just saw some promo scenes from LIFE ON MARS and the hair, clothes, set design looks like the 70's I remember as a teenager, but the visual style is all now, like NUMBERS and 24 and CSI this or that. Wouldn't it be funny if they shot it like ROCKFORD FILES or HAWAII 5-0? Angenieux 25-250 zoom coverage from close up to wide shots, hard lights, 5247 grain, etc.
 
Denis, I agree with you 100%. And some of the other comments make a lot of sense to me as well. This is why I still visit this forum despite all the bad craziness that it generates now and then.

Just sayin'...

:watsup:
 
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