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The Cinematography of Inglourious Basterds (shot by Robert Richardson)

Matthew Scott

Matthew Scott

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FINALLY! After much work, my Cinematography Breakdown of the first chapter of 'Inglourious Basterds' is complete and ready for viewing at my blog! Or check out a few shots below, enjoy :)

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The rest are HERE :)
 
L O V E this! Can't get enough of scene breakdowns. Vincent Laforet's recent workshop dove into this but never at this level.

Thanks Matthew!
 
Matthew, thank you for doing this. I really enjoyed the previous one on Prisoners. I wish more discussion was aimed at theory, framing, and the actual important bits of shooting a film. I feel like it's too easy to get lost in pixel peeping on camera forums.

Edit: Also, I think your tutorials are both humorous and nicely paced! Too many tutorials are insultingly slow or boring.
 
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Matthew, very interesting read, but in terms of lenses used, the Cookes (not anamorphic) are last on the IMDB list. Looks like 2 camera types were used with a mixture of Panavision Anamorphics on each camera, plus Spherical Cookes.

These being Anamorphic primes (Primo/G-Series), Spherical (Cooke) primes plus the ATZ & AWZ2 Anamorphic zooms.

Arriflex 435, Panavision Primo, G-Series, ATZ, AWZ2 and Cooke Lenses
Panavision Panaflex Millennium, Panavision Primo, G-Series, ATZ, AWZ2 and Cooke Lenses

Without talking with the DP, seeing the slate or looking at the bokeh/fall-off (etc) very closely, I'd assume some of the shots are on wider anamorphics than you're guessing :)

Edit - Just re-read the post and was just clarifying info, not being negative at all :) A good post and informative, especially for the upcoming guys that may have missed out film school or a more formal background that helped with gaining a compositional eye etc. Looking forwards to your next Cinematography Essay :)
 
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Thanks for all the hard work and time spent on these Matthew - I especially like the colour palette comparisons!

Only a few notes from me.

Shot 8: The cut here does not "cross the line". He should indeed stay left of frame! If you imagine this was a dirty over the shoulder shot of two people talking where the other person is the distant vehicles, the geography makes total sense.

Shot 9: It is not correct that colour traces closer to the centre of the vectorscope are more saturated - it's the opposite! The boxes labelled RGBYlMgCy indicated purely saturated Red, Green, Blue, Yellow, Magenta, Cyan which you would see if monitoring a Colour Bars test image. Unsaturated Black, White and every shade of grey map to the centre of the vectorscope.

Love the matching of Shot 31 and 32!

Shot 35: I think this is a longer lens than 50mm to get the house as big as that at this distance, with a deep depth of field achieved with a small aperture. Hard to say for sure without being able to see the actual relative distances though!
 
ericyoung said:
Thanks for all the hard work and time spent on these Matthew - I especially like the colour palette comparisons!

Only a few notes from me.

Shot 8: The cut here does not "cross the line". He should indeed stay left of frame! If you imagine this was a dirty over the shoulder shot of two people talking where the other person is the distant vehicles, the geography makes total sense.

Shot 9: It is not correct that colour traces closer to the centre of the vectorscope are more saturated - it's the opposite! The boxes labelled RGBYlMgCy indicated purely saturated Red, Green, Blue, Yellow, Magenta, Cyan which you would see if monitoring a Colour Bars test image. Unsaturated Black, White and every shade of grey map to the centre of the vectorscope.

Love the matching of Shot 31 and 32!

Shot 35: I think this is a longer lens than 50mm to get the house as big as that at this distance, with a deep depth of field achieved with a small aperture. Hard to say for sure without being able to see the actual relative distances though!
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Nice job Matt. I also have to agree with Eric about shot 8. I feel its the only way to do that shot. Its a totally comfortable edit.
 
Bob Gundu said:
....also have to agree with Eric about shot 8. I feel its the only way to do that shot. Its a totally comfortable edit.
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Yes..it's the only way to do shot 8. In both shots he is on left side of the frame and his eyeline is looking Left to Right as it should.
 
Matthew this is AWESOME... You never cease to Amaze... Thank you.
 
Thanks every one! And yes with the vector scope, obviously a typo! Shot 9, yep for sure I see how it works now (and have edited it), but I never said that it didn't work, just talked about how I would have done it (wrong). Also, with the lenses and not all being Ana, makes perfect sense now...I could have sworn some of those shots were Spherical hehe :) Cheers :)
 
The French farm interior was actually done on a stage, and the exteriors seen through the windows and door were green screen. This is all covered in the "making of" doc on the DVD release.

Yvan Lucas (at eFilm) was the main colorist on the project, and he would've been responsible for keeping the fleshtones consistent. Bob Richardson does an exceptionally good job, particularly on his film projects. Steve Arkle at Technicolor set a lot of the initial look of the film with Bob during dailies.
 
Marc Wielage said:
The French farm interior was actually done on a stage, and the exteriors seen through the windows and door were green screen. This is all covered in the "making of" doc on the DVD release.

Yvan Lucas (at eFilm) was the main colorist on the project, and he would've been responsible for keeping the fleshtones consistent. Bob Richardson does an exceptionally good job, particularly on his film projects. Steve Arkle at Technicolor set a lot of the initial look of the film with Bob during dailies.
Click to expand...

Yvan's the man!
 
IIRC the spherical Cooke lenses where only used for the movie-within-the-movie "Pride of the Nation" framed 1.33:1, all of the "actual" movie was shot on Panavision Anamorphics.
 
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