Pre-prod - Research for D.O.P - Natasha Braier

As my chosen technique to focus on is being the Director of Photography, i'm now researching DOPs for inspiration & guidance of the skill. The technique is really composed of 4 main attributes, these include lighting, framing, camera movement & colour/tone, and with these attributes a films world is created & conveyed across the screen. One D.O.P i will be focusing & researching within this blog is Natasha Braier. She's an Argentinian-born D.O.P and is best known for her work on Neon Demon (2016). She has a unique way of working with light and that is the primary reason i decided to research her. 

(Natasha Braier)

Link to her work
http://www.natashabraier.com/html/en/stills/Vanity-Fair/


NEON DEMON -
A quote from her about working with Nicolas Winding Refn, she states '“When you see ‘Neon Demon,’ every shot, every aesthetic decision is so extreme and so confident that you’d think it’s totally planned from the beginning, but the interesting thing is that it’s not,”. The film itself was quite vacuous, but the visual composition was utterly astonishing, and that's why i've chose Natasha to converse about. 


LIGHTING
Natasha's lighting is extremely saturated and uses a lot of different colour gels to bring out various types of emotions throughout Neon Demon. She's very abstract in her usage of lighting, and uses it's full potential to effectively portray the narratives themes & topics beautifully.



COLOUR/TONE
Braier didn't want ND (Neon Demon) to be a authentic representation of the fashion industry, nor did she want it to reference the cool, slick look of the magazine print ads featuring super-models.  Instead, her reference for the big fashionista party, where the innocent Jesse first comes into contact with other models, was the feeling Alice had entering Wonderland.
A quote from Braier herself, “The colors are always subtly changing in this scene, the blue becomes turquoise, and then liliac,” ... “The shifting colors does something to your brain, I want you to feel how alien and overwhelming this world is to her.”


Then it gets on to the second part of the film, in which Jesse has a realisation of how beautiful she is, and the power that it brings, losing that innocence for arrogance. After this, the colour palette completely changes to red throughout shots with her in, clearly forboding the change of mind & emphasis on the power & dominance she is now newly craving. 



FRAMING/CAMERA MOVEMENT
The movement within this piece was quite soft & static, complimentary of the characters within, it dragged out scenes through it's little movement, to emphasise the characters more & depict the beauty & power of each individual. It was a clever way of indicating power by Natasha Braier and I feel it worked.



WHY RESEARCH HER & WHAT AFFECT IT HAS HAD ON OUR PROJECT?
One of the main reasons I decided to research Natasha was because of how much I enjoyed the visuals to the film. The actual narrative i wasn't so keen on, i thought it was a vacuous, pointless plot with no actual substance to it, that it was style over substance. However, I do love the visual side to it, and if I look at it from a camera person's perspective its a triumph. It's her styling & lighting that is used so effectively, and I want to try and learn those skills, so that I can apply to my own work in the future. The film also deals with ominous themes, and it's intriguing to see the lighting and composition used throughout those certain dark scenes for inspiration for this current project.