Three-time Emmy-nominated Cinematographer Bob Richman joined us to discuss his work on "The September Issue," "Metallica: Some Kind of Monster,"and the award-winning Documentary "Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills" and his decades shooting documentary films.
Cinematographer Bob Richman began his film career working with vérité pioneers Albert and David Maysles, quickly transitioning from production assistant to camera assistant then operator. Finally he made the leap to director of photography on the Maysles’ "Umbrellas," which chronicled artist Christo’s installation of three thousand umbrellas north of Los Angeles and Tokyo. Today, Richman is an Emmy-nominated and Sundance award-winning cinematographer on almost a hundred documentaries including: Davis Guggenheim’s "An Inconvenient Truth" and "Waiting for Superman," Nathaniel Kahn’s "My Architect," Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s HBO films "Paradise Lost" 1, 2 & 3 and "Metallica: Some Kinda Monster," RJ Cutler’s "The September Issue," "Oprah’s Master Class" and Sundance Channel’s "Iconoclasts."
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Gordon Burkell (GB) - At Filmmaker U, we create courses for film professionals to deepen and diversify their existing skill set. Every Friday we invite a film professional to chat with us. Today I am joined by Bob Richman, the cinematographer for some incredible documentaries such as "Metallica: Some Kind of Monster," "The September Issue," "An Inconvenient Truth," and "Paradise Lost."
Bob, when you are preparing for a shoot with a new director, how do you get inside the director’s head so that you understand what they're going for with the film?
Bob Richman (BR) - At this point, directors usually understand what I do and they hire me because of that. In a vérité situation, I really consider myself a co-director. It's like basketball, the coach can tell the player when to shoot and where to go, but he has to trust the player knows what he is doing. The director has to trust me. Having said that, every director is different. I've been working with Joe Berlinger for years and we're usually on the same page. I worked with Nathaniel Kahn, the director of "My Architect," and the way we worked is that we would talk before shooting, and then we talk after shooting, very rarely did we talk during the filming. We'll talk about what we think we're going to get but there's always that danger of taking too much about what you think you are going to get because things never quite turn out the way you expect. Oftentimes, you can make the mistake of missing something important because you've thought too much ahead of time about what you think a scene is going to give you. Something happens and at the time it doesn't seem like it's relevant and so you don't shoot it. Then later on, you say that was important! Every time I am in Sundance, they send these questions around for all the DPs and it's the same question. They always ask me do I bake-in the look. If you're doing a feature film and narrative film, you need to think about how it should look, but if you're doing a vérité film, you don't even know how the film is going to turn out! So you just want to make it look good. You don't want to bake in any look that isn't appropriate until you know what the finished film is. So it's always an act of discovery. At least that's the way I look at documentaries. That's what makes them fun for me. That it is a journey you go on with the director.
GB - You and I have been chatting about teaching. One of the scenes I show in my class is from "Harlan County, USA" and it's the union scene just before the gunshot goes off. The reason I show that is because of the way the cinematographer was able to capture all the people in the union meeting. It seemed as if the cinematographer knew who each individual was and how they would play out in the edit. How much research do you do beforehand so you know each of the people in a large situation like that? How much is it based on what's happening live?
BR - Usually, I don't! Hopefully the director has done that research. That's the wonderful thing that a director can do for a cinema vérité cinematographer is to build trust with the characters. Start by building trust, and getting to know who the characters are. You never know what character will emerge. You might assume that one person will be the lead character, but then some other character emerges and dominates the film. That's where a director has to really have discipline to say, "Okay, the film's going to be about this person. Even though I got great footage of these other people, this is who the film is about." I have to build my own trust with the director and my sound person, because trust is really the glue that holds those type of films to together and trust takes time. The first few times I film someone it is oftentimes awkward, and not great. Then as time goes on, if you've done your job right, and you have built trust, and love, they open up more and more. You get to know them, and they get to know you. Oftentimes right at the end, the last filming you do, it's like peeling away an onion. You say, oh, now I'm getting it. What happens to me often is, I get to that point, and then the film's over, and then I have to start another film and I can't understand why I’m not getting this great footage. I forget the process of building trust, to get to that point where somebody opens up to you.
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