Days Of Heaven

C

cmags27

New member
Hi All,

I'm a newbie to this site, as well as to film production in general...

I recently saw Terrance Malik's "Days Of Heaven" and was curious about the stunning cinematography. I heard that the entire film was shot using natural light??? If so, can I assume to take on a feat such as this would require a lot of very large bounce cards, flags, reflectors, etc, etc?

I thought it might be cool to try something like this on a much smaller scale, and was trying to get a general idea of some of the equipment I would need.

Cmags
 
Most of it was shot during magic hour. This is the time of day when the sun is low or beyond the horizon, creating beautiful ambient or side lighting.

This is a scheduling nightmare but well worth it.

As far as JUST using natural light I would highly doubt it.
 
My understanding is that it took them like 6 months to shoot that film based upon the need for not only various seasons but natural light. Also, I'm pretty sure it was shot by 2 different DPs.

As far as equipment that you would need to shoot a similar project, I'd say you'd need a chart with sunrise/sunset times, a compass, maybe even a sundicator, and some bounce board.
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If you buy the Criterion DVD of this, the booklet has a lengthy excerpt from Nestor Almendros's book on cinematography and he goes into a lot of detail about how the movie was shot and how he struggled often with the more traditionally-trained camera crew. A lot of it really was natural light, but not all of it. Almendros admits that he was often surprised that he got an image on the negative at all - apparently Malick egged him on in this respect, encouraging him to go as far out as he wanted. The crew hated it and didn't understand why this guy didn't just light everything like a Hollywood film.

Also, there was indeed a second cinematographer on the film, the brilliant Haskell Wexler, who came in during the second half of production because Almendros had committed to shooting a film with Truffaut and Malick had gone over schedule. Wexler was basically brought in to match the work Almendros was already doing, and he made certain concessions in his own style of cinematography to honor what Almendros had done (for instance, Wexler typically likes to use some diffusion, but Almendros preferred not to). One shot that is definitely Haskell's in the film is the gorgeous tracking shot that moves from inside the house to outside in very low light as I recall. Wexler was responsible for a lot of the winter month interior scenes.

Hope that helps! You couldn't ask for a better film to study for its use of light.
 
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