I know, I know, I’m obsessed with La La Land. But Linus is a really interesting cinematographer to look at for a few reasons, firstly, he’s a swedish cinematographer who’s work is interestingly quite understated, yet very colourful, I think. I know it would be completely misleading to suggest that Linus is the reason the films he works on are beautifully coloured, however, what I am amazed by is how almost every light in every scene has a hue. There’s never just a bunch of white lights and the scene is graded to appear a certain colour, there is almost always contrast in the colours of the lighting in the image. In fact, one of the only times he just used a bunch of white lights was to intentionally contrast the pink sunset sky in City of Stars, in an interview for the film he said, “In Los Angeles there’s a lot of orange sodium-vapor streetlights, but we didn’t want them to exist in our Los Angeles. So we made them cool white colors in combination with the pink skies and blue nights.”
The Hundred Foot Journey is a lovely film, that has a very distinct quality of the culture of the setting of the film, similar to La La Land, though in saying that, Hundred Foot Journey is a much more understated film (obviously), but where Sandgren shines is the way he renders the juxtaposition of the French setting with the Indian Culture. The film has this beautiful love affair with old school lighting and Linus does an amazing job of using the candles from David Gropman’s Production Design to inform this very old school french look. Even though it wouldn’t be anachronistic to just shove some electric lights up in every scene, they do an amazing job of keeping the scenes extremely well lit and still feel punchy, intimate and a little bit colourful.
The first image on the left, above, shows a dinner scene that couldn’t have been lit with just candles. The key light on Marguerite is extraordinary how well directed it is, I suspect coming from right of camera and cut down quite a lot, accenting it, is this beautiful blue fill that just lights the room enough to create some depth in the shot. A lot of Sandgren’s look comes to his film processing. He always shoots film. For La La Land, Sandgren pull-processed the footage one stop to soften the contrast and finer grain; shooting on Kodak Vision3 500T 5219 and some 250D 5207 stock. Sandgren looked to Jacques Demy and his work on The Umbrellas of Cherbourg at the request of Damien Chazelle, the Director. Mostly for inspiration but Sandgren says, “Demy’s work is very impressive — so unique and unconventional. He had his own vision and I don’t think he really cared what other people thought. He just did what he thought was right.”
Sandgren and his team were often attempting extremely difficult shots that had to be filmed in short periods of time on La La Land to try to capture sunsets or because they had blocked up freeway ramps to get the shots. But Sandgren encouraged his crew to remember the feeling of nailing the shots and taking that feeling to heart knowing that every day would feel hopeless at different times. “There was actually only one scene that we couldn’t nail. It was in that green apartment when [Gosling and Stone] sing “City of Stars” at his piano. We were going to do that on a little mini Technocrane and we rehearsed forever and just couldn’t get it right. But we had that same instinct – “We aren’t nailing it, but eventually we’ll get it.” And then someone said, “Why don’t we just shoot this on Steadicam?” And everyone was like “Yeah, why don’t we shoot this on Steadicam? Why are we in this tiny fucking apartment in Van Nuys with a little crane?” (laughs) Then Ari came in with his Steadicam and nailed it right away.”
Joy is a rather unconventional film, unlike La La Land or The Hundred Foot Journey it isn’t finished in scope, it’s finished flat, which is unusual for that genre. David O Russel the Director of Joy loved the way in which film rendered flesh tones and really wanted Jennifer Lawrence’s flesh tones to stand out in the film though the two of them were both very inspired by black and white, old school film. A lot of Sandgren’s work is marked by the way he is able to heighten what Production Design does. In the case of Joy, he is able to take the very muted tones of the scenes and add life back into them with very colour saturated lighting, which still feels a little bit muted and monochrome but has a life and colour that exists only through lighting.
Linus often talks about each film that he works on “constantly evolving” at every moment, “even when [the crew] is asleep, the film is still changing, evolving”. I think the respect for that and his ability to adapt his style and his ideas quickly make him a really amazing cinematographer.
Linussandgren.com. (2018). LINUS SANDGREN Director Of Photography / FEATURES. [online] Available at: http://www.linussandgren.com [Accessed 27 Apr. 2018].
Mulcahey, M., Macaulay, S., Sell, C., Schoenbrun, D. and Macaulay, S. (2018). Pink Skies and Poetic Artifacts: DP Linus Sandgren on La La Land | Filmmaker Magazine. [online] Filmmaker Magazine. Available at: https://filmmakermagazine.com/101296-pink-skies-and-poetic-artifacts-dp-linus-sandgren-on-la-la-land/#.WuKNnS9L2-V [Accessed 27 Apr. 2018].
Sandgren, L. (2018). Linus Sandgren. [online] IMDb. Available at: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0761874/ [Accessed 27 Apr. 2018].