Claudio Mirandahas had an interesting career thus far. After working as a gaffer on films likeSe7enandFight Club, filmmakerDavid Fincher(with whom he’d worked on a few commercials and music videos as a cinematographer) asked him to serve as the cinematographer for the wildly ambitious 2008 filmThe Curious Case of Benjamin Button. That VFX-intensive effort scored Miranda an Oscar nomination and led to him then shooting visually breathtaking movies likeTron: LegacyandOblivion, and of courseLife of Pi, for which he won the Best Cinematography Oscar.
Miranda’s latest film reteams him with directorJoseph Kosinskifor the third time and also marks something of a departure—the true story dramaOnly the Brave. The film revolves around one unit of local firefighters who battled the Yarnell Hill wildfire in 2013 to tragic results.Josh Brolinleads a cast that includesMiles Teller,Jeff Bridges,James Badge Dale,Taylor Kitsch, andJennifer Connelly.
WithOnly the Bravehitting theaters on October 20th, I recently go the chance to have an extended conversation with Miranda about his work on the film. He talked about his working relationship with Kosinski, the challenges of capturing real fire onscreen, shooting on location, and his approach to shooting realistic visual effects.
But I’m also a big fan of Miranda’s work in general, so the conversation veered off into his early days working as a gaffer for Fincher, and we discussed his “trial by fire” experience shootingBenjamin Buttonas well as what it’s like to work with Fincher and how his gaffer work with other cinematographers likeHarris SavidesandDariusz Wolskihas shaped his approach. Finally, with Kosinski next set to direct theTop GunsequelTop Gun: Maverick, I asked Miranda what the prep has been like on that movie so far.
It’s a wide-ranging and refreshingly candid conversation that hopefully admirers of Miranda’s work, or just those curious about cinematography in general, will find illuminating. I certainly had a great time chatting with the talented DP. Check out the full conversation below.
I know you worked with Joseph previously onTron LegacyandOblivion, but this is a very different kind of project with its own unique challenges so I was curious, how did you first get involved withOnly The Brave?
CLAUDIO MIRANDA: Because I did (laughs). I don’t know. Joe just asked me to do it. Joe and I just have kind of a little bit of a connection so we just almost, whatever he does do, I’m always the first call on that. I think we always do good work together. We’re probably going to move on toTop Gunmaybe, that’s coming up and I’ll probably say yes to that as well.
What were your early conversations like about how you guys wanted to approachOnly the Bravevisually?
MIRANDA: Joe and I were looking at a movie that was grounded in reality a little bit. I think we needed that, I love my movies but it’s been fantasyland sinceLife of PitoObliviontoTron. Benjamin Buttonwas kind of more grounded. So we wanted to do something that was in-camera and obviously we had to figure out a way to capture fire. Fire is, well it’s kind of interesting to scale it, right? I mean you’re able to’t have fire … The bigger you get it the farther you have to get away, for safety’s sake. It’s hard to shoot people engulfed in fire. But we did have fire on set for actors to react to. I feel like it gave them a better performance even though we had to replace a lot later. When you see the actors cower because of the intense heat, it’s sometimes real cowering, it’s really hot. That was a challenge. I love to test cameras, and my main test was to see what captures fire the best. And figure out how we’re going to approach that and the logistics of the movie, as well. I wanted to feel natural and let it go to the dark side when it needs to for certain scenes, and kind of play some scenes very simple.
Was honing in on the drama and simplicity more of a challenge for you, or was it exciting to have that change of pace?
MIRANDA: It was kind of exciting to do, I mean what we did do a little more of—you know the drones are getting really popular, everyone’s kind of hopping on the bandwagon of drones. But we were shooting up in the high mountains a lot so we didn’t want to hire a separate drone crew, so we kind of did it ourselves. I mean, I sort of wanted to do it ourselves, in a way, just keep it in house so we kept it in house. We flew our own drones and did that for the movie, because a lot of times we just didn’t want to have a crew waiting around all the time, we wanted to fly it when we wanted to. Imagine being around mountains, it’s hard to get away or in certain areas. So we got involved in some drone work, that changed a little bit of … There’s still helicopter work in the movie as well, especially when we have to chase another helicopter or follow another helicopter or get a super high field of view. There’s a lot of stuff you’ll see even on the trailer, watching some drops or some mountains on fire. Some of those mountains on fire are real, that’s the movie as well.
They did a controlled burn, which got a little bit on the verge of controlled fire. So, we went to go film that. I think that’s in the last trailer, you’ll see them look at a mountain that’s half on fire and half smoke, that’s a real shot, and then a shot of a real deer running away from that control fire and the helicopter actually shot that as well. So those little moments are kind of real, but obviously when they get completely surrounded and engulfed, you couldn’t be near that. Physically, nothing would last.
Yeah, I spoke to Paul Cameron recently and he was talking about using drones on the latestPiratesmovie and how he had to teach the drone crew how to be cinematic. Because I guess this drone technology is kind of new.
MIRANDA: That’s what I don’t like, I mean I didn’t like how non-cinematic they were. That’s kind of why we took it over, I was tired of … I don’t need a hot shot shot, I just need a boom op to fly over. I don’t need crazy. I’m sure there are guys that are better than I am for fancy flying through things, but we didn’t need that. We needed simple boom ops to kind of reveal and orbit around points. Simple drone flying. That’s why we didn’t feel like we needed help and didn’t need Mr. Fancy Pants, you know.
And your approach to the fire, it sounds like some of it was practical but a lot of it was visual effects, so was a lot of that on you to get the lighting right?
MIRANDA: Not a lot of it was visual effects. There was one day we burned a couple thousand, three thousand gallons of propane in one day. When you see through it, you see pipes and fire. It may work in a long lens shot, but it’s not going to really feel right on a—it doesn’t look like a fire, you don’t have real trees on fire. They did a good job of doing the best they can, it’s just not quite the same as the real thing.
You have great deal of experience blending cutting-edge visual effects with real serious drama which sounds like it should be a given in a lot of films, but in a lot of movies it just doesn’t come together that well so I was curious what’s your approach to visual effects intensive shots?
MIRANDA: Normally I’m very protective of them. The better they have a nice key, the better they can integrate into the shot. I don’t try to “f” them too much, because I know in the end that’s the whole thing. If their inlay looks terrible and you’re not thinking about them as a unified front, it’s just going to end up as a terrible project, see? And I do try to know the final goal of the project, try to help them out, because it helps me out. If their integration looks good, then my stuff looks good at the end, too. I work closely with them. Eric Barba who was on the shoot has been with Joe since the beginning as well—he didTron, he didOblivion, and he did this movie as well, he didOnly the Brave—we work closely together and we kind of have a shorthand, but I do what I can. Obviously there’s not going to be a blue screen when there’s a fire. Even the fake fire because it would set everything on fire. So that kind of stuff, it was a little more roto on that kind of stuff and then put a background behind there. I helped him as much as I could, but I couldn’t help him that much.
I think we did put one blue screen up, and I think it was for the campfire scene. It kind of looks out, they’re all kind of at a campfire and he’s picking bee stings out of his bottom. One of the scenes on there. Anyway, it kind of looks out and they’re all at this campfire, that was the one blue screen shot there. We did actually put up one, but I think that’s the only one, really.
Well, and I know you guys shot a lot on location in New Mexico as well, so what did the location shoots bring to the film visually? BecauseTronis not super location-intensive.
MIRANDA: Well, we went to a ski resort called Pajarito in Santa Fe, I don’t know if you know that place. Anyway, this kind of gave us … they let us do little controlled burns. They do this thing where they do controlled burns to maintain the fire line or make a fire break. So we did a lot of that kind of exercising. And then we had a lot of… there was a guy, not Brandon, he headed up how that was going to happen. They gave us a natural location where we can do little controlled burns and do a couple of scenes in there. If we got bigger, we had a backlot about the size of a football field, I think it was 300 feet by 400 feet. And then there we can kind of burn… We had trees planted and we just let her loose there as much as we can. There’s some scenes where Marsh is pulling Brandon out of the fire, that I think a lot of that’s in camera as well.
There’s always a little bit of finagling around in there, adding a little bit in there as well but we have a force so we can go add a fire without being small. As in, when we got on location. Because when we got on location all we could do is be small as far as setting fires. But we had other locations, all shot around Santa Fe. There’s a jogging scene where they’re running around, that’s up in the mountains. So it’s kind of all this desert flat ground area, except Pajarito which had more of the tall trees. A little bit of a mix of everything to tell you the truth. And then at Santa Fe studios in the back we built the main headquarters. You’ll see that in the trailer too, it’s kind of the main interior.
As I said, I’m a big fan of your work and of cinematography in general, so I was curious if you could talk a bit about how you first got into the field of cinematography. I know you worked as a gaffer on a few films first.
MIRANDA: Well, I mean, I’ve always said yes to everyone’s push, you know what I mean (laughs). So people gave me opportunity and I sort of took it. I’ve been around Fincher for a while. I gaffed on a lot of movies for him. So when I started shooting some music videos back in the day, they just kind of—they liked that I had that Fincher connection because everyone wanted to have thatSevenorFight Clublook. I didn’t gaffSeven, but I gaffed some reshoots ofSeven, a couple weeks of that, but people were interested in the look ofFight Cluband that was kind of a staple that people wanted to replicate. Even though these music videos didn’t end up looking like that. They just, you know, they just liked the fact that I was around that kind of scene. And back in the day I had a girlfriend at the time, and she was a producer, and she says “I have this music video, you wanna shoot it?” And I said all right. And I kind of kept going, that’s how I got started with music video. And then Fincher gave me a shot at shooting something for Nike, like a film strips thing, so I shot that for him.
Then David called me a long time ago, he goes “Hey, Claudio, want to meet me at Bixel?” Which was a video place. And I go “Huh.” I say “What’s it about?” He says “I’ll tell you when I get there.” So, I went online and I looked up what’s the fanciest new thing at Bixel and it was this Viper camera. So I learned as much as I can the hour before I had to leave to go there. I learned a little bit so I wasn’t totally blank, and then that kind of started me with shooting some … I was the first to shoot digital for Fincher on commercials. And then Harris [Savides] didZodiac. I did this horrible commercial for David calledOrville Redenbacher. It was terrible. It was ugly, David wanted it to be ugly, and I shot it with the Viper. I think it’s the ugliest thing that David’s ever done. He wanted it to be ugly. He goes there’s hardly lighting in this thing, I want it to look shitty and really ugly. And I go OK. I have weird judgment about how this looks. And he goes “Yeah, it looks pretty shitty.” And I go okay, alright, we were done.
And then I did some reshoots forZodiacbecause Harris wasn’t available. I re-lit some things and they became a little bit different from what Harris had done, but try to keep the same mood, just because practically I couldn’t just redo a scene, it was going to be completely new. Fincher seemed to respond well to that. Then he’s sort of hiring my crew from under me after that Orville Redenbacher commercial. And they go, andBenjamin Buttonwas starting in a couple of months, that’s when the DP was starting. And I had a commercial that was coming up, I said “David, you know, I need to know if I’m doing … some people said that I’m doing your movie.” He doesn’t really tell you that much, and I kind of wanted to know either way, either I’m taking this commercial, or I’m taking your movie, and because you’re taking my crew away from me, do I need to get new crew? I don’t know what I’m doing yet. And I kind of need to know by tomorrow, because I gotta either turn down this commercial or not. And then the next day he gave meBenjamin Button.
So that’s kind of how I got it, I didn’t say “Oh golly gee, I really would love to do it,” I just made it more like off-the-cuff. And I think he kind of responds to that. Even though maybe you could be saying that internally, like “This is an awesome opportunity,” and then after you get the job you go “Holy Jesus,Benjamin Button, this is a massive movie.” 150 day schedule, there’s sets, there’s huge sets, and it was a major movie for me, coming out of being— I did this other movie calledFailure to Launch, which I don’t really talk about too much or want anymore because it was a little bit of a disaster (laughs). So, I didBenjamin Button, and that turned out really well I think. It’s the best that camera’s ever looked, that Viper. And that really holds up, that movie.
It does. I was going to say, I was re-watching it the other day actually kind of by happenstance, I didn’t know I was interviewing you yet. And it’s nine years old, and those effects still really hold up. Were you guys thinking of longevity when you were making that?
MIRANDA: I was really worried, because you go online and you watch Orville Redenbacher, David Fincher. That was terrible. David used that commercial to get the basis to howBenjamin Button[was going to be done, effects-wise]. So I was going into that movie going “Oh, God.” If it’s twice as good as that, it’s still really bad. We had actors wearing a blue sock, kind of the body down. In the version when he’s kind of young. I lit him like I would normally light an actor, I didn’t especially say “Oh, it’s visual effects. Light him differently.” I did what I would normally do. If there was an eye light, I would put an eye light in. Even though for the blue sock, I just know when they put their HDR ball in it would kind of be there when they put the head back on, and it would influence the lighting. So, even though it was a blue sock and I’m giving eye light to something that’s not there, I would still do that as well. I used to put little bright bulbs far away just to get the little glints in the eye so you’d get something, you wouldn’t really expose them, but you would just see this light reflection in the eyes, if that makes sense.
I’m kind of obsessed with Fincher, as most cinephiles are, it sounds like you guys are pretty close. What’s the experience like working with David Fincher, and not only working with him, but following up Harris Savides and Cronenweth and all these great cinematographers.
MIRANDA: You know, it was interesting. I used to work for Wolski and Cronenweth and Harris. I did movies with all three of them. When you first start shooting, you’re kind of a mish mash of all of them. When you’re starting out, before you truly find your own voice. But I still look at Harris, he likes to make imperfect lighting. Even Wolski, you always have to look at the set when people are moving lights and something turns off, look for those little amazing moments. They have influence in my methodology of how I look at lighting or sense how I want it to feel. And even Harris, when he would see something that felt lit, and I went oh God, that feels … there’s something really wrong. He always taught me if you’re not happy, don’t roll (laughs). If you do your plan and it sucks, because it kinda happens. “Oh let’s put a tent out the window” and then poof, and then all of a sudden it looks terrible. Don’t be afraid if you just want to put a light bulb in a corner instead and it’s better. Don’t be afraid to just dump your idea. He taught me that. Sometimes you have a big rig and you end up turning it all off, and it looks so much better.
Maybe that’s an extreme case and producers might get mad at that. But, I mean, the end goal is we all make initial mistakes, it’s how we kind of go on. And Harris always looked at that. I’ve done jobs with Harris where we had 100 sky pans rigged and 2 day pre-light, and we’d end up just having one sky panel (laughs). And it looks fine, it’s perfect. And things change, sometimes the scene changes. And Wolski, I did a bunch of movies with him. I didThe Crowwith him, I didCrimson Tidewith Wolski. I’m very strong in the lighting department, I’ve always kind of been. The gaffers I work with I’m pretty much dictate everything.
Fincher brought me to Jeff [Cronenweth], I wasn’t really Jeff’s choice. Fincher liked me, because I didThe Gamewith Fincher. Fincher said you know, you should hire Claudio to doFight Cluband Jeff said “Okay,” it wasn’t like he rebelled. Jeff had his own guy, but I was Fincher’s guy in a way.
What’s it like working with Fincher, a guy who could do all of these jobs himself probably because he knows so much about everything?
MIRANDA: Well, he kind of can. I mean, he knows a lot about the work. I find him a little bit overly of a RED fanatic (laughs). I just find that a little bit weird. I just feel like we should be men, camera-ing without labels. He’s labeled himself as a RED person, so I go “You should always look.” I don’t know, I find it a little bit oddball, how much. For me the RED works well in his world because he lives in this sort of dark world, stuff like that. But for me, when I tested fire, the RED was the worst.
Oh really?
MIRANDA: Well, you know it’s all about highlights, like how does it look? I think the RED lives really well in the undertones, and I think so far as fire it actually performed the worst for us. But that’s because David lives in a world that’s like exposures from 60 to 0, which is perfect for that camera, perfect for him. In that kind of world, I think it looks great, he does really great. He makes that camera look really good compared to most people. So, you know. I’ve been on the Sony for a little while, not just because I planned this, but because they made us do shoot outs for them. For every movie, we put all the cameras up and we blindfold ourselves and we pick A, B, C, D, and we just keep on kind of going back to it. Not because we’re a Sony waving flag, but because it seems to work for us.
I did this thing calledThe Dig. It’s something that Joe [Kosinski] and I shot recently, revealing the new Sony CineAlta camera. I also did this thing calledThe Circle. The DJI kind of helped me out with all the drone stuff. In the beginning they came out and really super helped me out, so I did them a little favor, I shot a short film calledThe Circle. It’s on the site, if you go to the site claudiomiranda.com you’ll see bothThe CircleandThe Dig.The Circlewas a drone-y piece, it was a period piece, but actually I thought it turned out really well and we shot it all with the drone, which is a strange way to shoot a thing. So, I put the drone on dollies and mounted it to cars, I mounted little rigs with it, and it turned out pretty good, that camera actually turned out pretty awesome. So I’m involved in that company as far as helping them create cameras that work.
Circling back to Fincher for a minute, I was just curious is it intimidating at all working with him?
MIRANDA: Oh, Fincher? Intimidating? No, I don’t find him intimidating. I mean, when I didButton, I was really nervous about the scope of the whole job, because it was so massive and it was my first kind of—you know it’s interesting, because when you’re a gaffer you can make up all the crazy ideas you want, and they’re not owned, right? But as a cinematographer, now you have to own that idea, which is a lot different than gaffing. That’s the biggest difference from when I did the “Hey have a light here, and hey, have a light here,” you know? Turn this off, that looks cool! As a DP, you have to live with that decision that I want that light there, or that light off, or that kind of quality light, and that’s recorded and it’s permanent, it’s not a bunch of ideas. For me that was kind of a scarier realization.
What Fincher usually does in the past, he usually has a lot of pre-vis, lots of books of how we’re going to do it and the set-ups. I was looking for that crutch onButton, but there was none of that. There was only one pre-vis shot for the whole thing and that was the submarine sequence when the submarine attacks the boat. But that was the only thing, there was no lighting references, so I made a book of lighting references. I did my own camera, I just shot stills from around the house and kind of focused on stills for lighting references for a week, just to calm my own mind I showed it to David and was like “Is this what you’re thinking?” He said “It’s kind of like that.” I said “David, where are all the books? The reference books?” He said “You know what, I just don’t want to be disappointed.”
So I just said, all right, okay, we’ll go with it. But internally I’m going, “Goddamn it, all these other DPs had all this reference stuff, all I’ve got is a fucking house and I’m dealing with windows and lights and ceilings and colors!” (laughs). And David was busy finishing upZodiac. That was probably why he didn’t really prep that movie the same way. A lot was left on me, and I’m a new DP, and I’m like wow (laughs).
I can’t imagine, but it turned out tremendously well, and I’m telling you, just the other day I was watching it and that really holds up. So, job well done.
MIRANDA: Yeah, I feel it does, too. And then, I got a call from Fincher, originally to shoot theDragon Tattoomovie. He wanted this other Swedish DP to shoot it, and when he did that I took this other movie,Life of Pi. AndDragon Tattoowasn’t working out with the Swedish DP and he called me, and he called Jeff [Cronenweth] as well to see if he could shoot it and Jeff was available and I wasn’t available. I mean, I did get a call that was like “Are you available?” But, I couldn’t do that movie, sadly. But it worked out pretty good anyway (laughs).
I would sayLife of Piturned out okay for you.
MIRANDA: It worked out fine. Ang Lee was awesome as well, in a different kind of way. And that’s a different language, you know, Ang Lee language to Fincher language is very different. Ang Lee is very feeling, and how do I feel, David’s a little more the technical side of things.
I’m curious, and since you brought up Orville Redenbacher, I mean you were there at the forefront of digital photography, and I was curious how you feel that it’s evolved. How do you feel about the evolution of digital over the years, are there any specific kind of advances you’re still looking to see happen?
MIRANDA: Well, you know what I did? On this new camera that I did, I wanted to have all the NDs in the camera. So, Sony made this camera that had 3 through 2.4 in the camera. Which I find is really an awesome thing, because on set, I could really do something which I’ve never been able to do before, which is kind of dial the depth of field in perfectly if that makes any sense. So, I’d be on set and be go 5.6 is a little deep, let me shallow it up, oh, 1.4, 1.3 is a little too much back it off click, click, and find this really perfect depth of field to hold a two shot or whatever the shot may feel, or if it’s too blurry, I wanted to see just a little bit more in the background. It’s a very interesting way of working, versus having assistants fly in and out of ND’s all the time. So I thought that was kind of interesting.
There is an interesting story that I could tell you. My first digital movie was I did a thing for Jonathan Darby calledDreams. It was one of those Sony Dreams projects, it was calledAngel at Hillside Road. I shot this thing, and it’s not on my site anymore, but it’s probably around somewhere, and I went to the projection room early to get the whole kind of thing. So I went to the production room to make sure my movie looked great, and then the projection was all out, so I tweaked it perfectly. And I think Fincher was in the audience, and Fincher loved the piece. I’m hearing this from someone else, not from Fincher because he would never ever say that to me ever directly. But then Fincher I heard, I’m not totally sure I have this rumor correct, but I’ve been told by some reliable sources that he saw that movie and he showed it to Brad Pitt, and he said this is the future of digital cinematography. So, I was impressed that this little short I did made him look towards digital in that way. So, I heard this from a person that knew him well, yeah, he saw that and showed it to Brad and he kind of fell in love with it. That was a super crappy camera, that was an F900 or something so.
One last question before I let you go, so are you gearing up to doTop Gun 2now? To work with Maverick?
MIRANDA: (Laughs) Right. We’ve been talking with Team Five as far as they’re making aircraft right now to place different cameras. We’re trying to get early on so we can get camera mounts. Tom Cruise is going to be part of it again. It’s kind of funny because I used to do a lot of Tony Scott movies. I didCrimson Tide, I did all those movies. And originally, Tony Scott did the first one, before all that happened, he was up for doing the second one, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to doTop Gun, in a way. But I saw the making of and there was this hour long making ofTop Gun, and I see Tony and I got really sentimental over the whole thing. I said of course I’ve got to do this movie, it’s perfect. And very sentimental to work with Tony. AndOblivion, I loved working with Tom. He’s awesome. There on time, he’s full of energy, I feel like onOblivionI really thought he was awesome to work with. And then working with Joe again was awesome. It has three things that make me say yes to the whole thing. Even though the script is not done yet (laughs). But I’m sure there’s jets.
This interview has been slightly edited and condensed for clarity.
