The Polish-born Janusz Kaminski is one of the most recognizable names in cinematography in modern times thanks in large part to his unbroken partnership with Steven Spielberg for nearly 20 years, beginning with his Oscar-winning work on 1993's SCHINDLER'S LIST (he won another Oscar five years later for SAVING PRIVATE RYAN and has been nominated two additional times).
All you need to do to be impressed by the man's accomplishments is look at the list of film's he has worked on: AMISTAD, JERRY MAGUIRE, A.I. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, MINORITY REPORT, CATCH ME IF YOU CAN, WAR OF THE WORLDS, MUNICH, THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY, FUNNY PEOPLE, and Spielberg's upcoming LINCOLN. His strength seems to be his uncanny ability to adapt to the material. I wouldn't say Kaminski has a recognizable style, but to me that's his greatest strength; he isn't trying to impose a look to each film beyond what the material requires.
In the years leading up to this interview on behalf of Spielberg's latest film WAR HORSE, which opens Christmas Day, I'd heard Kaminski wasn't much of a talking and could sometimes be a tough interview, but I found the opposite to be true. And once you get him talking on a subject he's passionate about, the knowledge and information just flows. Of the many interviews I did for WAR HORSE a couple weeks ago, I have to admit Kaminski was one of the people I was most looking forward to meeting. I'd love to sit him down for a Legends interview one day, but until then, please enjoy my brief chat with the great Janusz Kaminski…
Janusz Kaminski: Hello, Steven. How are you?
Capone: Hello, sir. I’m good. It’s nice to meet you.
JK: It’s nice to meet you.
Capone: You went to Columbia College [film school], right?
JK: Right, yea.
Capone: I'm actually from Chicago, and I meet a lot of student from there at screenings I host.
JK: Oh yeah, good city.
Capone: Do you still recruit students from there as interns? I heard you used to do that.
JK: I do. The school is always great. The unfortunate thing is that the school is so far away from Hollywood, that we have very few people coming and lecturing, you know?
Capone: Yeah.
JK: But it really educates great filmmakers, so occasionally I run into young filmmakers who are graduates of Columbia College in Chicago, which is great.
Capone: I brought this up in the press conference, but I wanted to talk to you a little bit more about it. Each chapter of this film has a unique look and visual style to it. Can you talk a little bit about piecing together looks for each of them? Especially when we get to the French farmhouse. They almost come across as a series of short films.
JK: Right. Well, it was very appealing to the script, that ability to be able to create various so-called “looks” for different sections of the film. Obviously, the film starts with very idealized view of the world with the farmhouse with the not-so-happy family, because daddy is drunk. But there’s this rebellion and he will rebel against the system, he will get the horse. But the land that shapes them, the land that they depend on, one bad harvest will really destroy them. So it’s the harshness of the land, but yet the beauty of that land, needed to be reflected in the movie.
So I ended up lighting a lot. Every time someone would go through a field, it would be lit so they would stand out from the landscape, so they wouldn’t blend with it, because I didn’t want the actors to blend with the landscape, because they were part of the landscape. I wanted them to stand out. They’re shaping the landscape. They're shaping the land. That’s what they do. They’re not animals who just live off of the land; they're actually trying to shape it. So I wanted them to stand out.
And obviously, the first horse action is much more of a softer approach of the more traditional, beautiful images, and then gradually as we're going into Germany, the first time we see the horse in the hands of the Germans, the whole picture turns towards a more realistic, more gritty, more blue, because the story demands that. Then for that brief moment, we escape the brutality of that environment and we go into this idyllic French farm where life is still very innocent with a grandfather living with his daughter making jams and having kind of an idealized life. I wanted the photography to be a little bit warmer and more innocent and more beautiful, but then of course the Germans come back [laughs] like they always do to some degree. And everything turns a little bit different, and we go back towards the grittier lighting and grittier colors.
Capone: Well then in the No Man’s Land section, that is so bleak with that fog.
JK: Right. That’s kind of beautiful as well.
Capone: It is.
JK: There is a beauty in the war. Wars are not beautiful, but visually, they are spectacular. You get the explosions. You get the colors. You get the blood. You get the fire. So it’s a very beautiful event, the war you know? Except then you get the dead people and dead horses, and that part is not so beautiful. But when you’re looking at a set that’s scorched by fires, with big holes, craters created by the explosions, and those craters are filled up with water and dead bodies. It’s just very haunting, you know? I was just going towards very conventional representations, sad-blue, happy-warm. I wasn’t really creating anything new; it’s a part of the language. It’s a very simple representation of human emotions.
Capone: I wrote it in my notes when I saw that the very last few shots of the film, and Steven said those were real sunsets. You said it was through filters, but I wrote in my notes “GONE WITH THE WIND sky,” that fiery red sunset.
JK: Sure, but now people will say, “It’s a WAR HORSE sky,” no?
[Both Laugh]
Capone: I will still say it’s GONE WITH THE WIND, sorry.
JK: [laughs] Steven said, yes, it was a sunset, but the sunset was not red. I had filters working there. I had lights lighting the actors, because effectively I was exposing the film in such a way that the sun become a non-effective element, because I was so dark so I could retain the color of the sun. So I had to bring the lights and I was lighting and putting filters over the image to create the redness, because the red was not there. The sky was just very dark and blue, but there was no color, except that one little ball of sun. So all of that was created through filters.
Capone: I would have guessed it was completely artificial.
JK: Well yeah, it was created artificially. Yes, exactly.
Capone: Yet you were still outside.
JK: It was totally real. We were really outside. That was on purpose; I wanted to create that.
Capone: Yeah, it’s iconic. It’s like it’s just a silhouette on there.
JK: The guy coming home from war; he leaves as a boy and comes back home as a man and reunites with the family, and you know everything’s going to be fine.
Capone: I know you had issues with weather, but it sounds like you embraced the rain and the clouds.
JK: Yeah, we embraced it. It was great. You can’t let it go against us for various reasons, schedules don’t allow for you to. It’s a lot of money per day, so we embraced it, and we did, and fortunately the weather would change everyday three times, so that was a good thing. You knew it was going to rain. You knew it was going to be sunny. You knew you would have beautiful puffy clouds. That’s it from the moment you woke up you knew, and then once we got into the Moors, you could see the land all the way to Plymouth and you saw the clouds coming at you. So you knew what was going to happen.
Capone: Wet horses look different, and they must photograph different too, I would imagine.
JK: Sure, because it’s reflecting light. Horses are tough to light, because they don’t want to stand, and you have to light them otherwise you’re not going to see them, particularly at night. It was a big challenge to light a black horse or brown horse at night, and you;re traveling at 30 miles an hour or 15 or 20 miles an hour, and you have to light the beast. It became very difficult, but yeah sweat is good on any dark color. That’s why in commercials, we always wet the pavement, because you want that to stand out.
Capone: That’s one of the first things I ever learned about cinematography was why the streets were always wet in movies and TV shows.
JK: Wet streets, exactly! [Laughs] And rain.
Capone: That’s right. As a kid, I'd always wondered why the streets were wet when it wasn't raining. It never occurred to me.
JK: It just looks better.
[Both Laugh]
Capone: Steven mentioned that this is very much a film where the land is a character, and you also have a lot of shots down low where you see the horses hooves in the dirt. What are some of the challenges about shooting the earth, dirt, and mud?
JK: Shooting a horse galloping is very challenging, because usually the terrain is not even, and you have to invent equipment to follow the horse, and then you have to tell a story. It’s not just getting an image, you also have to get a very specific image, and it’s so dynamic with the hooves digging into it, the primal feel, the war, the primal feel of that, and the machine guns firing at them, and the horses coming to the forest without riders. Right there is great storytelling. I think that’s the primary reason, it’s just to reflect how primal that whole thing is.
Capone: You’re also listed as director of photography on TIN TIN, right?
JK: Yes, but I think it’s a little bit of a…
Capone: How does that work exactly?
JK: Well, I became an advisor, because all of the images are being created by Weta, so you then just look at certain images and suggest what should be done in order to create a film look versus a very controlled representation and the technicians tend to do everything the right way. The highlights are even, nothing is burning. So you tell them, “Burn the highlights. Put some shine here. Have the light fog up a little bit, so it’s not just clean. Bring some smoke.” You’re using the same tools, except you’re talking to animators.
Capone: Well alright. Thank you so much. It was great to meet you.
