Cinematography technique · used in 9 films
Recreating the look of an earlier era's film or television using period cameras, film stock, lighting and contrast. The images feel like real records from that time or a tribute to it.
Examples
Woody Allen · 1972
The game show segment is the only black-and-white one and is shot kinescope style, like early recorded TV. It spoofs What's My Line? as What's My Perversion?, with Jack Barry as host. The old TV look makes the embarrassing material feel both silly and strangely polite.
Where to see it: What's My Perversion?: On a game show hosted by Jack Barry, a rabbi acts out a bondage fantasy while his wife eats pork.
Woody Allen · 1983
The crew tracked down antique cameras and lenses and added crinkles and scratches to the negatives. Sound was recorded on antique carbon microphones. The footage ends up looking like a genuine record from the 1920s. That is why you accept Allen standing beside historical crowds.
Where to see it: The newsreel scenes of Zelig in the 1920s. The scratched, jumpy black-and-white images sit next to real archive footage and pass for the same thing.
Joel Coen, Ethan Coen · 2001
Cinematographer Roger Deakins drew on crime films of the 1940s and 1950s. The image is black and white with a wide range of grays and low contrast. Ed is almost always seen smoking a Chesterfield, which adds a hazy mood.
Where to see it: The barbershop scenes. Ed cuts hair at Frank's shop, smoking, in soft gray light.
Todd Haynes · 2002
Cinematographer Edward Lachman uses lighting, equipment and lens filters typical of 1950s melodramas. Haynes also reused a rear-projection plate from a Sirk film for a driving shot. The film looks like an old Technicolor picture.
Where to see it: The driving shots. A shot of a car is made with a rear-projection plate taken from Written on the Wind.
Quentin Tarantino · 2007
The film was made to look like a damaged 1970s exploitation print. A missing reel card stands in for some scenes, including a lap dance. The wear tells you not to expect polish and puts you in the mood of a late-night double feature.
Where to see it: Missing reel: The US version replaces the lap dance with a title card saying a reel is missing.
Pablo Berger · 2012
The film is silent and black and white, and it was made as a love letter to European silent cinema. It also uses modern tools such as deep staging inside that look. You feel like you are watching an old movie, yet nothing seems dated.
Where to see it: The glass coffin sideshow. The troupe shows Carmen to a paying crowd, filmed in the look of a silent-era picture.
Joel Coen, Ethan Coen · 2016
Cinematographer Roger Deakins had moved to digital, but he agreed to shoot on film because the story is about classic Hollywood. It was the first movie he shot on film since 2010. The look fits the studio-era scenes.
Where to see it: The aquatic number. DeeAnna Moran's swimmers perform in a studio tank.
David Lowery · 2018
Lowery shot on Super 16 mm film, and the grain and warm colors make it look like a movie from the early 1980s. Texas diners and small-town banks feel lived in. The texture suits a story about a man from another era.
Where to see it: Diner lunch: after Forrest helps Jewel, she buys him lunch at a diner. The film was shot on location in Ohio and Texas. Forrest and Jewel's lunch at a diner shows the faded, grainy look.
David Fincher · 2020
Fincher and cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt shot in black and white on RED digital cameras, referencing the look of Gregg Toland, who shot Citizen Kane. The moonlit walk was shot in daylight with the day-for-night technique, where daytime footage is darkened to look like night.
Where to see it: The moonlight walk. Mankiewicz and Marion Davies stroll together under a night sky that was filmed in daytime.
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