As he begins his ARRI Academy masterclass, James Laxton ASC summarizes his views on large format cameras by stating his guiding cinematography principle: make choices based on the context of the story. You want to match the tool to the story. So, while people usually associate large format cameras with big Marvel-esque special effects sequences or large vistas, Laxton chose the ARRI Alexa 65 for If Beale Street Could Talk, a character-driven love story. Why use a giant sensor for an intimate film where most of the scenes have only one or two subjects in them? “To me, it’s all about immersiveness, the proximity from subject to lens, where you’re close enough to feel emotional connectivity,” says Laxton. That’s the premise for the two-and-a-half-hour masterclass on Large Format Cinematography with James Laxton ASC. Large Format Cameras give actors room to express During the masterclass, which was recorded at the 2018 Cameraimage film festival, Director of Photography James Laxton walks audiences through an interior bar scene, as he illustrates the unique advantages of a large-format resolution on a typical scene. According to Laxton, we keep hearing a common refrain that actors don’t like high-resolution cameras, especially aged actors who are maybe conscious of their weathered features. But in his perspective, high-resolution cameras actually give actors more room to express themselves. If you set a Super 35 camera in the same place as a Large Format Camera, with the same lens and distance to the subject, the Super 35 frame boxes in the actor and limits their movement....
Published By: CineD - Friday, 4 March, 2022