MM: The colors in the film are so vibrant and alive, especially the costumes. Talk about the process of coordinating the costumes and scenery with the lighting. Did you work primarily around them or did they work around you?
LS: Both. We wanted to base everything around the script and this script wanted to be colorful. And Damien loves blue. He loved blue skies. He loved blue lights. He loved a blue jacket for Ryan’s character. He lad lots of ideas about colors, about certain colors that he loved and he was inspired by Jacques Demy films, like The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, and other references he had for how L.A. looks at night and stuff that we discussed. I had my own ideas about what I loved about L.A., which were very similar to his. We had a very mutual idea about things.
Then, between Damien and me and production designer David Wasco and costume designer Mary Zophres, we discussed the color palette. What colored costumes are best-looking in this light or in this environment? Sometimes the color palette was determined by the set design. It was a very colorful apartment where Mia lived. On the other hand, in Sebastian’s apartment, there were almost no colors because he lived in a sadder place. Still we felt that she could have romantic moments in there anyway, by having this sort of ugly green light outside his window becoming something romantic, even though it’s green. And we thought about romance and emotions in terms of colors. We felt that the street lights should be cool white, like blue green, and some street lights are blue green, but a lot of street lights in L.A. are orange, so it’s not completely true that every street in L.A. has blue green light. But we made it that way because that was part of our idea: to make L.A. a little more magic, or make the film a little more magic by having a heightened reality.
It’s like a memory. You think, “Do you remember when I was in L.A.? They had all those gas lights everywhere, like you’d drive up on the hills and there’d be all these gas lights everywhere.” They obviously don’t exist everywhere, but they do exist, and going by that memory, we just sprinkled them around, so in almost every romantic scene you can see those gas lights. We loved them so much that we used them even on the pier, when he goes out and dances by himself: We put these lights up on the pier, making that pier look a little more timeless and old-school. Even though they don’t exist there, they sort of fit there, perhaps, because it’s how L.A. could look like. Some things are real and some things are heightened like that.
Stone and Gosling on Pasadena’s Colorado Street Bridge
At night we did a lot of blue-green lighting because that would contrast so beautifully, we thought, to blue skies at twilight, when skies are blue. We shot in twilight because you can remember that sky. Sometimes we had pink skies, which also exist, and we had to shoot in pink skies with those lights in combination. That green-blue with the blue and the pink and purple was the palette we generally loved for the movie, because Damien really felt those colors would be the most romantic colors for this film.
As far as costumes go, for example, Emma had a yellow dress for the scene when they’re dancing up there on Mulholland Drive. We worked with that department both in colors but also in fabric material and how it reflected the light. Mary was very conscious about: “How will this read on camera? What color light will you have? Will this be like another color when we end up watching the movie, or will it look like this color?” And colors are really important for me, always. I think films should have colors, even if they’re monochromatic-looking. I think they should have a color in every part of the frame. Even a white wall has a tone of a yellow, or blue, or green, or something. You read it as white, but in fact it has, because of shadows, perhaps a blue part and a warmer part.
I also like to capture color in the camera, so whether the walls have those colors for real or if we add light that has color, I still want to capture it in the camera and not add it in post. So I also want to work a lot with the on-set painter. I remember for the epilogue, when they run around in those theatrical sets, on the day we repainted the floor, the scene when they come into Paris through the black tunnel… In order to get it the way Damien wanted it with the light we put there, we had to adjust on the day with the on- set painter, and that was really helpful. I’d rather do that then that adding color in post.
MM: From a cinematographer’s view, what is special about the light in Los Angeles?
LS: It’s the contrast that’s beautiful with Los Angeles. Like other big cities, they have all the telephone poles, and it’s so gritty in so many places. But then at night, at the magic hour in the evenings, it gets those beautiful skies that are so incredible—something you would expect in Greenland or in Alaska in the mountains, that kind of beautiful light. In a city that is so urban, it’s sort of an interesting contrast, which is so beautiful because it makes the city much more romantic-looking even though it has those sort of harsher contours. I think it’s very unique to L.A., how it looks, but also so many other things, not only the light but the mountains. There are even mountain lions there. I’ve lived there as well. There was one day when a mountain lion walked down into Santa Monica and slept inside the city, in an office building. It’s such a nice mix of beauty and nature and city, and it’s sort of an impossible combination, but beautiful too.
MM: Why did you and Damien make the decision to have so many long takes of Ryan Gosling playing the piano? Is he really playing all those difficult pieces?
LS: Oh yeah, absolutely. I don’t exactly know how much he knew before he came on the film but he spent so much time rehearsing, playing the piano with a teacher. He got really hooked on it too. He continued with it after the wrap. I think he plays now too. He plays everything in the film.
MM: I figured those pieces had to be too complicated for him after only four months of instruction.
LS: In the scene where he plays the piano in the Italian restaurant, it sounds improvised, because it’s like improvised jazz and it’s how he plays it. But it’s all composed. It’s a composed song that sounds like it’s improvised and he learned that song and he could play it.
Chazelle and Gosling in Sebastian’s apartment
MM: Can you talk about how the emotional aspects of the film integrated with your cinematography?
LS: The cinematography was all driven by the emotions of the film. I think the camera itself is emotionally involved in the scenes. It decides to move in or to react emotionally. It’s whimsical when they’re having fun at the jazz club or they’re dancing and we pan it back and forth with the camera. Or we’re playful, or we’re suspenseful. So I think the camera movement is very emotionally involved as well as the lighting. With the light effects we do, where we dim the lights, we want to get closer to the characters. We want to put them in a position where they’re experiencing a little bit of their dreams—being in the center of attention in their theatrical life, which is a sort of clichéd version of a spotlight.
We also wanted to be emotional with the lighting. Tell a story with the light. For example, when he gets the spotlight on him—those moments when the light just changes from the location’s lighting to a more dramatic type of lighting, like a spotlight enhancing their dreams of being in the spotlight, and making an emotional contact between us and them.
Those situations were very interesting for us to work with because you realize it’s so magical being so intimate with the actors. Not only was it a special situation for the character, but also for the viewer, when you move in and you see the light change. It’s something that felt very emotional to me, like an intimate exchange between me and the character. Sometimes you have to follow certain rules of filmmaking and storytelling with the camera, but I think in this case Damien let the story be told in such a way that the camera was free to do whatever it felt like doing. MM
La La Land opened in theaters December 9, 2016, courtesy of Lionsgate. All photographs by Dale Robinette.
Share:
