Cinematography is an essential part of motion pictures as it is not only about the aesthetics of the imagery but also a means of communicating the story and emotions.Among many cinematographers working today, Hoyte van Hoytema stands out as one of the most talented directors of photography, having worked on several critical acclaimed movies such as “The Fighter” (David O. Russell), “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” (Tomas Alfredson), “Her” (Spike Jonze), “Interstallar” and “Dunkirk” (Christopher Nolan). A Swedish-Dutch native, he worked mostly in Europe (Swedish, British, German) before his breakthrough in Hollywood with “The Fighter” in 2010.

Hoytema doesn’t have a specific cinematography technique or style to the films he is called on to, but rather approaches his cinematography based on the scripts story and characters. However, he does tend to stay with a soft cinematic theme in most of the films he has worked on. Hoytema is undoubtedly experienced in his field, having shot in nearly every aspect ratio format and gear, both film and digital. He has lighting preferences, such as the use of neutral-density (ND) filter, and adding color by using Color Temperature gel. When lighting faces, Hoytema doesn’t go by a specific constant ratio and generally likes to light his subjects form the top, front, or side. Van Hoytema argues that using many light sources “enriches the space”. Van Hoytema prefers to do things in camera rather than relying on post production, and also expressed his love for “nondescript ambient light coming from above.” This is exemplified by his use of Translites (an illuminated image backdrop) to immerse the actors in the scene. This can be clearly observed in the film “Spectre”, especially scenes in the  grand hall when the villain emerges, as they used 50 space lights in a softbox and a silk dyed with 1/4 CTO into it, just for ambient light. For this scene Hoytema was worried about the contrivance of silhouetting the bad guy, but was able to find a creative solution by having his face only revealed when he looks right at Bond.

In examination of Hoytema’s body of work, it is hard not to mention “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy”. Production designer Paul Smith showed director Tomas Alfredson a copy of “London, City of Any Dream”, Erwin Fieger’s large format book of color photographs of 1960s London that Fieger shot with a telephoto lens. Hoyte van Hoytema used the mages as visual references for the film, and even did camera tests to see whether they could match the photos’ graininess.

For this movie, he created this fictive world of carefully guarded secrets using rectangles of all sizes figure prominently throughout the film, isolating and compartmentalizing individuals within their frames. The repetition of rectangles ties the visuals together, imparts a heightened sense of order and visual interconnectedness to the narrative’s story line. The film is realistic in nature, but as this abundance of rectangles suggests, it is realism inflected through set designs and an unusual style of photography whose flattening of images often challenge the certainty of the viewer’s perception.

As director Alfredson stated their approach was to sort of create a “voyeur” in all the scenes that everything is sort of peeked in upon, like outside windows, through the keyhole feeling, and also to create such ‘bubbles’, where these people are captured in. And one way they thought to create that was to work with very long lenses to sort of squeeze everything together. Also, A somewhat more sophisticated flattening of an otherwise realistic image is achieved through the continuity of color in a shot.

In addition, the brilliance of van Hoytema once was shown in the movie “Her”, a collaboration with director Spike Jonze. The intention for ‘Her’ was to create a futuristic and dreamy look of Los Angeles with heavy warm color cast and low contrast look. Most of the scenes in the movie contain either the colors red or yellow or the combination of both. As Hoytema stated, modern is often very sleek and very stark, but part of that vision of the future was that modern should be very soulful and warm and tactile. Therefore, the bluish tone was almost eliminated from every scene. This is an interesting decision considering most films with a futuristic setting would go for a sleek, bluish color palette, which resulted in a very soft intimate, futuristic, tangible and cordial feeling, rather than the typical heavy dystopian tone.

In the modern day of movie production, it is hard to downplay the roles of production designers, colorists and costume department as they all collaborate to achieve the desired aesthetics for the film. However, Hoyte van Hoytema always works closely with others and tries not to be heavily reliant on post production. The movie was shot in digital (Alexa), using various lenses for clean imagery and especially for working in low light condition during night scenes. Hoytema said  they didn’t want to do a lot of augmenting in post, and with the Alexa they could use extremely low-level light sources [for the interior] that were still controllable.” He mostly used small LEDs, like the shot near the end where he’s standing in front of the windows with a LED light box for an overall ambience, that we could also color exactly as the city appears outside. The light registers were incredibly low and subtle, which were enabled by the camera and high-speed lenses.

Also, it is worth noticing that the overall visual was inspired by Rinko Kawauchi – the Japanese photographer whose work depicts pristine moments from everyday life. It is very interesting that both this movie and “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” were using visual cues from still photography works, which demonstrates that van Hoytema doesn’t have a set style, but rather adapt lighting and camera techniques to compliment the overall productions.

The film follows the life of Theodore Twombly. Theodore is a lonely, soulful man who falls in love with his operating system, Samantha. Therefore, the film features many long soft close-up shots on Theodore as he talks to Samantha, with a shallow depth of field. In nearly every shot of Theodore with the skyline of the city behind him, we see that his is in focus and the city is very out of focus. This tactic makes the audience feel that disconnect Theodore has from his world, in which we’ve established is the thing he needs to connect with. The shallow depth of field is also quite common in Hoytema’s work, to separate the characters from the background and elevate the actor’s performance, which is very apparent with Joaquin Phoenix’s performance as Theodore.

His collaboration with Christopher Nolan in “Interstellar” and “Dunkirk” is also worth noticing. “Dunkirk” was shot in 65mm IMAX film, featuring many handheld action sequels in harsh weather condition, further showcasing Hoytema’s skill of working with different cameras and formats  in both independent and blockbuster movies.

In summary, despite only having gained recognition in recent years, Hoyte van Hoytema stands out as one of the most talented cinematography in the industry today. His work in the movie “Her” remains as one of my personal favorite with stunning visual complimenting the plot rather than distracting from it.