tarbaby4293

[tarbaby4293]

I Know This Much Is True

“Episode 6”

Director: Derek Cianfrance

DoP: Jody Lee Lipes

[tarbaby4293]

How do you trust your feelings when they can just disappear like that?

Blue Valentine (2010) dir. Derek Cianfrance

[tarbaby4293]

[tarbaby4293]

I see you from back there, you one of them loner-stoners

[tarbaby4293]

“I wanted the past of Blue Valentine to be a movie about opportunities, where the characters had an unlimited amount of choices. They could become anything. They find each other, and they decide to become one. Flash forward six years: they have less opportunity. They can’t become as many things anymore. 

I think I wanted past of Blue Valentine to make you feel like a fish in the ocean, and you could go anywhere. The present is these two characters as fish in a bucket and desperately trying to get back in the ocean again.”

Derek Cianfrance

[tarbaby4293]

With “Pines,” because I was telling a linear story and it was all about these people living in this same place, the city of Schenectady, New York, very early on Sean Bobbitt and I decided that it would be a unified vision, that we weren’t going to deal stylistically with different worlds. So in terms of the aesthetic approach of the film, in terms of formats, in terms of how we approached our scenes, we wanted to make a film that was more about echoes of the past and the repetition of actions and the consequence of those actions. And so we decided to shoot it all in the same kind of visual language, and the only thing that’s different, that changes, is the location, because this movie is also about class, social structures that people are born into.

-Derek Cianfrance

[tarbaby4293]

[tarbaby4293]

The Place Beyond The Pines (2012) dir. Derek Cianfrance

[tarbaby4293]

I’m so out of love with you. I’ve got nothing left for you, nothing, nothing. Nothing, there is nothing here for you.

Blue Valentine (2010) dir. Derek Cianfrance

[tarbaby4293]

The Cinematography of Derek Cianfrance

Film — Blue Valentine  Year — 2010 Cinematographer — Andrij Parekh

[tarbaby4293]

The past scenes in Blue Valentine were all shot on film to achieve a more nostalgic feel, like looking back on fond memories. This also meant fewer takes as they only had a certain amount of film to shoot with, and only used one camera. This results in the couple always being in the frame together for majority of the shots. These moments are almost always accompanied by the soundtrack too. A lot of the scenes were unscripted and improvised by the actors, as the director Derek Cianfrance used various method techniques to create these moments, which is why all the scenes are hand held, adding to the spontaneous feeling of the past section of the film. 

The future/present scenes were shot with digital cameras, mostly on tripods and long lenses, creating a more distant feeling. These scenes are shot in a traditional shot, reverse shot way, meaning we don’t see the couple in the same frames anymore. The soundtrack never accompanies these moments until the end, making the future/present section of the film feel more empty. In between filming the past and present parts of the film, Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams stayed in a house together for a month, encouraged by the director to pick fights and argue with each other, so when it came to filming these scenes, the arguments would feel real, tiring and repetitive. Shooting on digital also meant they had more time for more takes, which would really emphasize the worn out feeling of the dialogue exchanged, opposed to the fresher, unrehearsed performances of the past. 

[tarbaby4293]

When filming the argument scenes in 2010’s Blue Valentine, writer/director Derek Cianfrance gave instructions to Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling individually without the knowledge of the other in order to create more tension between Dean and Cindy. For Williams, Cianfrance would instruct her to try to leave the room, use any way to break out of the argument with Gosling etc. For Gosling, Cianfrance would tell him to use any means to persuade, get Williams’ attention, etc. Gosling has stated it was a new and interesting process as it became a tug game on set.

[tarbaby4293]

Lily-Rose Depp and Nicholas Hoult in Nosferatu (2024)

[tarbaby4293]

The place beyond the pines, directed by Derek Cianfrance in three parts.

[tarbaby4293]

You can have anything you want, but I don’t want you to touch that kid.

[tarbaby4293]

I called in Dane to come and do some chemistry reads, which is what Hollywood does nowadays where you have two actors read together to see how their chemistry is. So I had Dane come in and about 12 other actors to read opposite him that day. And Emory Cohen came in, he was about the 8th of the day. And immediately there was this tension between them in the room. I gave them an ice-breaker question; who was their favorite actor? Emory said, “Well, I always liked Marlon Brando.” Dane said, “I always liked James Dean.” And they proceeded to argue about who was better, Marlon Brando or James Dean. I thought they had this definite connection and a chip on their shoulder for each other. And that was exactly the dynamic for the movie. The first scene I shot with them was the cafeteria scene. Ray Liotta came to visit me on set that day and he was just like, “Man, looks like you’ve got two real winners here.” - Derek Cianfrance

[tarbaby4293]

“When you first meet Jason, he is a loner. He likes to be alone. He doesn’t have a whole lot of friends, but he’s also not in search of friends … He’s built up all these walls and ways of protecting himself. And then AJ comes into town and AJ kind of breaks down that wall immediately.” - Dane DeHaan

“AJ is a hurt child. I saw all this bullying behavior and then underneath, a real pain and fear. There is anger directed towards the world, but the pain is directed towards his father … AJ has a predatory instinct and he spots Jason out.” - Emory Cohen