Rob­bie Ryan On New Andrea Arnold and Ken Loach Movies

We met with the ace Irish cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Rob­bie Ryan who, while pro­mot­ing the home enter­tain­ment release of Matthew and Daniel Wolfe’s British chase thriller, Catch Me Dad­dy, spoke on a wide range of top­ics, includ­ing his work (past and future) with Andrea Arnold, his favourite direc­tors and films, why he’s not so hot on Ter­rence Malick’s lat­est cin­e­mat­ic phase, and a big project he’s got lined up for the lat­er part of 2015.

LWLies: I’ve read that peo­ple who love shoot­ing on 35mm can do it for cheap and can make the eco­nom­ics work.

Rob­bie Ryan: Well you’ve got some­one like Christo­pher Nolan is com­ing from a big­ger pro­duc­tion lev­el. I’m a bloke who has a cam­era and I can film some­thing on the week­end with my mate for next to noth­ing. When you were mak­ing short films on film, you had to invest in it. I’m all for Christo­pher Nolan being a good ambas­sador for film. Thank god, as the stu­dios don’t care. They’re ruth­less. They’d pre­fer it goes away. It’s an ongo­ing con­ver­sa­tion though. Peo­ple like Daniel and Matthew Wolfe who made Catch Me Dad­dy – Daniel says that dig­i­tal video is his Kryp­tonite. It kills him. He can’t do it. He hates it. He feels there’s no ways past the argu­ment that film will always look bet­ter than dig­i­tal. He will always shoot on film.

When advo­cates for dig­i­tal talk about it, they always claim it looks as good as film. It’s not a case of look­ing bet­ter or the same – they’re dif­fer­ent things. It’s a quality.

I watch a lot of trail­ers for films. I actu­al­ly watch more trail­ers than I do com­plet­ed films! I find some­times that tech­nol­o­gy has made things eas­i­er to film. And some stuff feels more lazy. I’m all for nat­ur­al light, but some of these things are lit bad­ly. They’re attun­ing to the new lev­els of sen­si­tiv­i­ty that some of these cam­eras have. It’s a sat­u­rat­ed mar­ket though. A lot of new shit com­ing out. Every film fes­ti­val has ten or 20 pre­mieres and it’s like whoa.

What do you mean by bad­ly lit?

Exte­ri­ors, they’ve gone for the sodi­um stream light thing. One of my all time favourites is Cas­savetes, and he shot in total­ly nat­ur­al light. I think it was his pro­duc­tion design­er who would shoot – there was nev­er a cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er. I think there’s such beau­ti­ful imagery there. Back in those times, the nature of stu­dio film­ing had more impe­tus put on the light­ing. It’s a fash­ion­able thing. Only because I’m look­ing back and see­ing a lot of films that I would prob­a­bly do – hand held, no lights – that these new ones all look a bit slop­py. Your Roman Polan­s­ki films of the ​’70s – it always comes back to the ​’70s – just look kin­da beau­ti­ful and I don’t know why. I’m not sure what it is. I watched the trail­er for a film called Truth which looks like Net­work. But it actu­al­ly ​“looks” like it could almost be a TV movie. That’s the prob­lem: there’s a crossover with TV becom­ing the place for inter­est­ing, for­ward think­ing, chal­leng­ing sto­ry­lines, but this crossover is hap­pen­ing visu­al­ly too. I don’t think the visu­al sen­si­bil­i­ties of cin­e­ma can cross over into cinema.

Have you ever had to sup­press your style to make a shot work bet­ter on TV?

Not so much. The BBC had some crazy tech­ni­cal thing which said you weren’t allowed to shoot on 16mm at all. The grain lev­el means that the amount of infor­ma­tion on the screen is too much for the BBC to han­dle. They just want­ed every­thing to be shot dig­i­tal­ly. It’s a weird one, because some­times you watch some­thing that’s beau­ti­ful­ly lit and well done, but you don’t get any­thing from it. One of the last films I watched which I loved was Hard To be a God. The cin­e­matog­ra­phy in that is incred­i­ble. I’ve been in some tough shoots, but that makes those look like a walk in the park. It’s like an art piece in a way. I loved that film Leviathan too – not the Russ­ian one, the ethno­graph­ic one. My favourite film of late, though, is Char­lie Kaufman’s Anom­al­isa. It’s phenomenal.

On Catch Me Dad­dy, did you have any allowance for spontaneity?

Yeah, what hap­pened on that was that Matthew and Daniel cre­at­ed this huge bible. It was a 400 page man­u­script of loca­tions, sto­ry­boards and ref­er­ence pho­tographs. We had the plan, then we’d go off on tan­gents. But they real­ly do go for what­ev­er occur­rence hap­pens in front of the cam­era. There’s room for spontaneity.

How do you work with actors?

Respect­ful­ly! I always respect some­one in front of the cam­era. You may end up doing an inti­mate scene, so you have to be ready for that. I need to find out if the actor is up for a laugh and if they ​“get it”. They con­fide in you some­times. Because I’m on hand-held, it’s a bit like a dance. You move around with them. I remem­ber one actor, I was shoot­ing his foot, and then I tilt­ed up and shot his face and he wasn’t ready for that. ​“I didn’t know it was going to be total foot­ball, Rob­bie!” he said. I real­ly enjoy work­ing with actors. That’s the buzz for me.

Is work­ing with non-actors a bet­ter fit for the stuff you do?

What I find is that the actors who are more estab­lished have to read­just to my style, where a non-actor doesn’t have to adjust to any­thing. There’s a more doc­u­men­tary feel to things. Andrea [Arnold] would call it a poet­ic real­ism. You’re try­ing to be lyri­cal with some­thing that’s real. Ken Loach also uses a lot of non-actors. That almost awk­ward­ness feels more real than any great actor pre­tend­ing to be like that. Sameena Ahmed in Catch Me Dad­dy is the per­fect cast­ing. What’s real­ly enjoy­able about that is that the char­ac­ter is real­ly her. It brings the film up to anoth­er lev­el. If you’re a pro, you’re only real­ly as good as your last film. It’s a dif­fi­cult place to be. Michael Fass­ben­der is great at choos­ing good films, for example.

Did you see Steve Jobs?

Ha ha, no. I saw the trail­er. I’ve heard it’s very good, but he does sound a bit like Ker­mit the Frog in it. He’s an amaz­ing mim­ic. He loves it. He does a real­ly fun­ny Ter­rence Mal­ick impres­sion. He had me in stitch­es with that one.

Has he worked with Malick?

Yeah, he did that film Knight of Cups. No, no… it’s the next one. It’s set at a music fes­ti­val in Austin. It hasn’t come out yet. I’m not sure what it’s called.

At one point it was called Weightless.

I don’t know what’s going on there because Knight of Cups came out in Berlin, but I haven’t heard any­thing since then. Appar­ent­ly To The Won­der, Knight of Cups and this new one came from a sin­gle 500-page script. A mas­sive thing.

I loved Knight of Cups.

Oh right. I wasn’t so keen on To The Wonder.

I loved that too.

I call that one ​“Makes You Won­der”. Each to their own, eh! I think he’s in dan­ger­ous ter­ri­to­ry. All the things he’s revered for, he’s uncon­scious­ly mak­ing a mock­ery of.

You must revere Emmanuel Lubezki?

Yeah, I mean he’s on anoth­er lev­el. He’s in anoth­er dimen­sion. I don’t know how he does what he does. In an over­sat­u­rat­ed visu­al medi­um, he’s doing it real­ly well. It’s all wide lens­es with no lights.

I hear they don’t do rehearsals. They’re just film­ing stuff intuitively.

I was work­ing with a loca­tion guy who worked with Mal­ick on this new one with Fass­ben­der. He said they had four dif­fer­ent apart­ment tow­er block loca­tions that were good for light at dif­fer­ent times of the day. So they’d see that the light was good in one place, so they’d all pack over and head that way. Then they’d see that there was bet­ter light at one of the oth­er blocks, so they’d all jump in the lift and head over there. When you hear about that atten­tion to detail, you can’t help but admire it. But To The Won­der did push me over the edge a bit.

Red Road was the movie where you first came into your own. How has your work­ing rela­tion­ship with Andrea Arnold changed over the years?

This new film we’ve made, Amer­i­can Hon­ey, is exact­ly the same as every­thing we’ve done. It’s the same approach, dif­fer­ent land­scape. She knows how she wants her films to feel. That hasn’t changed since Red Road. The only thing that has changed is the type of sto­ry she’s done. That was a col­lab­o­ra­tion with Zen­tropa to make a sto­ry about a spe­cif­ic set of char­ac­ters. Amer­i­can Hon­ey is basi­cal­ly Andrea’s mus­ings on life in a sim­i­lar way to Fish Tank. The sto­ry tells a big­ger sto­ry, if you get me? Her writ­ing is the key to her film­mak­ing. It’s a gelling of a lot of things for her. She spends too much time writ­ing and not enough time out there direct­ing. She loves the process of direct­ing. With her, spon­tane­ity is the key. The film is all about a road trip in a van and we didn’t know what was com­ing next. She even said to me, ​‘Yeah, even for me this was a big­ger chal­lenge than I was expect­ing’. We always laughed every day. I hope the film’s got some­thing about it that’s unusu­al. You nev­er know.

Is this more of an Amer­i­can film, or is it a British film in America?

I don’t know. I’d be inter­est­ing to see whether that comes up when the film is released. What if she went to shoot in France? Cul­tur­al­ly, Britain is more con­nect­ed to Amer­i­ca than any­where else. It wasn’t as big a jump as you might think. Peo­ple are mak­ing a big deal of Andrea going to Amer­i­ca. She read a sto­ry she was inter­est­ed in and she want­ed to make a film. It hap­pens to be based in the US.

You make all these fea­tures, but you also make an incred­i­ble amount of shorts. How do you find the time?

I know. I just did one at the week­end. It’s very, very dif­fi­cult place for a young film­mak­er to get their first film made. There’s a lot of pres­sure. From a col­lab­o­ra­tive point of view, how do I know if I’m going to get on with this film­mak­er if I haven’t work with them before? So best thing is to do a short. I did music videos with Matthew and Daniel Wolfe and I got an idea of how we could work togeth­er. I worked with Andrea on shorts before Red Road. Did a short with John Maclean before Slow West. Tom Harp­er too. Most peo­ple I’ve worked with, I’ve like­ly got with them through a short. And I enjoy them. It’s an amaz­ing buzz. You feel beat­en up after three days on a short film, but you feel real­ly sat­is­fied too. On a fea­ture, you feel beat­en up after six weeks. I just can’t do that many fea­tures per year. I’ll be doing three this year. That’s enough.

Are you off to do anoth­er one before the end of the year?

Yeah I’m going to do a film up in New­cas­tle this Octo­ber with Ken Loach.

Is it a fic­tion film?

Well, yeah, I can’t real­ly say at the moment. It’s a lit­tle on the QT. I’m also doing a movie which I co-pro­duced. I bought the option on this book called I Am Not a Ser­i­al Killer and it’s a youth-ori­en­tat­ed thriller. A friend of mind, Bil­ly O’Brien, is the direc­tor on it. We’ve been mak­ing it over five years. We shot it just before Andrea’s film in Min­neso­ta. And it’s just near­ing its final edit. It’s excit­ing to be involved on that lev­el, like giv­ing notes on the final cut, which is some­thing I’ve nev­er done before.

And why didn’t you want to direct?

It’s too much. Bil­ly spend five years sit­ting there, bit­ing his nails, won­der­ing if his film will get made. He spent a lot of time wait­ing and not get­ting any work. From a cinematographer’s point of view, you can work all the time. If you want to. And if you’re lucky.

Catch Me Dad­dy is on DVD and Blu-ray now.