Robert Yeoman, ASC on The French Dispatch, working with director Wes Anderson for 25 years, Drugstore Cowboy, Bridesmaids and more

After working together for 25 years, cinematographer Robert Yeoman,
ASC and director Wes Anderson share a similar aesthetic and
creative process. Bob finds he can anticipate what Anderson wants
to see and exactly how he wants to shoot things. The trademark of a
Wes Anderson movie is a sense of humor and whimsy, and each film
has a distinct color palette that deliberately tells a story. Both
Bob and Anderson love the symmetrical style of Kubrick movies, but
the symmetry in the frame of Anderson's films draw on comic
elements rather than those of horror. Anderson is involved in all
the decisions on art direction, choices of textures, colors,
costume, hair and makeup, testing many of his choices on film
before making a decision. During their very long prep period,
Anderson will make an animatic of the entire movie before the
shoot, and try to match the reality to the animatic as much as
possible. Bob finds this incredibly helpful, since Anderson's
movies are very complex- many shots are oners and use complicated
dolly movies. In the movie The French Dispatch, Bob and Anderson
had planned on shooting at least one section in black and white.
They fell in love with the black and white stock, so Bob ended up
shooting a lot more than they had originally planned. Anderson also
decided to mix three aspect ratios in the film to delineate
different time periods and different stories, which Bob thought
wouldn't work very well, but ended up liking the end result. On
every movie he makes, Anderson has a library of DVDs, photo books
and research books that are available for the cast and crew to
borrow. Naturally, for The French Dispatch, French movies were
often referenced. It made it easy for Bob to have a shorthand way
to communicate with Anderson on which French film they were
emulating for framing, lighting and aspect ratio. The 1989 film,
Drugstore Cowboy, directed by Gus Van Sant, helped Bob make his
name as a cinematographer. He used a much looser style, with the
camera reacting to the actors rather than carefully planned out
movements such as those favored by Wes Anderson. Bob found it a
pleasure working with Van Sant, who is more of an experimental
filmmaker, and from the moment he read the script for Drugstore
Cowboy, he loved it. Bob's work on the comedies Bridesmaids,
Ghostbusters (2016), and Get Him to the Greek also presented him
with a different challenge- everything is cross shot with multiple
cameras because so much of those movies are improvised. On both
Bridesmaids and Ghostbusters, director Paul Feig's style is to
allow the actors freedom to do what they like, and as the
cinematographer, Bob let them have the space and simply moved with
them, lighting in a more generalized way. The French Dispatch opens
in theaters on October 22. Find out even more about this episode,
with extensive show notes and links: http://camnoir.com//ep144/
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