A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of speaking with Matthew Jensen, the cinematographer for Wonder Woman. Jensen, whose previous credits include Chronicle, Fantastic Four, Filth and episodes of Game of Thrones, True Blood and Ray Donovan, spoke in glowing terms of star Gal Gadot and director Patty Jenkins. He also described the film as something intended to be on par with Richard Donner's iconic Superman and Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins.
He and I also discussed some nagging questions I, as a layperson, have always had about cinematography. And the subject of the Fantastic Four remake, which he also worked on, came up as well. Read on for our full chat...
Cinematographer Matthew Jensen (left) talks about the aspirations of Wonder Woman and what it was like making this ambitious superhero movie.
IGN: What were some of the most challenging setups you faced filming Wonder Woman?
Matthew Jensen: Every day seemed like a challenge because it was such a big and complicated movie. Just the knowledge that we were doing Wonder Woman’s story, solo, a movie that a lot of people had been trying to get off the ground for over 20 years, and she is one of the pop culture icons, so there was a lot of pressure on us to do it correctly. We were setting out to make something close to Richard Donner’s Superman or Batman Begins. We wanted to do her story that kind of justice so every day felt like we had that monkey on our back. But in terms of setups, World War I, we were working in trenches and the only way to deal with a trench is to actually build the trench. We were in a lot of mud in the freezing cold in the rain and moving equipment around was difficult. We had limited light because we were shooting in the winter in London with big setups to do with explosions and soldiers storming other soldiers. It’s complicated. All the World War I sequences were enormously challenging.
We were shooting a lot of Diana’s homeland, Themyscira, in Italy, which was a logistical challenge. We were shooting some battle sequences there so we were dealing with water. And none of this was at the ideal time of year. It was all cold and variable weather. I was clothed head-to-toe, boots and layers and thermals and all this kind of stuff. Gal was out there in that Wonder Woman costume and I never once heard her complain. She never quit. Things were never too hard. I just have an amazing amount of respect for the job that she did. She was always full of energy and she was great and she had it much harder than any of us.
IGN: What’s something most people might not understand about cinematography in general?
MJ: It’s one of those things where every time the best cinematography Oscar comes up there are always so many people that go, “Well, what is cinematography?” I don’t think people realize how much we do on set and how big our role is in determining the look of the film and how essential we are to the director and helping them realize their vision. Along with production designer and editor, I think we’re right there as the key contributors to not only the look but the mood, the feel. Except for the exceptionally gifted visual directors, directors need help translating their vision filmically and we’re there to do that. Not only does that involve actually looking behind the lens but it determines the choice of lens which determines so many things: how the camera can move, is this a crane shot, is this a slow dolly push-in, is this a static shot. All of those decisions filter through us. Color, lighting, all sorts of things. And then we’re on the lookout constantly because we’re the first eyes on the production design and on the costumes and on the makeup and how all of that works together in the frame. So a lot of times we’re the first to see any flaws or things that need to improve and we have to be able to facilitate those conversations.
IGN: How was working with Patty Jenkins?
MJ: Well, Patty’s great. Patty is just a thunderbolt of energy and enthusiasm and was a great collaborator, really trusted me to run with a lot of ideas that she had and allowed me to expand. The best thing that I could say about Patty is that when I got the job and we were early in prep Patty was trying to convey to some storyboard artists what she wanted Wonder Woman to do in a certain sequence and how she was supposed to move and Patty got up in the room and started acting out physically what Wonder Woman was doing complete with sound effects and choreography and I sat there sort of amazed that she was doing this with complete gusto and no self-consciousness. She was just, she was Wonder Woman. And I thought this is great, she’s gonna be a great person to work for.
IGN: What was her overall vision was for the way she wanted the movie to look?
MJ: I think we talked about a lot of things but the main [thing], because we were dealing with period, she was very specific with me in that she didn’t want this film to look like what we traditionally think of how period films are photographed. She really wanted modern techniques and a modern color palette applied to this period movie so that it would have more pop sensibility or a comic book sensibility, yet, given that, keeping it grounded and earth-based because we wanted to believe that Wonder Woman was real. So not getting too fancy, or too stylized so that suddenly you’re out of the mood. Those were sort of our guiding principles and then we talked more specifically about referencing certain movies and she had brought up a certain painter, John Singer Sargent, who’d done a lot of portraits at the turn of the century and during and around WWI. She loved the look of his paintings, which were very flattering to the person who was sitting in the portrait. And he used a lot of available northern light in his studio so it was a really beautiful mottled, soft light on the faces but then that quickly fell off into blackness, so the paintings always had rich blacks. They didn’t have a ton of color but when there was a color, either in a piece of cloth or in some of the clothing that the subject, whatever color they were wearing, it would pop and it would be vibrant. So that was a philosophy that I took forward in lighting the movie and looking at color.
IGN: That seems to be reflected in the trailers, where we see a stark contrast between the bright colors of Wonder Woman’s costume against the drab background browns and greens of the World War I setting.
MJ: I think the major challenge for me was bringing color into the lighting and into the subjects because you’re not dealing with a lot of color in front of the lens, either in costume or in production design, if you’re period accurate. It’s just like you’re saying, it’s a lot of browns and grays and deep greens and deep blues. So you don’t have that sort of vibrancy to work with. So the challenge was like, for instance if somebody had a red lapel or Wonder Woman’s costume or whatever it was, we were always trying to - whatever color we could grab onto, we’d grab onto that. And then I tried to introduce some color in the lighting in the different environments that still looked natural but also went a little further in terms of providing some color.
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