Without getting into a detailed analysis of the just released (in LA) film “Tree of Life” – (Winner of Palme d’Or, Cannes 2011, Director Terence Malick, DP – Emmanuel “Chivo” Lubetzky, ASC, AMC) I would like to mention an interesting trend, which could give us additional “fodder” for debates about the “Future of Cinematography.”

“Tree of Life” is not your “usual” Malick film in the style and/or photographically expressed visual symbolism of “Days of Heaven” (1978) or “Badlands” (1973), instead it is a visual symphony intended to symbolize at least some
meanings of the “Tree of Life” in Biblical/Cabbala interpretations.  Malick seems more of a spiritual environmental artist than a traditional film director.

Visually it is a mix of realistically stylish “Chivo” photography depicting the troublesome life of a small-town American family in 1950’s Texas with a mélange of images “portraying” the Genesis of the Universe.  We see matter forming the sun and planets, volcanoes forming, living beings and dinosaurs’ birth and death, and the asteroid killing all... The nomination for the Best Visual Effects Oscar next year is due – no doubt!  And in the same vein, no doubts about new “old” debates regarding a Best Cinematography Award for “Chivo” – just remember “Avatar” times!

The plot is no less symbolic and polyphonic, but for the sake of potential audience attendance some descriptions of it simplify it to the rather short one-liner: “The story centers around a family with three boys in the 1950s. The eldest son witnesses the loss of innocence.”

And in this scheme of things, the “classical” cinematography is only a part of the whole film; a part of the collage of different yet equal elements: live photography and CGI.

From the point of view of the visual style of this film, it has two closest analogs--“2001: A Space Odyssey” (Kubrick/Unsworth/Trumball) and “Avatar ” (Cameron/ Fiore/VFX team(s)--where VFX/CGI images are main
elements of the story as visually told.

When we talk about “2001: A Space Odyssey,” what come to our mind first--space scenes, and one of the most spectacular scenes of the movie--the “Jupiter Landing” and “Stargate sequence”--SFX-ed by Doug Trumball and which were based on the works and experiments of 1960’s pioneers of computer cinematography: Jordan Belson and the Whitney “clan” (John, James and Michael) who used the “slit scan” effect (“Jupiter Landing” in “2001”) in their earlier works.

The work of Geoffrey Unsworth (BSC), DP of “2001: A Space Odyssey” is no less spectacular, and he
received a well-deserved Best Cinematography Award, yet it is clearly seen where the directorial story
telling emphasis was!  It’s the same as we see in “Avatar” and in “Tree of Life”…

And this trend--an increased emphasis on CGI imagery and less dependence on live photography--was not born yesterday or even just a few years ago.  In 1970 Gene Youngblood, in his fundamental book “Expanded Cinema,” foresaw a future of cinema in which “location shooting will become obsolete as all locations will be able to be simulated with computers.”

The history of art photography is a good bellwether of current cinematography trends. (Until the 1960’s it was a history of painting which was a good indicator of cinematography art trends.)

After art photography’s heights of achievements in photo reportage and photojournalism, in “light-based” photography, in Bauhaus-based experimentalism, and in the rise of amateur photography in the 1960’s, the art
of photography entered a new period in the 1970’s-1980’s .

It’s new accomplishments and successes, as demonstrated often in installations, is collage/assemblage artifacts where photography is just one of the many artistic elements and therefore somehow less important.

So in my opinion the question is: how to preserve live cinematography as an art in the era of limitless possibilities of CGI and internet based global image-exchange between billions of people?

Yuri Neyman, ASC, Director of Photography

Founder of 3cP/Gamma and Density Co. and

“Pages from History of Cinematography”