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Matt Katz: You are listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Matt Katz, and I'm sitting in for Alison Stewart today. We continue now with our annual series, The Big Picture, where we speak with some of the Oscar-nominated creatives who worked behind the scenes to make movie magic in 2023. Our next guest had to juggle a lot while working as the cinematographer for Maestro.

Matthew Libatique was working with Director Bradley Cooper, who also had to dedicate a lot of his time to his performance as famed conductor, Leonard Bernstein. Matthew also had to work both in black and white, and color, and in two different aspect ratios. Plus he had to capture the magic of conducting. His work on Maestro, which focuses on Bernstein's relationship with his wife, Felicia, earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Cinematography, and he joins me now to discuss. Matthew Libatique, welcome to All Of It.

Matthew Libatique: Hey, thank you. Nice to meet you, Matt.

Matt Katz: Nice to meet you, and congratulations on the nomination. Very exciting. I want to get into the movie, obviously. We're going to talk about the film, but I feel like I need to start here. For those of us who aren't necessarily familiar with the ins and outs of movie making and think we might know what cinematography is, can you just give me a basic rundown on what a cinematographer on a set actually does and how you would describe your role in making movies?

Matthew Libatique: I think the camera that everybody is familiar with is a shared object between the director and the cinematographer. Sometimes the cinematographer's responsible for the compositions of every shot, but generally speaking, the cinematographer's responsible for the look of the film, and that encompasses lighting and camera and optics and all things technical, but a lot of creative choices to go and try to articulate a director's vision. The old term for a cinematographer was the cameraman, but a lot of it has to do with the light as much as the camera.

Matt Katz: I imagine you're not physically operating a camera. You are moving around and looking at how the shot looks on a screen and giving some sort of direction in terms of angles and all the rest of the technical aspects that go along with it.

Matthew Libatique: Generally speaking, when you're a cinematographer, depending on the film-- it depends on the film. Sometimes something's much smaller where you're operating. For example, on The Whale, I operated the film, and on Maestro, I didn't. I had operators. So typically, the film and the style of the film and the size of the film dictates whether or not you are on the camera, but you're still connected to it by the lens choices and how you use the aperture on those lenses to create the looks that you want.

Matt Katz: Do you remember anything from your first ever cinematography job that maybe you've taken with you through the years? Is there anything you learned from one early project that you continue to think about and maybe incorporate in your work?

Matthew Libatique: I once was shooting a music video, and I was shooting at the end of the day, we were out of light. I thought we didn't really have enough light to expose the film, but when we got the dailies back, it was absolutely gorgeous. It was the best-looking stuff of the whole project. I realized that there is a way to make the film see what the human eye sees. That's been a guiding principle.

Matt Katz: Say that one more time. You can make the film see what the human eye sees.

Matthew Libatique: We were shooting at dusk, with the woman walking down some train tracks. I didn't really think I had enough light, but we kept shooting anyway.

Matt Katz: Right.

Matthew Libatique: It ended up becoming the most beautiful image in the entire piece, and I realized that there is a way to make film see what the human eye sees.

Matt Katz: Wow. You worked with Bradley Cooper before in A Star Is Born. Was there something different about collaborating with him on this project? It seemed like there was a lot more involved in really transforming into a real-life Leonard Bernstein. Was there something about this collaboration that was deeper or different from A Star is Born?

Matthew Libatique: It was deeper just because it was our second film together. We had a shorthand going in, but there was an intensity to it that was amplified because he really had to undergo physical transformation. That played a part in his energy. It played a part and it also motivated him. He was extremely, I wouldn't say intense, but he was extremely focused, but he was of a creative high level. Such a creative high level that everybody on set had to bring it. You match the energy of the director, and I would say Bradley was, on a scale of 1 to 10, was like a 12.

Matt Katz: Right. This was really one of those films where you forget you're watching an A-list actor. You feel like you're watching the real person that he has basically become. It's really remarkable. Really remarkable.

Matthew Libatique: Yes, I agree with you there.

Matt Katz: What strikes the layperson about this film in terms of how it was shot, is that the first half of this film is in black and white, and then you go to color. What was the thought process behind that, and what challenges might that have presented?

Matthew Libatique: Bradley and I tested a lot, preceding our actual shooting of the film. We did some tests of different formats, different digital cameras, film stocks. When we landed on black and white film, it just, something spoke to us about it, and especially spoke to him. He's told me it's transported him. When we shot, it transported him into the time. The reason that it goes from black and white to color is that it exhibits a time where the world went from black and white to color. That's the motivation behind the choices, but really the black and white, it was just transformative in terms of space and time for us and really put us in the place where Felicia and Lenny meet for the first time.

Matt Katz: Right. Can you give us a little bit of the technical challenges involved with shooting black and white in a way we might understand how that works?

Matthew Libatique: Yes. I'll start here. If you shoot with your iPhone, you don't really need a lot of light. Even at night, the sensitivity. Imagine having none of that sensitivity. You're starting with something that you actually have to bring a lot of light into to get an image. Because we've been shooting digital for the past whatever, 15, 20 years, we've been accustomed to less light levels, soft and light, things that don't even get hot. Then now, if we're shooting film, all of a sudden, we're bringing out the big lights that we don't use anymore, and we're having to bring the light level up so high that the set gets hot. People start to sweat and makeup-- we go back to makeup having to powder people down. We go back in time a bit and people are wearing gloves again on set. Hot lamps around.

There's also a quality of light that changes because films look the way they look back in time because the lighting that was necessary to expose the film dictated what the films look like. Now, we could do it on a digital camera, and again, you could walk into a mall and not need any light. You could walk into a restaurant and not need any light, but when you're shooting a film, it becomes a different story and you're bringing things in and you're creating a reality through an artifice of movie lighting.

Matt Katz: Right. The other technical unique element of this, from what I understand, is that you shot in different aspect ratios. Can you explain what that means and how that works?

Matthew Libatique: The aspect ratio speaks to the shape of the frame. The composition. What you see in wide screen is called 2:4:0 or 2:3:5. It's a mathematical aspect ratio that relates to the horizontal and the vertical. Some films are 1:8:5, so that's actually not as wide but taller. What we shot was 1:3:3, which is the original academy aperture. It was the original academy aspect ratio before films went widescreen. It's basically a square. For the longest time before HD, TVs were 1:3:3 because that was the industry standard.

We framed that way, again, just to transport us into a time where that's how people saw the world. What I love about that, it metaphorically felt like an embrace of these two people within their inner sphere like these-- it was almost like hugging these two people in their mirror. When she dies towards the end of the film, the film expands to a 1:8:5 frame, which is wider, and there's more negative space showing that Lenny is alone.

Matt Katz: Right. Oh, it's so interesting. That's an amazing scene. Another scene I wanted to ask you about that's been getting a lot of attention is the sequence at the Ely Cathedral where Leonard is conducting and just seems totally enraptured in the moment. The shot begins from way up high, and then it comes down. Why did you start with a overhead view and what were you trying to achieve, just in general, in that whole scene?

Matthew Libatique: There is serving two masters. Actually, serving one. We don't show him conducting that much in the film. You see him at the very beginning, but you don't see a whole piece, and this is really the one time you see the entire piece. You're talking about culmination of this man's working life. It's not even a culmination, he's right in the middle, it's his prime. You're showing the sheer scale of this cathedral, and the depth of it, and the amount of people at the size of the orchestra. At the end of the day, the camera moves in, so you could see this, like you say, his intensity.

I think that the challenge in that scene really was that Bradley had transformed each and every day to Leonard Bernstein, but to conduct like Leonard Bernstein was the search, and he found it. He really found it. I think that what resonates is that I think you just really felt like you're watching Leonard Bernstein. When you look at old YouTube clips of the man, his passion and his joy, I feel like you feel that in his performance in that particular scene is you feel that passion, you feel that joy. I think that's what the strength of it is. Whatever I did was just capture this beautiful thing that was happening in front of us.

Matt Katz: Right. Wow. It must have been quite the experience to be on set and feel like you were maybe watching Leonard conduct in real-time. I mean, that's how I felt watching it.

Matthew Libatique: The most amazing thing is the London Philharmonic was there. The London Symphony Orchestra was there, and they applauded him after that take. Some of these people worked with Leonard Bernstein, they studied him, they played his music, and basically one of the best orchestras in the entire world, and they're just applauding the performance. It gave me chills.

Matt Katz: Matthew, as I mentioned, you have been nominated for an Oscar for Best Cinematography. Are you nervous? Are you looking forward to Oscars night? Where's your head at?

Matthew Libatique: I am excited. I told myself I'm just going to have fun with this award season. No, I'm not nervous at all. I'm excited to be there. I think it's an amazing class of cinematographers and films that have been nominated for my category, and also for Best Picture category. I think it's an amazing year for cinema, beyond Barbenheimer. I think it's been an amazing year for cinema.

Matt Katz: Right. Yes, cinema is not dead. Far from dead, right?

Matthew Libatique: Yes, 100%. You know what it feels like? It feels like there's a lot of people of like mind, all working really hard to make sure cinema lives.

Matt Katz: We're going to leave it there. Perfect way to leave it. Matthew Libatique is nominated for Best Cinematography for his work on Maestro. The Oscars are coming up next month. We wish you the best of luck. Thanks for joining us on All Of It.

Matthew Libatique: Nice to meet you. Thank you for having me.

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