HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT

For 25 years, Steven Soderbergh has shot his own films under a pseudonym—merging auteur ambition with cinematographic control and ninja slippers with handheld rig precision. 

Officially, filmmaker Steven Soderbergh has been shooting his own movies for the past 25 years, ever since Traffic (2000), his narcotics drama that won him the Academy Award for Best Director. But even before his 1989 debut Sex, Lies and, Videotape, he’d schooled himself in the basics of the artform. Raised in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, as he began to cultivate an interest in filmmaking in his teens, he trained as a stills photographer, shooting images for his high-school yearbook.  

Much later, he took an uncredited role as cinematographer on 1996 comedy Schizopolis – the fifth full-length film of his career – in which he also starred. “I was becoming increasingly frustrated that I wasn’t in control of the momentum on set and so started hatching plans actually post-Schizopolis to take over that responsibility,” he explains over Zoom. “As a result, anybody I was working with during that period really got their brain sucked out, because I was grilling them constantly.”  

Among the things Soderbergh felt he needed to know was how to interact with the film processing lab. “I remember it was the first or second day of shooting on Traffic, the San Diego section of the movie, which involves some post flashing of the negative in the lab. And we lost the whole day and never found out why. They just said, ‘Yeah, it didn’t work.’ It was a little disconcerting, because it was so early in the shoot.” 

Fortunately, when it came to learning the specifics of the craft, Soderbergh had support from Ed Lachman ASC, who shot such Soderbergh classics as The Limey and Erin Brockovich. “While Ed was shooting Erin Brockovich for me, Traffic was starting to take shape, and he said, ‘What are you going to do about this position?’ And I said, ‘I think I’m going to do it.’ And he just sort of smiled and said, ‘Yeah, I think it’s time.’” Lachman’s “helpful” habit of shooting Polaroids of every setup was also something Soderbergh took with him.   

PSEUDO-BERGH 

Adopting the pseudonym Peter Andrews for his role as cinematographer, ever since Traffic, Soderbergh has shot all his own features (28 in total, including his just-wrapped London-set drama The Christophers), long-form series (K Street, The Knick, Mosaic, Command Z and Full Circle) and assorted shorts. But for a director to perform double-duty is unusual in contemporary cinema. Of the A-List filmmakers working today, only Robert Rodriguez also operates as his own cinematographer. “It’s not typical, and it’s not popular,” says Soderbergh. “It’s not a popular thing to do.” 

While he may not have encountered a great deal of industry encouragement to shoot his own movies, Soderbergh has found it essential. “The feeling of being in control of the rhythm of the shooting is something that’s important to me and affects the performances very directly,” he says. “I think generally it creates a more intimate relationship with the movie itself, which I find really pleasurable. And obviously my relationship with the core members of the camera crew is very close as well. So, I feel very embedded inside of the whole shooting experience which I really enjoy.”  

Of all the key crew members, he feels inextricably wed to his gaffer. “That’s a crucial relationship for any cinematographer, clearly, but I rely on them a lot. I think professional cinematographers would be gob-smacked by how I work with my gaffer…I often don’t even know the names of the things that I’m asking him to use.  Sometimes I do, but a lot of times, I will describe the intensity of the light that I need, its quality – is it hard or soft? – and its colour. And then I will leave it to him to figure out how to get that effect.” 

From glossy blockbusters like Ocean’s Eleven to the low-budget, iPhone-shot drama Unsane, Soderbergh’s work has run the gauntlet. But perhaps none more so than his latest two films – ghost story Presence and espionage drama Black Bag. Both written by David Koepp (who also scripted Soderbergh’s 2022 tech thriller Kimi), they demonstrate very different skillsets. Paranormal drama Presence follows the plight of a family when they are confronted by a poltergeist in their new home. Entirely filmed in a New Jersey residence, the film’s conceit sees it shot from the point of view of the entity, meaning that Soderbergh’s camera was essentially ‘acting’ as the ghost. 

“It was fun to really be a member of the cast, in a way,” he comments. “I’m used to being close to them. But this was another layer of intimacy.” With the presence moving through the house, Soderbergh had to ‘perform’ just like an actor would. “I did have a greater degree of performance anxiety than I would normally, even as an operator, but we managed to get through it without me falling which I was concerned about. I bought these kind of ninja slippers – very light, very quiet, with rubber grips on the bottom of them. But negotiating the stairs was scary.”   
 
Shot on a Sony lightweight A7 digital camera, using the 14mm SLR Magic Micro Prime lens, Soderbergh filmed entirely handheld, using a Ronin stabiliser. Even so, with the rig weighing around 12 pounds, he came up with a strategy to shoot long takes. “Just because if I tried to be stock-still, my arms would start shaking.” He developed a subtle, floating movement style, even for a long conversation between Chris Sullivan’s father and his daughter, played by Callina Liang, where in theory the presence should just be listening. “I tried to keep it moving a little bit, just because if I didn’t, the shot would be ruined.” 

REVOLUTIONARIES  

Soderbergh has been shooting on digital ever since his 2008 two-film epic Che, starring Benicio Del Toro as the Argentine revolutionary Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara. Would he ever consider a return to film? “I wouldn’t rule it out,” he says. “If there was a very specific effect that I thought would be difficult to duplicate, I would do it. I’m not an extremist. But the fact of the matter is, the technology now that exists to manipulate a digital image in postproduction is incredible. And the effects that you can achieve are pretty remarkable, especially if you’re trying to duplicate a certain effect that previously was specific to celluloid.”   

He shot Black Bag on the RED V-Raptor [X], using Hawk anamorphic lenses, and has been using various iterations of the RED camera right back to Che. “ Just because I had such an intimate relationship with Jim Jannard and Jarred Land from that company. And part of what was great about working with the RED was literally being able to call Jarred up on the phone and ask him, ‘Oh, can you make it do X?’ And that could be something that has to do with the sensor. Or with the form factor of the camera itself.” 

Coming across as the antithesis to an action-packed Mission: Impossible-like movie, Black Bag stars Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett as two married agents who are pitted against each other, when she is suspected of betrayal. For years, Soderbergh had wanted Koepp to write something akin to Edward Albee’s play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? “And I think he took that notion and wound it partially into his idea of Black Bag.” In other words, it became a spy movie driven more by words than weapons, notably in two key dinner-party scenes, when a possible traitor is set to be unmasked. 

“Those two dinner sequences were a challenge, especially the first one,” says Soderbergh. “I mean, for Black Bag, that’s the Omaha Beach sequence from Saving Private Ryan. It’s really gotta work; this is what’s preparing the audience for the rest of the movie. And so, I thought about it a lot, planned it in a lot of detail.” He made good use of viewfinder app, Cadrage. “You can programme in what camera you’re using, what lenses you’re using – it’s an excellent viewfinder.” After bringing in stand-ins and then the cast, he then shot images of “every conceivable angle that belonged in this movie”, before printing them out and building the sequence on a giant whiteboard.  

“It’s basically the sequence as it exists in the movie, but in stills, and we would just check them off as we did them.” 

While Black Bag has a glamourous and sexy allure to its look, when it comes to lighting, Soderbergh’s “default mode” is what is real. “Every time you take a light off the truck, you’re going to make it look worse,” he says. “So, I always work back from what’s real. How does that look? And it also took me a few movies to resist the impulse to make everything look great and beautiful, and to sometimes walk into a real location, turn the lights on and go, ‘This is absolutely hideous! Don’t touch anything and just embrace what’s real.’” 

He thinks back to his time on The Knick, the two-season drama set in New York’s Knickerbocker Hospital. “I remember on The Knick cutting this one scene with close-ups…I realised we were shooting at such a low light level with a single candle lamp, like a lantern, that the actors’ irises…were the size of pool table eight balls. And it was a really arresting effect that was only achievable by the fact that we were shooting at this ridiculously low light level. I love that technology allows us now to be able to work in those kinds of circumstances and have those kinds of unintended effects.” 

TOP TALENT 

Aiding his quest for realism is the grading process in postproduction. On Presence, which was completed in New York, he collaborated with colourist Nat Jencks, a relationship that stretches back to Che. But for the British-set Black Bag, he discovered a new collaborator, Carl Thompson. His first time with working with London-based post-production facility Molinare, where Thompson is based, the experience was excellent. “Everybody’s got the same gear,” he comments. “It really is about the talent. If you find a colourist who seems to understand what you’re trying to do, that’s really the most important aspect.” 

Just like his approach to shooting on set, Soderbergh can make decisions quickly in post. None more so than on his 2011 pandemic drama Contagion. “I think the land speed record was Contagion, which we timed in six hours,” he says. Of course, the colourist – in that case, John Daro – had the material beforehand, but this was still rapid-fire. “I got a very, very nice call from the late, great [cinematographer] Harris Savides when Contagion came out. He wanted to know all the particulars about how we approached that movie, which was very sweet.” Perhaps Soderbergh’s cinematography has more supporters than he realises.  

Presence and Black Bag are available on digital platforms.  

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Header image credit: PictureLux / The Hollywood Archive / Alamy Stock Photo