A Two-Part Process Personified

Lawrence Sher, ASC earned Oscar, ASC, BSC, and BAFTA Award nominations for his cinematography for 2019’s Joker, and top honours at the prestigious Camerimage International Festival of the Art of Cinematography in Poland.

In 2024, Joker: Folie á Deux followed the character further into his own delusions and fantasies, echoing theatrical cinematic standards like All That Jazz (cinematography by Giuseppe Rotunno) and One from the Heart (Vittorio Storaro). Both Joker films were shot using the ARRI ALEXA 65 large format camera with in-camera CODEX recording and supporting technologies such as CODEX High Density Encoding (HDE), and CODEX Vault 65 with Transfer Drives. We recently asked Sher to share with us some insight into his creative process and technical collaborations.

Lawrence Sher, ASC on the set of Joker: Folie à Deux (image credit: Niko Tavernise/Warner Bros.)

"I BECAME OBSESSED WITH CAPTURING WHAT WE SEE WITH OUR EYE"

Earlier in your career, you shot a dozen features on film emulsion, including hit comedies like The Hangover and I Love You, Man. How did your thinking evolve?

For the longest time, I resisted digital. I didn’t like seeing exactly what I was getting. I didn’t like being caught in the minutia, deciding if what we were seeing on the set was actually going to be the picture. It’s just one more massive distraction in the shooting day, which is already the most compressed time there is in the course of making a movie. With film, you take out your meter and shoot what’s in front of you, knowing you can finesse it later. I didn’t need to reinvent. I didn’t need a new solution. But I remember preparing a driving sequence in Hangover 2 where I wished we could really be inside the car in Bangkok with those guys, exploiting the natural light and capturing that without all the mishigas that would be required to do it on film.

I remember driving in New Mexico at dusk, seeing the mountains out my window and wondering when I could see those mountains on film. Then in 2011 or so, we made The Dictator. I went out to the desert and tested the ALEXA, because I knew we were going to shoot in hot, bright sunlight. Nick Kay, my DIT, and I could see that ARRIRAW was the right way. We basically had to create a workflow. A few months later, CODEX drives were integrated into the camera bodies, which was transformative. I became obsessed with capturing what we see with our eye. This was now a tool for expanding the creative vision. That’s when I stopped looking at digital as the enemy, and started looking at it as an opportunity to enhance creativity.

On the set of Joker: Folie á Deux (image credit: Warner Bros.)

"I THINK CREATIVELY AT FIRST, WHEN I’M WITH THE DIRECTOR" 

You’ve been quoted as saying that during prep, once the visuals are conceived, your job becomes more practical – determining the best way to execute the plan and achieve the look you’ve designed. But on the set, your more artistic and creative instincts must become predominant.

When we were approaching Joker, we really started with the idea of shooting film. It’s a gritty, Gotham-based vibe. But late in the game, I took out the ALEXA 65. There were pros in the digital column that made it a 50-50 question. Focus, for example. You can’t be a creative-only thinker in filmmaking. It’s too expensive. You’re not a painter, at home alone with a canvas. I think creatively at first, when I’m with the director. You can’t be self-limiting at that stage. But once you decide the creative aspects, you become a technician, a responsible person working within a budget and a schedule.

“YOU NEVER WANT THE ACTORS OR THE DIRECTOR TO THINK ABOUT TECHNICAL STUFF”

What’s the tool that will help achieve the creativity given the constraints? Once you’re on the set, and everything is planned well enough, the technology should give you the flexibility and the freedom you need, with no need to think about it anymore. Then it’s up to people like your DIT and focus pullers and electricians to make those things work seamlessly, efficiently and quickly. You want to be able to put that out of your mind and just be creative. You never want the actors or the director to think about technical stuff. My biggest fear is that an actor delivers an incredible performance, and it’s compromised due to a technical issue. And you never want the level of technical difficulty to constrain you from a creative choice, even subconsciously.

Shooting the Joker: Folie á Deux courtroom scene (image credit: Warner Bros.)

Each DP/DIT collaboration is different, it seems. What do you need from your DIT Nick Kay?

Nick is really the centre point of all the technology we’re using on the camera side. He creates an incredible system that allows us to manage all this data in a seamless way, so I never have to think about it. He’s also the focal point in terms of sending the right LUT out to all the monitors and managing all the wireless technology – in other words, what everyone is seeing. And then throughout the shooting day, I put him in charge of basically maintaining some level of consistency shot-to-shot and scene-to-scene, like a dailies colourist. He takes it from the basic thing that I would do even on a film shoot, and sets the exposure and the camera. But there are subtleties, depending, for example, on whether we’re in backlight or front light, and in some aspects of the colour management. What he does is absolutely essential now.

"HE’S PART COMPUTER SCIENTIST, PART TECHNICIAN, AND PART CREATIVE"

Aside from the technical aspects, Nick is also the person I sit next to more than anyone else. He’s my sounding board, and he’s my therapist, the person who calms me down when I’m having a bad day. He’s makes sure I’m drinking enough water. He’s part computer scientist, part technician, and part creative.

When it came to Joker: Folie a deux, you stayed with the ALEXA 65. What was the thought process behind that decision?

Our thinking was very similar. The ALEXA 65 is the greatest camera next to shooting 70-millimeter film. It’s the same sensor size, and it gives the same portraiture feel. We knew we were going to make a movie that would live a lot in closeups. I love the way the 65 works for that. All movies at their heart should be trying to connect with you emotionally. Think of Oppenheimer – it’s all people’s faces, and I love the way the 70mm film looks in that. It’s the reason still photographers shoot portraits in medium format. On Joker: Folie á Deux, we were moving the camera into closeups in real time with no rehearsals, all the time. It was never “start moving on this line, and on this word, stop.” Knowing we were going to be sharp gave us the freedom to not be predetermined – to feel the actor’s performance and keep going, keep moving and go deeper if it felt right. That’s the jazz of it.

Lawrence Sher’s most recent assignment is The Bride, a wholly original rethinking of the Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein tale, written and directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal and set in 1930s Chicago. That film, said to be a musical, is expected in September 2025.