On the surface there were a number of factors going against cinematographer Elliot Davis becoming involved in director-writer-producer-actor Nate Parker’s The Birth of a Nation (Fox Searchlight). “I had never met Nate,” recalled Davis. “I didn’t know who he was when I got the script. To me he was a no-name first-time director with a low-budget film–not a very enticing proposition. But when I saw the film was about the Nat Turner slave rebellion and delved into the script, I had to do it. For me, it’s the content above all else. I have a deep desire to become involved in projects that raise social consciousness. I have a history of that, working with Charles Burnett [The Glass Shield] and Spike Lee [Get On The Bus]. Still, I don’t get to exercise my social conscience enough because I have to make a living too. But The Birth of a Nation fit the bill for me.”
A prime challenge posed by the film, noted Davis, was “working with a first-time director who’s passionate and dedicated to his project–but by definition has to be ‘freaked out,’ which I don’t mean in a negative way. It’s just that the director the first time out with a very ambitious project is on the edge all the time of getting what he wants done for limited time and money. There’s tremendous pressure but my filmmaking experience meant I knew how to mechanically get what we needed in the can. Without that experience, I couldn’t have done it and helped Nate to get the look he wanted.”
And Parker set his vision for that look early on for everyone to see. “Nate is an intense person as most actors are. He took his directorial responsibilities very seriously,” assessed Davis. “He had a whole wall filled with still captures from different films including Valhalla Rising [shot by Morten Soberg], The Assassination of Jesse James According by the Coward Robert Ford [shot by Roger Deakins], Man of Tai Chi and The Iron Lady [both lensed by Davis]. When you looked at all those images together, they looked like one movie. Nate invited anybody on the crew who had any visual responsibility to take a look at that board.”
Davis related that he and Parker wanted a modern look for The Birth of a Nation. “We didn’t want it to be like you’re watching a historical film. We wanted the viewer to realize there’s a modern connection, a relevancy to present-day society. We went for a cool desaturated look with crushed blacks and pushed whites, shot in anamorphic format–I’ve done movies before with that kind of look but not for a period film.”
Davis deployed a pair of Arri Alexa XT Plus cameras and a lighter weight Red Epic Dragon. The primary camera, the Alexa XT, said Davis, captures images that are not marked by the pixelation or jaggedness on the edges of objects that are present with many other digital cameras. “The edges are not as digital looking. Alexa delivers a much more pleasing look.”
In staffing up for The Birth of a Nation, Davis pushed hard for an additional crew member: an on-set colorist. Davis affirmed that the DI is critical to creating the emotional look of the film. He strives to establish that look as soon as possible so that it is planted firmly in everyone’s mind at the dailies stage. Steven Sherrick was the on-set colorist hired for The Birth of a Nation. All the takes were color graded by Sherrick so they would be available for the Avid edit. And after each day of shooting, Davis would get together with Sherrick in the color suite for an additional hour or two. This was instrumental in helping to realize the look envisioned by Parker. “Files were generated so that Nate could see dailies on his iPad and the work could go into Avid the way he wanted,” explained Davis. “Nate essentially had a timed movie–not perfectly but a lot better timed movie than most in Hollywood at that stage. He was able to cut out of the Avid to show his work to investors. The scenes looked phenomenal which instilled confidence in investors. He was able to raise money that way.”
This method of working was initiated by Davis on the alluded to Man of Tai Chi directed by Keanu Reeves. Deploying the then just introduced Alexa Studio camera package, the movie, said Davis, was the first to shoot full-resolution ArriRaw with anamorphic lenses utilizing the camera’s 4:3 sensor. To handle all the data, DIT Michael Taylor was brought into the project along with a colorist to do on-set dailies. Color-corrected dailies could be accessed by Reeves on an iPad, and Davis has continued that technique in all of his digital movies ever since.
In addition to work over the years with directors Lee, Burnett, Reeves and Parker, Davis’ filmography includes collaborations with such filmmakers as Steven Soderbergh (Out of Sight, King of the Hill, The Underneath, Gray’s Anatomy), Catherine Hardwicke (Twilight, Thirteen), Haile Gerima (Harvest: 3,000 Years), Jessie Nelson (Love the Coopers, I Am Sam) and Phyllida Lloyd (The Iron Lady).
This is the second of a multi-part series with future installments of The Road To Oscar slated to run in the weekly SHOOT>e.dition, The SHOOT Dailies and on SHOOTonline.com, with select installments also in print issues. The series will appear weekly through the Academy Awards. The Oscars will be held on Sunday, February 26, 2017, at the Dolby Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center in Hollywood, and will be televised live by the ABC Television Network. The Oscar presentation also will be televised live in more than 225 countries and territories worldwide.
