Emmanuel Lubezki’s Take on Failing Might Explains His Three Oscars

A few weeks ago I read an interview with Emmanuel Lubezki, Alfonso Cuaron, Alejandro Gonzalez-Inarritu and Terrence Malick‘s cinematographer to name a few, and who just won his third Oscar in a row. And there is one particular moment I haven’t been able to shake off since.

During the interview for Tribeca, Kiko Martinez asked Lubezki about the difficulty of trying new techniques to capture the stories he works on, and if he had a story about not being able to translate what he had in mind happen on set during the Revenant’s shooting.

This is exactly the question I want to see asked in an interview with a cinematographer that keeps successfully pushing the enveloppe. And here is what Emmanuel Lubezki answered:

“Absolutely. In [The Revenant], we had many moments where we completely failed. There’s a scene at the beginning of the movie where the Native American warriors attack. You see arrows flying in the air and [the fur trappers] are lost and don’t have any idea where the attack is coming from. We probably shot that scene four times because we failed a couple of those times. The blocking was wrong. The camera was in the wrong position. More than anything, the tempo of the scene was wrong. We were hitting it very fast and weren’t able to capture the emotion Alejandro wanted. It took a couple of tries to build it to where it is right now in the movie, which is haunting and scary and mysterious.

That’s something I love about Alejandro. If something is not right or doesn’t capture a certain emotion, we will try it again or not use it in the movie. There were a lot of things like that in the film that we had to redo because he didn’t think they were working.”

So… four times hu? First, I thought I had read it wrong (four times?!), and I think Kiko Martinez thought he had heard it wrong too because here is what he said:

I’m thinking about the complexity of that specific scene and can’t imagine having to shoot it once much less four times.

To what Lubezki answered :

“In every movie there are moments like that. Nothing is written. You can’t go get a manual that says, “Move the camera this amount of feet per second.” Everything is so subjective depending on how you perceive it and how the director perceives it. It’s a very complicated business.”

He doesn’t even pick on the four times issue, because to him, four takes is 20 for another cinematographer, and 99 for another one. If this is not a typo, and Lubezki really meant four takes (and not forty takes!), I find it astonishing.

But most importantly, it shows the level of excellence at which Lubezki plays. It is humbling, and inspiring, and it reminds me of one of my favorite book, Mastery, by Robert Greene, which is part of the unconventional resources for creatives.

The message here is not that if it takes you more than four takes to get the shot you want, you’re not good at what you’re doing, but rather that when you’re dedicated to your craft and being the best version of yourselves, you never cease to try getting better, and staying on your toes. I loved that Lubezki’s emotions were as intense as it actually was the 99th take:

“It took a couple of tries to build it to where it is right now in the movie, which is haunting and scary and mysterious.“

So onward, three Oscars in a row might come to those who see failing as what others would see as a huge success.

(four takes!!)