(To check out the previous essay in this month’s Sci-fi series click HERE)

I’ve just had the pleasure of being initiated into the Minority Report experience. I’ve heard a lot about this film over the years and had a DVD copy of it in my room for about six months now. People constantly praise the look of the film, the story, the tautness of its action, how fast the film feels for its two and half hour run time. It’s an adaptation of a Philip K. Dick short story and some of the greatest sci-fi films of all time have likewise been adaptations of his works (Blade Runner, Total Recall). Plus, the film was directed by Steven Spielberg, whose classic Sci-fi film Close Encounters of the Third Kind I consider amongst the top ten sci-fi pictures ever made (And if you missed seeing it in theaters this year for its 40th anniversary, you missed possibly the most important film event of the year). Needless to say, I had high hopes.

Right now, I’m in the process of interning as a grip for a small film production studio in Shelby, North Carolina in the States called Electric Films. I’ve been learning the ropes, how to operate our Red camera, and picking up a bit of editing in the process. The name Janusz Kaminski constantly comes up in conversation as the favorite director of photography for both of the owners and his work on big Hollywood features, and especially with Spielberg, is pretty extensive and impressive as one of the best at his level (on par with Roger Deakins). Kaminski was cinematographer on Minority Report and did quite a few interesting technical things to make the film look unique as possible.

But first, just what is the look of the film? Taking the neo-noir moniker of cyberpunk films really seriously, the filmmakers immersed themselves in classics of film noir like The Asphalt Jungle and The Maltese Falcon. Spielberg was so influenced by film noir that he placed a cameo of a classic film noir sequence into the background of a scene in the film (though I am unfamiliar with the particular film and can regrettably find no reference to which one it is online). But in the modern era of filmmaking, big budget Hollywood pictures with $100 million on the line need to be in color and film noir gains its aesthetic grittiness from black and white. Furthermore, the chiaroscuro, dutch angles, expressionistic lighting, and high contrast between light and shadow in a film noir are much easier to capture in a stylish and pleasing manner in the black and white medium. Minority Report is not a Black and White film, but it evokes film noir and its techniques by using rich shadows and dark colors, de-saturated film, and extremely high contrast photography.

Throughout the film, there are examples of daytime scenes when lighting is more straightforward, most color seems like it has been sapped from the film leaving a black and white aesthetic on top of a color palate that merely evokes color while being subtly monochrome. Most scenes are shot in this manner, but there are extreme variations and interesting experimental shots in the film even beyond this off-putting neo-noir experiment itself. for instance, when the psychic precogs have a vision of a future crime in the film, and the sensors in the DC PreCrime Division render them visually for the PreCop’s analysis, the scenes are anamorphic-like and squished-in on the sides. They are even less clear and more noir than the normal style of the film and seem to have been shot with handheld cameras emphasizing movement and a subjective viewing state. The scenes are erratic with quick cuts between shots, no establishing shots, lack of clarity of detail, and an overall feeling of intense emotional disturbance and pain on the part of the precogs who are fated to experience visions of future murders all their lives.

John Anderton (Tom Cruise) often watches clips of his past when he is alone. These are videos of past experiences with his disappeared child and his ex-wife. They are also the only the scenes in the film with regular color photography. This emphasizes the vibrancy of Anderton’s past life in an idyllic world with violence, but freedom, before PreCrime changed American society into a surveillance state in the early 2050’s. It also emphasizes the difference between his life back then as a romantic romp of innocence and his new life as a single man whose son was taken from him years ago and who has experienced significant mental and emotional traumas because of the process, thereby leading him to seek ‘clarity’ in an illegal pill form on the streets and live in dejected gray world.

The scenes of the precog visions were created by a team of pick-up photographers for the film, while the color cinematography was probably shot by Kaminski. These are easy to understand in terms of technicality and the process of their making. However, the overall regular look of the film was achieved using a process unique to the medium the film was shot on that needs some explaining. Spielberg usually shoots all of his films on filmstock, even in the age of digital, and even with the higher costs of film today. This allowed Kaminski to create a new look for Minority Report by doing what is called bleach-bypassing. In this process, as i understand it, the lab skips the normal step of bleaching out silver emulsion in the processing. This leaves the silver in the final photograph, thereby leaving a black and white photo on top of the color photography underneath. This silver retention leaves the film looking grainier and increases the contrast, just as one would like in a film noir.

Furthermore, the process reduces saturation of the color photography underneath, thereby decreasing brightness and colorfulness of the final photography. This part of the process makes the resulting cinematography more matte and higher contrast and produces a better picture when the original work was slightly underexposed (as again, much film noir originally was). But even with this process, the colors in the film were too saturated for Kaminski’s and Spielberg’s tastes in this case. So later, in editing, they reduced the color by around 40%.

The resulting cinematography is highly unique and fits the maxim of the best cinematographers: Don’t approach a film with a style, fit a style to the film’s needs. Of all modern cinematographers, Janusz Kaminski (and Roger Deakins) seems to be the best at this approach. And the proof is in the pudding as they say. Look at the featured image for this essay. That’s not just a beautiful promotional photo for the film, that’s actually in it.

Cody Ward

[Next up: Outland]