Cinematographer Giles Nuttgens Turns Landscape Into A Character In "Hell Or High Water"

Reviewing the script for “Hell or High Water” was an unnecessary task for cinematographer Giles Nuttgens.  After all, he had a fifteen year relationship with the films’ director, David MacKenzie.  During that time they collaborated on five films together, including the director’s BAFTA winning second feature, “Young Adam.”  He committed on the sheer faith of MacKenzie’s talent.

“I never saw the script, I just had complete trust,” said Nuttgens.  “When I did see the script, I wanted to do it even more.”

“Hell or High Water” focuses on the Howard brothers, Tanner (Ben Foster) and Toby (Chris Pine), who are robbing banks to save their family’s farm from foreclosure.  Set in an arid, “dust bowl” rural section of Texas, the land itself played as crucial a character in the film as the actors.  Filled with cowboys and farmers, the land must sustain the people and their businesses.  During the driest seasons the land betrays the very people who own it, allowing banks to repossess it, resulting in a ghost town that sustains nothing. The first course of business for Nuttgens was to understand what Texas meant to MacKenzie.  He traveled to Texas for a week, visiting all the locations included in the script.

Noting the production would be shot in New Mexico, Nuttgens had to find locations that doubled for the dry, flat landscapes he encountered in Texas.  Recognizing the production was working under tight scheduling conditions to accommodate Pine’s work on the upcoming “Star Trek Beyond”, they selected three key areas that Nuttgens transformed into many towns by establishing tight eye lines and utilizing clever angles: thus enabling the under-populated areas to look entirely unique from the different perspectives.

While Nuttgens would have preferred working with film, “Hell or High Water” was shot on the Arri Alexa XT.  The digital files allowed editor Jake Roberts to complete daily edits, a  discipline that MacKenzie chose to ensure the production’s mood and tone were consistently in line with what he’d envisioned.  Nuttgens used Angenieux Optimo and Optimo 2S anamorphic lenses to give the visuals a timeless quality and often over-exposed the image, allowing all outdoor shots to have a harsh, blinding quality that was drastically offset by the dark interior sets.

“We wanted to give you that massive contrast.  The light blinds you and gives you a sense of heat,” explained Nuttgens.

The exposure also helped remove the greens and other bright colors from the landscape – leaving a palette consisting primarily of browns and beiges.  The intent of the image capture was to make everything look run down and dusty.    Camera movement was also crucial to establishing tone in “Hell or High Water.” The shots alternated between static shots that created a sense of “time stopping” that allowed the viewer to fully digest the dry, barren landscape, and choreographed movement involving 360 pans that equally engulf the environment and the slow pace of the characters within them.  This shooting style is crucial to the story telling and is used in pivotal moments of the film, such as the first bank robbery and a scene where the car is being buried on the farm – the camera pans the entire landscape while the sound of a bulldozer is heard, eventually revealing that the brothers are hiding their get-away car.

“First we scouted to find the right location.  Then we worked out the movements with the actors,” said Nuttgens.

They also experimented with crane sizes, settling on a smaller technocrane for their original concept resulted in too great a circle for their needs.  They worked out the timing to last 2-3 minutes - giving viewers just enough of a delay that they start to invent a scenario as the action unfolds.

“Hell or High Water” made a splash with critics and held its own in the indie market during its summer release.  When Nuttgens reflects back on the experience he’s had with “Hello or High Water” this past year, he’s particularly enthusiastic the film was accepted and screened at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, particularly in noting their last Cannes visit was for “Young Adam.”

“Going back to Cannes was a particularly nice thing for (MacKenzie),” said Nuttgens.