Filming a Vérité Nature Doc with a Magical Style on "Tigerland"

When I first met with the director of “Tigerland,” Ross Kauffman, here's how he explained the film to me. He said, I want to make a verité film, but I want it to be beautiful and magical that makes people fall in love with the tiger. I mean, of course I was in. I loved it. But at the same time, it had me a little bit nervous. I mean, I've never shot a nature doc before. And of course, my mind goes straight to something like “Planet Earth,” right? There are a million people that could do this bet

ter than me. Have you ever been in a situation where you've been tasked to do something that you know you can do, but at the same time have no idea how to pull it off? Have you ever been so intimidated by a project that your only option is to say yes and prove to yourself that you can do it? In this video, I'm going to take you through the process of shooting the film “Tigerland” by an Academy Award winning director and a producer that had me so nervous I couldn't say no. At first, I honestly co

uldn't see why Ross was talking to me about this project. I mean, I'm a I'm a verité cinematographer, but where I'm good is I'm good at following the action. I'm good at capturing intimate and difficult stories. You know, that's my comfort zone. But the more that we started talking about the project, the more I started to see where I could be a good fit. Ross didn't want to make a slick, you know, perfectly lit, slow motion, beautiful film about tigers in the wild. He wanted to introduce people

to tigers in the reality of how they lived and the challenges they were up against. He wanted to do this through the eyes of the people who were trying to save the tigers. But what really interested me is all of the things that he wanted to do stylistically on top of that foundation. He wanted to add poetry to the verité and find an interesting and new way to bring in the archival materials, which we'd have a lot of. He'd also talked about the possibility of animation to take us more into a magi

cal realm as well. So slowly but surely, the visual style of this film started to materialize in our heads. The film would follow two conservationists. The first was Pavel Fomenko in Far East Russia. We do the majority of our filming with Pavel in the dead of winter, you know, with temperatures reaching -35 degrees Celsius. And that was an experience all of its own for sure. In fact, I did a whole video about filming in Extreme Cold. So if you haven't checked that out, I suggest you do so. And t

hen a month later, we traveled to Central India in one of the hottest months of the year where temperatures were reaching over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, humidity at almost 100% to follow our second set of subjects, Amit Sankhala his nephew Jai, who's the grandson of India's tiger man, Kailash Sankhala, who basically started tiger conservation as we know of it today. The first step was choosing what camera and lenses we wanted to use for this project. I did a test and we ended up choosing the Canon

C300 Mark II for verité and the RED Epic for B-roll and slow motion. The C300 Mark II gave us the flexibility in the way that we wanted to shoot. And it also gave us the range that we needed for low light performance. And then the RED gave us a step up in terms of resolution and frame rates. Next, we need to choose our lenses. Initially, Ross and I had talked about shooting this entire film on primes, specifically the Canon K-35s. We had both worked with those lenses before and we were just in

love with the milky warmth, the beautiful bokeh and the flares that those lenses gave. And we thought that that would bring a lot of that magical element into the look of the film that we were talking about. But we also knew that shooting on primes can be potentially limiting, especially in verité and verité about tigers. And so we ended up settling on a compromise. When we were in Russia, we brought along a set of the Canon Compact Cine Zooms, the 15.5-47 and the 30-105. And these lenses are in

credibly sharp, they're crisp, they're clean, and we felt that these lenses would fit really well with the stark, harsh Russian winter. And then we would use the K-35s when we're shooting kind of beauty B-roll and our interviews. And then what we did was just to help blend those two looks together is we shot all of the Canon Compact Cine Zooms with either an 1/8 or a 1/4 Black Pro Mist just to take the edge off. And between those two lenses, I think we were able to effectively communicate the fe

eling of being in that environment while still translating some of that magic as well. Once we got to India, things would be a little bit more predictable based on the scenes that we were looking to cover. And so in that situation, we were able to shoot the majority of our verité and all of our interviews on the K-35s. And again, this is where the environment of the warm, lush Indian jungle was really able to be supported by the look of the K-35s. But at the same time, we also couldn't ignore th

e elephant in the room, or in this case, the tiger. And there was no way that we were going to be able to get shots of a tiger if we even saw one with primes, we wouldn't be able to get shots of tigers with traditional zooms either. And so we knew that we needed to bring something along that had a much longer range, but also a range that would allow us to work with it depending on what the situation came up with. And so, thankfully, the the only option and really the perfect option was the Canon

50-1000. And this lens was incredible. The lens has a built in 1.5x tele-converter. So it allowed us to get up to 1500 millimeters. And in that situation we were able to get what we needed. We brought three C300 Mark II bodies with us. One was for verité that would be used primarily with the K-35s, but in certain situations the Canon Compact Cine Zooms another for Ross to work with again with the K-35s and then a third body that was dedicated to the 50-1000. And then we also had a RED Epic with

us to be able to get B-roll beauty shots, slow motion car mounted shots, things like that. In addition to the verité moments of the film, we also had a lot of archival that we needed to bring into the story. And a lot of this was through photographs, which, you know, traditionally can be difficult to photograph in a cinematic way. But Ross came up with a really interesting technique, which was to have our subjects look at the photographs through a magnifying glass. And then that gave us a reall

y great entry point to be able to get the textural details of the photograph to give it some life, some motion. And that became a really interesting motif throughout the film. We also had a lot of diary entries, books, journals, notes that we were able to again bring to life by, you know, seeing someone typing these out on a typewriter, seeing them splayed out on a table that, again, you know, we could kind of give some life to them that could be further accentuated through the voiceover of read

ing them and then also transition them into animations to, you know, again, bring all of these still images to life. Our interviews were mainly lit with natural light. You know, for the most part we were just working with the lighting that was in the space and then augmenting that with diffusion materials bounce, negative fill. But then we also did bring with us a Light Panels Astra as well as a Joker 400. You know, if we needed to lift the ambiance in the room or we needed to create an edge or

some fill on the subject. But for the most part, our interviews were naturally lit and we let the environment speak for themselves. Again, with the support of the look of the Canon K-35s. You know, shooting a film of this style, that was a blend of verité as well as beautiful kind of poetic moments. I needed to remind myself of what it is that Ross was after, which was in and of itself a verité film that showed the reality of the life of the tiger and not a glamorous version of that. So one of t

he favorite scenes to me of the film that illustrates this, you know, initially actually bothered me after I shot it. And that's a true verité moment of seeing a tiger for the first time. And we were out in Kanha Tiger Preserve with Amit and Jai, and Ross was in one jeep with the two of them filming on the K-35s. And I was in a second jeep with the 50-1000. And while I was filming that scene, I just didn't feel like it was it was beautiful enough. I think I still had, you know, “Planet Earth” im

ages in my head. But then the more that I started thinking about it, you know, I was realizing that we actually shot it exactly the way that Ross had described and the way that he had wanted it. It wasn't perfect. It wasn't traditionally beautiful. But what it was, was it was real. You know, there were moments that my framing wasn't perfect because we're bouncing around in the back of a jeep. But that's what it felt like. There were moments that I'm fishing and searching, but if you've ever been

in one of these places and tried to find a tiger in the in the dense thick, you realize that you are constantly searching and constantly trying to see where it is. You know, the focus isn't perfect at all times. But again, when you're that excited and you're that, you know, intimidated by the moment, that's what happens. And so ultimately, the way that that scene was shot reflected the exact feeling of what it was like to see a tiger for the first time, because that was the first time that I ha

d ever seen a tiger. And I think that my experience of living that moment was translated in the way that it was shot. What I love about the look of this film is that it flips the way that we traditionally look at nature documentaries. It breathed life and excitement into the moments that are traditionally captured perfectly. But then conversely, it also added a layer of poetry and beauty to the elements that we traditionally overlook. And it's the blending of these two styles that gave this film

a look all of its own. I really owe the look of this film to our director, Ross, because he had such a clear vision of what he wanted and it was well communicated before filming even began. And to me, this is why pre-production is so important, is it's the opportunity to plant the seed, because once you get into production and things start rolling, then that idea has permeated into the way that you respond. And you can start to naturally communicate the visual style that you had set in pre-prod

uction. It was such a privilege to shoot this movie and we had an incredible team working on this film. I'm so proud of the work that we did and I hope that this video inspires you to think outside of the box. Take some risks, try something new. It can certainly be scary, daunting at times. But it's such a thrill to see what you can do and how far you can take it. If you have specific questions about a project that you're working on or needs some guidance on building out a camera package that yo

u can't learn from just watching these videos, then you can schedule a one on one call with me where we can go deeper into some of the challenges that you might be facing. And if you'd like to learn more about the cinematography of “Tigerland,” be sure to read the American Cinematographer article about our process of shooting the film. You can find links for both of these in the description. If you found this video helpful, please consider subscribing to the channel. It really helps me bring mor

e of this content to you. Thank you so much for watching and I look forward to seeing you again soon.