THE HARDER
THEY FALL
REQUIRES CAREFUL
TONAL BALANCE

The Harder They Fall, directed by Jeymes Samuel, is a genre film unlike any other. The combination of balletic Western violence and smirking humor recalls Peckinpah and Sergio Leone, and the scenery-chewing, all-African American cast seems to play things simultaneously intense and broad. It’s a balance of tone and temperature that required careful consideration from director of photography Mihai Malaimare, Jr.

“I like to push things as much as possible,” says Malaimare. “I like to try new things that haven’t been done before.”

Idris Elba and Jeymes Samuel on set

Malaimare often makes bold format choices. He photographed The Master on 65 mm and 35 mm film emulsion, the dark satire Jojo Rabbit with a combination of anamorphic and spherical primes and The Hate U Give with 1.3x anamorphics. For The Harder They Fall, he went with Panavision DXL2 cameras equipped with RED Digital Cinema’s Monstro 8K VV sensor, combined with a wide array of lenses from Panavision. The resulting images have a sweeping, cinematic feel – a palpable theatricality even on the home screen. Malaimare credits that in part to the VistaVision-sized sensor.

"...I WAS REALLY HAPPY TO USE PIX ON APPLE TV 4K. THE COMPRESSION ON THE DAILIES HAS BEEN SIGNIFICANTLY IMPROVED."

“We could go fairly wide without distorting,” says Malaimare. “It’s a different shot when you’re shooting 14 mm on Super 35. Shooting with a 24 mm on VistaVision, you have less distortion and it’s a much more pleasant image. It’s closer to what our eyes are used to. And in fact, we did actually use a 12 mm on the VistaVision sensor at one point. I think our widest lens was a 30 mm anamorphic, so we went quite wide in our approach, which worked with the Western settings.”

Lenses included fine-tuned Panavision T-Series with an unusual 1.85x squeeze factor, and four 1950s-era 1.3x Panavision anamorphics. In certain situations, Malaimare used the “Ben-Hur” 1.3x prism anamorphics that Robert Richardson, ASC resurrected for The Hateful Eight, as well as some specialty 1.25x anamorphics. Each of these lens types delivers subtly different optical architecture that must work with the scene and still remain part of the whole.

To maintain a successful balance of imagery, acting style and production design, Malaimare, Samuel, and production designer Martin Whist needed seamless communication and accurate images. Throughout the shoot, they depended on PIX to communicate and coordinate their visual ideas.

“PIX is a great, useful tool,” says Malaimare. “For a long time, I resisted it. But for The Harder They Fall, I was really happy to use PIX on Apple TV 4K. The compression on the dailies has been significantly improved.”

The ability to judge dailies was crucial given the giant VistaVision sensor.

“I love the Monstro sensor because the color science pretty much emulates film stock,” says the cinematographer. “It’s very similar to film in terms of recoverable image, and over- and underexposure. With the 1600 ISO base exposure, you have more room in the highlights, and you still need something to dig into the shadows, which is an approach I enjoy. At the beginning of the digital age, we got so used to using available light, even on night exteriors. Because I started on film, I prefer to control the shadows more carefully with lighting.”

"THERE’S SOMETHING INTERESTING ABOUT HOW THE SENSOR WORKS WITH OLD GLASS – SOMETHING VERY HARD TO REPRODUCE"

The enhanced resolution of the 8K Monstro sensor, the wide aspect ratio and the distinctive anamorphic glass all came together for several stylized split-screen shots. “If we wanted to fit six faces into the same shot, it was difficult,” says Malaimare. “The idea was, what if we play with the squeeze factor using a variable anamorphoser to make people skinnier, so they fit within a better cropping within our split screen? It worked really well. We also ended up using it for some other portraits as well, without necessarily making everyone skinny. Even at the nominal squeeze factor, that lens is unbelievable.

 “There’s something interesting about how the sensor works with old glass – something very hard to reproduce,” he says. “Some of the lenses have minimal coating. The look is gorgeous.”

These subtleties are the cinematographer’s stock in trade. Also, important to evaluating the imagery was the ability to see nuance in color and flaring, essential to the film’s visual signature. Samuel and Malaimare joked that for this project, there were never too many flares or push-ins. They wanted many flares, but each flare needed to be controlled or subdued to the proper extent.

“We kind of lived by those rules,” says Malaimare. “Every time the sun was low enough, we’d go for the flare. And because the main lenses had minimal coating, we’d get all the interesting artifacts.”

Samuel also asked for deeply saturated colors. “I was looking for a still photo or a frame with the right saturation qualities, and eventually I found a book of photographs in a bookstore in Santa Fe called ‘Congo Tales,’ with photographs by Pieter Henket,” says Malaimare. “The lighting and colors he used became our main reference, along with Kadir Nelson paintings he suggested.”

"EVERY TIME THE SUN WAS LOW ENOUGH, WE’D GO FOR THE FLARE..."

Malaimare says that the older glass also helped him control the harsh exterior light. “You can get away with a lot of front light, and it can be interesting, if you let the lens handle it,” he says. “I watched many Westerns, but once we started shooting tests with costumes, I realized that the cowboy hats would be a blessing. In New Mexico, the dust on the ground is so reflective that you almost don’t need any light control. You get a lot of warm, brownish bounce from the ground into the faces, and the cameras can pick it up!”

Matt Zoller Seitz, reviewing the film on rogerebert.com, called the film a pleasure, “each scene and moment staged for voluptuous beauty and kinetic power.” The Harder They Fall premiered at the BFI London Film Festival in Oct 2021, and had a limited theatrical release followed by streaming on Netflix on November 3.