La La Land - A Visual Orgasm

La La Land created ripples around the world this year. Winning almost all the awards in every Festival, the movie is being celebrated as one of the best Musical Romance in the recent years. Set in Los Angeles, La La Land is about a musician and an aspiring actress who meet and fall in Love. starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, La La Land received critical acclaim upon its release, and was regarded as one of the best films of 2016.

Cinematography is something which pulls you straight into their world. Camera handled by Linus Sandgren, La La Land is a movie which is not to be missed by Cinematography aspirants. Hollywood, in general, has always set its standards high in terms of Technical Perfection. And this movie is one of the finest example how a cameraman's vision can change and elevate the movie.

It is not easy for a cinematographer to express what the theme of the movie demands. Many fail in doing so. Sandgren, having worked with different genres, has depicted the whole movie in such a way that you feel a music being played visually on screen. Continuous shots, Long Panning shots are something which differentiates La La Land from other musical movies. The camera worked in such a way that it tells a story in a physical and interactive way.

The whole tone of the movie was inspired from Boogie Nights, having complimentary colors predominantly on screen with a blue tint prevailing throughout the movie. The movie has four seasons of a year and each season is depicted with appropriate shades of color grading. Also there were few scenes, for example The Hallway Scene, where Ryan and Emma dance, had Green shades indirectly showing the pace of their future. 

Observing the movie in detail, you can see Linus had broke the conventional rules of Cinematography in terms of framing and lighting. When dreams were lit with bright colors and isolated surroundings, Linus set the light to dull and added people in the frame, adding the sense to audience that we should believe in our dreams, and just do what we believe in. The camera itself, is a musical instrument which listens to the music and moves along the story.

Few of the scenes are mentioned below which will be broken down to deep meanings.

1. 

La La Land’s opening show-stopper finds the victims of a Los Angeles traffic jam exiting their vehicles and breaking into an impromptu song-and-dance number. Though the shot plays as a oner, it’s actually three separate pieces — two photographed on a Moviebird 45 telescopic crane and another on Steadicam — with the cuts disguised by whip pans. The set piece was filmed over two days on a closed-down ramp connecting the 105 and 110 freeways.

2. 

Ryan Gosling performs “City of Stars” at sunset along a pier. To capture the oner at the perfect moment of twilight, production had roughly 30 minutes to shoot the scene.

3.

Stone and Gosling’s initially contentious relationship begins to soften during a twilight stroll up Mulholland Drive, during which conversation turns to song and then to dance. Sandgren and company shot this extended oner over the course of two nights – getting only five takes each night because the window of perfect light was so short.