joewright:

Academy Award Winners for Best Cinematography:
2017 — Linus Sandgren, FSF
La La Land (2016)
Directed by Damien Chazelle
Aspect Ratio: 2.55 : 1

“From the very beginning he [Damien Chazelle] expressed that he wanted the film’s musical numbers to be filmed head-to-toe, paying homage to the 1950s Hollywood style in wide-screen Cinemascope, and for the song and dance routines to be performed and captured in single takes.

We discussed using a naturalistic light, but heightened with a colourful palette – no black night skies, but blue instead, and no sodium vapour orange from the streetlights, but mercury vapour. He preferred to shoot the daytime scenes in bright sunlight, and to embrace and heighten the romance of the city locations, architecture and LA’s amazing skies, by shooting in magic hour and night scenes at near-dusk. So we worked out a palette of blues, greens, pinks and purples for nights. All of this whilst keeping something of a sense of melancholy to the visuals and always lingering in the land between realism and dream.” — Linus Sandgren