Cinematography Style: Philipe Le Sourd

INTRODUCTION

In the world of cinematography, Philippe Le Sourd’s images feel like paintings in motion that are elegant, deliberate, and deeply atmospheric. From the soft, desaturated candlelight of The Beguiled to the poetic grandeur of The Grandmaster, his work captures not just how a scene looks, but how it feels. 

In this episode of Cinematography Style, we’ll explore the visual language of the French DP and the filmmaking gear and techniques he selects to make it happen.  Examining how his use of texture, light, and composition creates a cinematic world that’s both romantic, natural and restrained.

BACKGROUND

Le Sourd has been working as a director of photography since the 90s. While he began his career shooting for French filmmakers in his home country, he has since collaborated with a wide range of international directors. From Ridley Scott to Wong Kar-Wai - which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Cinematography - and more recently through his ongoing collaborations with Sofia Coppola.

PHILOSOPHY

Before thinking about the technical side of filmmaking, like camera gear, the first point of departure between a director and a cinematographer is usually to begin building an idea or imagining of the visual language for the film.

This could be a singular visual idea, such as needing the overall palette to feel more neutral or desaturated throughout the movie, or, more often than not, a collection of different visual vocabularies that become a language, like choosing an aspect ratio, a style of lighting, a softer texture to the lensing, an approach to the framing, or a cool-warm palette duality.

Le Sourd acknowledges that the process for developing this visual language changes depending on the director he’s working with.

For his collaborations with Sofia Coppola - the script and underlying emotions that the characters are experiencing are the first points of reference.

“She doesn’t want to have the image too strong compared to the emotion. So, you try to match very closely what could be the emotion and what the format should be for the film.” 

They’ll build this look and tone using research, references and camera tests. He’ll start by doing research, such as looking at examples of Civil War imagery on The Beguiled. 

They’ll then go over some more specific visual references, which are often from photographers, such as a still from Saul Leiter with a bright, blowing background that influenced the look of Priscilla’s interiors, or the portraits of Julia Margeret Cameron with their washed out tonality of grey which informed The Beguiled.

Based on this idea he’ll then usually conduct more technical gear tests of lenses, cameras and filmstocks to arrive at the look ahead of shooting.     

Since Coppola writes her own screenplays, which often means living with the material for years before it is shot, she’ll usually have a broad idea of how to represent each scene, such as whether the camera is further or closer to characters, or whether it plays out in a single shot.

For more complex scenes with a greater number of characters they’ll work together to create a list of shots on set based on the blocking. They like to do this by using a still camera to take photos from different angles during the rehearsal, then decide on which of those shots are needed. Trying to visually simplify things by not overshooting too much coverage.   

Other directors, like Ridley Scott, work differently with a more straightforward, production oriented approach and a producer’s eye.

“I don’t think he’s the type of director who has a discussion about the visual language. I think he’s about setting it up, the number of shots and schedule. He will tell you very directly if he likes it or not.”   

They didn’t decide on a visual style going in and rather let the film’s design be determined by the locations he selected around the south of France - which built in a large part of the look. With warmer, earthy exteriors lit by natural, dappled light under oak trees.

Working with Wong Kar-Wai presented yet another different collaborative relationship. In a highly unusual working style, they went into production without having a fully written screenplay. Instead, Kar-Wai would work things out as he went along. Writing a few pages based on a character, a location, or a story idea - which Le Sourd would then shoot. The director would then review the rushes and either write a few new pages, or reshoot the scene they had already shot, but this time perhaps with a new narrative idea, a different actor, or with a freshly dressed set.

“It’s really step by step and you never know where you will go. You have no idea. About the script, the cinematography and the actor.”

The challenge of creating the visual language became largely about how to maintain continuity over a production timeline that eventually lasted around 3 years. To create a coherent look he’d keep extensive notes about all the gear he used, and how he set it up and positioned it for each scene. So if he needed to come back to a space he could recreate a look.

In this way, they cobbled The Grandmaster together by slowly adding different segments until they finally reached a product with a complete story.

All of these different approaches for the various directors he worked for meant he needed a range of technical tools and techniques which he could use to create each movie’s visual language.

GEAR

Although as we’ve seen Le Sourd’s work doesn’t fall neatly into one style, but is rather created afresh based on each script and director he works with, there are a few characteristics which he carries through.

He tries to not do too much with the camera by creating a language which is naturalistic, yet is slightly elevated for cinema, with often underexposed, darker lit, shadowy interiors. 

I’ve also noticed that the movies he shoots often push one of two looks. 

Either, one, a cool and warm colour palette with a good level of filmic saturation. Or, two, a more desaturated look which maintains contrast with large amounts of dark shadow.

This first look can be seen in films like A Good Year, Seven Pounds, The Grandmaster and On The Rocks. 

He creates this cool-warm look partly by using lights with different colour temperatures. If we look at a few examples of this lighting style you can see a common theme emerge - most of the palette is cool, with a few accents of warmth.

The first step to this look is shooting with a cool white balance. Since almost all of his work was shot on film, he’d usually select a tungsten balanced film stock for these interiors - such as Kodak 500T. 

These stocks have a colour temperature of approximately 3,200K - which is what you could set the camera to if shooting digitally. 

Next, he'd use lights to create a level of ambience - which is like an overall soft fill that envelops the location. This is done with cooler light set to somewhere around 4,300K or 5,600K. 

He then uses practical sources that can be seen in the shot, like candles or lamps with incandescent bulbs with a warm colour temperature, such as 2,800K. Creating little warm hotspots that offset the cool look and create a colour contrast.

Sometimes, instead of it being a practical, the warmth comes from using a warmer key light on the actors’ faces while keeping the background ambience lit by a cooler source.

With the capabilities of grading software like Baselight, he can combine old school 35mm film capture with new school colour manipulation. Pushing more of a cyan look into the cooler tones. 

He also likes pushing a warm look for exteriors - which is probably mostly done in the grade. And, especially in films like The Grandmaster, giving interiors an overall warmer palette, by only lighting with warm, probably tungsten, sources - and removing his cool ambient fill source.  

Remember we mentioned he likes shooting camera tests ahead of production. Well, a colour workflow he has used is to give those tests to a colourist, who will then build a custom show LUT. This LUT can be applied to dailies - which Le Sourd views on an iPad on the Copra app. He can use this app to make grading notes or corrections which his colourist can then implement.    

The second more desaturated look which I mentioned he’s pushed mainly on his more recent work on period dramas with Sofia Coppola, like The Beguiled and Priscilla.

A technique he likes to use is pull processing film by one stop. This is where you overexpose the film. So if he’s shooting 500T, a 500ASA film, he’ll rate it at 320ASA, a stop brighter. 

When the overexposed film is processed it is then underdeveloped in the lab to get it back to its correct exposure. Pull processing is done to retain more detail in the shadows and in the highlights and reduce the film grain. It also decreases the saturation - which created less vibrant colours in The Beguiled.

He created a similar desaturated look on Priscilla - however this was done digitally in post production rather than photochemically. 

Le Sourd almost only shoots features on 35mm film - with the one exception being Priscilla - which for budgetary reasons was shot digitally on the Alexa 35. Opting for the more classically traditional Super 35 format over using large format cameras.  

Unlike the trend of using wide angle lenses for everything, Le Sourd prefers to select more medium focal length lenses - most commonly a 40mm, 50mm, or 75mm. He also shies away from anamorphic lenses, preferring to shoot with spherical, Super 35 glass and then crop to widescreen aspect ratios if they’re required.

Most of his films are serviced by Panavision, on their spherical prime lenses. From the Primos, to the PVintage, or the Super Speed or Ultra Speeds.

Although on The Grandmaster he selected Cooke S4s and used an Angenieux Optimo zoom for some of the telephoto shots.

CONCLUSION

Le Sourd’s cinematography is a study in restraint: a reminder that visual beauty often lies in what’s left unsaid. Whether working within Coppola’s delicate emotional worlds or Wong Kar-Wai’s improvisational chaos, he adapts his craft to serve story and tone above all else. 

His images feel timeless not because of flashy technique, but because of how quietly they observe character and emotion.