Sundance Film Festival

DP Patrick Murguia is touristing around Main Street recovering from the long journey from Mexico City; he’s enroute to the Eccles to be very early for the premiere of the independent film he shot for Antoine Fuqua. We grab a corner of the cramped lobby at the Marriott Summit Watch and as he talks the many distractions fade away.

Murguia recalls standing in the streets of New York, while Fuqua laid out a shot plan. From his gestures I’m seeing a dynamic, nearly 360-degree lighting extravaganza, the kind of muscular, operatic command of space and action that Fuqua does so distinctively. “He actually wanted to make something very simple,” Murguia says of Brooklyn’s Finest, which stars Ethan Hawke, Richard Gere, and Don Cheadle. “Most of the time he got that, but sometimes it’s in his nature to go a little over the top,” the DP says with a little grin. I think it’s an understatement. Why else would Trevor Goth, writing in the program notes, talk about the “roving cinematography,” the “intensity and complexity,” the “complete command of the cinematic language,” and the “visceral and emotional punch” of a master at work. Simple I suppose for Fuqua.

Murguia is a sought-after commercials director and has shot features for his friend Rodrigo Prieto; he started working with Fuqua when Oliver Stone suggested him for Escobar. That project stalled in pre-production so when Fuqua went to work on Brooklyn’s Finest the relationship continued on that film.

Murguia shot Super 35 1:235 (Kodak Vision 3 500 and Daylight Vision 500) to get what he describes as a “claustrophobic city, always present and compressing in on you all the time.” He went with anamorphic in the final scene to highlight the allegorical feeling of the story’s inevitable ending. “How I read the story was as human beings we are all the time looking for felicity—happiness–we make our plans and we do whatever is necessary to get there and forget along the way that we are living. In the end none of these characters get what they were expecting.”

As the characters face themselves with the clarity of their last moments, Murguia saw anamorphic as a metaphor for self awareness. “It has a different feeing of depth of field, no? A kind of cutting through the circles of confusion to a greater focus. Then, at the end as the camera moves, anamorphic does this beautiful blue flare that says in an almost clinical way, well, you are dead.”

His DI, with the Stephans at Company 3, was not elaborate, although knowing he would have one he took judicious advantage of economies of time on set. “For example, greeny fluorescents don’t like all the blue in the 500 stock, so I didn’t have to change bulbs or use gels, all of which takes time; I knew I’d deal with that in DI.”

Overall, Murguia had the studio toolkit—cranes, dollies, steadicams, and a gaffer’s truck at his disposal. But he says he used those tools minimally. “At one point I was using all practicals and trying to get a little more light on Richard Gere’s face. I knew that if I turned on one more bulb the room would go flat. My gaffer Jay Fortune suggested a Fresnel and I had to think for a moment ‘oh right, we have Fresnels’.”

He calls Fuqua a “great listener” and says the director’s ability to show up on set and fully marshal resources makes it possible to get a big canvas even when prep time is short, as it was on Brooklyn’s Finest. “He was still writing, casting–where was the time for us? In the end it’s that facility he has that makes it all work.”