The Instigators: Henry Braham BSC on reworking the rules of how to shoot a blockbuster

Henry Braham BSC talks about shooting Apple TV’s movie The Instigators on RED in a truncated timeframe of a little over a month.

Laid-back comedy caper The Instigators succeeds on its own terms in feeling unencumbered by the weight of a big studio movie despite the A-list charms of Matt Damon, Casey Affleck (who also co-wrote the script) and Hong Chau, a number of weighty character actors (Ving Rhames, Ron Perlman, Toby Jones) and being bankrolled by Apple.

Director Doug Liman is a master at flipping a paper thin plot into slickly entertaining escapade (see Mr. & Mrs. Smith, American Made) and has shot his last two movies in concert with cinematographer Henry Braham BSC.

Braham is renowned for his work in developing character driven performances stretching back to indie fayre like Stefan Schwartz’ Soft Top Hard Shoulder (1992) through Nanny McPhee (2005) to  studio blockbusters The Golden Compass (2007) and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017).

“It sounds really obvious but Road House was about the heat and the water. Set in the Keys, shot in the Dominican Republic. It's a cowboy movie, an action movie, it’s all about the fights,” says Braham of the Jake Gyllenhaal feature directed by Liman which released earlier this year on Amazon Prime.

“The Instigators is the exact opposite. It's cold. It’s Boston. It’s a buddy movie about hapless guys for whom everything goes wrong. The common thing between them is Doug's approach to filmmaking.”

As part of his prep Braham scouted locations in Boston and New York. “[The production] had great collaboration from the city. We were allowed to run amok in Boston City Hall [the modern concrete behemoth that dominates downtown] and across the streets. It was important that we shot during winter time so that there was a sort of a greyness to it and nothing looked too pretty.”

That fits with the blue-collar post-industrial milieu of the film which to a degree recalls Michael Mann’s Chicago set heist movie Thief (1981) where the hero (a career best performance from James Caan) believes that stealing from the rich equates to social justice, provided no-one gets harmed.

Affleck’s screenplay for The Instigators also has downtrodden heroes sticking it ‘to the man’ – in this case corrupt politicians. Braham leans into the cloudy skies and gives the film a grey-blue hue.

“Obviously the story is fantastical but if you can ground it more in reality then you buy into the story better,” he says. “Although it's ridiculous there are all kinds of truths that come through the movie. So, photographically it's important that we ground it.”

He continues, “It wasn't important to me to show off the Boston locations. It was about telling the story of these two guys and the chaos around them.”

The interior of the mayor’s office was built at Broadway Stages in Brooklyn with a layout based on the real thing, duplicating Boston City Hall’s exposed concrete structure and high ceilings.

Always moving pictures

The camera is always moving

Braham’s camera is hardly ever static and often frames close-up to the actors and very close indeed with shots inside vehicles during the car chase [one of the most extensive ever filmed in downtown Boston which also filmed inside the I-93 expressway tunnel]. The cinematographer says his aim was to keep connected to the performances, not to over plan shots and to be intuitive to the moment.

“Hopefully the audience is not aware of the camera at all but just feels very connected to the story. A classic way of doing that is for the camera to stand back and be on longer lenses and to observe what's going on. There are brilliant examples of that in Doug's early movies, especially in his first Bourne picture (The Bourne Identity 2002).” 

Another example is In The Mood For Love (shot by Christopher Doyle for Wong Kar Wai) which Braham says is “beautifully observed and not shot conventionally at all.”

“Those are two ways of doing it but there's a new way of doing it which technology has recently allowed us to achieve. It's where we can shoot on large format cameras which are physically small and which enable you to get the camera close in and amongst the actors. 

“Because the negative format is large you can use wider lenses that don't look like wider lenses on screen. In every filmmaker's dream there's a thing called a ‘tight wide’ shot which is where you want to see everything but at the same time you want to be close and connected to what's going on. 

“In the old days we used to have a wide shot or a tight shot. But now, thanks to the advent of large format digital cameras, we can have our cake and eat it, which is a tight wide shot.

Braham has been developing this technique and related philosophy over a number of films with James Gunn including Suicide Squad (2021), and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023) and The Flash for director Andy Muschietti.  All are in the Marvel or DC Universe and foreground character over VFX.

“It means you can be entirely intuitive with a handheld camera,” says Braham who likes to operate himself. “You can be very precise about the relationship of the camera to the actors. The actors aren't bound by marks on the floor. I can always keep the camera in the right relationship to them and they will always be in the right relationship to the other actors and the set.”

This approach frees actors, directors and camera to perform and respond more freely on set. “It's a really fun way of making a movie. It’s not consciously artful. That’s hard to explain but I think when you shoot something conventionally there's an artfulness to it which audiences are aware of. For lots of movies that's entirely appropriate. But in a movie like this, it’s not.”

Breaking the rules

Doug Liman (centre): creating an engaging caper out of nothing

He cites the 1971 classic The French Connection shot by Owen Roizman as revolutionary in breaking many of the established rules.

“They didn’t use wide, mid-shot to close-up. Their response to the story on location was intuitive and that was enabled by being able to use small cameras rolling a single strip of film and cameras which were among the first to be single-lens reflex – the operator could look through the lens and see exactly what the camera was seeing. Plus, it was one of the first films to take advantage of the  zoom lens. I believe where we are now with digital cine technology is the next genuine progression since that era of filmmaking.”

Most of the enjoyment in watching The Instigators comes from the repartee of the three leads. Their comic timing is often captured in camera rather than feeling manufactured in the edit and is testimony to Braham and Liman’s approach.

“Doug encouraged improvisation and because we have a shooting style that can evolve with the scene we can capture moments that feel spontaneous. That’s a lot harder when there's a team of people directly behind the camera worried about getting into territory that hasn't been discussed.

“In this case, most of the film is shot single camera and it is myself and my demon focus puller (A camera assistant Dermot Hickey) who has to react to what I’m doing which he often won’t know in advance. 

“Doug has got this antenna for things that don't feel truthful. If it's not working in one way, he'll try something completely different and that could just literally turn the whole scene on its head. To have the flexibility to do that is important for a filmmaker like that. We always ended up with something significantly better.” 

Shooting RED

The look of Road House may be entirely different but Braham used the same camera package of RED V-Raptor with Leitz M 0.8 glass. He’s been working with RED on all of his recent films and says he changes up as new sensors or features are released to always work with the latest model. 

“In camera technology there's been a steady progression of improvements but I've kept the same fundamental principles for every film I’ve shot over last four to five years.

“When RED developed their first VistaVision camera it was revolutionary because the moment you have the larger negative the lenses you can use change completely. When you get used to shooting VistaVision and then go back to 35mm it’s like going backwards to 16mm. The profound step forward in movie making technique is the move to large format. 

“Secondly, it’s putting that sensor in a camera the size of a Hasselblad. RED really nailed this. The V-Raptor is so light it enables you to do all sorts of things that are intimate or to put the camera in places which wouldn’t fit a larger one.

“In the days of film the cinematographer would take time to get to understand a new film stock when it came out. You had to get to know the material. It’s a bit like an artist testing the canvas or wood or texture on which they will paint. Your raw materials react differently. It's the same with photography. Each time something changes from my point of view, I really have to understand what that is. Once I’ve understood the tools then goes into the background. I’ll just know the photographic range I’m working with and what a particular camera is good at.”

In this endeavour Braham has been aided by the bespoke designs of David Freeth co-developer of the stabiliser system Stabileye.  “It’s incredibly expressive,” Braham says of the remotely-operated, miniature stabilised head. “It kind of allows the camera to dance with whatever's going on in front of it.” 

He has just shot Superman for James Gunn and says 90 per cent of the film was shot in this fashion.   “A few years ago we used to think a big, big movie like this had to be approached in a certain way but I don't think you need to now. Directors change their minds when they discover the freedom they get from this approach.”

The tight 36-day shoot would arguably not have been possible without the Braham-Freeth proprietary system that can emulate a dolly shot, a crane shot, a handheld shot, all with the same camera system. It meant that with a pre-lit the set designed for naturalism Liman could point the camera anywhere without need to wait between set-ups.

Big or small screen?

Always assume a big screen viewing...

There has been some reported disagreement between Liman and Amazon over theatrical release of Road House. Liman seemed to suggest that an agreement by the streamer to give the film a cinema run was reneged on. The Instigators has also gone straight to AppleTV+ but the filmmaker seems to have known this in advance. 

“The way we shot Road House was intended for the big screen,” Braham says. “It was a very immersive kind of roller coaster ride. The fight scenes are specifically designed for IMAX and we colour timed those on a big screen so the idea is that the audience is literally part of the fight. 

“My approach is always to assume everything's going on a big screen. Because we shoot in a way I’ve described using the tight wide shot, it works whichever size screen. I’ll often see movies in the cinema but I’ll go back and watch them on TV over the years simply because I enjoy them. A good film well told will stand up to being viewed repeatedly.”

He worked with regular colourist Stefan Sonnenfeld of Company 3 to grade the film. “My process now is to shoot material during prep and to build a colour bible of how the movie is going to look. You can talk about these things and look at bits of reference but I found it most helpful to shoot some material and build the look so that everybody from design to costume can work toward the same goal. It’s like designing your own print stock. I love that it's like starting with a blank sheet of paper. Some people don't like that because they want some rules to work with. I'm more interested in there being no rules.”

tl;dr

• The movie The Instigators was shot on RED in a little over a month and features A-list actors like Matt Damon, Casey Affleck, and Hong Chau.
• Director Doug Liman and cinematographer Henry Braham worked together to create a laid-back comedy caper with a focus on character-driven performances.
• The film's setting in Boston during winter was chosen to create a grey, grounded atmosphere that suited the story of hapless heroes taking on corrupt politicians.
• Braham's camera work involved keeping the camera moving and using large format cameras to achieve a "tight wide" shot, allowing for a close and connected feel to the action.