Director - Derek Cianfrance

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Derek Cianfrance is an American film director and writer, most famous for directing The Place Beyond the Pines and Blue Valentine.He began film making from a very young age; his first 3 films won him a continuous Goldfarb awards for best film.

Blue Valentine:

Blue Valentine is a romance/drama starring Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams. It follows the dying relationship of a young couple, crossing over time periods from when they were first met and fell in love to their relationship in the present day; exploring their challenges and struggles. 

In this film, Cianfrance portrays both there points of view, switching between the two throughout the film. This shows the audience they there is not one main character they should follow.  

The scenes of the past in the story were shot with a 50mm lens, and they have a warm tone which sets up the atmosphere for that part of the story. The scenes of the present day were shot on a zoom lens from afar which makes the audience feel far away from the characters, detaching them and showing that the characters are not that close anymore. 

Cianfrance's directing style makes good use of colour to portray the atmosphere and the tone of the film, I like this technique and find it to be really effective in his films.


The Place Beyond the Pines:

The Place Beyond the Pines is a crime drama/thriller starring Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper. It follows Luke (Gosling), a motorbike stunt rider who in order to provide for his baby begins robbing banks. This puts him on a path which results in him meeting Avery (Cooper), a young police officer who has to cope with working for a corrupt police force.


I like Cianfrance's directing style in this film. He uses lots of wide establishing shots to set up location of this film.

He also uses lots of close ups of the details in a scene and of the characters faces to efffectively show their emotions. Cianfrance uses harsh lighting in some of the more dramatic scenes in the film, this directs the audience to which character they should be paying attention to and draws then into where the light is on screen. The lighting often creates shadows on the characters, for example in this image of characters Luke and Romina, the shadows on them show that they both have different sides to their characters, making them more enigmatic. 

Overall, I am inspired by Cianfrance's directorial style and the way he uses colour and lighting to set the mood and tone of the film. I would like to try this in my next project as I think it can be really effective.  


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