‘One Battle After Another’ DP Talks the Highway Chase and If Paul Thomas Anderson Will Ever Use IMAX Cameras

For gaffer-turned-cinematographer Michael Bauman, One Battle After Another is the culmination of his 30-plus-year career. 

Beginning in the early ‘90s, Bauman cut his teeth in the camera department, eventually racking up credits that include Training Day, Munich and Iron Man. 2012 would prove to be a turning point as that’s when he joined Paul Thomas Anderson’s decorated team on The Master. That experience as gaffer has since turned into four more PTA films and several of his music videos for Radiohead. 

2017’s Phantom Thread is when Anderson began step one of Bauman’s ascension to full-fledged cinematographer. He served as “lighting cameraman,” which really meant that he was part of the multi-headed DP role. Thus, the Daniel Day-Lewis period drama did not have an officially credited cinematographer, but that changed on 2021’s Licorice Pizza when Bauman and Anderson split the responsibility. The 2024 shoot of current Oscar frontrunner One Battle After Another is when PTA finally crowned his longtime collaborator as the sole director of photography. 

There’s a common misconception that auteur filmmakers like Anderson have every detail of their films planned out ahead of time in excruciating detail. But so many of them live by the “best idea wins” mantra, something Bauman reconfirms in the case of Anderson.

“On One Battle, we shot the scene where Perfidia [Teyana Taylor] and Lockjaw [Sean Penn] finally meet in the hotel room, and Paul was like, ‘I’m thinking we should try something different.’ And I was like, ‘Well, why don’t we shoot it like we shot [a passed out] Barbara Rose on Phantom Thread?’” Bauman recalls to The Hollywood Reporter in support of One Battle After Another’s recent 4K Blu-ray release. “And Paul was like, ‘Oh my God, that’s it. Let’s do that.’ So that kind of shorthand and dialogue has been really healthy for us.”

One Battle After Another is the latest notable film to utilize VistaVision cameras. Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist seemed to revive the high-resolution widescreen 35mm format from the 1950s, as Yorgos Lanthimos, Alejandro González Iñárritu, M. Night Shyamalan and Greta Gerwig have all applied it to their recent films as well. However, Bauman recalls Anderson testing it out all the way back on the 2011 set of The Master. 

“The question was more, ‘Is this going to be a reliable enough format for us?’ When you see the shots from The Brutalist, [DP] Lol Crawley has got the camera on a tripod. It’s just sitting there, and we weren’t going to do anything like that,” Bauman says. “One Battle was always going to be about movement. It had to be handheld; it had to be on Steadicam; it had to be strapped to cars; it had to bounce around.”

VistaVision is considered a precursor to the much larger presentation of IMAX, and while Bauman and PTA formatted One Battle for IMAX screenings, the question remains as to whether Anderson will ever shoot with actual IMAX cameras. “I’ve talked to [DP] Autumn [Durald Arkapaw] a lot about IMAX and what she did on Sinners. An IMAX camera is huge and noisy,” Bauman says. “It’s obviously amazing as a format, but I think it depends on what the particular project needs. [Anderson] is always experimenting with stuff.”

Below, during a conversation with THR, Bauman — who recently photographed Matt Johnson’s Anthony Bourdain movie, Tony, for A24 — also discusses the unsung heroes who helped make the climactic highway chase the film’s most showstopping sequence.

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You started working with PTA as his gaffer on The Master (2012), and then your working relationship started to change as of Phantom Thread (2017). So how exactly did you end up becoming the full-fledged DP on One Battle After Another?

It was just an evolutionary process between the two of us. With Paul, you do movies, and you also do a lot of music videos, which are tests for movies that he has coming. We have a very tight team that involves Colin Anderson, the camera operator. Colin has done six movies with Paul, and I’ve done five. All of us have a very quick shorthand, and that’s really helped the process move along. So I did a Radiohead music video [for “Daydreaming”] with Paul, and he was like, “Hey, what if we did a movie like this?” Then we did Phantom Thread, and that role [as lighting cameraman] was really what started the train going down that way [of being DP]. 

Did he incrementally add more responsibility to your plate? 

Paul, like a lot of other directors, has a very strong visual sense. As a gaffer, I got to see so many different directors’ styles and so many different cinematographers’ working processes, which was an incredible gift in hindsight. Working with Paul is very much like working with Spielberg or Fincher. He speaks in the language of a lens. He’s really big into lenses. So our working style leans toward the British system. Paul and Colin will talk about lensing, and then he and I will have conversations about lighting before it all crosses over. Our process is a mishmash. 

A lot of times we’ll have visual conversations about shots that we did on some of the other movies. For example, on One Battle, we shot the scene where Perfidia [Teyana Taylor] and Lockjaw [Sean Penn] finally meet in the hotel room, and Paul was like, “I don’t know. I’m thinking we should try something different.” And I was like, “Well, why don’t we shoot it like we shot Barbara Rose on Phantom Thread?” It’s that scene where she’s drunk, passed out on the bed, and Alma comes in to take the dress. When we shot that, we put a light in the bathroom adjacent and shot a light against it to have shadows and things going on. 

So I mentioned that to Paul, and he was like, “Oh my God, that’s it. Let’s do that.” We then set that up, and that’s the version that ended up in the film. Perfidia bends over and pushes Lockjaw onto the bed, and there’s a silhouette against the back wall. So that kind of shorthand and dialogue has been really healthy for us.

VistaVision has mounted a major comeback lately. 

Has it ever! 

One Battle, The Brutalist and Bugonia have used it, as have upcoming films from Alejandro González Iñárritu, M. Night Shyamalan and Greta Gerwig. How did that choice get made on One Battle?

We originally did very rudimentary tests with VistaVision way back on The Master, so it had always been percolating on his radar. When he came to the decision, the question was more, “Is this going to be a reliable enough format for us?” When you see the shots from The Brutalist, [DP] Lol Crawley has got the camera on a tripod. It’s just sitting there, and we weren’t going to do anything like that. One Battle was always going to be about movement. It had to be handheld; it had to be on Steadicam; it had to be strapped to cars; it had to bounce around. You’re also shooting twice as much film. We ended up shooting a million-and-a-half feet of film. 

So the first step was asking, “Is this going to be a reliable camera enough to keep up with us?” We then had all the cameras rebuilt, and Giovanni Ribisi had a cherry condition Beaucam, which he was incredibly generous to lend us. That was our best [VistaVision] camera, and we had two others. We also had two Super 35 cameras to get out the door and get going. But even during the process of making the movie, we were learning the many peculiarities of the system, and there’s never enough time. You had to adjust to things like how it handles film loads. It couldn’t handle a thousand feet, we had to cut it down to 800. It had its own temperament, and you just had to roll with it. 

At the end of the day, Paul was pretty adamant about trying to figure out how to release the film on VistaVision, which really made it a unique cinema-going experience. So to originate on VistaVision and release it on VistaVision was really a feather in the cap. It involved new projectors and training and all this other stuff.

You also formatted the film for IMAX, but do you think Paul will eventually take the plunge with IMAX cameras? 

That’s a good question. I’ve talked to [DP] Autumn [Durald Arkapaw] a lot about IMAX and what she did on Sinners. An IMAX camera is huge and noisy. 

I read that The Odyssey invented some type of blimp to combat the noise.

Yeah, it’s obviously amazing as a format, but I think it depends on what the particular project needs. We had so much scale and scope [to necessitate VistaVision] on One Battle, but I don’t think Paul would’ve ever used VistaVision to shoot Phantom Thread, for example. That was a more intimate type of movie. But he’s always experimenting with stuff.

When One Battle jumps in time, we’re greeted with Perfidia’s voiceover saying, “Sixteen years later, the world had changed very little.” Did you still adjust the visual language for the new time period? Or did that line give you permission to not change it too drastically?

Visually, we were always going to be tight on faces. That was really a big thing. So the time period cut was really a great opportunity to keep the same language. Paul opens up with that shot at Willa [Chase Infiniti] starting her karate routine, and the shot before it is her as a baby. So it was still played within the language we established.

I’ll be blacklisted if I don’t ask about the highway scene. How complicated was it to achieve that rollercoaster effect? 

Camera wise, it was really about getting the camera as close to the road as possible. That involved using Allan Padelford’s camera car system. Those guys have been doing high-speed camera cars for decades. If you want to put the camera two inches off the ground and go 80 miles an hour, Allan and [stunt driver] Robert Nagle are your guys. On top of that, there were all the other things that add to the tension of it, like the way they cut it. It’s a Hitchcockian moment because of how strong Jonny Greenwood’s incredible score plays in that situation, and it really just adds this other layer of tension. The sound design of all the different cars and their motors was also really something. The other thing we did is we let the sun be as raw as possible. It was all about rawness. And when we attached the cameras to the car, if they had looseness and shake, that was a feature, not a bug. So the combination of all those elements really just added to the whole pie being as good as it turned out to be.

You had Jonny’s music available to you during nightly reviews of those “River of Hills” dailies?

Yeah, Paul would have temp’d stuff from Jonny that would set the tone and the feel. We would review dailies every day with Andy Jurgensen, the editor, just to see if we should get some more of this or more of that. It was very technically challenging because we only had a certain amount of time to lock up the active road [near Borrego Springs, California] and get all the traffic out of there. You’d then have one camera car chasing the picture vehicle and another one shooting the front of the picture vehicle behind it. So you had this train of vehicles that only had this small window to shoot all of the sequence. You’d do a pass, and then you’d hear, “Alright, cut. Clear the road.” Then they’d get all the traffic through, and then you’d hear, “Alright, reset it.” It was a laborious process, and then you’re trying to make it feel as seamless as possible. It was also hot as hell, so cameras were jamming.

What day from One Battle do you revisit the most in your mind?

Oh my gosh, there were so many great moments. I’ve always been a fan of the rooftop and riot sequence, and just how much went into it with the skateboarders and everything else. The community of El Paso was so generous, and the fact that we had the freedom to work downtown there is really cool. That location really added this layer to it. So I wouldn’t say there’s one day, but all of these days came together to make the magic and energy of the movie. 

Has Paul hinted at what he’s doing next?

He always has a few things burning. He never stops writing and ruminating on stuff. Everything that’s going on with this film right now takes up a ton of time, so he hasn’t really hinted about anything yet. But he’s definitely got a few things. A little of this, a little of that. So I’m sure that something will start to gather more moss and more momentum over the course of this year.

Paul recently paid tribute to his late first assistant director, Adam Somner, during one of his Golden Globes acceptance speeches. I presume he was a big part of your day to day as well? 

Yeah, I did eight movies with Adam, not just the five with Paul. We did Munich with Spielberg; Ford v Ferrari with James Mangold; and [the aforementioned Radiohead video]. So I knew Adam for 20 years, and it’s going to be challenging the next time we do a movie because his presence was so strong. He had this unique ability to manage these almost unmanageable situations. He just had this incredible skillset that made him one of the top ADs in the world. 

“Assistant director,” like Paul said, doesn’t do him justice. You’re talking about someone who’s a key collaborator. I could go frame by frame through One Battle After Another, and I could talk for an hour about Adam’s contributions. It’s subtle stuff that adds a layer of energy to the film. He was so gifted at being able to coordinate background, and he also did that a lot for Scorsese on Killers of the Flower Moon, The Wolf of Wall Street and all these other great films. You can’t appreciate it until you see it, but his impact throughout so many films that we hold dear to our hearts is unbelievable. So I will miss him a lot, and I’m glad Paul said what he said. This movie would not be what it is without Adam’s involvement, hands down.

Lastly, you worked as gaffer on Jon Favreau’s Iron Man. My mom and aunt happened to be staying at a Lone Pine bed and breakfast where a bunch of the Iron Man crew were staying during production. They ended up cooking for the crew, and when they found out that my mom and aunt were fellow guests, not employees, the crew slid generous tips under the doors to their rooms. So our family has had a long-running joke that my mom and aunt’s cooking was partially responsible for the success of the MCU.

(Laughs.) What a small world, man. Thank you for sharing that story. That movie was just so unique because it was before all of the MCU, and nobody knew what it was going to turn into at the time. It felt like we were making a small movie during our time in Lone Pine, and your great little story just adds to it.

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One Battle After Another is now available at home on 4K.