Tom Hooper (director) - Directing Style

Directing Style

Hooper uses camera styles "that encode the DNA of the storytelling in some way" and will reuse and develop filming styles in successive productions. Hooper identifies research as being key to his process of directing period dramas such as John Adams in order to make the scenes authentic. For The Damned United, Hooper and director of photography Ben Smithard researched the look of the late 1960s and early 1970s through football photography books. Hooper has also been influenced by cinematographer Larry Smith, who worked with Stanley Kubrick and advised Hooper of techniques used by Kubrick. Hooper and Smith have worked together on Cold Feet, Love in a Cold Climate, Prime Suspect, Red Dust and Elizabeth I.

Hooper also uses uncommon framing techniques to emphasise story; in John Adams, he wanted to imply American independence seemed unlikely during the Revolutionary War, so he used "a very rough camera style—almost all hand held, wide lenses close to the actors, lots of movement, many cameras shooting at once so there was often not a settled master "point of view", and lots of unmatching dutch tilts so the horizon lines of the frame were often being thrown off." The America-set scenes were contrasted by the scenes set in France, in which more traditional filming techniques were employed to evoke a feel of entrenched values. Similarly, in The Damned United, Hooper began to experiment with using wide-angle lenses and putting actors in the extreme edges of the frame. He was influenced by the unusual framing from social photography of the 1970s, and he and Ben Smithard decided to adopt the framing style while scouting locations. Hooper used the same style in The King's Speech, particularly in the scene where Bertie and Logue meet in Logue's consulting room; Colin Firth is framed to the extreme left of the picture, leaving most of the shot dominated by the rough wall behind Firth.

Another frequently used technique is Hooper's tendency to use a variety of focal length camera lenses to distort the resulting picture. In The Damned United he used a 10mm lens, notably in the scene where Clough stays inside during the Derby–Leeds match. Hooper operated the camera in this scene himself. In The King's Speech, Hooper used "typically 14mm, 18mm, 21mm, 25mm and 27mm" lenses and put the camera close to the actors' faces. Hooper said the use of this method in the first consulting room scene served to "suggest the awkardness and tension of Logue and Bertie's first meeting".