{"id":257484,"date":"2026-01-22T06:34:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-22T06:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/257484\/"},"modified":"2026-01-22T06:34:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T06:34:09","slug":"interview-cinematographer-michael-bauman-returns-to-discuss-the-look-of-one-battle-after-another","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/257484\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview: Cinematographer Michael Bauman Returns to Discuss the Look of ‘One Battle After Another’"},"content":{"rendered":"

The look of a Paul Thomas Anderson film, it goes without saying, is quite singular. For One Battle After Another, Anderson and his cinematographer Michael Bauman were opting to shoot on film, in VistaVision, making it all the more complicated. It so easily could have gone wrong. Instead, it wound up one of the best looking movies of the year. Yesterday, I spoke to editor Andy Jergensen here<\/a> about the flick. Today, hours before Bauman and company likely become Oscar nominees, it\u2019s his time to chat.<\/p>\n

Last time I spoke to Bauman, it was for Licorice Pizza, where he and Anderson shared the cinematographer\u2019s credit. I introduced that conversation here<\/a> like so:<\/p>\n

The look of a\u00a0Paul Thomas Anderson\u00a0project is always something worth talking about. They always vary, whether it\u2019s his explorations of Southern California, or something seemingly totally out of the blue like\u00a0Phantom Thread. Anderson is a master craftsman, so it stands to reason that his department heads and technical crew are masters as well. One such individual is\u00a0Michael Bauman, a longtime gaffer who actually shares the cinematographer label with PTA on\u00a0Licorice Pizza. As the flick is awaiting its Academy Award fate, I recently spoke to the artisan about this tremendous work.\u00a0<\/p>\n

My four star review of the film here<\/a> includes the following bit about Bauman and PTA\u2019s filmmaking:<\/p>\n

Paul Thomas Anderson is flexing a new directorial muscle here, giving us action scenes, a blockbuster scale (done on a blockbuster budget), and even making some moves towards the mainstream.\u00a0One Battle After Another\u00a0is almost certainly his most accessible film, yet at the same time, it\u2019s also easily his most political. The fascist government the revolutionaries are fighting against are unnamed white supremacists, though you don\u2019t have to squint too hard to see who Anderson is raging at. The loose adaptation of\u00a0Thomas Pynchon\u2018s\u00a0Vineland\u00a0never feels preachy, instead consistently seeking to entertain. The real world timeliness of the message just gives it all weight. PTA\u2019s writing and direction is once again impeccable here, aided by another mesmerizing\u00a0Jonny Greenwood\u00a0score, as well as stunning cinematography (see it in VistaVision if you can!) from\u00a0Michael Bauman.
<\/p>\n

Below, you can see my discussion with Bauman. It\u2019s fascinating to hear about how the movie\u2019s look is such a collaborative effort between Anderson and Bauman, especially in how PTA kicked off their conversation about it by revealing the VistaVision plan. The grit of film really plays into its look as well, which he\u2019s able to get into too. It\u2019s a really enjoyable conversation about one of the most technically impressive works of 2025. We\u2019re about to see just how many Oscar nominations the film receives below the line (in addition to its various above the line honors), so it\u2019s a perfect time to watch Bauman get into the look of One Battle After Another, if I do say so, myself.<\/p>\n

Here now is my interview with One Battle After Another cinematographer Michael Bauman. Enjoy:<\/p>\n

One Battle After Another is available to watch now on 4K, Blu-ray, and HBO Max!<\/p>\n

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\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The look of a Paul Thomas Anderson film, it goes without saying, is quite singular. For One Battle…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":257485,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[93,61,1635,1694,60,128084,270,11549],"class_list":{"0":"post-257484","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-interview","11":"tag-interviews","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-michael-bauman","14":"tag-movies","15":"tag-one-battle-after-another"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/257485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}