In the Sundance documentary film Searchers, director Pacho Velez asks a very diverse set of New Yorkers what their preferred dating apps are and what sort of experiences they’ve had while searching for that special someone. The doc was shot — around the city and in people’s apartments — by DPs Daniel Claridge and Martin DiCicco.

Daniel Claridge

Let’s find out more about the shoot.

How early did you get involved on this film?
Daniel Claridge: I was involved with the project from the beginning, when we were starting to explore how to bring the world of online dating to life. One of the film’s striking conceits — that an audience observes (and in some ways, participates in) a person’s browsing session — emerged only after a series of visual experiments that got us really excited.

One of the clearest benefits of working together early on was that the cinematography was able to inform the essential concept of the film, when it’s (too) often only the other way around.

Martin DiCicco: Pacho and I met at UnionDocs. We were both fans of each other, but we really connected through director Brett Story. I think maybe he liked my work on her film, The Hottest August, perhaps seeing a similar, roving practice of filming the absurd in NYC. Our way of personalizing it for Pacho roaming the streets became a sort of skeleton connecting each “searcher.” I think he also liked that I’m so used to working alone on my own films, that I am very good with improvisation, being uncomfortable and carrying gear without complaint.

Martin DiCicco

How did you work with Pacho? What direction were you given?
DiCicco: One thing Pacho had discussed was a desire for uniformity in visual framing, so as to mimic the dating profiles people were swiping through — as if we the audience are viewing all the interviewees as potential matches.

Claridge: Pacho and I have now worked together on a few projects, all of which share a basic formal approach that involves capturing extended portraits of people and places with mostly natural light and an unobtrusive footprint. As a result, I’ve developed a pretty good understanding of Pacho’s sensibilities.

This project had the luxury of being shot systematically, which meant that Pacho could also be very involved in the cinematography.  So on set it was really a collaborative process of crafting compositions together.

What about the color? Was it all remotely?
Claridge: I did the color work on the film, as well as the overlay animations. (I used Blackmagic Resolve for the color and Adobe After Effects for the animation.) This had the benefit of allowing us to tweak the elements (production footage, animations, color) in parallel up until the delivery. It also meant that we could do the finishing work together in an apartment, which was really important.

What did you end up shooting on and why? 
DiCicco: Like many documentaries, this was shot on whatever we could get our hands on, and, fortunately, Pacho had a kit already with the Canon C300 Mark II and Zeiss 28-80mm compact zoom. The C300 has been a stalwart of many docs I’ve shot over the last few years, giving it a super-sharp, nice big-barreled zoom to shoot through. It produces very nice and what some may call “buttery” images.

You guys used a teleprompter?
Claridge: At the very beginning, we knew we wanted the intimate effect of having subjects speak directly to the lens, so the use of a teleprompter was always part of the set up. But it took a few experiments before we landed on the novel idea of using the teleprompter to project a browsing session rather than an interviewer’s face. Then we went through a variety of technical iterations to figure out the most seamless way of simultaneously operating, projecting and capturing the mobile apps through a laptop computer.

On this film, the lens was a kind of two-way portal, as it also served as the backplate on which the subjects’ dating profiles were projected (using the teleprompter). There’s an intimacy and distortion inherent to that shared usage, complicated by the fact that subjects are then looking at profile pictures taken by cameras and designed to be viewed through screens.

So the visual choices, from the balanced compositions to the wider focal lengths, were all intended to service this sense of refraction, both as a stylistic statement and as a bit of a metaphor for how online dating operates through a skein of lenses and screens.

Can you talk lighting?
DiCicco: Much of the lighting was improvised based on whatever practicals or “encountered lighting” were available in each person’s home. We had a small kit of LEDs, variously using lamps from LiteMat and Litepanels, and the approach was mostly to supplement their home lighting rather than create something artificial.

For the exteriors, we shot all over the city in public spaces, parks, sidewalks, without any permits or crew of more than four, which is always difficult when you want to control natural light. But we mostly used overhead silks and bounces. And, as always on exteriors, negative fill is your friend.

Are there some scenes that stick out as challenging? Can you talk about those?
DiCicco: I’m sure he may demur, but I think there was a considerable debate about how much to show Pacho’s own identity as a “searcher” and for him to step in front of the camera.

Claridge: Another recurring production challenge was remotely operating the apps smooth enough to serve as an actual browsing session.

Looking back on the film, would you have done anything different?
Claridge: There are always small things to obsess over in retrospect, but what I really enjoyed about this project was that for most of it — with the striking exception of Martin’s observational footage — we didn’t have to run and gun. So once we understood how the film was going to work visually, we had the time and space to shoot in a very deliberate way, meaning there was less room for regrets after the fact.

Any tips for young cinematographers?
DiCicco: Be someone who is pleasant to be around on set; it’ll be one of your greatest assets.

Claridge: It’s easy to forget that filmmaking (especially doc cinematography) is super physical, so get comfortable carrying heavy stuff and standing in awkward positions for long stretches. It’s worth the discomfort to make a great movie.