By Iain Blair
Perry Mason is back. But HBO’s homage to TV’s most famous legal eagle bears little resemblance to the classic Raymond Burr drama from the ‘50s and ‘60s. In an origin story that is both dark and visually beautiful, the series stars Matthew Rhys as a young Perry Mason, a struggling investigator working for a lawyer and mentor played by John Lithgow.
Kat Goodson
It’s set in Los Angeles in the 1930s and while the rest of the country struggles through the Great Depression, the city is booming thanks to oil money, the Olympic Games, talking pictures and evangelical fervor. When the kidnapping of an infant goes very, very wrong, Mason and his team take on the case of defending the parents in a twisty landscape full of moral chaos.
The HBO show is executive produced by Robert Downey Jr., Susan Downey, Ron Fitzgerald (showrunner), Joseph Horacek, Rolin Jones (showrunner), Amanda Burrell, Timothy Van Patten (who also directs) and Aida Rodgers. Lead actor Rhys is also a producer, and Katrin L. “Kat” Goodson is co-producer and handles a lot of the post.
I recently talked with Fitzgerald and Goodson about making the show, the challenges and the post production workflow.
What sort of show did you set out to make?
Ron Fitzgerald: Rolin and I didn’t want to just do a repeat of the Raymond Burr show, where he’s breaking people down on the stand every week. That’s been done very well, and we didn’t see any new ground there to cover. So instead we came up with this origin story — what made the character tick? What made him this super defense attorney? It’s noir, so we thought, “Can we do a TV show that’s like the Chinatown movie and make it at that level and with that complexity of storytelling and visual richness?” That was the goal we set for ourselves.
Talk about the look you went for on the show, and where did you shoot?
Fitzgerald: We talked a lot about it with director Timothy Van Patten, our production designer John Goldsmith and our DPs Dave Franco and Darran Tiernan, and they just set the template for the whole dark, noir look we wanted, with great, moody lighting and striking shot composition. One of the big problems was that nearly all of the architecture in LA from the ‘30s is long gone now, so recreating all that wasn’t easy. In the end we shot all over LA — from downtown to San Pedro and Pasadena — and did a lot of work in post to pull the whole tapestry together.
What cameras and lenses did you shoot on?
Kat Goodson: We shot with the Sony Venice 6K 3:2 full sensor (6048×4032) with a 2:1 aspect ratio and anamorphic lenses. Since the show is set in 1932 Depression-era LA, color management was vital to our process. It was important to establish the LUTs for both our dailies department and editorial and VFX crews in preproduction and maintain those looks throughout the process.
Our creative team would always be able to see a true representation of what the show would look like, whether they were on set, in editorial or watching dailies on their computers. Managing the look of the show was considered in every step of post production.
Where did you post?
Goodson: At Technicolor SGS and Technicolor Sound Services.
You had three editors — Mako Kamitsuna, Meg Reticker and Ron Rosen. How did that work?
Fitzgerald: In TV it’s always such a tight schedule, so Mako cut the first three episodes, Meg did the next three and Ron cut the last two. We began editing on the Paramount lot and then moved as everything got so messed up with COVID. By the end we were all working mostly remotely.
I’ve actually been based in Montana since March, and instead of sitting in a room with the editors and director and going through it all frame by frame, it was mostly looking at cuts and giving notes, which is a way of working that I actually prefer. Kat did a great job of making sure we all had the same monitors, headsets and gear, so we were all looking at exactly the same thing remotely.
What are the big editing challenges?
Fitzgerald: Walking the fine line between over-explaining stuff and maintaining the mystery. How much of the exposition can you pull out and still keep people drawn in and focused correctly? Especially when it’s information you need as a viewer. You don’t want to spoil the suspense.
Goodson: Perry Mason is a big story with a well-known character at its center. Deciding what to include and what to cut out was our biggest challenge.
This show has a great score and great sound design. Talk about the importance of sound and music to you and working with supervising sound editor Brad North.
Goodson: We did it all at Technicolor, and sound and music design was the last, biggest step in world-building. With a great jazz score by Terence Blanchard, multiple locales and the Great Depression as our backdrop, we worked closely with Brad and our sound team — including sound re-recording mixers Joe DeAngelis and Chris Carpenter — to bring our characters and their stories to life.
What about all the VFX? What’s involved with VFX supervisor Justin Ball?
Fitzgerald: We had various vendors working on them (including Digital Domain, Pixomondo, Technicolor VFX and Lola VFX), as we had a ton of VFX, which you always do when it’s a period piece. And there was also the usual cleanup and replacement stuff on top of some quite complicated sequences, like the Angels Flight one in downtown LA.
Goodson: Re-constructing Angels Flight was the most challenging VFX sequence of the season. Building a locale that only partly still exists in a heavily populated area in downtown LA was challenging for both production and post. Justin Ball and the folks at Digital Domain spent several months fine-tuning the location to make it feel both believable and familiar to the audience.
Where did you do the DI, and how closely do you work with colorist Pankaj Bajpai?
Goodson: We worked very closely with Pankaj Bajpai and his color team at Technicolor. From building and refining the LUTs in preproduction to delivering the final archive masters, color design was always at the forefront of our process.
Given the COVID-19 crisis, you finished Season 1 just in time. Have you started working on Season 2?
Fitzgerald: We have. We finished shooting Season 1 around mid-January and were well into post by the time it really hit, so we were really lucky compared with a lot of shows that were shut down. For Season 2, we’ve set up a writer’s room, but I find the online room difficult and exhausting, as you get so tired just staring at a screen all day. Looking ahead, we’ll have to see what happens, but we’d love it to run for quite a while, and there’s no shortage of material, as Erle Stanley Gardner wrote over 80 Perry Mason books.
Do you like being showrunners?
Fitzgerald: We do, especially the writing part and post, and collaborating with actors, directors, editorial, the music and sound teams. We love all of that, but all the administration and logistics aren’t so much fun.
What are the big challenges of running this show?
Fitzgerald: For me, it’s all the organizational aspects. There are a lot of moving parts to deal with, a huge cast. And once you leave the creative challenges, which are always welcome, it’s far less enjoyable.
Industry insider Iain Blair has been interviewing the biggest directors in Hollywood and around the world for years. He is a regular contributor to Variety and has written for such outlets as Reuters, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe.
