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Lessons in Chemistry

Lessons in Chemistry DP Jason Oldak Talks Light, Lenses and More

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By Randi Altman

Jason Oldak is a cinematographer with almost two decades of experience across large- and small-scale feature films, episodic television, documentaries and numerous commercial projects. He recently shot episodes of Apple TV+’s Lessons in Chemistry, starring Brie Larson and Lewis Pullman.

Lessons in Chemistry

Jason Oldak

Oldak was nominated for the ASC award for Limited or Anthology Series or Motion Picture Made for TV for his work on Episode 7, titled Book of Calvin. We reached out to Oldak to talk about that particular episode and his other work on the show.

How early did you start on Lessons in Chemistry?
I was hired onto the team in early spring, but prep didn’t commence until midsummer. It’s always beneficial to join the team early and talk about the origins of the project. It was also quite helpful to discuss the process with my co-DP, Zack Galler, and our production designer, Cat Smith.

Cat had a plethora of images and colors she pulled to discuss her intentions and how the world would be built on the stages. That helped us to think about lighting and the design of the LUT. Zack and I shared our lookbooks from our respective interviews and found shared images. Moving forward, I knew we were on the same page with our visual intentions for the show.

Generally, when starting a show, there is a meeting with the studio to present a lookbook across all departments. As I mentioned, both Zack and I shared similar images in our own interview lookbooks that happened to end up in the presentation to the studio. Although many of our images had a period feel, nothing was forced or overly dialed-in. Our objective was always to find the right cinema glass to tell the story appropriately. Our lighting and our LUT would balance the palettes that our production design and costume design teams created.

What was it shot on? Why was it the right camera for the series?
We photographed the series on the ARRI Mini LF camera system along with TLS Canon K35 lenses. I love the ARRI camera. Its color science seems to react slightly better to skin tones and has a softness to the image compared to some of the other systems out there.

The camera is also small enough so that it never was an issue when mounting to cranes, remote heads or Steadicam. However, I really feel that the lens choice is your paintbrush when it comes to designing your visual language for your show. The TLS Canon K35 lenses, supported by our friends at Keslow Camera, are rehoused vintage glass that really accentuated the period we were after. We added a mix of atmosphere, and it was exactly the right recipe for the series.

 

Did you follow the look created in the pilot?
This show doesn’t necessarily have a pilot in the traditional sense. It was an eight-episode, straight-to-picture series for Apple TV+ based on the best-selling novel of the same name. Lessons in Chemistry tells the story of Elizabeth Zott’s journey. Each episode of the limited series tends to create a different emotional and physical stage in Elizabeth’s life, and that gave Zack Galler and me a jumping-off point for tone and the visual language for our particular episodes. Zack Galler photographed episodes 1, 2, 5 and 6, and I photographed episodes 3, 4, 7 and 8.

How did you make your episodes your own?
It all starts with the story you are telling. As a cinematographer, you have to be truthful to the pages you’re given. In Episode 103, we dealt with an immense amount of grief and sadness. It’s quite the departure from the first two episodes, where their love story began. Losing someone close to you creates a sensation that the world has stopped moving. It felt necessary to visually depart from the light and embrace the darkness and the stillness. There were a lot of scenes in the episode that needed the stillness to process the pain.

In Episode 104, we deal with birth and new beginnings. The episode narrates an initial discomfort, which eventually arcs to determination. Our lighting and camera work was distinctive of these emotions. We opted for some hand-held work and extreme shallowness with our focus during the scene when Elizabeth is giving birth to Mad. We used a device called the Deakinizer on the front element of the camera to create a dreamlike state, when Calvin enters her vision and guides her through the birthing process. We started that episode with a level of stillness, but by the end there was determination, and we created more camera movement to justify the change.

Episode 7, the penultimate episode, takes us back to the origin of Calvin and his side of our love story. This episode had a plethora of visual opportunities. Tara Miele, the director of episodes 7 and 8, and I created a unique look for young Calvin’s world in the 1930s. It felt appropriate to strip down the color since this is where Calvin’s life started.

Once we bridge the gap to adult Calvin and his scientific achievements, we contrast the world with warmth and color. Another opportunity that challenged our visual vocabulary was the correspondence between our man of science and our man of God. Tara and I created a cohesion of imagery that flowed back and forth, sometimes metaphorically, to the spoken word being said. We romanticized the influence each of them had on their worlds through camera movement and composition.

In Episode 8, we come full circle, finding focus and a clear path ahead. A big arc to the final episode is Elizabeth’s decision about her future at Supper at Six. We devised fluid camera moves, and our lighting felt clear and controlled. The number of shots we devised and how we introduced the show was important, as this would be the last time we step foot in the Supper at Six studio.

As we reveal Elizabeth’s new profession, we contrast this with a more simplistic approach to the set design, lighting and shot design. In one of the final scenes of the series, we are in the Zott residence, and Elizabeth is hosting a dinner party with all of the characters under one roof. She greets them as she passes through the house from room to room. We designed the camera to dance through this interaction with only one or two cuts. My intention was to have the audience feel as if they were as much a part of this POV and this journey with these folks as Elizabeth was. It felt like a perfect way to say goodbye to our show.

For Episode 7, there are different time frames and looks … young Calvin, Calvin as a chemist, Calvin in 1951. How did you differentiate those with the camera, lenses and lighting?
There is a distinction between where Calvin starts in his life and where he ends up. As a young man, he was stripped of a family and a home. But he had a drive and perseverance. As we start our story in the 1930s, we decided to strip the color away and create a cooler palette with blooming highlights.

As we transition to adult Calvin, who has become established through his scientific achievements, our world has more color and warmth to it. It felt important to give these two worlds their own characteristics. The way we moved through both time periods felt true to the style of our show. The lenses were the same throughout the series. The true distinction between the 1930s and ‘50s is the color palette of the two periods, a collaborative effort by camera, costume and set design.

You were nominated for your work on Episode 7. Can you talk us through that one?
First off, I want to say what a complete honor it has been to be recognized by my peers for the collaborative work my team and I were able to create. I strive for creativity and to have a passionate sensibility toward the work at hand. To be recognized with an award is the icing on the cake.

When thinking about what episode I should submit for the awards, Episode 7 spoke to me. I love how we go backward to tell the story from a perspective other than our main character’s. I love the unlikely friendship that Wakely and Calvin form via the written word and how their lives influence each other’s.

When I first interviewed for the job, I remember reading a scene involving Calvin at dawn, crewing on the open water. I had this immediate vision of what that would look like through the lens in my head. I really wanted to photograph it right then and there. In Episode 7, I was able to do that!

That first shot with young Calvin — was that one camera move until the classroom?
In general, our approach to camera movement in Lessons in Chemistry was striving to take, for example, three shots that you need in a scene and make them work as one. We tried to design blocking so that the camera moves from one piece to the next, acting more like a oner and telling the story in a non-cutty way. Our A camera operator, Mikael Levin, and B camera operators, Jan Ruona and Ilan Levin, were masters at this.

When Tara Miele and I discussed the opening sequence, we wanted to show off how Calvin had always been so curious about the world, and that took his attention away from his schooling. The opening shot was not one shot, but it was intended to feel like one. Because of the geography in front of the boy’s home location, we had to use a crane to tell our story. As Calvin is called out by the first nun, we telescope back, leading him to run around the corner and up the stairs. As he rounded the corner, we shifted our crane on a dolly track down the line with him, and as he ran up the stairs, the crane started to telescope forward, feeling as if we were running to class too! It was a game of measurements to see if we could achieve it, but thanks to key grip Adam Kolegas and his team, it was a success.

Once inside, we actually did the whole shot as one move on Steadicam. Alas, in the edit they needed to break it up with another shot midway through, but it still works. The intention was to tie the boy’s name, Calvin Evans, to his face at the very end of the sequence. We start on his feet as he enters the hallway and pull back, leading him.

We do a dance with the camera and wrap around the back of Calvin as he rounds the corner; we are now in follow mode as he approaches the class door. As he opens the door, we creep in behind trying to get to our seat before the nun turns around. As she says his name, we wrap around and reveal Calvin in the light, sitting in his chair. I loved the orchestration and the timing of that shot. It told the story in the most effective way possible. This was truly a collaborative effort with our operator, our director and me.

What about the crewing scene you touched on earlier?
Being on the open water and filming the actors crewing was one of the highlights of the show for me. It was such a tranquil and beautiful experience. We had a large pontoon boat that carried the crew and a 35-foot MovieBird crane with a camera on the end of it. We treated the row work like you would with a car-to-car sequence.

However, every cinematographer will tell you that their biggest fear is watching that sunset and knowing that they did not complete the work for the day. Our day on the water, shooting all of our row work for Episode 7 and Episode 8, was an extremely tight schedule. The plan was to shoot the row work on a lake in San Dimas, California, in the early part of December — a time of the year when the sun sets at 4:30pm, if you’re lucky.

We arrived way before the sun came up and had everything prerigged to get out on the water as soon as the sun was rising. Tara, our AD and I worked out a very specific timetable, so it left little room for error. In addition to our own water work, we also were tasked with shooting a portion of Episode 5’s row work that day and two scenes along the edge of the water, one being a lengthy dialogue scene in Episode 8. We had our work cut out for us. In the end, the light always seemed to be in the right place at the right time, and our team was on their A-game and knew exactly what needed to be done. The success is in the results!

What about the lighting at the lab and at Calvin’s house? It seems like the windows are the main light sources.
The term naturalistic lighting comes up a lot in contemporary cinematography, yet it doesn’t always seem successful in its final execution. I truly feel like this was one of the first shows where I got there.

We really strived to make it feel like the light was coming from our window sources or from a fixture that you can see on-camera in the interior sets. We augmented these frames with our own lighting, but just enough exposure to feel as if that practical was creating the luminance on the subject’s face. At times, it was about finding a source that was more of a ¾ back angle to the subject, and we would wrap that light subtly with atmospheric smoke and grip attire so that the lighting never felt heavy on the face. If we did bring units inside to help enhance the source of light, they were always used very subtly.

In the lab, we used a heavy number of lights outside of the set to sell daylight, and they also worked as the sun, pushing their way through the blinds to find the point we were lighting. However, we also rigged par cans above each window almost directly downward onto the blinds. The heat from those units would hit the blinds and carry into the room to really sell the hot California sunlight. It helped us light minimally in the room and be able to move throughout.

I can go on and on….

What was it about Episode 7 that you think resonated with your peers?
I am truly happy with all the work we did on Lessons in Chemistry. Each of my episodes was so unique, with various challenges and success stories. I really felt that my creative gears were constantly moving, and for me, that’s a dream job.

In regard to the selection of Episode 7, with most award shows, you select an episode to submit. I felt that Episode 7 showcased the most range in regards to my cinematography on the show. The episode allowed us to create a look unique to the 1930s, there was a range of new locations, we showcased a lot of physical activity in Calvin’s running and rowing, and we saw the perspective of the accident in a different light. Episode 7 felt the most diverse with my range of work.

What about the other episodes you shot? What was most fun or challenging about those?
In Episode 4, as Elizabeth gets more clarity, she decides to convert her kitchen to an industrial lab. The directors, Bert and Bertie [Amber Templemore-Finlayson and Katie Ellwood], and I created an elaborate number of shots, all designed to feel like one fluid movement of the camera to create the feeling of time passing.

The camera moves in and around the kitchen, with stitched edits in a few places, as the viewer watches the transformation unfold. Different characters come and go, building the passage of time. In the end, we land on Elizabeth and a vision of Calvin reminiscing about their past and their love for one another. The way they are both lit in this moment is one of my favorite scenes in the show.

They are gazing into each other’s eyes. As the viewer, you know this is in her head, but in this moment, I wanted it to feel real. We enhanced this feeling through dreamlike lighting on their faces. We do a slow dolly push into each of their faces as they talk about their pasts.

I truly love how we orchestrated that sequence. The scene had to be shot over several days because the art department had to change over the kitchen while we moved from sequence to sequence, so you can feel the kitchen changing and time passing. It was quite the undertaking but such a success in the end.

What about working with the show’s colorist? Were there on-set LUTs?
Ian Vertovec at Light Iron was our colorist for the series. He oversaw the dailies and was involved in each of our episodes for final color. This was my first time working with Ian, and he was wonderful, a true artist and talent. I consider us lucky to have had him on the show.

Zack Galler had a working relationship with Ian prior to Lessons in Chemistry, and since Zack went first out the gate, he sent some images to Ian in regards to building a show LUT. Ian looked at the images and immediately thought of the old AGFA film stock from the 1950s. It had a warmish quality, but with room for cool tones to pop through. He gave us a show LUT to work off of with those qualities in mind. It was a subtle LUT that complemented that soft 1950s color palette beautifully. Our DIT, Scott Resnick, was able to monitor the LUT based on our lighting and sets and make it work for the changing locations.

I was able to work with Ian in the final color for all of my episodes and had a great rapport with him. That stage of the process is always one of my favorites.

What haven’t I asked that’s important?
I truly had the best of both worlds on this show. I worked with three talented and artistically driven directors, who worked alongside me and prepped the heck out of these shows, pushing me to make great work for the screen.

As closely as I worked with our directors in prep, I was in full communication with my camera, grip and lighting teams to make images that we were all so proud of. Half the battle is hiring a talented team behind you that you can communicate your vision with, and it’s executed with ease. This team was a sensational bunch that understood the story and knew how to tell it in a compelling way.

Finally, I was in awe of our cast’s performances throughout the series. They brought their all on-set each and every day. They were so powerful and brought such talent to the frame. I am truly honored to be a part of the Lessons in Chemistry team.

Randi Altman is the founder and editor-in-chief of postPerspective. She has been covering production and post production for more than 25 years. 

Loki

DP Isaac Bauman on Going Old-School for Loki Season 2

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By Randi Altman

The Disney+ series Loki, based on the Marvel character, is back with six new episodes. In this season, Loki and the Time Variance Authority are searching for Sylvie, Ravonna Renslayer and Miss Minutes. It once again stars Tom Hiddleston as the god of mischief.

DP Isaac Bauman joined the Loki team in Season 2, following up on the work of Season 1 director Kate Herron and DP Autumn Durald Arkapaw, ASC. The cinematographer, who has television, film and commercials to his credit, shot five of the six episodes.

Loki

Isaac Bauman

We reached out to him to find out more…

What was it like coming onto a successful series in its second season? Did you follow the look of the first or develop your own? A bit of both?
We reinvented the look of Loki for its second season. Fortunately, we had Season 1 production designer Kasra Farahani and costume designer Christine Wada returning to continue their incredible work, which established a much-needed degree of aesthetic continuity for us to shake things up around.

Season 1 director Kate Herron and cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw knocked it out of the park, so we knew we had a lot to live up to. The thing is, we realized what made their work on the first season so special was how much of their own voices they brought to it.

For long-time admirers of Autumn’s work (such as myself), it was immediately visible in the cinematography that this was her voice — no one else’s. And that’s what made the cinematography feel so fresh and exciting. Autumn did her thing, and we were all the better for it. But to continue with the rightfully acclaimed approach from the first season would have done a disservice to the show.

I’m not Autumn, and in fact, I’d say our individual bodies of work display remarkably little stylistic overlap. We are very, very different artists with entirely different interests and preferences.

Same deal with Justin Benson’s and Aaron Moorhead’s philosophy as directors. They’ve developed their own voice, their own approach to the craft. It’s theirs, and it has very little overlap with any other filmmakers I’m aware of.

To step into Loki and imitate the work of our predecessors felt like it would be a mistake. When we decided that certain things had to change, we realized that everything had to change. We had to develop an entirely new approach from the ground up.

At every step of the process, we had the support and feedback of our open-minded, brilliant executive producer Kevin Wright, as well as the whole gang at Marvel HQ. We felt 100% supported, and we are so deeply grateful for that.

How would you describe the look of this season, and how did the showrunners tell you what they wanted?
Tasteful, mature, elegant, organic and immersive. I developed the look alongside lead directors and executive producers Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead. They’ve made half a dozen indie films and have developed a very refined style together. They came in knowing a lot of what they wanted to do this season —specifically in regard to camera movement and framing — and I brought a lot of the lighting ideas into play. It was a true collaboration.

We switched from “studio mode” filmmaking (dolly, crane, remote head, Steadicam, etc.) to doc-style hand-held photography. I’ve traditionally been a studio-mode guy myself, but Justin and Aaron love hand-held and wanted the sense of immediacy, naturalism and immersiveness that you can only ever get from hand-held. They were 100% right, and I love what the raw, energetic, hand-held approach brings to the often polished world of the MCU. We also did a lot of zooms for a ’60s/’70s thriller aesthetic and to break up the hand-held work.

Loki

We changed the aspect ratio from 2.39 to 2.20. In my mind, 2.39 is not wide — it’s actually narrow — and those thick black bars on the top and bottom of the screen feel like wasted canvas. 2.20 maintains that feeling of “wide” cinematic scope while allowing for 10% more vertical compositional space.

Another thing we changed was eliminating the use of colorful lighting. You’ll notice in the first season that there are many sequences — usually at least one in each episode — that are light, with saturated and colorful sources. In our season, there are none. The idea was to homogenize the palette — really limit the scope of the range of looks as well as tools used — to create more of a feeling of aesthetic cohesion and discipline.

Did you shoot using the same kit as Season 1?
We switched from Sony Venice to the ARRI Alexa Mini LF. I like the Venice a lot, but the Alexa is still the champ, in my opinion. There is something about how it renders movement and motion blur.

We switched from anamorphic to spherical lenses. This is a personal preference. I find that anamorphics look stunningly gorgeous but less immersive and immediate than the more matter-of-fact spherical optics.

We switched from top-of-the-line Panavision lenses to what are essentially prosumer-oriented budget lenses: the Tokina Cinema Vistas. We tested just about every set of large-format spherical lenses Panavision and ARRI Rental London possessed, and the Tokinas best fit the look we were after, even after a lot of incredulous double-checking. The proof is in the pudding.

We switched from the longer focal lengths that are inherent to anamorphic cinematography to using (very) wide lenses almost exclusively. These cameras got right up in our actors’ faces all day, every day. Cheers to the cast for using matte box/tape eyelines and never complaining about it.

Did you have a DIT? If so, how did that help?
Jay Patel was our DIT, and he was an enormous help. Because of the complicated VFX pipeline, it was necessary to limit ourselves to a single LUT. That would’ve been tricky without Jay. Using CDLs, we made little tweaks to scenes and individual shots all the time. It’s important to go into editorial with the most final-looking image possible, and Jay and I worked as best we could to deliver that.

Loki

Matt Watson

Did you work with the colorist on the look? What is an example of a note you gave to the colorist?
We worked with Matt Watson, who works full-time as a colorist at Marvel Finishing. He played a huge role in developing the look of the season. First, working together, he and I developed a film emulation LUT. In the first season, they embraced a fresh, cutting-edge aesthetic, whereas we were more interested in a vintage, throwback look — as if Loki was shot on the same film stock as 2001: A Space Odyssey.

We also added pretty heavy in-camera and digital/post-filtration (in addition to the heavy level of haze present on the sets) to make the image feel as soft and smoked-out as we could. Matt contributed to these efforts as well, developing a proprietary diffusion filter for us in Resolve, and it really made the images sing. And we added a hell of a lot of 16mm grain, which Matt massaged into the image, often on a shot-by-shot basis.

You touched on this a bit earlier, but you chose to go hand-held when Loki goes through timeslips. Why was that the way to go? What view does that give the audience?
The idea behind the hand-held, in general, was to put the audience into the scene. We wanted the photography to be as immersive as possible, and hand-held felt like the best way to achieve that.

What about the lighting? You went old school with tungsten rather than the newer LEDs. Why was that?
In the first season, nearly everything was LED. For example, the iconic Chronomonitor Wing set (the main area where they watch the timeline monitor) was lit with SkyPanels. In Season 2, we switched to ARRI Arrilite 2000s. Again, this was to achieve a more convincing vintage aesthetic.

There are a lot of reasons — and I could talk about how much I love tungsten all day — but the main reason was the production design. If Kasra’s sets so lovingly evoke a late ‘60s/early ‘70s aesthetic, then why shouldn’t the lighting?

All these older films we love the look of (like 2001) used tungsten, so we did too. You can see the difference in how much warmer the TVA feels this season; it’s very rich and golden.

Can you walk us through the challenging World’s Fair scene?
The World’s Fair was a massive build that took many weeks and a huge construction crew. Due to the size of the set, the scope of the lighting became quite large as well. On shooting days, we had over 100 set lighting technicians with us.

The idea was to key the scene with light motivated by the Ferris wheel. Where the Ferris wheel would be added later on in post, we had an array of Wendy Lights — an old school, very powerful, multi-headed tungsten unit. You can think of a Wendy as the big, industrial-sized brother of a Maxi Brute. We had a large array of those — large enough to accurately emulate a source as large as a 130-foot-tall Ferris wheel. It was suspended from a large construction crane, with the bottom side roughly 60 feet in the air. That provided the key and a feel of directionality that carried down the entire depth of the approximately 180-foot-long set.

For fill light, we had three 40-foot by 40-foot overhead softboxes equipped with Vortex8 LED units suspended from construction cranes out over and along the center of the set. There were 20- to 30-foot gaps between the softboxes, but on camera they feel very much like a continuous source.

Around the outside of the set, we had 12 by 20 “letterbox” softboxes on Manitou telehandlers pointed down into the set at about 45 degrees. We used these for edges or to dig fill in at a lower angle where necessary.

There were also more than a thousand practical bare tungsten bulbs built into the set, which provided some fill. And there was the need for an insane amount of distro.

Loki features a number of visual effects. How did that affect your shooting, if at all?
Generally, VFX sequences are fairly easy from a DP perspective. You frame the shot you want, you light it the way you want, you add interactive lighting effects as instructed by the VFX supervisor, and you never let the characters drift off the bluescreen. That’s about it.

The most involved part is planning the lighting. If you’re shooting a bluescreen sequence and only have a very rough understanding of what the VFX world will look like eventually, it is essentially on the DP to determine what the lighting should be. Often in VFX sequences, the DP will be indecisive or want to allow VFX the most flexibility to determine lighting, so that’s why you get a lot of these CGI set pieces looking so flat, gray and wishy-washy.

The trick is to really plant your flag and make strong, decisive choices about the direction, intensity and color of the light in your VFX sequence. Fortunately, I had the full support and, more than that, the encouragement of VFX supervisor Chris Townsend in that approach.

What was the most challenging part of the series for you?
The biggest challenge on a production this size is maintaining consistency in the look. Shooting dozens of sets on a half dozen stages, working with a large ensemble cast and a crew of hundreds over the course of 18 weeks. Trying to unify the look of the show so footage shot on day 1 cuts seamlessly with something shot on day 90 and has a strong, unique sense of style… that’s the challenge.

Randi Altman is the founder and editor-in-chief of postPerspective. She has been covering production and post production for more than 25 years. 

Cinematographer Greig Fraser

DP Greig Fraser on Dune’s Digital/Film Process and Look

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By Iain Blair

Australian cinematographer Greig Fraser (ACS, ASC), whose film credits include Zero Dark Thirty, Bright Star and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, enjoyed the challenges that came with his latest film, Dune — he was nominated for a Best Cinematography Oscar for his work. Directed by Denis Villeneuve and based on Frank Herbert’s book of the same name, Dune features inhospitable alien worlds, monsters and wars set thousands of years in the future as it charts a hero’s dangerous journey.

Cinematographer Greig Fraser

Cinematographer Greig Fraser

Dune tells the story of Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet), a young man propelled into an intergalactic power struggle that pulls him to the sands of the remote planet Arrakis, home to an indigenous human civilization called the Fremen. In this hostile environment, humanity fights for control of the Spice, a rare and mind-expanding natural resource upon which space travel, knowledge, commerce and human existence all rely.

In addition to Fraser, Villeneuve (read our conversation with him here) assembled a lineup of Academy Award-winning and nominated artisans, reteaming with two-time Oscar-nominated production designer Patrice Vermette, two-time Oscar-nominated editor Joe Walker and two-time Oscar-winning visual effects supervisor Paul Lambert.

Here, Fraser, whose credits also include Lion (for which he earned Oscar and BAFTA noms), Mary Magdalene, Vice and Foxcatcher, talks about the challenges of making the ambitious epic, his unique analog/digital approach to the cinematography and working with VFX.

Cinematographer Greig Fraser

Cinematographer Greig Fraser

You shot this digitally. Was that the plan from the start?
No. We were unsure, so we went and shot a ton of tests — everything from 35mm film to the large-format ARRI Alexa 65 and IMAX, and we shot anamorphic, spherical — it basically ran the gamut. It was a test of how the film would feel. Then we projected it at the IMAX theater in Playa Vista and compared all the looks. It was funny to see Denis’ reaction. Film did not impress Denis as much as we thought it might. I thought we’d shoot film, but Denis felt it had a nostalgic quality which, despite being beautiful, wasn’t what he envisioned Dune to be. But on the other hand, digital didn’t feel organic enough.

The last time we spoke, you’d been developing a process and look that combines digital with the warmth of analog.
It’s something I’d been working on for a few years before this came along, so I suggested we try this technique as the next step. In theory and in simple testing, it works like this: You basically shoot the movie digitally, give it a quick grade, output it to film and then grade the scan of that. This gives you the best out of digital and the best out of film, and we found it to be a really interesting process.

Is this the first time you’ve used it on a feature film?
Yes, and every filmmaker I’ve worked with since then that I’ve told about this has had this sort of light bulb moment. We all remember what it was like to work on film — all the bad things and problems with the lab — but also all the great things — the beautiful emotional images. I still have a very strong love of an emulsion, and the big question is, “Where does emulsion come in the process?” Does it come by acquiring image, or afterwards? I’m sure there are very film-centric filmmakers out there who’ll have my head on a platter for saying this, but I felt that for this film, putting an emulsion in the process after the fact was the right approach. You get that analog film look just like in the old days, when you could sculpt a look depending on what stock you went with — Kodak, Fuji, etc. Whether you underexposed and overdeveloped it or overexposed and underdeveloped it, or flashed the film, you had all these opportunities to give it a certain feel and look.

Cinematographer Greig FraserWhen we went digital, and when film stocks got reduced to a core number, we lost options. But with this process, you can shoot with any of the leading cameras you want, whichever one suits the project, and then the world opens up again. You can choose whatever stock you want to print it onto — negative stocks, print stocks, 35mm, 60mm. So you effectively go back to film. Now some may say it’s creating a faux grain, along with film problems like a bit of gate weave and noise, but it also creates this analog feel that film lovers have always loved about film.

What cameras and lenses did you use?
We used the ARRI Alexa LF 4K and Mini with Panavision H-series and Ultra Vista lenses. The first part of the film has a more formal look, then we decided to shoot IMAX for all the desert sequences and went for a much looser, hand-held style.

Cinematographer Greig Fraser

We deliberately went for an unsaturated look. Our skies aren’t blue, our rocks aren’t red, our sand isn’t golden, and we designed our LUT to take away the blues of the sky and so on. We used different LUTs, and colorist Dave Cole and lab FotoKem were able to combine the elements of highlights and shadows to create a LUT that worked for us. They were very much partners in creating the look, partly because they have a lab at their disposal.

We shot all the rock desert scenes in Jordan and all the desert sand dune scenes in Abu Dhabi. My DIT, Dan Carling, was on set, and we worked very closely because it was so crucial that we got the right images and graded the right way.

What about dealing with all the VFX? How involved were you in that side of the project?
I was fairly involved. I believe we had well over 2,000 VFX shots. Denis and I shot as much in-camera as possible, but even that stuff always has some VFX work on it. I visited with VFX supervisor Paul Lambert and his team a few times during the process, and they did ask my opinion about a number of things, but after the shoot wrapped, I had to move on to another film, so that limited it.

Cinematographer Greig Fraser

But one of the great things about this partnership between Denis and me and Patrice and Paul was that we built a lot of the sets for real, and we built what we could using a very simple technique — scaffolding wrapped in the materials and colors of what would have been the real stone.

By using that method, all the lighting behaved the way it should behave, because if you only are able to build 12 feet and you use blue- or greenscreen to fill in the other 18 feet to the top of the stage, that doesn’t help the lighting. If you need a shaft of light, I’d have to create that, so why don’t we do it in conjunction with the art department, where it’s actually built out of the material? That gives you the best chance of succeeding in making it look as real as possible. So for the most part, that’s exactly what we did, and all the set extensions that Paul added using VFX could only really look a certain way, as they were lit to be correct. There was a lot of coordination between the camera department and VFX, as well as all the other departments, and that was key to the production pipeline.

As you mentioned earlier, you did the DI at FotoKem. How important is this part of the process to you?
It’s very important. I did a color bible and worked on it before I had to start on another film. So I went into editorial and did a little cut — a sort of DP cut of the movie that was in no way an edit. It was a color bible, literally, of every scene that we knew would be in the movie at that point. Obviously, scenes got added and cut during post, but at least fundamentally we knew what the film would look like.

I graded all that with Dave [who used Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve], and then that color bible became what VFX used as a reference. Then Denis came in and looked at it, and he had some notes, and we made some adjustments. Of course, things change as the film gets cut and becomes what it is, and Denis and Dave worked very closely together on the final look and fulfilling that original vision we all had. This is what I love so much about filmmaking and collaboration — it’s not just my grade, my lighting and so on. To me, the grade is as much Denis’ and the colorist’s and the production designer’s. It’s a communal effort. The grade is the movie’s grade, and I trust Denis’ and Dave’s opinions implicitly. (Editor’s note: Watch this space for our upcoming interview with Cole.)

This was your first time working with Denis. How did you get involved in this?
We’d actually met a long time ago at a barbecue at Roger Deakins’ home. They’d just finished shooting Sicario, and I’d seen his previous films and loved his work, but I’d never met him before. We ended up having this great conversation, and over the years we stayed in touch and saw each other at awards shows. Then he called and asked if I’d be interested in meeting to talk about Dune. He’s a master filmmaker, so I jumped at the chance.

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.

 

 

DP Chat: Bridgerton Cinematographer Jeffrey Jur

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By Randi Altman

When the Covid lockdown first began, people were offered a bit of an escape in Netflix’s Tiger King. As the pandemic continued, viewers found another Netflix series to binge, but instead of real-life tiger pets and a prodigious mullet, this one — Bridgerton — involved beautiful and frisky high-society Londoners during the Regency era of the 1800s. The Shondaland show, which has set off a small Bridgerton baby boom, is based on the novels by Julia Quinn. It is show-run by Chris Van Dusen.

Jeffrey Jur

Bridgerton features beautiful interior and exterior settings that were shot by cinematographer Jeffrey Jur, ASC, and his colleague Philipp Blaubach, BSC.  Jur worked on episodes 1, 2, 3, 6 and 7.  An LA-based and Emmy Award-winning DP, Jur has shot HBO’s Carnivale, How to Get Away With Murder, Dirty Dancing, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and much more.

We reached out to Jur about his experience on Bridgerton, his workflow and his background.

How early did you get involved in planning for the season?
I arrived in London for about six weeks of prep before shooting started. The director Julie Anne Robinson and I spent a lot of time riding cars, buses and trains together all around England to see the various locations; we had plenty of time to discuss the look and style of the show. We were often with our brilliant production designer, Will Hughes-Jones, so it was a lovely creative space to work in while trundling through the English countryside.

What direction were you given about the look?
One concern was that we not be too “precious” with the look and, of course, we referenced many high-end period TV and film productions that had come before. All were beautiful, but we were after something contemporary, current and “now.” Julie Anne mentioned at one point that it should be “bonkers,” which rattled around in my head throughout the shoot. It was sort of a license to free up the style. I didn’t want a veil over the visuals… for the audience to be removed, watching a faraway piece of art or a distant memory. It needed to feel like it could have happened just yesterday.

How would you describe the look of the show? Saturated? Filmic?
Definitely filmic, as we wanted the show to feel big and expansive, but I kept using the term “lifted.” I wanted all the glorious detail and richness of our locations, sets, production design, costumes, makeup and hair styles to come through with vibrance and clarity but not to be pushed too far or to be artificial in any way.

How did you work with the directors and colorist to achieve the intended look?
My longtime finishing colorist is Pankaj Bajpai from Technicolor Hollywood (now Picture Shop). He’s truly a genius in his field. I can’t say enough about what he brings to that stage of production. He worked with me on Carnivale and Bessie for HBO as well as others.

We talked a lot about bringing a unique look to Bridgerton, something rich and alive and trying to avoid the veiled, monochromatic and diffused look typical of period dramas that came before. The word “lifted” came up again as our catchword, and Pankaj had some secret sauce in his board to devise this.

Color was obviously going to be very strong in our set design and costumes, so it was important to represent that accurately but also to honor the mood of the lighting of each scene. I am a film guy from way back, so I believe it’s important — actually my job — to get the look in the camera and not to rely on post to create it from scratch. Having said that, what post can do is amplify and extend the ideas and intent I put onto that camera sensor.

How did you explore the different worlds — male versus female — on the series?
The “female gaze” was going to be key to this project and unique to films in general. We were careful about our POV with camera placement, always remembering who was looking at whom. The two primary families of the Bridgertons and the Featheringtons were important to keep visually distinct. The upper-class world of those families had a clean and precise look — the Featheringtons had bolder, even garish colors, while the Bridgertons had a cool, blue, Wedgwood color tone. When the show visited the working-class villages and rougher parts of London and Will in his boxing world, we often shot hand-held with a looser feel and lit with more grit.

What were some of the challenges of shooting the ball scenes?
Getting all the coverage. The scenes are heavily populated, often with all the main characters, all reacting to everything going on. The scripts are dense, with many characters observing other characters, so it’s important to capture those reactions — even from the “Ton,” which is the society at large. We’ll be filming one scene and then have to get shots from the POV of other characters watching that scene.

Where was the series shot and how long was the shoot?
In and around the UK — London, York, Salisbury, Brighton, Bath, Bristol. Each block of two episodes was filmed over approximately six weeks.

Which episodes did you work on, assuming there was another DP on the show? How did that work?
I photographed episodes 1, 2, 3, 6 and 7. I did alternate with another DP, Philipp Blaubach, who photographed episodes 4, 5 and 8. As happens on these large projects, we often end up shooting bits of each other’s shows.

Was it mostly on location or a soundstage?
We began that first season shooting all of our location work as the stages as sets were not yet built. The season was probably 3/4 locations and 1/4 stage work.

How did you go about choosing the right camera and lenses for this project?
Netflix requires their shows be shot with a high-resolution camera, at least 4K. I had friends who worked with the Sony Venice and recommended it, so I tested it. I loved the filmic quality, the user interface and the ability to shoot even higher resolutions. We ended up shooting 6K spherical. It was important to me to have the large sensor for depth-of-field control as well as for capturing all the glorious detail that was going to be built into the sets, decor and costumes.

 

I tested lenses, looking for a clean, sharp image quality, but the bokeh of candlelight was very important, and the ARRI Signature Primes gave me the most perfectly round circle from the soft, out-of-focus candle flames.

Can you describe the lighting?
Soft, natural and always motivated by something real, although it was usually the most beautiful “real” light that could possibly be in each set. I felt the show was like a fairy tale, so I thought we could take the colors and lighting a bit further and make it more heightened.

Now for more general questions. How did you become interested in cinematography?
I started making films in high school and was totally hooked. Films gave me a voice that I needed and had no other outlet for. I studied film at Columbia College in Chicago, which had a great hands-on filmmaking curriculum. It was there that I began to favor cinematography as a calling, as it allowed me to work at the creative core of many different types of films.

What technology has changed the way you work?
Obviously, digital cinema cameras have changed everything. It’s amazing to see an image on a monitor that is quite close to your finished product before you’ve even left the set. I love being able to work and light at such low levels these days, at last capturing images that we all see with our eyes but were not able to film previously. LED lamps have also been wonderful technology, allowing so much more color and intensity control than ever before.

Jeffrey Jur with the Sony Venice

What are some of your best practices or rules you try to follow on each job?
Trust your instincts! The best work people do comes from a worldview developed over time, which comes from all that you’ve experienced, not just other films or TV shows. It’s important for me to get through each scheduled day quickly. Also, understanding what you can “get away with” helps, and that comes from experience and seeing how your work is edited over the years — what’s most likely to survive a cut. A good sense of humor is also key: It’s a crazy business, and things change constantly. You have to go with the flow and keep the work fun.

Explain your ideal collaboration with the director or showrunner when starting a new project.
Hopefully you find a show that has a worldview you share or are interested in. In interviews or prep, I like to bring in art and photography books to give them a sense of how I see their show. It’s not always a good idea to show them clips or stills from other films that aren’t yours; they might hire that DP instead! With directors, I try to get them to talk to me as if I were an actor: What is this scene about? What is the intent? What is the “feel”? Most directors would never tell an actor how to say a line! And, hopefully, they support what I think is the best technical way to achieve their intent.

What’s your go-to gear? Things you can’t live without?
My iPad — with Scriptation, Cadrage, iPhoto, LightTrac and QTake. It’s an amazing filmmaking machine. All my scripts, notes, location photos, dailies and on-set monitoring are available in my hands. I do miss my light meter, which I still pull out occasionally.

Randi Altman is the founder and editor-in-chief of postPerspective. She has been covering production and post production for more than 20 years. 

cinematography

American Society of Cinematographers’ 2021 Nominees

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The American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) has announced its nominees for feature film, documentary and television cinematography, representing the organization’s picks for the most compelling visual filmmaking over the past 14 months.

Winners will be named during the 35th ASC Outstanding Achievement Awards on April 18. The virtual ceremony will be live-streamed via American Cinematographer’s Facebook at 12:30pm PDT from the historic ASC Clubhouse in Hollywood.

The complete list of this year’s nominees are:

Feature Film

  • Erik Messerschmidt, ASC for Mank
  • Phedon Papamichael, ASC, GSC for The Trial of the Chicago 7
  • Joshua James Richards for Nomadland
  • Newton Thomas Sigel, ASC for Cherry
  • Dariusz Wolski, ASC for News of the World

 

Spotlight

  • Katelin Arizmendi for Swallow
  • Aurélien Marra for Two of Us
  • Andrey Naydenov for Dear Comrades!

 

Documentary

  • Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw for The Truffle Hunters
  • Viktor Kosakovskiy and Egil Håskjold Larsen for Gunda
  • Gianfranco Rosi for Notturno

Motion Picture, Limited Series, or Pilot Made for Television

  • Martin Ahlgren, ASC for The Plot Against America, “Part 6”
  • Anette Haellmigk for The Great, “The Great”
  • Pete Konczal for Fargo, “The Birthplace of Civilization”
  • Steven Meizler for The Queen’s Gambit, “End Game”
  • Gregory Middleton, ASC, CSC for Watchmen, “This Extraordinary Being”

Episode of a One-Hour Television Series – Commercial

  • Marshall Adams, ASC for Better Call Saul, “Bagman”
  • Carlos Catalán for Killing Eve, “Meetings Have Biscuits”
  • François Dagenais, CSC for Project Blue Book, “Area 51”
  • Jon Joffin, ASC for Motherland: Fort Salem, “Up is Down”
  • C. Kim Miles, ASC, CSC, MySC for Project Blue Book, “Operation Mainbrace”
  •  

Episode of a One-Hour Television Series – Non-Commercial

  • David Franco for Perry Mason, “Chapter 2”
  • Ken Glassing for Lucifer, “It Never Ends Well for the Chicken”
  • Adriano Goldman, ASC, ABC, BSC for The Crown, “Fairytale”
  • David Greene, ASC, CSC for Impulse, “The Moroi”
  • M. David Mullen, ASC for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, “It’s Comedy or Cabbage”
  • Fabian Wagner, ASC, BSC for The Crown, “Imbroglio”
  •  

Episode of a Half-Hour Television Series

  • Ava Berkofsky for Insecure, “Lowkey Lost”
  • Greig Fraser, ASC, ACS for The Mandalorian, “Chapter 1: The Mandalorian”
  • Baz Idoine for The Mandalorian, “Chapter 13: The Jedi”
  • Matthew Jensen, ASC for The Mandalorian, “Chapter 15: The Believer”
  • Jas Shelton for Homecoming, “Giant”

 

 

 

DP Chat: Jörg Widmer on The Book of Vision and More

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Berlin-based Jörg Widmer started in the industry working as an assistant photographer in fashion, stills and the car industry. He jumped into cinematography with an internship at a public broadcast company called Südwestfunk Baden-Baden, SWF.

Over time he became known for his Steadicam skills and amassed extensive credits as an operator or second unit DP on films such films as Babel and The Tree of Life. As a director of photography, his credits include the Oscar-nominated Buena Vista Social Club and A Hidden Life.

Jörg Widmer

A frequent collaborator of director/producer Terrence Malick, Widmer’s most recent project was the Malick-produced and Carlo Hintermann-directed The Book of Vision. 

How did your relationship with Terrence Malick begin, and how has it evolved?
Originally, Malick saw my Steadicam work in films. He wanted to meet, and when I finally connected with him in Los Angeles, he told me he’d like to have me on board for a film. Our first movie was The New World, which was a joyful adventure for me, with Emmanuel “Chivo” Lubezki directing photography.

There were some visual rules, the so-called dogma, to be respected, but apart from that it was a matter of collecting beautiful images while trying to capture the action. It was on 35mm film and, in certain parts, even 65mm. The collaboration went quite well — Chivo was Oscar-nominated.

The Book of Vision

Four years later, we were all happy to return for The Tree of Life, and three subsequent films. On Voyage of Time, an IMAX documentary, I worked with Malick as DP for some scenes, and I was really excited when he offered to bring me on as cinematographer for A Hidden Life. Our last collaboration was The Last Planet, which is still in post production.

The Book of Vision, produced by Malick, has been screening at festivals. What is the movie about and can you describe the look and feel of the film?
The Book of Vision is a film that is hard to describe. It’s about the mystery of the body and the way doctors look at it now, much differently than they did in the past. It’s a love story with a lot of philosophical thoughts about the meaning of life and reincarnation. It takes place over two time periods, with the same actors appearing in both, but in different roles.

Where was it filmed?
We shot in the Trentino region of northern Italy and around Brussels. 

How did you and director Carlo Hintermann communicate about the look you wanted?
We looked at and exchanged images, which could be considered as reference. We also went to museums, not only to see art but to learn more about medical history. At an early stage, production designer David Crank was involved and came up with a lot of ideas. We tried to achieve as much as possible in-camera and minimized the amount of VFX work because the production department came up with many fantastic ideas.

The Book of Vision

For the look, we had to decide whether or not we wanted to separate the two time periods visually by using different lenses or different grading, such as black-and-white for the period scenes and color for the contemporary parts. We decided we wanted to keep the same look for both parts, using the sets and costumes to provide the distinction. The two periods are interwoven, and the transitions from the past to the present are smoother and hardly noticeable. We also agreed to use bold colors. It was great fun to see the fabrics that costume designer Mariano Tufano wanted to use. I think we succeeded quite well in fine-tuning the color palette of production design and costumes.

How did you go about choosing the right camera and lenses for this project?
Testing is always the best way to find out what can be achieved. We wanted to use the same lightweight Red camera system with the Helium sensor that we had already used on A Hidden Life. I had seen how much latitude it provided, especially after Red introduced IPP2 color science. But the look of The Book of Vision needed to be different, so we tested different lenses.

Vantage provided us with the One T1, which turned out to be a great choice. For one setup, we needed a wide-angle lens to be able to emphasize the supernatural role of the tree, for which we used the 8mm ARRI/Zeiss 8R Ultra Prime. It provides a very special, almost magical feeling by itself.

A Hidden Life

Who was your colorist on the project, and how did you two collaborate to achieve the look?
For a couple of films, I’ve been working with Christian Kuss, who is based in Berlin. He was also the DIT on set. We would grade rushes every evening after wrap as close as possible to the final look we wanted to achieve. Since Christian always uses DaVinci Resolve on set as well as in the grading suite, the settings and metadata created while we shot fed right into the final grade. This was also helpful for the VFX department as a reference. And since the director had the chance to see images at an early stage and get a feel for what we were aiming for, it was convenient for him too. He came to Berlin for only one day for some minor and final adjustments. It was basically the same workflow Christian and I had used for A Hidden Life.

Now more general questions….

How did you become interested in cinematography?
I started as a still-photographer apprentice and worked in the business for a couple of years. This studio work was very helpful to get experience with shaping light and working with reflections under controlled conditions. But I always wanted to shoot movies. When I went for an internship at a broadcast station, I got my hands on a Steadicam, which was not very popular yet, and I became a Steadicam operator. From very early on, I could work as a DP as well and was able to hone my skills in both fields.

Jörg Widmer on the set of A Hidden Life

What inspires you artistically?
I’m fascinated by light and darkness and moving lights. I like architecture and watching changing reflections on buildings when the sun disappears behind the clouds. Also, I look at all kinds of commercial photography, YouTube videos, paintings, dance, and theater on stage or in the street. I also like to read, which helps me to create my own images.

How do you stay on top of advancing technologies in filmmaking?
Luckily, I like to go to the movies! But I’m also watching all kinds of YouTube tutorials, reading film articles and cinema gear ads. I try to visit rental houses, too, when they proudly show off their new equipment.

What are some best practices that you try to follow on each job?
I really like to listen, since I want to help bring the ideas of the director to the screen. I try to be open to changing circumstances and be prepared for the unexpected, to capture it when it happens. I try to make a film that I would love to watch myself in the theater.

As production restarts, are you looking at new gear or trying new methods of filmmaking to support your process going forward?
Every film has its own requirements to tell the story. If I find out about new ways of lighting or new ways of moving a camera, it’s my duty to try it and test it, to know in advance that it will work on set.

DP Chat: Ollie Downey on shooting Season 2 of Amazon’s Hanna

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By Randi Altman

Based on the 2011 film of the same name, Amazon’s Hanna tells the story of a girl raised in a Polish forest by the only father she’s ever known, former CIA agent Erik Heller. The two are hiding from a rogue CIA agent who wants Hanna dead, so Erik trains her to protect herself at all costs and kill if necessary. Part thriller, part coming-of-age story, the show follows Hanna (Esmé Creed-Miles) on her journey to find out who she is while also dealing with the struggles of being a teenage girl.

Ollie Downey

With Season 2 now streaming, Hanna finds herself at an assassin training school and still very much a target. This season was shot in a variety of locations around Europe, including the UK, Paris and Barcelona. The show also stars Dermot Mulroney, Mireille Enos and Yasmin Monet Prince.

We recently reached out to cinematographer Ollie Downey — who shot Episodes 1, 2, 3, 7 and 8 — to find out more.

Tell us about working on Hanna Season 2. How early did you get involved in planning?
I came onboard for six weeks of prep before shooting started. It’s always busy and you’re playing catch-up for the first couple of weeks, as the director, production designer and location manager have often already spent several weeks recceing. Tom Coan is a great executive producer, very calm and trusting. I think the key requirement was keeping the visual spirit of Season 1, letting it evolve but hanging onto the sensitivity of the imagery.

What is your process when coming onto a show after the first season?
A second series tends to be a much simpler process. There tends to be a general acceptance amongst producers, execs and studios about what worked visually and what didn’t, and that’s where you start.

I set up a Dropbox folder divided into story arcs and locations and share it with the director, production designer and other HODs. We keep adding and subtracting images until we have a pretty comprehensive set of references. I think that it’s really important that whatever you do visually, it’s motivated by the writing.

How did this season look different from the first, if at all?
DP Dana Gonzales did a brilliant job with the first episode of Season 1; it has a beautiful, sophisticated look that suits the story well. It feels cinematic, sensitive and sophisticated. Season 2 was very much about evolution rather than revolution. It was about capturing that lovely sensitivity of Dana and director Sarah Adina Smith’s imagery and bringing it into our new, expanded world.

Eva Husson, the director of Block 1, was very keen that we keep things as naturalistic as possible. She felt that the material was heightened anyway and that the important thing was that the characters and relationships remained relatable. If you’re trying to keep things naturalistic, then the change of geography also dictates a change of look — much of our material was set in Northern England, Paris and Barcelona. The architecture, the local culture and the weather all influence the look to some degree.

How would you describe the look?
I think it has a European indie feature feel to it. Quite naturalistic, quite subtle and sensitive. Obviously, the look is about so much, and props here to the brilliance of Carly Reddin’s production design, Anthony Unwin’s costume design and Sian Wilson’s hair and makeup design. Carly, in particular, was working across four countries simultaneously, so it was a great achievement on her part.

How did you work with the directors and colorist to achieve the intended look?
We managed to shoot some camera and lighting tests in prep, both at one of our main locations and in a test room at Panavision with Esmé Creed-Miles, who plays Hanna. We took these tests to colorist Asa Shoul at De Lane Lea and played with some different looks. We settled on a slightly lo-con, two-strip feel that really suited our world and existing costume choices that had been made in the first season, such as the color of the recruits’ jumpsuits.

It was also great to have the time with Esme to make the most of her skin tone and those striking blue eyes. We only used the one LUT, and it worked very well. My DIT, James Hogarth, has a brilliant eye and did a great job of then finessing the scenes further while shooting. James and I work quite hard on that part of the process — I think it’s really helpful to get the rushes as close as possible for the cut. The grade then tends to be quite straightforward — there will be changes, but they are usually to reinforce story points or the tone of the scene.

Unfortunately, when the grading of Episodes 1 through 3 began, I was still shooting in Barcelona, so we would do reviews in the evenings at Deluxe there and then send notes for the next day. It’s not an ideal way to work, but Asa is a great colorist, and I had Laura Hastings-Smith (our series producer) for company.

Laura has produced Justin Kurzel’s Macbeth and Steve McQueen’s Hunger (among many others). As you can imagine, she has a brilliant eye, and grading with her became a really enjoyable part of the process.

As you mentioned earlier, you shot in a variety of places in Europe. That must have come with some challenges. Can you talk about that a bit?
Travel was one of the most enjoyable, and challenging, parts of the job. We shot the first three episodes over 10 weeks in London, Wales, Paris and Dunkirk and finished with two months in Barcelona shooting the last two episodes of the series. Production did a great job.

It was busy but great fun. You really have to trust your HODs because the logistics can be quite daunting. Fortunately, camera operator John Hembrough and grip Phil Whittaker are regular collaborators, and they really take care of everything. I also worked with gaffer Andy Bailey for the first time, and he and his team did a great job across wildly different terrains, from drizzly forests in North Wales to fifth-floor apartments without lifts in Paris on the hottest day ever recorded there (42 degrees C).

The final two episodes were a whistle-stop tour of Barcelona. It’s [creator/executive producer/writer/director] David Farr’s favorite city, and we were determined to show it off in all its glory. It was logistically challenging, as we were often shooting two locations a day, but we worked in some wonderful places, and we were fortunate to be working with an excellent local crew. Our Spanish gaffer, Jose Luis Rodriguez, was running two teams (a shooting crew and a rigging crew) for the duration and really worked wonders.

While this is a story of assassins in training, they are also young girls. How did you balance those two things?
It’s a really good question. I think this mix is what makes it such a unique show — that combination of action-thriller and adolescence. I think you have to decide what it is that you are attempting to make. Season 2 is very much a coming-of-age story with mother/daughter relationships at its core. While it’s still part action-thriller, there’s a real sensitivity to it. The cinematography had to reflect that.

The fragility and vulnerability of these relationships had to be there on screen, so we wanted the cinematography to be sensitive and sympathetic to the emotional state of these young ladies. I think in some ways that helps jolt the viewer when the violence does then break out.

How did you go about choosing the right camera and lenses for this project?
Unless there is a pixel-counting reason not to, I tend to shoot on the ARRI Alexa. To my eye, it’s closer to the look of film. We shot on Panavision PVintage Prime lenses, which Dana had shot part of Series 1 on. The older coatings and vintage softness reflect the wide-eyed wonder of how the trainees first see the outside world. Juxtaposing this romantic look with the brutal situations that the trainees find themselves in is what the show is all about.

Can you describe the lighting? Any “happy accidents” you captured?
I think it’s pretty naturalistic for this type of show. I’m drawn to a more naturalistic style anyway. There are times when big shafts of light and uncorrected green fluorescents are right, but for the most part, I shy away from anything that could distract from the story. That said DP Stephen Murphy and director Ugla Hauksdottir did some lovely work on the second block, establishing a slightly more stylized look that reflected the growing confidence of our young characters. Whatever you do should be motivated by the writing.

Any challenging scenes that you are particularly proud of or found most challenging?
Our last two episodes in Barcelona were probably the most challenging (and also the most rewarding). It was almost November by the time we finished, so daylight hours were limited, and as fate would have it, our last week was shooting the denouement in a glass-fronted, south-facing villa up in the hills overlooking Barcelona. Controlling the light was very difficult because of the three-story height of the windows, the length of the villa and its position on a steep hillside. All of our scenes there were set over one day, so continuity was even more important. Fortunately, our Spanish gaffer, Jose Luis Rodriguez, and his team were remarkable — and the key to everything running so smoothly.

The other would be the rescue of Mireille Enos’ character in the desert in Episode 7. We shot the interiors (including the roll) in the back of the van in Ealing Studios in London. We shot the interiors in the front of the van and the exteriors a couple of hours northeast of Barcelona. Hopefully, you can’t tell.

Now more general questions… How did you become interested in cinematography?
I have vague memories of watching North by Northwest with my grandfather as a very young child and being mesmerized by the imagery — the crop duster flying low through the fields and all that fantastic stuff. Before I understood what cinematography was, I was hooked by it. I studied fine art but was frustrated by the solitary nature of it, so cinematography seemed a logical step. I assisted and worked my way up through the camera department shooting low-budget music videos on weekends until I was making more money DPing than assisting.

What inspires you artistically?
Work that has texture, whether it’s looking at a Rembrandt portrait or Darius Khondji’s work on Amour (shooting digitally). I think in this age of super-sharp imagery and ever-evolving technology, I’m increasingly aware of the need to work texture into the image. And then, of course, good storytelling.

I was lucky enough to shoot an episode of Electric Dreams that was beautifully written by Jack Thorne. It was about mental illness and a man’s relationship with his troubled son. Jack introduced the read-through, explained why the story mattered and why it was so personal to him. A beautiful piece of storytelling took on even greater resonance. It was an incredibly moving and inspiring hour.

Ollie Downey (behind camera with hat) on set of Hanna with director Eva Husson (in white).

What new technology has changed the way you work (looking back over the past few years)?
Cameras have obviously come a long way, but I think LED technology in lighting has been the biggest game-changer. Being able to change color temperatures in seconds, have units that are fully dimmable (without a color shift), and being able to run smaller units off batteries is great. It means that you usually have a little bit more time to refine the lighting. ARRI Sky Panels and LiteMats are great bits of kit.

What are some of your best practices or rules you try to follow on each job?
Throw away everything you know to some degree. One of the most enjoyable parts of the process is finding your “look” in prep. Starting with visual references and slowly translating that into a camera package, lenses, lighting style, even the type of lighting units and diffusion that you use. I think it’s really important not to just repeat yourself.

Randi Altman is the founder and editor-in-chief of postPerspective. She has been covering production and post production for more than 20 years. 

Cinematographer Bobby Bukowski on Jon Stewart’s Irresistible

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By Randi Altman

The Jon Stewart written- and -directed Irresistible from Focus Features is a political comedy with a message. It stars Steve Carell and Rose Byrne as opposing — and constantly bickering and scheming — political consultants. Chris Cooper plays a retired Marine colonel who is running for the mayor of his small, conservative Wisconsin town. The film shows what can happen when politics get in the way of doing the right thing.

Cinematographer Bobby Bukowski (left) and director Jon Stewart on the set.

For his second directorial outing (2014’s Rosewater was his first), Stewart once again called on cinematographer Bobby Bukowski, ASC, to shoot the film. This TV and film DP has a long and varied list of credits, including Arlington Road, Boogeyman and The Last Thing He Wanted, a film starring Ben Affleck and Anne Hathaway that is streaming now on Netflix.

We recently reached out to Bukowski to talk about working on Irresistible, re-teaming with director Stewart and his process.

You worked with Jon on Rosewater. Can you talk about how you first met him, and how your combined process changed if at all from one film to another?
Lila Yacoub, who produced the film Rampart, which I shot, put me together with Jon. She has an impeccable sense of combining personalities on a set that will work together successfully.
He was doing The Daily Show at the time, and I went in there to meet him. Then he called me and asked, “How would you like to shoot a film at the height of the summer heat in Jordan, during Ramadan, with a director who doesn’t know anything about making a film?”

I don’t really watch television, so I wasn’t really that familiar with his show, so it was a good place to start our relationship. After the shoot, I watched some of the archives of the show and was blown away. I’m glad I wasn’t aware of how great he was, or I might have been reduced to a sniveling sycophant on the set.

On Rosewater, Jon was learning somewhat as we shot. However steep the learning curve, he assimilated it all very quickly. The main thing I suggested he do at the start was to talk to me from the standpoint of narrative intent, and from there I could offer visual corollaries supporting that intention.

We also tested lenses from the standpoint of perspective, such as how a wide lens placed close to a subject resonated emotionally in a different way from a longer lens that was further away from the subject yet capturing the identical field of view. We did exposure tests to dissect how the level luminosity and contrast could be for to dramatic effect. I wanted to familiarize him with the tools we would be using.

Because you worked together before, was there was a sort of shorthand?
We developed a trust on Rosewater. He could trust that I would always be working toward bolstering the narrative with my visual ideas and not just trying to shoot “pretty pictures.” And I could trust his assessment of what was essential to telling that story.

Jay Rabinowitz was the editor on both films, and we spoke to him about our approach on capturing the film and the methods we would employ. He became an essential designer in the language we would develop together.

How early did you get involved on Irresistible, and what direction did you get from Jon? What did he tell you about the look they wanted for this film?
Jon involved me about six months before principal photography. He had producer Lila Yacoub reach out to me to gauge my interest and availability and then sent me the screenplay. After I read it a few times, I called Jon, and we discussed my reactions to the narrative. At this point in the process, I don’t really like to discuss the “look” of the film. It’s most important for me to understand what the film is saying.

The film is set in Wisconsin. Did you shoot there? And how much did the rural landscape play a role in the look?
The ideas for the visuals stemmed from the collision of two worlds: the world of the urban political machine versus the rural, ordinary world. Jon likened the influx of the political machine to the invasion of a virus.

The small farm town in Wisconsin was actually shot in the beautiful town of Rockmart, Georgia, approximately 45 miles northwest of Atlanta.

With broad strokes, we imbued the town with a warmer and softer feel, versus the look of the political machine, which we presented in a cooler and crisper way. As the “virus” overwhelms the town, we see the warm softness become supplanted by coolness and crispness. Rounded surfaces are squared off. The age-worn patina is replaced with shiny, new surfaces, and there is a palpable increase in population.

It was very important to immediately and clearly establish the characteristics of the rural landscape so the audience could witness its transformation at the hand of the urban interlopers.

Jon and I viewed many Preston Sturges films, particularly Hail the Conquering Hero. We were inspired by the visual and aural cacophony and density of the compositions.

How did you work with the colorist Joe Gawler to achieve the intended look?
Joe is chief colorist at Harbor Picture Company in New York, and he and I have been frequent collaborators for the better part of two decades. Given our time together, there is an understanding we share of color grading. He understands the care and intensity with which I approach the process, and I trust that he is highly skilled to help me translate my intent.

The danger of knowing and working with someone for so long is that we could easily fall into ingrained methods. I always begin a new project with Joe saying, “Remember how we worked on the last beautiful film that we colored? Good. Now let’s forget it.” Each new film asks for something separate and distinct.

I normally start out with Joe in preproduction conducting many tests of camera/lens combinations, exposure and locations. I suggest source materials, such as paintings and photographs to define the color space I’m intending to work in, and I cite other elements of the photography, like contrast, sharpness, grain. We take that test material and color it, defining the ultimate look particular to the film.

I like to have Joe do the dailies during production as well, so he is watching the work as it’s being shot to make sure the dailies represent our intended, ultimate outcome.

How long was the shoot and how did that part of the process go?
I always forget the length of a shoot, but it was probably around six weeks.

The biggest challenge of the film was representing the linear transformation of the town. Particularly when outlying factors, such as cast availability, prevent shooting in sequence. Careful scheduling was key and designed beautifully by our first assistant director, Jonas Spaccarotelli.

From the very first location scouts, Jonas and I were looking for a place that could accommodate the many locations and have a farm very close by. That way we could leave the town so the art department could make the requisite changeovers. Sometimes we could simply abandon a street and go around the corner while the art department redressed for another time period of the film.

We were fortunate to find Rockmart. Like many rural American towns, the original Main Street had been abandoned in lieu of strip malls. This allowed us to inhabit four square blocks of a charming, old village and work on it like a backlot. We were able to lay all the cable, replace the streetlights (for nighttime ambience), furnish the shops and offices with our own lights, paint, decorate… it was a great way to work.

How did you go about choosing the right camera and lenses for this project?
I’m an ARRI proponent, so the choice of the Alexa was simple. I used two Alexa Mini cameras, which can also be used for hand-held and Steadicam shots.

Lenses were basically chosen for how best they could render the discrete looks for each part of the film. For the rural portion of the film, I used vintage Cooke Speed Panchros, which have a warm and soft look. I shot wide open at T 2.2 to render a shallow depth of field.

For the capturing the sections of the film pertaining to the political invaders, we chose to use Zeiss Master Primes, some of the sharpest lenses available, to promote a cooler and crisper look. When using these lenses, we opted for a deeper stop, regularly lighting and shooting to a T 8-11 stop for a deeper depth of field. Our design reason behind that was to create more planes of focus.

Since the frames were becoming more populated, each plane could be in focus, presenting a more visually dense composition — leaving it up to the audience where they wanted to look, since everything has equal visual weight. With a shallower depth of field, we are directing the audience precisely where to spend their attention.

Can you describe the lighting? Any “happy accidents” you captured?
Conforming to our design of warmth versus coolness, we would use tungsten-balances lights for warmth and daylight-balanced instruments for coolness. For the rural renderings, we tended to use tungsten lights and practical incandescent household light bulbs (all of them dimmed down to create an even warmer color temperature).

For the lighting surrounding the political world, we employed a combination of HMIs (daylight-balanced color temperature), daylight-corrected florescent tubes and LEDs balanced for 5,600 Kelvin.

One happy accident, not pertaining to lighting at all, had to do with the wrangling of the cows when Gary (Carell) attempts to televise the kick-off of the Colonel’s campaign at the farm. Jon wanted the cows to be featured in the middle of the shot, framing the Colonel (Cooper). Those cows didn’t care where Jon wanted them. As a result, Jon incorporated the wranglers as characters in the film, giving Cooper an opportunity to riff on that comedically.

Any challenging scenes that you are particularly proud of or found most challenging?
I always find lengthy daylight scenes to be the most challenging. It’s on days like those that I wake up and ask Mother Nature to provide us with a cloudy day. Luckily, she did give us a lot of cloud cover, and the Georgia humidity added an additional layer of cover and softness to the quality of the daylight.

Now more general questions…. How did you become interested in cinematography?
I was on my way to medical school, having studied biochemistry as an undergraduate. When I realized what my life would be as a doctor, I panicked and ran kicking and screaming as far away from that life as possible.

Bobby Bukowski, ASC

Having grown up mostly in NYC, and never having left the US, I was wanted to explore the planet. I spent the next several years traveling in Asia and ultimately settled in Paris. I had a friend who was a fashion working there and he introduced me to a photographer. I worked for a bit as his assistant and became enamored with imagery, so I bought a Nikon camera and a few Prime lenses and started shooting. I navigated the city on a bicycle, always with the camera strapped around my neck. Nothing like constant daily shooting of various subjects and lighting conditions to hone one’s eye. I got the opportunity to be part of a pilgrimage of Tibetan Buddhists following the Dalai Lama to all the sacred Buddhist sites along the Ganges River in India. It was with this material that I applied to the Tisch School of the Arts Graduate Film program at NYU.

What inspires you artistically?
Ordinary existence is what inspires me: human behavior that plays out before my eyes daily. As a cinematographer I have become so attuned to subtle and minute happenings. I am constantly ingesting the world around me visually. It is rare that I have a conversation with someone and don’t take note of the way their face is lit.

What new technology has changed the way you work (looking back over the past few years)?
The digital sensor, particularly that of the ARRI Alexa. When filmmaker Oren Moverman (my collaborator and friend) invited me to shoot Rampart with him, he was curious about shooting digitally. We tested the Alexa at Otto Nemenz in Hollywood, and I’ll never forget the first night I had that camera in my hands and experienced the sensitivity of a sensor rated at 800 ISO.

I was driving around downtown LA one night and shooting when I realized that the red light that was reflected in my friend’s face was from the brake lights of a car 15 feet away from him. That is when I knew a key light could be a dim distant light and that all my experience, which began with exposing and lighting film emulsion originally at 100 ASA, was about to change completely.

What are some of your best practices or rules you try to follow on each job?
To remain open on set. To wipe clean any preconceived notions and to experience what is in front of me at that moment. To get to a set and not note the weather, the wind, an actor’s voice — the way she occupies the space and moves through it, the look in her eyes — is to be creatively negligent.

Randi Altman is the founder and editor-in-chief of postPerspective. She has been covering production and post production for more than 20 years. 

DP Chat: The Baby-Sitters Club’s Adam Silver talks collaboration and color

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By Randi Altman

Netflix’s The Baby-Sitters Club, based on the best-selling book series by Ann M. Martin, follows a group of entrepreneurial middle-school girls as they start a babysitting business in the town of Stoneybrook, Connecticut. There are dad dilemmas, crushes, Halloween spookiness and more. The show stars Sophie Grace, Momona Tamada, Shay Rudolph, Malia Baker, Xochitl Gomez, Alicia Silverstone and Mark Feuerstein.

The cinematographer on The Baby-Sitters Club is Adam Silver, founder of the Santa Monica-based production company National Picture Show, which creates content across multiple platforms. Silver’s recent DP projects include Pen15, Into the Dark and the Valley Girl remake. He also served dual roles as director and DP on the TV adaption of Heathers and producer and DP on the films Daddio and A Deadly Adoption. Proving his ability to move between types of projects, Silver also works shooting commercial campaigns, such as those for Bud Light, 3M and Meta.

His most recent endeavor, The Baby-Sitters Club, started streaming on Netflix on July 3. Here Silver talks to us about the show, his process and inspiration.

How early did you get involved in planning for the season? And what direction did showrunner Rachel Shukert give you about the vision she had for this new series?
I came onto the project with about six weeks of prep before we started shooting in Vancouver. I’d known EP/director Lucia Aniello socially and had seen a lot of her comedy work. I had also watched Rachel’s work on GLOW and other shows. It was exciting to do a project with both of them.

From the outset, Rachel and Lucia envisioned a look that was naturalistic and felt real but also poppy and fun to look at. So I took this initial guideline and then got to run with it and hone it to a specific set of aesthetics and grammar, all while creating space for each director to come in and personalize it. Working closely with Lucia, I put our ideas into a visual presentation for the EPs, studio and network. They loved it, so we were off and running.

Can you talk about developing that happy and bright look?
I felt the coolest version of the show was something grounded in naturalism and realism — something that felt truthful and authentic. We wanted to enable the audience to connect emotionally with the characters, but balance that with something visually dynamic and fun to watch. We wanted something that had a sense of childlike whimsy and playfulness to serve the comedy and was inherent in the book-to-series adaptation.

How much did the books the show is based on play into the look of the show, if at all?
We were very inspired by the spirit of the books. Lucia and Rachel were superfans, to put it lightly, and we all wanted something that felt like a compelling friendship/adventure story — for and about girls.

As I was doing visual research in prep, it was very easy to find references set in the world of boys — I had grown up with films like The Goonies, E.T. and Stand by Me. Now there’s Stranger Things, etc., but it was surprisingly hard to find visual references or an equivalent series for girls. Which is, of course, what the books are, and which meant that this was such a great time to make this show.

We wanted the visual style to capture a sense of excitement and adventure and I felt there were ways to reflect that in the photography — with a dynamic camera, a sense of playfulness, a richness and vibrancy to the color all while staying grounded in realism. And I really wanted to stay away from the type of old-school kids show that is too cutesy or bubble gum; I think kid audiences are way too sophisticated for that now.

There’s also an iconography associated with the original books from the cover art and other renderings. For example, the classic cover of the five main characters framed in Claudia’s room, sitting around the rotary telephone, which is another iconic device from the books. We wanted to keep those very much alive in the Netflix version, but with a modern twist.

How did you work with director Lucia Aniello and Light Iron colorist Corinne Bogdanowicz to achieve that look?
It always starts with story and what the show is about at its core. The drama and comedy of this show are born from the relationships between the five main characters. I thought a lot about how to visualize these relationship dynamics and how to use the frame to help tell this part of the story.

Lucia and I really liked the idea of a widescreen aspect ratio that could capture four of five kids in the same shot. We felt a wider frame could help articulate themes about group versus the individual, together versus alone, etc. I find the wider frame works well to isolate a character that’s feeling alone.

While 16:9 didn’t feel wide enough, traditional anamorphic 2.40 actually felt too wide for the streaming format. We felt it might lose a sense of intimacy. I had gone through a similar process on Heathers (Paramount TV) and suggested we do some tests and find our own proprietary frame that felt right to the show. I got the network and post team to approve the idea, and after testing we settled on a ratio of 2.1:1. Very specific, but I liked it, and that’s what felt right to Lucia so we made it happen!

Working with Lucia, our general process was to hone the look using visual references, then I proposed a couple different lens and camera options to test during prep. She came into Sim Camera (our camera partner) with me, and we went through a few setups. Then, using our test footage up in Vancouver, I did a remote color session with colorist Corinne Bogdanowicz, who was in LA working on the FilmLight Baselight.

Huge props to Light Iron’s Katie Fellion for setting that up and figuring out the tech. Corinne helped create a show LUT and some looks, which were very helpful during production. Throughout prep, in addition to exhaustive location scouting, Lucia and I went on to shot-list most of her episodes, which was key for production efficiency, especially given the limited hours with the kid cast.

What was it like shooting in Vancouver, and how long was the shoot?
It was fantastic; we had some of the best technical crews I’ve ever had: 1st AC Mikah Sharkey, who was the anchor of the camera department; operators Mikey Jechort and Brett Manyluk; gaffer Mark Alexander; and key grip Amrit Bawa.

But the town also had its challenges. We were one of 70 or 80 TV productions working at the time, which put a strain on resources. We also had tricky situations with the weather and shooting outdoors. For scheduling reasons, we had to shoot some of our summer episodes in the fall when the weather had turned, so rain became a regular part of our production. We tried to embrace it as much as possible, and Rachel and the writers did an amazing job of adjusting the scripts to incorporate the rain.

How did you choose the right camera and lenses for this project? Why was this the right combination of tools?
I’ve traditionally been a huge fan of the ARRI Alexa Mini for fast-paced TV production, but with the Netflix 4K requirement, I took it as an opportunity to try some new stuff. I hadn’t shot Red for several years but had heard great things about the Monstro chip and was excited to test it.

I paired the DSMC2 Monstro with a couple different lens packages, including both spherical and anamorphic. We liked the feel of the anamorphics right away; they captured the wider aspect ratio. We also liked the bokeh and rendering of an out-of-focus background. Even though we weren’t using its full width (essentially chopping off the extreme sides of the frame for a 2.1:1 finish), there was something about the bendiness on the wider anamorphic primes when framing a group of actors in close proximity that we felt encircled the viewer, drawing them into the group. Though I love the Cooke anamorphic/i primes, I thought this show needed a bit crisper, cleaner look. After testing both, we went with the ARRI/Zeiss Master anamorphics.

When testing the Red Monstro, I paid close attention to its color rendition, since my preferences for the Alexa were a lot about the color science, the system’s filmic color rendition and smooth skin tones. I ended up really liking the Monstro’s color.

DIT Mason Denysek helped to keep our color consistent with his live grade on set and into dailies. Then, in final grade at Light Iron, I was able to dial it in with Corinne and supervise most of it directly.

Any challenging scenes that you are particularly proud of or found most challenging?
Overall, the trickiest part of the production was having enough time with our amazing kid actors. All our young leads were so professional and prepared, but because of their ages, we had very limited hours with them. Each day became both a race and a math puzzle to figure out how to shoot all their scene work before we had to wrap them. Our producer Meg Shave and the AD team worked some magic with scheduling and other tricks to give us what we needed.

Adam Silver on set of After with director Jenny Gage.

How did you become interested in cinematography?
I started in the business in New York, moving there after college and working on set. I spent four or five years coming up in the lighting and grip departments. I had studied still photography in college and always liked the visual side of filmmaking.

After a few years working in the industry in New York, I went on to graduate film school. I mostly trained in writing and directing, but because I brought a lighting and photography background, I gravitated to cinematography, shooting dozens of my classmates shorts. These days I’m a director as well, but I will always be a cinematographer; I truly love the craft and it’s in many ways the backbone of filmmaking.

What inspires you artistically?
I’m often driven by wanting to work with a particular artist or filmmaker and will go after projects that have interesting people attached to them.

How do you keep up on new technology?
I’m not the kind of DP that attends gear conferences or anything, and I’ve never wanted to own equipment. I stay on top of it by being as truthful as I can to the story: The story will create a need for a certain type of approach or technique or grammar or style, and if it’s something I haven’t done before, I’ll be forced to learn the tech of it. Prep is key; it’s where all that research happens.

Any best practices that you try to follow on each job?
The longer I do this job, the simpler my lighting gets. I also feel a sense of duty to the idea of truth. That may sound amorphous, and it can mean a lot of things, but just one example is in lighting. There is truth in lighting the way it is in writing or performance.

Not long ago, I was shooting Pen15, and that’s a great example of this. The creators (also the leads), Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle, wrote the show based on their very personal experiences from middle school, and they have an infallible barometer for truth. If anything in the show feels inauthentic, including the lighting, they immediately flag it. I love this. It keeps all of us honest, and it’s one reason the show is so good.

Randi Altman is the founder and editor-in-chief of postPerspective. She has been covering production and post production for more than 20 years. 

Tales From the Loop DP talks large-format and natural light

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By Adrian Pennington

“Not everything in life makes sense,” a woman tells a little girl in the first episode of Amazon’s series Tales From the Loop. Sage advice from any adult to a child, but in this case the pair are both versions of the same character caught in a time-travelling paradox.

Jeff Cronenweth

“This is an adventure with a lot of sci-fi nuances, but the story itself is about humanity,” says Jeff Cronenweth, ASC, who shot the pilot episode for director/producer Mark Romanek. “We are representing the idea that life is little different from the norm. There are time changes that our characters are unaware of, and we wanted the audience’s attention to detail. We didn’t want the visuals to be a distraction.”

Inspired by the retro-futurist paintings of Swedish artist Simon Stålenhag, Tales from the Loop gravitates around characters in a rural North American community and the emotional connection some of them feel toward artefacts from a clandestine government facility that litter the landscape.

Rather than going full Stranger Things and having a narrative that inexorably unlocks the dark mysteries of the experimental lab, writer Nathaniel Halpern (Legion) and producer Matt Reeves (director of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and The Batman), construct Tales From the Loop as a series of individual loosely connected short stories.

The tone and pace are different too, as Cronenweth explains. “Simon’s artwork is the foundation for the story, and it elicits a certain emotion, but some of his pieces we felt were overly strong in color or saturated in a way that would overwhelm a live-action piece. Our jumping-off points were his use of light and staging of action, which often depicts rusting, broken-down bipedal robots or buildings located in the background. What is striking is that the people in the paintings — and the characters in our show — treat these objects as a matter of fact of daily life.”

Near the beginning of Episode 1, a young girl runs through woods across snowy ground. Filmed as a continuous shot and edited into two separate shots in the final piece, the child has lost her mother and spends the rest of the story trying to find her. “We can all relate to being 9 years old and finding yourself alone,” Cronenweth explains. “We begin by establishing the scale of the environment. This is flat rural Ohio in the middle of winter.”

Photography took place during early 2019 in southwest Winnipeg in Canada (standing in for Ohio) and in sub-zero temperatures. “Our dilemma was shooting in winter with short daylight hours and at night where it reaches minus 32. Child actors are in 80 percent of scenes and the time you can legally shoot with them is limited to eight hours per day, plus you need weather breaks, or your fingers will break off. The idea of shooting over 10 consecutive nights became problematic. During location scouting, I noticed that the twilight seemed longer than normal and was really very beautiful, so we made the decision to switch our night scenes to magic hour to prolong our shoot time and take advantage of this light.”

He continues, “We had a condor [cherry picker] and lights on standby in case we couldn’t make it. We rehearsed two-camera setups, and once the light was perfect, we shot. It surprised everybody how much we could accomplish in that amount of time.”

Working in low, natural light; maximizing time with child actors and establishing figures isolated in a landscape were among the factors that led to the decision to shoot large-format digital.

Cronenweth drew on his vast experience shooting Red cameras on films for David Fincher, including Gone Girl, The Social Network and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Cronenweth was Oscar nominated for the latter of those two films. His experience with Red and his preference for lenses led him to the Panavision’s Millennium DXL2 with the Red Monstro 8K VV full-frame sensor, which offers a 46.31 mm (diagonal) canvas and 16 bits of color.

“It was important for us to use a format with 70mm glass and a large-format camera to give scale to the drama on the small screen,” he says.

Another vital consideration was to have great control over depth of field. A set of Primo 70s were mainly for second unit and plate work while Panaspeeds (typically 65mm, 125mm and 200mm) allowed him to shoot at T1.4 (aided by 1st AC Jeff Hammerback).

“The Monstro sensor combined with shooting wide open made depth very shallow in order to make our character more isolated as she tries to find what was taken away from her,” explains Cronenweth. “We also want to be with the characters all the time, so the camera movement is considerable. In telling this story, the camera is fluid, allowing viewers to be more present with the character.”

There is very little Steadicam, but he deployed a variety of technocranes, tracks and vehicles to keep the camera moving. “The camera movement is always very deliberate and tied to the actor.”

Shooting against blinding white snow might have been an issue for older generations of digital sensors, but the Monstro “has so much latitude it can handle high-contrast situations,” says Cronenweth. “We’d shoot exteriors at the beginning or end of the day to mitigate extreme daylight brightness. The quality of light we captured at those times was soft and diffused. That, plus a combination of lens choice, filtration and some manipulation in the DI process, gave us our look.”

Cronenweth was able to draw on his experience working camera on eight pictures for fabled Swedish cinematographer Sven Nykvist, ASC, FSF, (Sleepless in Seattle, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape). Other tonal references were the films of Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky (Stalker) and Polish genius Krzysztof Kieslowski (notably his 10-hour TV series Dekalog).

“I was motivated by Sven’s style of lighting on this,” he says. “We were trying to get the long shadows, to create drama photographically as much as we could to add weight to the story.”

Cronenweth’s year spent shooting Dragon Tattoo in Sweden also came into play. “The way exteriors should look and how to embrace the natural soft light all came flooding back. From Bergman, Tarkovsky and Kieslowski, we leaned into the ‘Scandinavian’ approach of tempered and methodological filmmaking.”

The color palette is suitably muted: cold blues and greys melding with warm yellows and browns. Cronenweth tuned the footage using the DXL2’s built-in color film LUT, which is tuned to the latest Red IPP2 color processing incorporated in the Monstro sensor.

Cronenweth recalls, “In talking with [Light Iron supervising colorist] Ian Vertovec about the DI for Tales From the Loop, he explained that Light Iron had manufactured that LUT from a combination of work we’d done together on The Social Network and Dragon Tattoo. That was why this particular LUT was so appealing to me in tonality and color for this show — I was already familiar with it!”

“I’ve had the good fortune of working with Jeff Cronenweth on several feature films. This would be the first project that’ve we’ve done together that would be delivering for HDR,” reports Vertovec. “I started building the show LUT using the camera LUT for the DXL2 that I made, but I needed to rebuild it for HDR. I knew we would want to control skin tones from going too ruddy and also keep the green grass from getting to bright and electric. When Jeff came into grade, he asked to increase the contrast a bit and keep the blacks nice and rich.”

The pilot of Tales From the Loop is helmed by Romanek, for whom Cronenweth has worked for over two decades on music videos as well as Romanek’s first feature, One Hour Photo. The remaining episodes of Tales From the Loop were shot by Ole Bratt Birkeland; Luc Montpellier, CSC; and Craig Wrobleski, CSC, for directors So Yong Kim, Andrew Stanton and Jodie Foster, among others.

Tales From the Loop is streaming now on Amazon Prime.

Adrian Pennington is a UK-based journalist, editor and commentator in the film and TV production space. He has co-written a book on stereoscopic 3D and edited several publications.

DP Chat: The Grudge’s Zachary Galler

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By Randi Altman

Being on set is like coming home for New York-based cinematographer Zachary Galler, who as a child would tag along with his father while he directed television and film projects. The younger Galler started in the industry as a lighting technician and quickly worked his way up to shooting various features and series.

His first feature as a cinematographer, The Sleepwalker, premiered at the in 2014 and was later distributed by IFC. His second feature, She’s Lost Control, was awarded the C.I.C.A.E. Award at the Berlin International Film Festival later that year. Other television credits include all eight episodes of Discovery’s scripted series Manhunt: Unabomber, Hulu’s The Act and USA’s Briarpatch (coming in February). He recently completed the feature Nicolas Pesce-directed thriller The Grudge, which stars John Cho and Betty Gilpin and is in theaters now.

Tell us about The Grudge. How early did you get involved in planning, and what direction were you given by the director about the look he wanted?
Nick and I worked together on a movie he directed called Piercing. That was our first collaboration, but we discovered that we had very similar ideas and working styles and we formed a special relationship. Shortly after that project, we started talking about The Grudge, and about a year later we were shooting. We talked a lot about how this movie should feel, and how we could achieve something new and different from something neither of us had done before. We used a lot of look-books and movie references to communicate, so when it came time to shoot we had the visual language down fluently and that allowed us keep each other consistent in execution.

How would you describe the look?
Nick really liked the bleach-bypass look from David Fincher’s Se7en, and I thought about a mix of that and (photographer) Bill Henson. We also knew that we had to differentiate between the different storyline threads in the movie, so we had lots to figure out. One of the threads is darker and looks very yellow, while another is warmer and more classic. Another is slightly more desaturated and darker. We did keep the same bleach-bypass look throughout, but adjusted our color temperature, contrast and saturation accordingly. For a horror movie like this, I really wanted to be able to control where the shadow detail turned into black, because some of our scare scenes relied on that so we made sure to light accordingly, and were able to fine-tune most of that in-camera.

How did you work with the director and colorist to achieve that look?
We worked with FotoKem colorist Kostas Theodosiou (who used Blackmagic Resolve). I was shooting a TV show during the main color pass, so I only got to check in to set looks and approve final color, but Nick and Kostas did a beautiful job. Kostas is a master of contrast control and very tastefully helped us ride that line of where there should be detail and where it should not be detail. He was definitely an important part of the collaboration and helped make the movie better.

Where was it shot and how long was the shoot?
We shot the movie in 35 days in Winnipeg, Canada.

How did you go about choosing the right camera and lenses for this project and why these tools?
Nick decided early on that he wanted to shoot this film anamorphic. Panavision has been an important partner for me on most of my projects, and I knew that I loved their glass. We got a range of different lenses from Panavision Toronto to help us differentiate our storylines — we shot one on T Series, one on Primo anamorphics and one on G Series anamorphics. The Alexa Mini was the camera of choice because of its low light sensitivity and more natural feel.

Now more general questions…

How did you become interested in cinematography?
My father was a director, so I would visit him on set a lot when I was growing up. I didn’t know quite what I wanted to do when I was young but I knew that it was being on set. After dropping out of film school, I got a job working in a lighting rental warehouse and started driving trucks and delivering lights to sets in New York. I had always loved taking pictures as a kid and as I worked more and learned more, I realized that what I wanted to do was be a DP. I was very lucky in that I found some great collaborators early on in my career that both pushed me and allowed me to fail. This is the greatest job in the world.

What inspires you artistically? And how do you simultaneously stay on top of advancing technology that serves your vision?
Artistically, I am inspired by painters, photographers and other DPs. There are so many people doing such amazing work right now. As far as technology is concerned, I’m a bit slow with adopting, as I need to hold something in my hands or see what it does before I adopt it. I have been very lucky to get to work with some great crews, and often a camera assistant, gaffer or key grip will bring something new to the table. I love that type of collaboration.

 

DP Zachary Galler (right) and director Nicolas Pesce on the set of Screen Gems’ The Grudge.

What new technology has changed the way you works?
For some reason, I was resistant to using LUTs for a long time. The Grudge was actually the first time I relied on something that wasn’t close to just plain Rec 709. I always figured that if I could get the 709 feeling good when I got into color I’d be in great shape. Now, I realize how helpful they can be, and that you can push much further. I also think that the Astera LED tubes are amazing. They allow you to do so much so fast and put light in places that would be very hard to do with other traditional lighting units.

What are some of your best practices or rules you try to follow on each job?
I try to be pretty laid back on set, and I can only do that because I’m very picky about who I hire in prep. I try and let people run their departments as much as possible and give them as much information as possible — it’s like cooking, where you try and get the best ingredients and don’t do much to them. I’ve been very lucky to have worked with some great crews over the years.

What’s your go-to gear — things you can’t live without?
I really try and keep an open mind about gear. I don’t feel romantically attached to anything, so that I can make the right choices for each project.

Randi Altman is the founder and editor-in-chief of postPerspective. She has been covering production and post production for more than 20 years. 

DP Chat: Late Night cinematographer Matthew Clark

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Directed by Nisha Ganatra, Amazon Studios’ comedy Late Night stars Emma Thompson as Katherine, a famous talk show host who hires Molly, her first-ever female writer (played by Mindy Kaling, who also wrote the screenplay).

Ganatra — whose rich directing background includes Transparent, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Fresh Off the Boat and Chutney Popcorn — worked closely with her, DP Matthew Clark. The two were students together at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Clark’s credits include Pitch Perfect 3, Up All Night and 30 Rock, among many others.

Matthew Clark

Clark has said that one of the toughest tasks in shooting comedy is to make it look and feel natural for the audience while allowing the space for them to laugh. “The visuals must have some depth to them but you need to let the actors work things out on screen,” he explains. “That was a big part for this film knowing the way Nisha likes to work. She’s visual but she’s also very actor-oriented, so one of the things I wanted to do was make our technical footprint as small as possible to give the actors room to work and to find those comic moments.”

For Late Night, Clark describes the look as “heightened naturalism.” He created a look book of images from still photographers, including Gregory Crewdson (artificial reality) and Robert Frank (super naturalism). He also worked with Light Iron colorists Corinne Bogdanowicz in Los Angeles and Sean Dunckley in New York to develop the look during prep. “There were three distinct kind of looks we wanted,” describes Clark. “One was for Katherine’s home, which was more elegant with warm tones. The television studio needed to be crisp and clean with more neutral tones. and for the writers’ room office, the look was more chaotic and business-like with blue or cooler tones.”

We recently reached out to Clark with a few questions designed to learn more about his work on the film and his most recent collaboration with Ganatra.

How would you describe the overarching look of the film? What did you and the director want to achieve? You’ve described it as heightened naturalism. Can you expand on that?
Nisha and I wanted a sophisticated look without being too glamorous. We started off looking at the story, the locations and the ideas that go along with placing our characters in those spaces — both physically and emotionally. Comedy is not easy in that regard. It can be easy to go from joke to joke, but if you want something layered and something that lasts in the audience’s mind, you have to ground the film.

So we worked very hard to give Nisha and the actors space to find those moments. It meant less lighting and a more natural approach. We didn’t back away completely though. We still used camera and light to elevate the scenes and accentuate the mood; for example, huge backlight on the stage, massive negative space when we find out about Katherine’s betrayal or a smoke-filled room as Katherine gives up. That’s what I mean by “heightened naturalism.”

How did Ganatra describe the look she wanted?
Nisha and I started going over looks well before prep began. We talked photos and films. Two of our favorites photographers are William Eggleston and Philip-Lorca DiCorsia. So I was ahead of the game when the official prep started. There was a definite shorthand. Because of that, I was able to go to Light Iron in LA and work out some basic looks for the film — overall color, highlights, shadow detail/color, grain, etc. We wanted three distinct looks. The rest would fall into place.

Katherine’s home was elegant and warm. The writers’ office was cool and corporate. The talk show’s studio was crisper and more neutral. As you know, even at that point, it’s just an idea unless you have your camera, lenses, etc.

Can you talk about the tools you chose?
Once prep started, I realized that we would need to shed some weight to accomplish our days due to very few extra days for rigging and the amount of daily company moves. So we went without a generator and took advantage of the 5000 ISO Panasonic VariCam 35 in conjunction some old, beautiful Panavision UltraSpeeds and Super Speeds.

That lens choice came after I sat with Dan Sasaki and told him what I was going for. He knew I was a fan of older lenses having used an old set of Baltars and similar Ultras on my last movie. I think they take the digital edge off of the sensor and can provide beautiful anomalies and flares when used to achieve your look. Anyway, I think he emptied out the closets at the Woodland Hills location and let us test everything. This was very exciting for a DP.

What makes the process a smooth one for you?
I think what got me started, artistic inspiration and rules/process, all stem from the same thing. The story, the telling, the showing and the emotion. The refined and the raw. It sounds simple. but for me, it is true.

Always try to serve the story; don’t get tied to the fancy new thing or the splashy piece of equipment. Just tell the story. Sometimes, those things coincide. But, always tell a story.

Where do you find inspiration for your work?
I think inspiration for each project comes from many different sources — music, painting, photography, a walk in the afternoon, a sound. That’s very vague, I know, but we have to be open to the world and draw from that. Obviously, it is crucial to spend time with the director — to breathe the same air, so to speak. That’s what puts me on the path and allows me to use the inspirations that fit the film.

Main Image: Matthew Clark and director Nisha Ganatra.

GLOW’s DP and colorist adapt look of new season for Vegas setting

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By Adrian Pennington

Netflix’s Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling (GLOW) are back in the ring for a third round of the dramatic comedy, but this time the girls are in Las Vegas. The glitz and glamour of Sin City seems tailor-made for the 1980s-set GLOW and provided the main creative challenge for Season 3 cinematographer Chris Teague (Russian Doll, Broad City).

DP Chris Teague

“Early on, I met with Christian Sprenger, who shot the first season and designed the initial look,” says Teague, who was recently nominated for an Emmy for his work on Russian Doll. “We still want GLOW to feel like GLOW, but the story and character arc of Season 3 and the new setting led us to build on the look and evolve elements like lighting and dynamic range.”

The GLOW team is headlining the Fan-Tan Hotel & Casino, one of two main sets along with a hotel built for the series and featuring the distinctive Vegas skyline as a backdrop.

“We discussed compositing actors against greenscreen, but that would have turned every shot into a VFX shot and would have been too costly, not to mention time-intensive on a TV schedule like ours,” he says. “Plus, working with a backdrop just felt aesthetically right.”

In that vein, production designer Todd Fjelsted built a skyline using miniatures, a creative decision in keeping with the handcrafted look of the show. That decision, though, required extensive testing of lenses, lighting and look prior to shooting. This testing was done in partnership with post house Light Iron.

“There was no overall shift in the look of the show, but together with Light Iron, we felt the baseline LUT needed to be built on, particularly in terms of how we lit the sets,” explains Teague.

“Chris was clear early on that he wanted to build upon the look of the first two seasons,” says Light Iron colorist Ian Vertovec. “We adjusted the LUT to hold a little more color in the highlights than in past seasons. Originally, the LUT was based on a film emulation and adjusted for HDR. In Season 1, we created a period film look and transformed it for HDR to get a hybrid film emulation LUT. For Season 3, for HDR and standard viewing, we made tweaks to the LUT so that some of the colors would pop more.”

The show was also finished in Dolby Vision HDR. “There was some initial concern about working with backdrops and stages in HDR,” Teague says. “We are used to the way film treats color over its exposure range — it tends to desaturate as it gets more overexposed — whereas HDR holds a lot more color information in overexposure. However, Ian showed how it can be a creative tool.”

Colorist Ian Vertovec

“The goal was to get the 1980s buildings in the background and out the hotel windows to look real — emulating marquees with flashing lights,” adds Vertovec. “We also needed it to be a believable Nevada sky and skyline. Skies and clouds look different in HDR. So, when dialing this in, we discussed how they wanted it to look. Did it feel real? Is the sky in this scene too blue? Information from testing informed production, so everything was geared toward these looks.”

“Ian has been on the first two seasons, so he knows the look inside and out and has a great eye,” Teague continues. “It’s nice to come into a room and have his point of view. Sometimes when you are staring at images all day, it’s easy to lose your objectivity, so I relied on Ian’s insight.” Vertovec grades the show on FilmLight’s Baselight.

As with Season 2, GLOW Season 3 was a Red Helium shoot using Red’s IPP2 color pipeline in conjunction with Vertovec’s custom LUTs all the way to post. Teague shot full 8K resolution to accommodate his choice of Cooke anamorphic lenses, desqueezed and finished in a 2:1 ratio.

“For dailies I used an iPad with Moxion, which is perhaps the best dailies viewing platform I’ve ever worked with. I feel like the color is more accurate than other platforms, which is extremely useful for checking out contrast and shadow level. Too many times with dailies you get blacks washed out and highlights blown and you can’t judge anything critical.”

Teague sat in on the grade of the first three of the 10 episodes and then used the app to pull stills and make notes remotely. “With Ian I felt like we were both on the same page. We also had a great DIT [Peter Brunet] who was doing on-set grading for reference and was able to dial in things at a much higher level than I’ve been able to do in the past.”

The most challenging but also rewarding work was shooting the wrestling performances. “We wanted to do something that felt a little bigger, more polished, more theatrical,” Teague says. “The performance space had tiered seating, which gave us challenges and options in terms of moving the cameras. For example, we could use telescoping crane work to reach across the room and draw characters in as they enter the wrestling ring.”

He commends gaffer Eric Sagot for inspiring lighting cues and building them into the performance. “The wrestling scenes were the hardest to shoot but they’re exciting to watch — dynamic, cinematic and deliberately a little hokey in true ‘80s Vegas style.”

Adrian Pennington is a UK-based journalist, editor and commentator in the film and TV production space. He has co-written a book on stereoscopic 3D and edited several publications.

DP Chat: Good Omens cinematographer Gavin Finney

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By Randi Altman

London-born cinematographer Gavin Finney, BSC, has a wealth of television series and film experience under his belt, including Wolf Hall, The Fear and the upcoming series based on the film of the same name, Hulu’s Four Weddings and a Funeral. One of his most recent projects was the six-episode Amazon series Good Omens, starring Michael Sheen (Aziraphale) and David Tennant (Crowley) as an angel and a demon with a very long history, who are tasked with saving the world. It’s based on the book by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett.

Finney was drawn to cinematography by his love of still photography and telling stories. He followed that passion to film school and fell in love with what could be done with moving images.

Let’s find out more about Finney and his work on Good Omens.

How would you describe the look of Good Omens? How did you work with the director/s/producers to achieve the look they wanted?
There is a progression through the story where things get increasingly strange as Adam (who our main characters believe is the antichrist) comes into his powers, and things in his head start manifesting themselves. It is also a 6,000-year-long buddy movie between an angel and a demon! There is Adam’s world — where everything is heightened and strangely perfect — and Aziraphale and Crowley’s world of heaven and hell. At some point, all these worlds intersect. I had to keep a lot of balls in the air in regard to giving each section its own look, but also making sure that when these worlds collide, it still makes sense.

Each era depicted in the series had a different design treatment — obviously in the case of costume and production design — but also in the way we shot each scene and the way they were lit. For instance, Neil Gaiman had always imagined the scene in the church in the blitz in Episode 3 to be an homage to the film noir style of the time, and we lit and photographed it in that style. Ancient Rome was given the patina of an Alma-Tadema oil painting, and we shot Elizabethan London in an exact recreation of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. The ‘60s were shot mainly on our Soho set, but redressed with posters from that time, and we changed the lighting to use more neon and used bare bulbs for signage.

I also graded the dailies throughout production on DaVinci Resolve, adding film grain and different looks to different time periods to help anchor where we were in the story. Neil wanted heaven and hell to feel like two parts of the same celestial building, so heaven occupied the best penthouse offices, and hell was stuck in the damp, moldy basement where nothing works properly.

We found a huge empty building for the heaven set that had shiny metal flooring and white walls. I frosted all the windows and lit them from outside using 77 ARRI Skypanels linked to a dimmer desk so we could control the light over the day. We also used extremely wide-angle lenses such as the Zeiss rectilinear 8mm lens to make the space look even bigger. The hell set used a lot of old, slightly greenish fluorescent fittings, some of them flickering on and off. Slimy dark walls and leaking pipes were added into the mix.

For another sequence Neil and Douglas wanted an old-film look. To do this, ARRI Media in London constructed a hand-cranked digital camera out of an old ARRI D21 camera and connected it to an ARRI 435 hand-crank wheel and then to a Codex recorder. This gave us a realistic, organic varis-peed/vari-exposure look. I added a Lensbaby in a deliberately loose mount to emulate film weave and vignetting. In this way I was able to reproduce very accurately the old-style, hand-cranked black and white look of the first days of cinema.

How early did you get involved in the production?
I’d worked with the director Douglas Mackinnon a few times before (on Gentlemen’s Relish and The Flying Scotsman), and I’d wanted to work with him again a number of times but was never available. When I heard he was doing this project, I was extremely keen to get involved, as I loved the book and especially the kind of world that Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett were so good at creating. Fortunately, he asked me to join the team, and I dropped everything I was doing to come on board. I joined the show quite late and had to fly from London to Cape Town on an early scout the day after getting the job!

How did you go about choosing the right camera and lenses for this project?
We shot on Leica Summilux Primes and ARRI Alura zooms (15.5-45mm and 45-
250mm) and ARRI Alexa SXT and Alexa Mini cameras outputting UHD 4K files. The Alexa camera is very reliable, easy to work with, looks great and has very low noise in the color channels, which is useful for green/bluescreen work. It can also shoot at 120fps without cutting into the sensor size. We also had to make sure that both cameras and lenses were easily available in Cape Town, where we filmed after the
UK section.

The Alexa output is also very flexible in the grade, and we knew we were going to be pushing the look in a number of directions in post. We also shot with the Phantom Flex 4K high-speed camera at 1,000fps for some scenes requiring ultra-slo motion, and for one particular sequence, a specially modified ARRI D-21 that could be “hand-cranked” like an old movie camera.

You mentioned using Resolve on set. Is this how you usually work? What benefit did you get from doing this?
We graded the dailies on Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve with our DIT Rich
Simpson. We applied different looks to each period of the story, often using a modified film emulation plugin. It’s very important to me that the dailies look great and that we start to establish a look early on that can inform the grade later.

Rich would bring me a variety of looks each day and we’d pick the one we liked for that day’s work. Rich was also able to export our selected looks and workflow to the South African DIT in Cape Town. This formed the starting point of the online grade done at Molinare on FilmLight Baselight under the hugely capable hands of Gareth Spensley. Gareth had a big influence on the look of the series and did some fantastic work balancing all the different day exteriors and adding some magic.

Any challenging scenes you are particularly proud of?
We had some very big sets and locations to light, and the constantly moving style of photography we employed is always a challenge to light — you have to keep all the fixtures out of shot, but also look after the actors and make sure the tone is right for the scene. A complicated rig was the Soho street set that Michael Ralph designed and built on a disused airbase. This involved four intersecting streets with additional alleyways, many shops and a main set — the bookshop belonging to Aziraphale.

This was a two-story composite set (the interior led directly to the exterior). Not only did we have to execute big crane moves that began looking down at the whole street section and then flew down and “through” the windows of the bookshop and into an interior scene. We also had to rig the set knowing that we were going to burn the whole thing down.

Another challenge was that we were filming in the winter and losing daylight at 3:30pm but needing to shoot day exterior scenes to 8pm or later. My gaffer (Andy Bailey) and I designed a rig that covered the whole set (involving eight cranes, four 18Kw HMIs and six six-meter helium hybrid balloons) so that we could seamlessly continue filming daylight scenes as it got dark and went to full night without losing any time. We also had four 20×20-foot mobile self-lighting greenscreens that we could move about the set to allow for the CGI extensions being added later.

What inspires you artistically? And how do you simultaneously stay on top of advancing technology that serves your vision?
The script inspires me artistically. If I don’t love the story and can’t immediately “see” how it might look, I don’t do it. After that, I’m inspired by real life and the way changing light utterly transforms a scene, be it a landscape or an interior. I also visit art galleries regularly to understand how other people see, imagine and communicate.

What new technology has changed the way you work (looking back over the past few years)?
Obviously, digital cinematography has had a huge impact. I trained in film and spent the first 16 years of my career shooting film exclusively, but I was happy to embrace digital when it came in. I love keeping up with all the advances.

Lighting is also going digital with the advent of LED fixtures with on-board computers. I can now dial any gel color or mix my own at any dimmer level from an app on my phone and send it to dozens of fixtures. There is an incredible array of tools now at our disposal, and I find that very exciting and creatively liberating.

What are some of your best practices or rules you try to follow on each job?
I tend to work on quite long jobs — my last two shows shot for 109 and 105 days, respectively. So keeping to sensible hours is critical. Experienced producers who are concerned with the welfare, health and safety of their crew keep to 10 hours on camera, a one-hour lunch and five-days weeks only. Anything in excess of that results in diminishing returns and an exhausted and demoralized crew.

I also think prep time is incredibly important, and this is another area that’s getting squeezed by inexperienced producers to the detriment of the production. Prep time is a comparatively cheap part of the process but one that reaps huge dividends on the shoot. Being fully prepared, making the right location and set design choices, and having enough to time to choose equipment and crew and work out lighting designs all make for a smooth-running shoot.

Explain your ideal collaboration with the director when setting the look of a project.
This goes back to having enough prep time. The more time there is to visit possible locations and simply talk through all the options for looks, style, movement and general approach the better. I love working with visual directors who can communicate their ideas but who welcome input. I also like being able to ditch the plan on the day and go with something better if it suddenly presents itself. I like being pushed out of my comfort zone and challenged to come up with something wonderful and fresh.

What’s your go-to gear — things you can’t live without?
I always start a new production from scratch, and I like to test everything that’s available and proven in the field. I like to use a selection of equipment — often different cameras and lenses that I feel suit the aesthetic of the show. That said, I think
ARRI Alexa cameras are reliable and flexible and produce very “easy to work with” images.

I’ve been using the Letus Helix Double and Infinity (provided by Riz at Mr Helix) with an Exhauss exoskeleton support vest quite a lot. It’s a very flexible tool that I can operate myself and it produces great results. The Easyrig is also a great back-saver when doing a lot of handheld-work, as the best cameras aren’t getting any lighter.

Apart from that, comfortable footwear and warm, waterproof clothing are essential!

Randi Altman is the founder and editor-in-chief of postPerspective. She has been covering production and post production for more than 20 years. 

Whiskey Cavalier DPs weigh in on the show’s look, DITs

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While ABC recently cancelled freshman series Whiskey Cavalier, their on-set workflow is an interesting story to tell. The will-they-won’t-they drama featured FBI agent Will Chase (Scott Foley) and CIA operative Frankie Trowbridge (Lauren Cohan) — his codename is Whiskey Cavalier and hers is Fiery Tribune. The two lead an inter-agency team of spies who travel all over the world, periodically saving the world and each other, all while navigating friendship, romance and office politics.

David “Moxy” Moxness

Like many episodic television shows, Whiskey Cavalier used two cinematographers who alternated episodes so that the directors could work side-by-side with a cinematographer while prepping. David “Moxy” Moxness, CSC, ASC, shot the pilot. Moxness had previously worked on shows like Lethal Weapon, Fringe and Smallville and was just finishing another show when Warner Bros. sent him the pilot script.

“I liked it and took a meeting with director Peter Atencio,” explains Moxness. “We had a great meeting and seemed to be on the same page creatively. For me, it’s so much about collaborating on good shows with great people. Whiskey gave me that feeling.” Sid Sidell, ASC, a friend and colleague of Moxness’, was brought on as the second DP.

While Whiskey Cavalier’s plot has its two main characters traveling all over the world, principal photography took place in Prague. Neither cinematographer had worked there previously, although Moxness had passed through on vacation years before. While prepping and shooting the pilot, Moxness developed the look of the show with director Atencio. “Peter and I had the idea of using the color red when our lead character Will Chase was conflicted emotionally to trigger an emotional response for him,” he explains. “This was a combo platter of set dressing, costumes and lighting. We were very precise about not having the color red in frame other than these times. Also, when the team was on a mission, we kept to a cooler palette while their home base, New York, used warmer tones.”

This didn’t always prove to be straightforward. “You still have to adjust to location surroundings — when scouting for the pilot, I realized Prague still had mostly sodium vapor streetlights, which are not often seen in America anymore,” explains Moxness. “This color was completely opposite to what Peter and I had discussed regarding our nighttime palette, and we had a big car chase over a few nights and in different areas. I knew time and resources would in no way allow us to change or adjust this, and that I would have to work backwards from the existing tones. Peter agreed and we reworked that into our game. For our flashbacks, I shot 35mm 4-perf film with an ARRI IIC hand-cranked camera and Kowa lenses. That was fun! We continued all of these techniques and looks during the series.”

DITs
Mission, a UK-based DIT/digital services provider serving Europe, was brought on to work beside the cinematographers. Mission has an ever-expanding roster of DITs and digital dailies lab operators and works with cinematographers from preproduction onward, safeguarding their color decisions as a project moves from production into post.

Moxness and Sidell hadn’t worked with Mission before, but a colleague of Moxness’ had spoken to him about the experience of working with Mission on a project the year before. This intrigued Moxness, so he was waiting for a chance to work with them.

“When Whiskey chose to shoot in Prague I immediately reached out to Mission’s managing director, Mark Purvis,” explains Moxness. “Mark was enthusiastic about setting us up on Whiskey. After a few conversations to get to know each other, Mark suggested DIT Nick Everett. Nick couldn’t have been a better match for me and our show.”

Interestingly, Sidell had often worked without a DIT before his time on Whiskey Cavalier. He says, “My thoughts on the DP/DIT relationship changed drastically on Whiskey Cavalier. By choice, before Whiskey, I did the majority of my work without a DIT. The opportunity to work alongside Nick Everett and his Mission system changed my view of the creative possibilities of working with a DIT.”

Gear
Whiskey Cavalier was shot with the ARRI Alexa Mini and primarily ARRI Master Prime lenses with a few Angenieux zooms. Both Moxness and Sidell had worked with the Mini numerous times before, finding it ideal for episodic television. The post workflow was simple. On set, Everett used Pomfort’s LiveGrade to set the look desired by the cinematographers. Final color was done at Picture Shop in Los Angeles by senior colorist George Manno.

Moxy (behind camera) and director/EP Peter Atencio (to his right) on the Prague set.

“There are a few inherent factors shooting episodic television that can, and often do, handcuff the DP with regards to maintaining their intended look,” says Moxness. “The shooting pace is very fast, and it is not uncommon for editorial, final color and sometimes even dailies to happen far away from the shooting location. Working with a properly trained and knowledgeable DIT allows the DP to create a desired look and get it into and down the post pipeline to maintain that look. Without a proper solid roadmap, others start to input their subjective vision, which likely doesn’t match that of the DP. When shooting, I feel a strong responsibility to put my thumbprint on the work as I was hired to do. If not, then why was I chosen over others?”

Since successfully working on Whiskey Cavalier in Prague, Mission has set up a local office in Prague, led by Mirek Sochor and dedicated to Mission’s expansion into Central Europe.

And Moxness will be heading back to Prague to shoot Amazon’s The Wheel of Time.

 

DP Chat: No Activity cinematographer Judd Overton

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By Randi Altman

Judd Overton, who grew up in the Australian Outback, knew he wanted to be a DP before he even knew exactly what that was, spending a lot of his time watching and re-watching movies on VHS tapes. When he was young, a documentary film crew came to his town. “I watched as the camera operator was hanging off the side of my motorbike filming as we charged over sand dunes. I thought that was a pretty cool job!”

No Activity

The rest, as they say, is history. Overton’s recent work includes the Netflix comedy series The Letdown and No Activity, which is a remake of the Australian comedy series of the same name. It stars Patrick Brammall and Tim Meadows and is produced by CBS Television Studios in association with Funny or Die, Jungle and Gary Sanchez Productions. It streams on CBS All Access.

We recently reached out to Overton, who also just completed the documentary Lessons from Joan, about one of the first female British theater directors, Joan Littlewood.

What inspires you artistically? And how do you simultaneously stay on top of advancing technology that serves your vision?
What I love about what I do is being able to see things, and show the world to audiences in a way people haven’t seen before. I always keep abreast of technology, but for me the technology really needs to service the story. I choose particular equipment in order to capture the emotion of the piece.

What new technology has changed the way you work (looking back over the past few years?
The greatest change in my world is the high-quality, high-ISO cameras now on the market. This has meant being able to shoot in a much less obtrusive way, shooting and lighting to create footage that is far closer to reality.

The use of great-quality LED lighting is something I’m really enjoying. The ability to create and capture any color and control it from your iPhone opens the floodgates for some really creative lighting.

 

Judd Overton

Can you describe your ideal collaboration with the director when setting the look of a project?
Every director is different, it’s a role and relationship I fill as required. Some directors like to operate the camera themselves. In that case, I oversee the lighting. Some directors just want to work with the actors, so my job then involves more responsibilities for coverage, camera movement and selecting locations.

I try to be open to each new experience and make creative guidelines for a project in collaboration with the director and producers, trying to preempt obstacles before they strike.

Tell us about the CBS All Access show No Activity. Can you describe the overall look of the show and what you and the director/producers wanted to achieve?
I shot the pilot for the original No Activity five years ago. Trent O’Donnell (writer/director, co-creator) wanted to make a series out of simple two hander (two actor) scenes.

We decided to use the police procedural drama genre because we knew the audience would fill in gaps with their own knowledge. In a show where very little happens, the mood and style become far more important.

How early did you get involved in the production?
I’ve been involved since the show was conceptualized. We shot the pilot in a parking lot in one of Sydney’s seedier areas. We fought off a lot of rats.

No Activity

How did you go about choosing the right camera and lenses for this project?
I had to shoot three cameras, as the show is heavily improvised. Other than my main cameras with zoom lenses, I chose the best cameras for each sequence. We used Blackmagic cameras Ursa Pro and Micro for a lot of our rigged positions. I also used Panasonic cameras for our available light work, and even an Arri 65 for some projection plates.

Were there any scenes that you are particularly proud of?
The scene I had the most fun with was the siege, which plays over the last two episodes of Season 2. We dusted off and fired up two 1930s Arc lights. Carbon Arc lights are what all the old Hollywood films used before HMIs. They are a true 5600 Kelvin, daylight source.

My gaffer’s father actually made these units, and they were refurbished for Quentin Tarantino’s film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. We used them as searchlights for our nighttime siege, and the bright beams and plumes of smoke rising really gave the scene an epic scale.

What’s your go-to gear — things you can’t live without?
Communication is everything, and the latest toy in my toy box is HME headsets. They allow me to have constant communications with my camera operators, grips and electrics, essential when you’re running five cameras across multiple units.