LA-based cinematographer Jeff Powers’ work spans features, episodics, commercials and music videos. Recent credits include Heaven’s Gate for HBO Max, Muscles and Mayhem for Netflix and Slipnot’s video for Yen for Offsite Films.

Powers also shot the indie film Bucky F*cking Dent, written and directed by David Duchovny and edited by Jamie Nelsen, ACE. Set in the 1970s, the story centers on struggling author Ted (Logan Marshall-Green) and his estranged, terminally ill father, Marty (Duchovny). After learning of Marty’s condition from his caretaker/nurse Mariana (Stephanie Beatriz), Ted decides to move back home. Ted and Marty’s struggle to reconnect, understand and ultimately forgive each other is built on a mutual love of baseball.

Jeff Powers

“The film is dark and funny but also earnest and affecting. The two trade plenty of barbs, feeling each other out before Marty, in his failing health, opens up about his past and the source of their troubled relationship,” explains Powers. “The whole journey takes place within the context of the Red Sox’s doomed 1978 pennant race and results in Ted finding new purpose and direction in his life.”

Let’s find out more from Powers’ and his work on the film, which screened at NYC’s Tribeca Film Festival…

How early did you get involved on this film?
The whole project came together very quickly for me. Only three and a half weeks after my first conversation with director David Duchovny, we were on-set making it happen. With such a short preproduction window, I had to be extremely focused on my prep. David adapted the screenplay from a novel he’d published in 2016, so I was able to rely on his in-depth understanding of the story and characters. His clear vision of everything, from broad story points down to hyper-specific details, helped me get up to speed quickly.

How did you work with Duchovny? What direction were you given?
David said he wanted the camera to feel “buoyant,” which is a sentiment I latched onto. It’s wonderfully specific yet completely open-ended at the same time. In a literal interpretation, we decided to shoot a large portion of the film hand-held. That float gives a sense of subjectivity and immediacy that works well for this kind of character-driven story.

More figuratively, the film deals with themes of disappointment and death, but at its heart, it is an optimistic comedy. We don’t shy away from the dramatic moments, but we didn’t want the movie to sink into a heavy, dark place. Ultimately, it is a hopeful story with a lot of hilarious moments along the way, and the camera’s POV needed to be that buoy carrying you along.

One of the films David and I looked at to find a common frame of reference was Five Easy Pieces. There are obvious comparisons to the 1970s time period, and father/son theme — Laszlo Kovacs’ beautiful and often understated character-driven photography is truly inspirational.

Shooting for a director who will spend the majority of the day in front of the camera is a big undertaking. I knew I was going to have to cover a lot of the gray area in between the DP and director role while shooting, and that’s a lot of responsibility. I’m extremely grateful for the trust David placed in me and his unyielding support on-set. In the end, I think a lot of our personal relationship is up on the screen in a way that is truly unique, in my experience.

What about the color and working with the colorist? What are some notes that you exchanged?
For production, I built a show LUT. I wanted to set our look at the start so the intention would be clear from dailies all the way through editorial. I chose a single-LUT workflow to keep myself honest. We were working very quickly on-set, and in that situation, I find the simplicity of sticking with the single look and using lighting and exposure to craft the image works best for me.

Sebastian Perez-Burchard at Tunnel Post handled the color. While we did look at dailies for reference here and there, Sebastian built up a fresh, more refined look based on some images we traded back and forth. I was particularly into photographers Tina Barney and Larry Sultan at the time. I found their work informative in finding how to place our highlights and shadows at the near edges of exposure while maintaining a relatively medium- to low-contrast look. There’s an intimacy to these images as well as an off-the-cuff snapshot quality that was appropriate for our film. I brought both those books with me to the DI in case we lost our way and needed some inspiration.

Sebastian did a tremendous job giving the film the grade it deserved while keeping David and me on track throughout the process. I can’t thank him enough for the heroic 14-hour final day we pulled to get it all done.

What did you end up shooting on and why? 
We shot Bucky on ARRI Alexa Minis with Zeiss standard speeds. Given the nature of our short prep and fast production style, I needed to rely on a camera I’m comfortable with. I’ve shot with the Alexa Mini countless times, and its combination of wide latitude, beautiful color rendition and compact form factor was the right choice.

I’ve always loved Zeiss standard and super speed lenses. DPs often pair older, softer lenses with digital sensors, and it’s a move I’ve pulled many times myself. In this case, the standards brought the right balance of clarity and expressiveness to achieve our look. I tended to shoot them in the T 2 2/3 to T 2.8 1/3 range, which is where those lenses perform best for me. When necessary, I also worked contrast or diffusion filters in to push the softness and halation even further, but I’d guess a solid third of the film was shot on 40mm, clean with no filtration.

AbelCine in New York set us up with the Alexa/Zeiss package as well as an Angenieux 10:1 zoom, which we used for some of our more telephoto shots.

Can you talk lighting?
The goal of the film was natural, grounded lighting throughout. David was looking for a style that would apply to the dramatic elements equally as well as the comedic. To me, this meant lighting from outside windows or motivating with practicals as much as possible. It also meant not being afraid to let faces fall into shadow.

As with any DP, I always feel the temptation to get the lighting “perfect” (whatever that might mean). You place the key just so to get that Rembrandt triangle. You set blocking so your actor’s marks are carved out with striking back light. Don’t get me wrong, I love all that, and it’s my go-to starting point. However, every time I reached for these approaches in Bucky, they ended up feeling forced and unnatural in a way that undercut the story we were telling. Eventually, I settled into emphasizing those key moments with darkness and shadow.

One particularly dramatic and cathartic scene between Ted and Mariana is set in a narrow hallway and plays out entirely in silhouette. I love how much weight this image brings to the moment and allows the audience to focus on the emotion conveyed in the characters’ entire body language. You can’t see either of their faces, but you feel it all.

Any happy accidents happen on-set?
In the third act of the film, there is a scene in which Marty has a revelation and truly opens up to his son, which required a lot from David and Logan performance-wise.

We did a blocking rehearsal, and while David stepped away to prepare, I placed the cameras and set up the scene. But when the cast returned and we started rolling, I immediately realized the angles I’d chosen weren’t working at all. Everything felt very stiff, and the camera wasn’t matching the intensity David was bringing to this massive three-page performance. I didn’t want to break the energy midscene, so after the first take, I went up to David and told him his performance was incredible, but the cameras were in the totally wrong place. Not a comfortable admission to make!

I could have stopped it down and reconfigured the setup, but David and Logan were in it and prepared to give a great performance right then and there. In order to keep momentum, I opted to go hand-held and shoot everything with a single camera. This was not the plan at all, nor was it the vision for how the scene would play, but in the moment, it just felt right. This allowed me to adjust the camera to mirror the dynamic of David’s performance.

Without much forethought, I found myself wrapping from a medium close-up to a near-3/4 raking profile and back, spontaneously taking cues from David’s monologue. Similarly, while on Logan’s side, the lens dips in and out of flares, sometimes almost completely obscuring his face as he takes in this brutal honesty from his father. None of these choices would have been made if the initial plan had worked out.

The result has a very close and intimate feel. The performance is feeding the camera, and the visuals are reinforcing that performance. Obviously, this is all some very basic stuff, but it really made the scene come to life. Sometimes things work out through dumb luck, but in most cases, I think these “happy accidents” come from acknowledging that what you’ve planned isn’t as good as what’s actually happening… and having the presence of mind to roll with it.

Are there some scenes that stick out as challenging? Can you talk about those?
Making a period indie film is tough. The script called for a few exterior scenes, which I knew would be huge undertakings to make period-accurate. For example, there is a sequence in which Ted and Mariana walk around downtown as they get to know each other. I was searching for a way to convey the world of this 1970s small town without just burying the art and AD departments.

I love a good medium-to-longer-lens wide shot in general, but on this one, we pushed it hard and ended up doing wides at 200mm or even longer. This gave the shots a very narrow and achievable field of view from a set dressing and background actor perspective, but it also used the compression and depth of a telephoto lens to keep that sense of world I was aiming for.

Looking back on the film, would you have done anything different?
There is that classic saying, something to the effect of “You are only really prepared to shoot a film after you’ve wrapped it.” There are always things to improve if you were to get a second shot at it. I’m always highly self-critical, and so the day I step away from a film fully satisfied will honestly probably be the day I retire.

I’m really proud of what we achieved with Bucky, but if there’s one thing I would have done differently, it’s that I would have loved another couple weeks of prep. Days spent sitting in the production office certainly aren’t the most exciting part of filmmaking, but there is no substitute for thorough preparation. In this case, our quick preproduction window didn’t allow for that, so everyone had to be light on their feet to keep up. I will say this forced us to focus on the bigger picture of the film and adapt to new opportunities as they came up, which gave plenty of room for those happy accidents you mentioned.

Any tips for young cinematographers?
I can’t recommend working on-set in a crew position enough. I started out on a dual track of sorts, working as an electrician and gaffer while simultaneously shooting my own smaller projects. Not only do you get to learn more experienced DPs’ approaches, but you also gain a sense and appreciation of what you’re asking your team to do. A big part of being the DP is managing the people working with you. How well can you do that if you’ve never actually held any of those positions yourself?

Also, I keep a work journal and wish I had started doing so right from the start. It can be as elaborate as full lighting plots, set photos and camera diagrams on some shoots, or as simple as a few notes recollected after a chaotic day. Either way, I have a record of what was done on-set and how effective it was. Over time, it’ll help you find your style and dial in your skills. And most importantly, it’ll prevent you from making the same mistake twice when you do have a misstep… I can promise you that!