ICG Magazine - April 2024 - New Technology

APRIL 2024

VOL. 95 #03

FEATURING PALM ROYALE

+

GENIUS: MLK/X

MANHUNT SUNDANCE 2024

DISRUPTION CENTRAL

THE BEST MINDS IN TECHNOLOGY AT HPA 2024 ALL AGREED THAT AI WILL BE A GAME-CHANGER; LESS CLEAR ARE WHERE THE NEW GOAL POSTS WILL BE AND WHAT THAT EVENT HORIZON LOOKS LIKE.

BY DAVID GEFFNER

READ ALL ABOUT THIS WEB EXCLUSIVE COMING SOON TO ICGMAGAZINE.COM

CONTENTS

APRIL 2024

DEPARTMENTS

gear guide ................ 14

zoom in ................ 22

game changers ................ 24

exposure ................ 26

production credits .............. 116

stop motion .............. 124

FEATURE 01

LIFESTYLES OF THE RICH & FAMOUS

Palm Royale’s creator, Abe Sylvia, wanted to make a show that mirrored the work of celebrity photographer Slim Aarons; Directors of Photography David Lanzenberg and Todd McMullen were thrilled to accommodate the ask.

DAYBREAK, GRAY AND DIM 66 SPECIAL

FEATURE 03

The

killing of America’s 16th president flung a nation into mourning; the search for his assassin became high drama of Shakespearean proportions.

How a Local 600 Publicity team captured the unique behind-the-series atmosphere in the latest in Nat Geo’s Genius series. FEATURE 02

PRESIDENT’S LETTER

CONNECTIONS

This issue of ICG Magazine is all about technology, which changes at a lightningfast speed. From my perspective as a career camera technician, it’s been amazing to see all the new remote-focus and camera-control tools hitting the market, as well as the new ultra-high-resolution, large-format-sensor camera systems that offer a ton of new menus and options, and all demand a level of precision in focus pulling that film never did. There are also many new spherical and anamorphic lenses – that cover large-format sensors – with extremely fast speeds of T1.3 or even faster. These lenses push the technician’s skills to a new place and demand constant training, practice and upgrading of individual skills.

Something we never encountered in a film workflow is the huge amount of metadata captured on set, and the new tools that feed that metadata into a file-based workflow. This metadata helps to achieve new levels of accuracy in meeting tight deadlines in post (especially when doing VFX). Like many other new digital systems, they require training and setup, as well as being overseen as they travel from the set to the postproduction pipeline, making it clear how dynamic the camera technician’s role has become.

And the same can be said for every job

in the camera department. Highly technical (and portable) new gimbal and remote rigs require today’s camera operators to be well-conditioned athletes; thanks to supersensitive sensors and versatile LEDs, directors of photography must capture images in the lowest possible light situations, and the advances in on-set color management software have made the DIT’s role as complex and critical as ever.

All of these new technologies are great, but they are not without challenges. The speed with which they are introduced means new tools are arriving (almost daily) on set without so much as an instruction manual (or someone to explain them). Of course, they require constant new training, which this Local strives to provide in every one of our regions. For those like me who grew up in film, some of these new technologies have fractured a bond. Focus pullers used to work right next to operators, dolly grips, boom technicians and even talent. There was a connection established that was different from being on a comm set in another room.

As technology pushes this membership forward, we must be careful not to lose those human connections that have been a part of this industry since the beginning.

Baird B Steptoe

Photo by Scott Everett White

National President International Cinematographers Guild IATSE Local 600

Michael Chambliss

Chr!s Reel

Derek Stettler

Valentina Valentini

Putting together our April New Technology issue, which coincides with the industry’s largest tech convention, NAB in Las Vegas, I wondered aloud if that theme had become an oxymoron. With HPA (the annual tech conference in Rancho Mirage, CA that, on a much smaller scale than NAB, brings together some of the best and brightest technologists in the world) still fresh in mind, I realized that with the current speed of progression, every technology is new for a moment – and then quickly becomes old within weeks, days, or even less. The new technology that’s on everyone’s minds – artificial intelligence (AI) – reigned supreme at HPA, and I expect that to be repeated at NAB. But as my Exposure conversation with Local 600 Director of Photography Andrew Shulkind (page 26) reveals, shouldn’t a technology like Sphere –which Shulkind helped develop and where he’s now SVP, head of capture – truly lay claim to being new, since it didn’t even exist until MSG Entertainment CEO James Dolan reimagined what the future of live (and filmed) entertainment could be?

Or maybe giving too much power to the technology itself (and not enough to the human beings who imagined it) is our first mistake? As Shulkind, who has been at the leading edge of every tech trend of the last twenty years, from largeformat and high-speed imaging to 360-degree photography, volumetric capture, data scanning, and more, told me, “in spite of the epic scale [of Sphere], the technology was always meant to be subordinate to the overall experience. The challenge has always been: How do we make the technical complexity disappear so it’s only about this transportive experience for the audience? No one was sure that it could be done, which was exciting and scary.”

Those same two words aptly describe this industry’s view of AI, whether it be the recent demonstration of Open AI’s new SORA platform I saw at HPA, or ICG Writer Michael Chambliss’ experience at an AI panel at Sundance (Neural Networks , page 110). Like Shulkind, Chambliss has a decades-long grounding in both traditional workflows and every new digital technology that has come along since. Like Shulkind, he comes at any new technology from the point-of-view of a filmmaker, specifically cinematography, i.e., how

can this technology be ultimately transparent in the storytelling process?

Even in the budget-challenged world of Sundance, many filmmakers were curious about what AI’s impact will be on a century of cinematic storytelling. But if our three features this month are any indication, human beings are still as capable as machines of learning new ways to tell stories. Just ask the Guild cinematographers who shot Apple TV+’s new limited series Manhunt (page 66). Robert Humphries, ACS, and Trevor Forrest helped to reimagine a well-known time in U.S. history – President Lincoln’s assassination in 1865 – using digital tools to help emulate that era’s still photography. As Humphreys explained: “[Photography] was still such a new art form that it changed people’s views of the world…and because of the massive glass negatives they had to use [10 × 8 or 5 × 4], the depth of field was very shallow,” which lined up well with the DP’s choice to capture with a large-format digital sensor.

Also key in replicating Manhunt’s look was a custom film emulation process created by Streamland Media Colorist Pankaj Bajpai, who drew from Technicolor image scientist Joshua Pines’ work adapting photochemical film workflows to digital capture. Using Pines’ extensive transform library, Bajpai was able to build a custom twostage film emulation utilizing an initial film-print LUT based on Kodak Vision 2383 print stock and filtered through an ENR emulation LUT. As Humphries continues, “The look of Manhunt is very much that of an ENR-developed film – gorgeous, with rich blacks and the contrast characteristics of the silver retention ENR created.”

So does Manhunt constitute a new technology, a new use of technology, or just a new way to see a world that was already documented with the world’s newest technology of that time – photography? Semantics aside, I think it’s important to heed the directive Shulkind and his team at Sphere laid out: to make the technology, however new it may be, secondary to the human experience. After all, if the ancient dictum that “there’s nothing new under the sun” holds, every new technology already exists within us – artists, craftspeople, scientists, filmmakers – and is just waiting to be discovered.

See you at NAB!

David Geffner Executive

CHR!S REEL

Daybreak, Gray and Dim, Stop Motion

“Photographing Manhunt in Savannah and Philadelphia was a charged experience. It was interesting to learn from the locations department how some of the chosen places tied into the Civil War. All the actors and crew were welcoming, which allowed me to capture the best possible images for Apple TV+’s marketing department.

DEREK STETTLER

Daybreak, Gray and Dim

“I have specific memories of learning about President Lincoln and the U.S. Civil War in 7th grade, and Manhunt perfectly captures the way I imagined that period. I enjoyed hearing from DP’s Robert Humphreys, ACS, and Trevor Forrest on how they brought the era to life for a gripping story that took me far beyond what I learned in school.”

In our February/March Madame Webb story (page 64) we incorrectly attributed the top image to A-Camera/Steadicam Operator David Emmerichs, SOC, working in Grand Central Station. That shoot day in New York City had Will Arnot on Steadicam, who is featured in the image.

Our Focus is HELPING YOU

Members of the International Cinematographers Guild,

Last year’s historic strike made it crystal clear that partnership is the bedrock of the entertainment industry. Professionals from all trades came together to make their voices heard, staying united for months of negotiations. This commitment paid off, with the two sides coming to new agreements that reflect the talents of the members of the entertainment industry. The fabric of the guilds during this time was strengthened by their partnerships with supporting institutions who put the needs of their members first.

As one of the institutions that partners with entertainment professionals, First Entertainment Credit Union was proud to focus on you by providing seven million dollars in vital financial solutions—both to existing credit union members and the nearly 200 new members we welcomed—by funding emergency loans, deferring loans, and waiving and reversing fees. We also enjoyed the opportunity to meet many of our members face-to-face when we handed out hundreds of bags filled with more than 2,000 non-perishable items donated by our team members during the holiday season.

In the coming year First Entertainment is set up to provide the best services, education, and special offers to help entertainment industry professionals regain their financial footing.

We’ll do this by continuing to deliver a premiere banking experience that allows members to access their finances when and where it’s most convenient, be it Digital Banking, on the studio lot, or your mobile phone. We also tailor products to meet your needs with custom banking services including loans to pay your Union Dues, Skip-A-Pay, and more.

We are excited to help our members wherever they are in 2024 so they can continue to pursue their dreams. Come and see why creators trust us as their banking partner. We look forward to seeing you soon!

Sincerely,

STEVE OWEN President and CEO

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Lights, Camera, Action, Logistics!

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ARRI’s new flagship stabilized remote head, the 360 EVO, builds on the success of the company’s new generation of stabilizers. It features 360-degree rotation on the roll and pan axes, a more robust design, and remote system integration. A new GUI and multiple accessories are shared with the TRINITY 2, creating a unique integrated lineup of hard- and softmounted stabilizer options. The same technology from the TRINITY 2 has been scaled up for the 360 EVO three-axis, opening up new shot possibilities and more dynamic roll-axis shots, which can be achieved by mounting the 360 EVO to any platform, like a dolly, camera car, crane, or cable cam for live broadcast. The 360 EVO runs on the same software platform as TRINITY 2, with the same popular and intuitive GUI displayed on its touchscreen remotecontrol panel. LBUS connectivity enables efficient digital and metadata workflows. The new software and GUI are focused on long-term Unreal Engine integration to facilitate virtual production.

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In a world where cinema lens choices seem limitless – vintage, anamorphic, large format and more – CINEFLARES offers a resource for industry professionals to make informed decisions that truly support their artistic vision. The collection began with the passion for lenses felt by Guild Director of Photography Markus Förderer, ASC, BVK. It allows users to explore and compare a vast selection of cine lenses for their unique visual characteristics and response to light. Each lens has been professionally captured under controlled conditions utilizing state-ofthe-art motion control and high-resolution large-format cameras. By capturing a bright-point light source against a deep black background, each optic exhibits its distinctive flare pattern, contrast-holding ability, and individual color response, revealing each serial number’s unique fingerprint or lens flare. “It’s a revelation not only about the peculiarities of each lens responding to flare but also the distinct characteristic of the glass in terms of color and focus,” says Seamus McGarvey, ASC, BSC. “This system will be as much a part of my kit as my light meter.”

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ANNALEE PAULO

BY PAULINE ROGERS

PHOTO BY SARA MALLY

Annalee Paulo, West Coast President of 42West, jokes that she “pledged MPRM” during the late 1990s, the heyday of independent film, “where I had a ton of fun learning the ropes of film and festival campaigns from among the best in the business: Mark Pogachefsky and Laura Kim.” She spent a few years at New Line and United Artists, freelanced for several boutique agencies and even did a stint at AFI Fest. That training was the perfect basis for starting at 42West (mentored by Leslee Dart, Susan Ciccone and Amanda Lundberg). Today she oversees a department of 15 people on the West Coast.

Working for an independent PR agency as opposed to a studio takes a great ability to spin many plates at once. “We have a diverse roster of clients made up of studios, networks and streamers that hire us for content PR campaigns, as well as creative talent who hire us directly to handle their personal/corporate PR and/or the release campaign of their film or TV show,” describes Paulo. “That relationship with our actors, directors, musicians, showrunners and producers empowers us to take action on their behalf and cut through the bureaucracy to do our jobs effectively.”

Those clients can often be new producers and directors, whose ramp-up to the marketing world is all at once. This is when Paulo’s “gentle” touch kicks in, needing to both educate the filmmakers about publicity for the first time while also strategizing the very best outcome for the project during what is usually an overwhelming and stressful period. “We try to keep it simple,” she says. “If there are no publicity materials,

which is often the case for an indie film, we’ll work with the filmmaker on screen grabs for photos. We’ll ask them to provide a director’s statement and offer recommendations for video clips. As we get to know them, we are listening and looking out for nuggets of information that may turn into great pitch angles. Often, a filmmaker’s motivation for making their film and their journey to finish it are strong narratives

we can use in a PR campaign. Another issue is balancing the best way to reveal the film to the press. Most of the time we hold back advance screenings until it has debuted at a film festival. When needed, we might screen it ahead of time. The strategy for every film is different.”

That balance is crucial when Paulo and her team are promoting films seeking distribution at venues like Sundance. “The assignment is

to do just enough publicity to entice a buyer, while saving its potential editorial opportunities for when it becomes available to the public,” she adds. Sundance 2024 was a huge success for 42West – the agency handled the world premiere of the documentary feature Super/ Man: The Christopher Reeve Story (which sold to Warner Bros. Discovery for $15 million), the horror feature It’s What’s Inside (which sold to Netflix for $17 million) and LuckyChap’s My Old Ass (which sold to Lionsgate for $15 million).

“I think my first Sundance was in 2000, when I was a junior assistant shivering outside of Sofia Coppola’s Virgin Suicides super-hot-ticket after-party and fending off party crashers,” Paulo reflects. “Those first years stand out for me because I was working on the early films of genius filmmakers and actors before their careers took off, like Sofia, Christopher Nolan and Emma Thomas for Memento, Doug Liman for Go, and Kristen Stewart, whose star quality was apparent at age 14 in Speak

“Justin Lin’s debut, Better Luck Tomorrow, was a particular milestone for me,” Paulo continues. “It’s a compelling, funny and violent film that upended racial stereotypes and featured an all-Asian-American cast and crew, which was especially meaningful since inclusive films were unicorns in the early 2000s. It was also the first acquisition title I personally oversaw alongside my good friend David Magdael, and we crafted a great campaign. The world premiere at the Library Theater sold out and played like a rock concert both on and off the screen. During the Q&A, when an audience member expressed offense at the storyline, the filmmakers appeared to droop under the scrutiny until the famed film critic Roger Ebert stood up to vigorously defend the director’s vision with a preacher’s voice and a shaking fist. The whole room exploded with cheers and Better Luck Tomorrow was distributed by MTV Films/Paramount not long after.”

Paulo says that since those heady early days of the festival, “Sundance and I have evolved to a point where I can no longer park my SUV on Main Street and I’d rather skip the party than stand outside in a blizzard waiting to get in. I’ve also given up on ever finding time to ski on the empty slopes. But it’s still so much fun discovering new voices and having a hand in careers being born.”

42West is also heavily involved in promotion for independent distributors like Lionsgate, IFC, Magnolia, and self-distributed projects, as

well as studio/streamers including Apple TV+, Paramount+, Max, and Amazon Prime. But no matter the distribution model, Paulo says the goal is always to attract as wide an audience as possible to sell tickets or get people to stream once the film is made public.

“The challenge for indie films is they generally do not have the resources to buy advertising or invest in promotions,” she shares, “so publicity is the primary method [of gaining attention]. Agencies analyze what assets are available – be it celebrity talent, a timely theme, amazing crafts, et cetera – and uncover press, word-of-mouth or other opportunities that will gain traction with the viewing public.”

During the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, the company handled the release campaigns of feature projects like Vertical’s She Came To Me, Lionsgate’s The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and Apple TV+’s Killers of the Flower Moon, all of which featured bookable actor talent who were not available to do publicity due to the work actions.

“We pivoted to other editorial pitch angles and focused heavily on the artisans to build awareness for these films,” Paulo recounts. “I’m happy to say 42West celebrated success for each of them, but we had to get creative about making actors feel comfortable doing press if their film had a SAG Interim Agreement. On She Came To Me , we opened the door to fruitful conversations between SAG-AFTRA and reps for Peter Dinklage, Marisa Tomei, and Anne Hathaway. We recommended union representatives attend our premiere and got permission for the union logo to be printed on the step-and-repeat. In the end, the cast felt so supported, they confidently walked the red carpet and fully participated throughout the film’s national PR campaign.”

In describing her unique (and challenging) area of the marketing universe, Paulo explains that “independent publicists are trained to think fast and creatively, since we often don’t have the benefit of large resources and sometimes the distribution model isn’t standard. Every film is its own unique creation, so the campaigns we strategize and build are never cookie cutter. We are in the business of nurturing the public narrative of storytellers and connecting their films to the widest audience possible. It’s certainly challenging with today’s complex media landscape, but at least it’s never boring.”

GREG SMOKLER

BY PAULINE ROGERS

PHOTO BY ZACH DILGARD OPERATOR VP OF CINE PRODUCTS CREATIVE SOLUTIONS

“Filmmaking is a collaborative medium. A director can’t simultaneously lay dolly track, pull focus, rig a flyswatter and block a scene,” says Greg Smokler, a 17-year member of Local 600 who has won a SciTech Academy Award and two Sci-Tech Emmy Awards with his team of fellow innovators at Cine Products Videndum Creative Solutions, where he is president and general manager. “I fell in love with that aspect while shadowing my father, Director of Photography Peter Smokler ( This Is Spinal Tap, Sports Night, The Larry Sanders Show , It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia), on shoots,” Smokler shares. “This is why I was able to fall into technology product development so easily. Just like making a great film, building up a product or innovation is complex and multi-disciplinary, and you can’t possibly do it alone.”

As a student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Smokler stumbled upon an obscure program that allowed him to create his major, which he called Film Culture. “I was learning how to consider every possible context and aspect of the environment in which art or ideas were created as well as consumed,” Smokler recalls. But noodling with his father’s filmmaking tools while enjoying a deep dive into literature and the environment of art didn’t necessarily provide an obvious career path. So, for ten years, Smokler worked in all aspects of the industry – from teleprompter PA, movie-premiere schlepper, and commercial truck PA to art department and eventually camera.

“One of my first union TV jobs was as digital utility on the first season of Californication, shot by Mike Weaver, ASC,” he adds. “I was working with super dialed-in camera assistants. And I saw firsthand the challenges of moving from 35-millimeter film workflows to the HD digital revolution. We had massive looms of HD cable required

to support video village and the camera shading for the DIT. One of my primary jobs was to stand behind the camera and wrangle these horrible cables. And I was constantly getting yelled at by the legendary dolly grip Greg Brooks. I can still hear ‘Smokler!’ in my nightmares. Every other crew around the world was experiencing the same pain as we moved away from film cameras into HD monitoring.”

It was in 2011 that fellow ICG member Dan Kanes introduced Smokler to the world of wireless video and, as he describes, “was ripped out of my path to becoming a cinematographer. Innovation has come mostly from sheer persistence to push forward the development of powerful and well-designed platforms while maintaining flexibility and openness to the creative process of iteration,” Smokler describes. “This allows you to jump on opportunities the moment the confluence of art and technology creates major changes.”

Opportunity had come calling, and Smokler opted to move away from camera operating into the world of product design and entrepreneurship – with the added benefit of knowing how new technology should provide benefits in the real world. His debut venture was Paralinx, the first wireless video company that employed the unique technology developed by Amimon in a way that made onset wireless video accessible and affordable to any production – not just those with extremely high budgets. “As we worked with Amimon we started competing with Teradek,” Smokler explains. “Coming together with Teradek CEO/Founder Nicol Verheem, we were able to essentially eliminate a ton of SDI cables, thereby enabling a ton of freedom of camera movement (and relieving all those poor digital utilities from getting yelled at by dolly grips)!

“I was still a pretty technically ignorant person,” Smokler recalls. “But joining Teradek and getting to work with brilliant engineers and designers like Ryan Barber, Richard Billet, Dennis Scheftner and Marius van der Watt was

an education. As a product manager, I found my niche, providing the critical element of context in which technological innovation can be useful, beneficial and functional.”

Smokler was about to reset the game with Teradek, pouring his energy into designing ergonomics, functionality and core technological capabilities in a wireless video system. The result was the fourth-generation Teradek Bolt, the 3000XT. That same year the company acquired Amimon, and the following year, Bolt 4K received the AMPAS Scitech Award.

But he wasn’t done yet. Smokler’s next transformative step was as a product manager of Cine Monitors at SmallHD. “I had seen the low-end creator market saturated with lowcost, low-quality products,” he explains. “But professional camera crews across the planet were starting to fall in love with SmallHD because Dale Backus, and his partner, Wes Phillips, ignored the conventional wisdom and built small, affordable on-camera HD monitors when all the other companies were focused on the larger broadcast industry. In collaboration with the amazing SmallHD team – led by Russell Hocken, Jeffrey Gray, Barrett Phillips, and Blake Johnson and Tim Malooly – we made a major shift to focus on more cinematography-centric software capabilities and a new platform for 4K monitors.”

SmallHD was known for daylight-viewable on-camera monitors that offered great software features. But they had yet to enter the realm of reference displays – ultra-high-end monitors used by, as Smokler describes, “the best eyes on the planet – cinematographers, DIT’s and postproduction colorists. As we developed our 4K platform, we also realized that we could bring an outsider’s perspective to the definition of ‘reference’ monitors that had always come from a traditional background in broadcast television.”

In the end, Smokler and team designed the first true “field ready” HDR monitor – dubbed

the Vision Series, capable of going anywhere Production needs to film. [See Griselda, ICG Magazine February/March 2024.] Vision is powered by SmallHD’s proprietary localdimming algorithm that controls the backlight modulation of more than 2000 zones of miniLED’s. “We also added two 4K OLED monitors and three more 4K LCD monitors in our Cine Series,” Smokler says. The result was SmallHD being honored with an AMPAS Scitech Emmy Award in 2023 for the company’s innovative monitor platform.

More recently, SmallHD has launched what they believe will be one of the best reference monitors ever made, the Quantum 32. “It’s a 31.5-inch quantum-dot OLED monitor which is the result of a cooperation with Samsung Display Corporation, who have pioneered the development of this new panel technology,” Smokler offers. “We believe that this product line will make the highest-level of final color authoring accessible to a much larger group of boutique postproduction houses, as well as other roles within post.”

According to Smokler, the move to HDR monitoring has been largely limited to final color for nearly a decade, but there are so many more elements of production, from the actual monitoring of cinematography to VFX and editorial, where almost everyone but the final colorist must suffer through SDR images. “This is the beginning of opening the HDR pipeline through powerful technology deployed within products,” he promises. “Our design teams put their hearts and souls into making what we believe will be the most capable monitors ever designed for both production and post.”

Also in the works is the refinement of all-in-one support packages from Wooden Camera, the expansion of software tools and functionality available in PageOS, the company’s unique page-based monitor operating system, and the launch of Cine 7 with professional camera control software for RED/ARRI/SONY cinema cameras. Teradek has also just released an ultra-simple cloud platform to enable a “drag and drop” video village anywhere on Earth.

“We have to change the game as it exists now,” Smokler concludes. “And the best way to do that is by building tools for our industry that should follow one basic and practical axiom: technology in filmmaking should be so useful it disappears, so the filmmakers and artisans can just focus on making the movie.”

ANDREW SHULKIND

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY

BY DAVID GEFFNER PHOTOS COURTESY OF SPHERE ENTERTAINMENT

Director of Photography Andrew Shulkind is a 23-year member of Local 600 who currently serves as senior vice president of capture for Sphere Studios. Shulkind has spent his career at the leading edge of art and technology, forever seeking out new (and often uncharted) paths in the grand adventure that is visual storytelling. This creative problem-solver has been, as his bio for the 2024 HPA Tech Retreat stated, “one of the leading industry voices on the future of entertainment…spending over two decades on the front lines of where technology meets entertainment, helping forge a hybrid future that merges experiential media, traditional cinema, live events, commercial art and advertising.”

All of that is true (and probably more). But talking with Shulkind over Zoom recently, the self-effacing, always upbeat Guild member marveled at how “a kid from Kansas City, with no real childhood yearning to work in the film industry,” has managed to be in the thick of every major new technology trend of the last twenty years. We’re talking large-format and high-speed imaging, 360-degree photography, volumetric capture, data scanning and more.

“Growing up in a smallish town in the Midwest, cinematography wasn’t exactly on my radar,” Shulkind told me a week after his HPA panel on the making of Postcard from Earth, the first immersive film at Sphere in Las Vegas. And while he says he “played around” with Super 8 cameras in high school, his intended career path was most likely broadcasting or radio. “It wasn’t until I got to NYU that I discovered filmmaking, and specifically telling stories with a camera,” he shares.

Shulkind (modestly) insists he’s mostly just been in the right place at the right time since his first day on a movie set, but tracing a throughline of his singular career reveals a passion for that place where art and technology meet that has made him uniquely comfortable in leaping into the great unknown. Or as he describes it: “I guess I’ve always thrived in those transitional seams, like those underwater organisms who live between the thermal vents and the cold water. It’s just a place where I’ve always been comfortable.”

ICG: What started you on the path toward filmmaking? Andrew Shulkind: My mom inspired a love of movies and my dad was an untrained engineer, so I was always fascinated by lighting and fine art but figured that I would end up in radio. A chance encounter led me to move to New York City and study at New York University. That was when I found photography and eventually motion pictures.

What happened at NYU that generated a love for cinematography? I took a photography course first semester and was instantly hooked; I had transferred into the film program before the end of the year. I remember walking up to this big table at Freshman Colloquium, where they had all these button labels for incoming students to self-identify: “NYU Director,” “NYU Producer,” “NYU Actor.” All the director buttons had been taken, of course [laughs]. But that was fine with me because by

then I knew I wanted to be a cinematographer, and there weren’t any buttons for that anyway.

Take me through your film school years and how they informed where you are now. I came out to L.A. the summer before my senior year to do a internship at Panavision. I ended up hanging around with a camera team that was prepping for a movie that would start in the fall. It was Steve Meizler and Tom Jordan who were prepping a Bruckheimer movie being shot by Amir Mokri called Coyote Ugly that would start with some location work in New York, and they generously invited me to join them. I took a few weeks off from school to work on the film as a camera PA, recharging Steadicam batteries and learning how to use a coffee maker.

You went into working on sets right out of school? Yeah, I got pretty lucky. Stevie and Tom were Janusz Kaminski’s guys and that camera team went on to make A.I. Artificial Intelligence and Panic Room and a bunch of other movies. Watching the ballet of Steven [Spielberg] and Janusz working together was indelible. From there, I started working my way up from 2nd AC to 1st AC to operator, getting to work with luminaries like Don Burgess, ASC; Darius Khondji, ASC; Guillermo Navarro, AMC, ASC; who were so generous with their time and whom I still count as friends. I had a frontrow seat to watch the very best.

How did you get into Local 600? It came through the Panavision internship. Besides learning how to take apart heads and lenses at Panavision, I became one of the first Kodak Preview System operators, which was a new Guild designation. I think there were only ever three of us working with this ahead-of-itstime system, which printed still images shot with a Kodak digital camera onto a thermal CMYK printer. It gave cinematographers a way to virtualize film stocks and filtration to communicate more clearly with the lab. In that role, I got to sit in on dailies sessions with guys like Janusz and John Bickford [at Technicolor] and go deep on printer lights. This was 1999 or 2000.

When did you start working as a DP? Before 2005, I was living a double life, operating during the day and shooting indie movies, music videos and commercials at night. Around that time, I finished two movies photochemically and found success on the commercial side

where I could experiment with style.

What do you remember about the transition from film to digital? In the early digital video days when we couldn’t afford to shoot film, we used all the transitional tricks to try to degrade or soften the image, from Fogal netting over the lens and spinning lens adapters to using cool old glass on those sharp little sensors. The Panavised Sony F900 felt like the starting point for that professional transition, and I always felt lucky to be there at that time. I remember some side-by-side tests that Allen Daviau, ASC, and [Panavision Camera Designer] Nolan Murdock did and shared in the old Panavision screening room that really sold me on the potential of shooting video, and printing to film as an intermediate step. Pleasantville and O Brother, Where Art Thou? inspired us all to take big risks in a new, non-destructible DI process that allowed for endless experimentation. And then in 2007 with Canon’s release of the 5D Mark II, artistic tools like shallow focus and RAW color became available to the masses. Since then, display technologies have aggressively driven the need for camera resolutions to push ever higher, and we now capture far more data in camera than we would ever hope to display. As content studios have been absorbed by technology companies, in many ways it has become a race for data and I was always interested in finding artful applications of those technical innovations.

In 2014 you won an ECA from Local 600. I had been shooting a ton of commercials – a lot of VFX spots, comedy, and a bunch of stuff for Budweiser every year for the Super Bowl. Because I had worked on big Hollywood films, I was able to bring that polish to the short form. I feel like I found my footing in that genre and it was super validating to be recognized by the Guild with an ECA.

You and I talked at NAB when everyone thought 3D would take over. What do you remember about that time, and more importantly, what should we as an industry have learned from it? It felt like there was a real desire for change in the industry that we’re only just starting to see. The business of storytelling has a long history of reinventing itself. But cinematography has always come down to the psychological impact of images on an audience. The question becomes: how do we leverage all the advancements and

innovations that we’ve honed over the past 100 years of the craft, but also stay open to weave-in new technologies as they arise? I’m forever interested in that crossover.

3D originally was about an immersive experience that you couldn’t get from your TV screen. I’m not so sure the last 3D revolution had the same intent. One of the main reasons that 3D re-emerged when it did was the new availability of small-format digital camera technologies that freed stereo from the gear behemoth it had always been. Suddenly you had cameras you could put anywhere – ALEXA M’s or REDs, SI-2K’s or Sinecams – and get an interocular closer than you could get your eyes. But in the end, that 3D push felt like it was being driven by screen manufacturers wanting to sell new displays as opposed to being driven by artistic opportunity.

You were one of the first traditional cinematographers to get involved in 360-degree filmmaking. How did that happen? In 2015, I was on a project where we needed to shoot background plates for this job in Spain, and having experience with stereo, small cameras, and miniatures, we thought maybe we could build a 360-degree camera out of some small, high-resolution imagers

– something sharp with a high color depth that allowed us to create nuance and have an uncompressed image that we could color. Through various partnerships, we created this camera for the spot. We used it in some other applications, such as sports training and military applications, all focused to capture high-resolution images in 360 degrees. We created a partnership with a rental house, a camera manufacturer, and some investors, and that venture led me to work on other 360-degree technologies for other brand partners.

When did Sphere come into your life? While shooting, I started consulting for technology companies like Google and Samsung on content innovation and immersive media. Inevitably, they would want to do something big and bold but weren’t exactly sure how to make it or even how to scope it. I could help decode some of the tech fluff and could bring some art and purpose to the mission, fighting for storytelling. I met some of the team from Sphere when I was presenting at Oculus Connect 5 in the Bay Area. Sphere was building the biggest LED screen in the world that needed more pixels than any single camera could offer with an unprecedented level of sharpness. I first got involved as a consultant and then brought in some partners

to help solve some of those key questions and make sure that we could actually shoot something that could deliver on that epic display plan.

Sphere was different – it was a project with a tangible goal. A brick-and-mortar facility, albeit unlike any other. That’s the real headline here. Unlike many of these other players, the visionary behind Sphere, Jim Dolan, has known exactly where this was headed and has guided that consistently from the beginning. There has been an authenticity to the mission that was not going to be diluted or pulled off course. The vision was always just what you see now – all of the early renderings have been eerily on point. And in spite of the epic scale of the project, it was never just about the screen (or the audio system or any other specific technology); the technology was always meant to be subordinate to the overall experience. The challenge has always been: How do we make the technical complexity disappear so it’s only about this transportive experience for the audience? No one was sure that it could be done, which was exciting and scary.

I bet. The technology did not exist for what you wanted to do. It did not exist, and the deliverable was 16,384 by 16,384, which is nearly 32 times the specs for UHD – no

CINEMATOGRAPHY - POST PRODUCTION - DIGITAL WORKFLOWS

“SPHERE’S LED SCREEN IS SO SHARP THAT YOU SEE EVERYTHING, SO WE ARE WORKING TO AN UNIMAGINABLE THRESHOLD OF DETAIL.”

other camera came close. We started by assembling a bunch of cameras together. I had done array work for background plates and theme park rides, so I brought in the best of the best, and they were extremely helpful in building an 11-camera array. Are the cameras planar? Converging? Splayed out? How do we synchronize them for genlock? How do we adjust focus? Just as important as those questions was to make the system as light and usable as possible, with the fewest number of cameras but the widest lenses. As I knew from shooting 360 degrees and virtual reality, there was no one making wide-angle glass that didn’t fall off brutally at the edges. We did a ton of testing with these arrays, slinging them around on stabilized heads. But the expense of stitching every shot wasn’t something that could scale. We went deep on how we could automate these processes, and finally we just said to each other, “Maybe we should build our own camera?”

And how did that go? [Laughs.] We went to all the usual suspects and no one could do it in a way or on a timeline that met our specifications. Earlier in the project, I had brought in camera engineer Deanan DaSilva, who had expertise in many aspects of this world, to help solve some other pixel and media server issues. Deanan suggested that we could do it ourselves, and who was I to argue? Sphere was interested to take the risk, and within 18 months we had a functional camera. We went through a lot of back-andforth to determine speed of lenses, camera sensitivity, features, ergonomics, et cetera. It’s all about compromise and balance and taking

calculated risks. I like working on the edge like that. At one point, I had to rent a freezer container to validate that our experimental camera equipment would function reliably at -20 degrees Fahrenheit before going down to Antarctica. Those kinds of pressure tests in the field only help mature the technology for less extreme conditions.

Were you concerned about the same things you would be with a more traditional project – skin tone rendition, color space, depth of field, crushing the blacks? Or was it something altogether different at that scale? The two things I was most concerned about were sharpness and stabilization. At this scale and angle of magnification, it was possible that the movement of the earth could be too much for shots to feel stable. Sphere’s LED screen is so sharp that you see everything, so we are working to an unimaginable threshold of detail. We had some unique issues solving for lens coma across our expansive field of view in some of our astrophotography. Add that to the list of things I never thought I’d have to worry about! [Laughs.]

Was there ever a confidence level close to Sphere’s opening that the images you captured would work at that scale? We had shot nearly the entire schedule of Postcard from Earth before we even turned Sphere on. We have a quarter-scale test dome in Burbank where we proof images and still do most of our preliminary reviews, and we had spent two years testing and experimenting with how to tune this new medium for storytelling. But nothing could prepare us for that first viewing

in the actual [Sphere] venue in August of 2023, one month before we opened.

Is Sphere as immersive as we can get with present-day technology? And is it a new path forward for visual storytelling? Absolutely. Sphere breaks the rectangle – it removes the edges of the frame and puts the viewer into the story itself. This will prove to be a new primary technology alongside radio, film, and TV. What’s exciting [with Sphere] is that the director and cinematographer turn over a lot of the way-finding and discovery to the viewer. The viewer is as invested in the project as its creators, and that approach to storytelling is still very experimental.

I remember being at NAB 2023 and seeing the dome, fully constructed but not yet live, riding to the convention hall each morning, and I couldn’t take my eyes off it. Then seeing the first images on my phone, not in person, was mind-boggling. The Exosphere has blown us all away. The whole of Sphere’s technologies – inside and outside – is this unique marvel. It borrows from the early, mineral-rich environment of art, science, and technology, of illusion and magic, that sparked the beginning of cinema. I think of illuminated manuscripts, calliopes, magic lanterns and zoetropes. I feel like Sphere is an inflection point in the continuum of storytelling where we can leverage the latest strides in innovation into a new format that makes the most of what has been done before, automating the rote stuff, making space for new artists, storytellers and technicians to play into a completely new direction.

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Palm Royale’s creator, Abe Sylvia, wanted to make a show that mirrored the work of celebrity photographer Slim Aarons; Directors of Photography David Lanzenberg and Todd McMullen were thrilled to accommodate the ask.

BY VALENTINA VALENTINI

ERICA PARISE / APPLE TV+ FRAMEGRABS COURTESY OF APPLE TV+

PHOTOS BY

When we meet our protagonist in the opening scenes of Apple TV+’s Palm Royale, she’s shimmying over a bougainvillea-laden concrete wall to gain access to the members-only Palm Royale Country Club. It’s 1969, and Maxine, played by Kristen Wiig (who, alongside Laura Dern, executive-produced the 10-episode series), believes getting into that club – and thus into the upper echelons of Palm Beach society – is the answer to her lower-class lot in life. For director Tate Taylor, the stakes might not have been quite as high, nor did he shimmy over a wall, but he did find himself sneaking into a famous Palm Beach members-only social club – a location that served as the visual inspiration for the show’s social centerpiece and the object of Maxine’s greatest desire.

“Our production designer, Jon Carlos [ICG Magazine August 2021], and I went to Palm Beach for 48 hours,” says Taylor, recalling how the pair drove around for two days taking pictures of and soaking up all they could of what was left from the 1960s era portrayed in the series. “I snuck in, looked around, was discovered, and got escorted out by security – just like Maxine,” he smiles. “But I had to get the feel, so that’s what I did [to get it].”

Taylor, an actor-turned-director best known for writing and directing The Help, helmed the first two episodes and the last episode of Palm Royale for Creator/Showrunner Abe Sylvia, who most recently created George & Tammy but cut his teeth writing and directing for the Showtime hit Nurse Jackie and Netflix’s Dead To Me . Sylvia directed three episodes, and directors Stephanie Laing and Claire Scanlon each directed two episodes. The show, which co-stars Carol Burnett, Ricky Martin, Laura and Bruce Dern, and Josh Lucas, is loosely inspired by Juliet McDaniel’s 2018 bestseller Mrs. American Pie, which takes place in Palm Springs.

“When you say ‘Palm Beach,’ it conjures up a lot of responses in people, both good and bad,” Sylvia recounts in the production notes. “It’s become a place in our country where the elite go to hide and live in a fantasy world that keeps the outside world at bay. Our story is set during the Vietnam War, but you have no idea that the war is going on because these people have completely walled off the real world.”

Sylvia goes on to explain that he’s long-awaited the chance to set a show in the world of renowned still photographer Slim Aarons, who focused on lifestyle and celebrity during the 1950s, 60s,

and 70s, and, in his own words, photographed “attractive people doing attractive things in attractive places.” The filmmaker made good on his dream, even including a Slim Aarons homage in the show’s first montage, featuring a blonde, tall and tanned woman getting out of a Rolls Royce Silver Shadow wearing a white lace crop top and bell bottoms. It’s an outfit lifted from Aarons’ “Poolside Gossip” photo, which Costume Designer Alix Friedberg recreated for about 5.5 seconds of screentime.

“I’m obsessed with [Aarons’] photography and not just because the people are beautiful,” Sylvia adds. “Those photographs work as high art because there’s no sense of the outside world. There’s always some danger and edge behind those beautiful façades, and I wanted to tell the story of the women behind it. When Apple TV+ came along, they let me play in the scale of this world, so we could execute it to the degree that you feel like you’re getting lost in Palm Beach society.”

To hear Taylor tell it, their hearts were broken when they found out they weren’t allowed to film in Palm Beach (mainly due to drone restrictions). Plus, the South Florida enclave, which is separated from the less desirable West Palm Beach by a lagoon, has been gentrified to within an inch of its old self. But Carlos and Taylor were determined to seek out the bits that remained. This is how they found inspiration for that still-existing club along with a nursing home that plays heavily in the plot.

Of course, when it comes to mid-century architecture and a friendly filming city, Los Angeles is a perfect fit. Location manager Stacey Brashear helped Carlos find the perfect locations

for exteriors (including a Howard Hughes estate) in Los Angeles, where Carlos later built interior extensions across five stages at Paramount. The hero house was to be a palatial mansion owned by Norma D’ellacorte (Burnett), Maxine’s invalid auntby-marriage, and her de facto bank account as she scales the proverbial (and actual) walls of high society.

“That was probably the most important [set],” shares Carlos. “We needed a space that we could control 100 percent, from color palette to décor. We saw maybe 25 houses, but the second I walked into [this private residence] in South Pasadena, I knew it was right. It had this Wuthering Heights vibe, with ivy everywhere; it felt beautifully abandoned.”

They used the house’s exterior, the foyer, and one sitting room, but the interior wasn’t palatial enough to serve as Norma’s house. So, Carlos’ team built the parlor and smoking room as interconnected sets at Paramount, as well as Norma’s bedroom, where some key scenes take place. They even created exterior hardscapes and landscapes around the set so that they had duplications of the walls and pavers.

“We basically brought in a jungle,” Carlos adds. “We started calling the alley where we stored it ‘Jurassic Alley.’ When we brought it all on stage, there were so many plants that it changed the ecosystem. We created humidity, and when you [walked onto that set], there was a visceral quality to the air – it felt like Palm Beach. I’d like to think it truly transported [the actors].”

Sharing director-of-photography duties were David Lanzenberg and Todd McMullen. Lanzenberg, who was thrilled to do an aboutface after nine months (including a brutal winter in Romania) on Netflix’s Wednesday, was slated to shoot the first two episodes of Palm Royale. McMullen, who was to shoot the remaining eight, was originally approached by producer Jesse Sternbaum – for whom he shot Dirty John – when Palm Royale was still in development. The colorful Palm Royale was a 180-pivot for McMullen as well, compared to his work on dark dramas like The Leftovers , Friday Night Lights , and The Newsroom. “This was going to be a saturated, bright, cinematic look and a color palette with a lighting scheme that I normally wouldn’t use,” McMullen describes. “And that switch was very attractive.”

Though the two cinematographers had yet to meet in person, their commitment to the show’s success played out in a close collaboration and a like-minded approach

TO CAPTURE A MOVING IMAGE VERSION OF SLIM AARONS’ PHOTOGRAPHS.

KEY ELEMENTS WERE TO KEEP COMPOSITIONS WIDE TO SHOW OFF PRODUCTION DESIGN AND COSTUMES, AND HIGHLIGHT AN OPULENT WORLD FULL OF PERIOD PRINTS, FABRICS, AND COLORS.

to hiring the camera and electrical team. “It can be tricky [when there are two DP’s on a show] finding crew who understand who wants what,” observes Lanzenberg. “And it can be a bit of a compromise, but it lent itself well to our situation.”

Previous connections were everywhere: grip and electric had worked on Apple TV+’s Physical , which Sternbaum and Laing both produced. Lanzenberg had already worked with Chief Lighting Technician Russell Ayer, and McMullen had worked with Key Grip Paul Perkins. First AC Chad Rivetti had known Lanzenberg since 2012 and worked with him on The Morning Show; Rivetti had also met McMullen early in their respective careers when he was a film loader and McMullen was a 2nd AC. But there were also some brand-new hires neither DP had worked with, including A-Camera Operator Kris Krosskove (who proved incredibly valuable filling in when McMullen was deep in prep on the following episode).

“I was so impressed with our camera crew – how professional and in-tune everybody was,” McMullen states. “David was starting the show, and he had to be

comfortable with the crew to get the show going. So that was important to me, too. We came together to make that happen, and that’s what inspired me about this show –making sure everybody was included.”

As per Sylvia, what both filmmakers set out to achieve visually was a moving image version of Slim Aarons’ photographs. Key elements in the look were to keep compositions wide to highlight full costume and wardrobe, and better highlight an opulent world full of period prints, fabrics, and colors. “We tried to buck the TV tradition of coverage and close-ups,” Lanzenberg notes. “The goal was always a feature presentation on a TV schedule.”

Although shooting on 35-mm film was floated by Taylor and McMullen, Production ended up capturing with Panavision DXL2s at 2.39:1 aspect ratio and spherical lenses. Lanzenberg and Rivetti worked closely in prep with Panavision’s Dan Sasaki to find a solution that could lend itself to the initial visual remit. Ultimately, they went with spherical Panaspeeds to give that close-andwide look to keep viewers focused on the characters but still highlight the aesthetics

RIGHT/BELOW: AS PER CREATOR ABE SYLVIA, GUILD DP’S DAVID LANZENBERG AND TODD MCMULLEN AIMED

of Carlos’ sets, Set Decorator Ellen Reede’s details and Friedberg’s costumes.

“All of the lenses were detuned and slightly softened so that they weren’t super sharp. They had a 1970s soft-focus feel to them,” Rivetti describes. “The Panaspeeds have that warm, classic Panavision artistic nuance. We also had a series of Panavision’s anamorphic distortion filters that mounted onto the front of the lens and added out-offocus corners to the image. We had various strengths to this but opted to use the more subtle versions most of the time. Depending on the emotion of a scene, sometimes we just got rid of them altogether or dug into it deeper and used a stronger version.”

McMullen adds that “the modified Panaspeeds on their own mimicked the soft, natural, buttery aesthetic of 1960s glass. When the anamorphic distortion filters were added, it transported the images to another dimension. David applied some of the more aggressive filters to the early flashback scenes, and I was blown away by the beauty of that imagery. The anamorphic adapters gave those scenes a unique and appropriate perspective of the time period.”

Company 3 Colorist Siggy Ferstl, who worked with Lanzenberg on The Morning Show and Wednesday and whom Lanzenberg lovingly calls “a mad scientist,” played a key part in defining the look. Ferstl built two film stock LUT’s, one for night and one for day, that drew from Aarons’ poolside still photography and Kodak Ektachrome film. Finishing in HDR also proved to be a driver.

“It’s not just the LUT that’s making the world of color for the show,” Ferstl explains. “It’s also the brightness values or the contrast ratio. How far do you want to push them? And because it’s more of a comedy, nothing can be too dark or sinister; but also, I didn’t want to push it too bright. I think I hit around 350 – a comfortable level without running into backlighting issues.”

Ferstl says that although he custombuilds LUT’s for all his shows, “I don’t think I’ve pushed as much as I did on this show in terms of Frankenstein-ing all these different LUT’s together. I used some LUT’s for the contrast ratio, [looking at] how the highlights rolled off, how the shadows rolled off. I took the color values of one LUT and then used another LUT for a higher color saturation, and another for the greener tones. It was all experimental.”

The longtime grader credits Company 3’s color science department (and Emily Faw in particular) with helping to make sure he didn’t “break anything” during his

mad-scientist phase. He explains that when mixing and matching as much as he was for Palm Royale, things can break, and it may not show until the color grade. “But everything married up perfectly with [the Panaspeeds and DXL2],” he continues. “When you’re creating a LUT, before you see any images from the actual shoot, sometimes you find afterward that either the LUT wasn’t doing enough or it didn’t suit that camera, or it was a little heavy-handed. But on this show, we hit a sweet spot. It was like an ‘ah-ha’ moment when [the team] saw it.”

Since keeping compositions wide was the framing mantra, staying classic with camera dynamics – shooting on dollies and cranes with minimal Steadicam and no handheld – was the call. Sylvia says he referenced films of the same period that had “hyper intentionality” in the framing and used the blocking of actors to keep the frame both dynamic and composed.

“This is in keeping not only with the classic films we referenced,” Sylvia explains, “everything from Hitchcock to Russ Meyer; but also contemporary riffs on classic films. I’m thinking specifically of the reverence and reinterpretation of classics by two of my heroes, Pedro Almodóvar in Talk to Her and All About My Mother, and Todd Haynes in Far from Heaven and Carol.”

Krosskove was another integral player in the approach to framing. And while he says he knows it’s not common for an operator to weigh in before shooting, Krosskove had already worked in that style with Dean

“

ALL OF THE PANASPEEDS WERE DETUNED AND SLIGHTLY SOFTENED SO THAT THEY WEREN’T SUPER SHARP. THEY HAD A 1970S SOFT-FOCUS FEEL TO THEM. ”

Semler, ASC, ACS, on Secretariat and other projects. “[Lanzenberg] and I looked at a lot of 1960s magazines, and you’d see all those colors and that 16:9 aspect ratio,” Krosskove shares. “As soon as we got a rehearsal, I knew how to sell this set, sell the body language, sell the costumes. I basically just set all the shots to be able to incorporate as much of that information as I could keep in a featureesque feeling. I was primarily on a dolly, but if you do Steadicam right, you don’t know which it is, so there’s a lot more Steadicam in there than you would imagine. The beauty is that we used the right tools at the right time, which many times doesn’t happen, and that’s when [things] get out of whack.”

After scouting Palm Beach, meeting with the Palm Beach Preservation Foundation, and buying every Slim Aarons anthology, Carlos, who had previously designed Westworld , provided digital white models of what would become the permanent sets so that McMullen and Lanzenberg could put lenses in and do fly-throughs. Once everyone was happy with the composition, he’d then move it into concept illustration and do colored renderings. Because of the wide framing and aspect ratio, Carlos divided every frame into thirds.

“That’s the reason why Norma D’ellacorte’s mansion has the trifecta of archways in the parlor, the same thing in Ceil Chapman’s Boutique, with the three dressing rooms on each side of the room, or in the doctor’s office bathroom there are three vanity mirrors,” Carlos details.

Once the sets were partially built, Carlos did walkthroughs with everyone to see if shifts were needed. “He has such a great eye and a terrific sensibility for lighting,” Lanzenberg describes. “Jon’s one of those very rare production designers who understand how lighting a room should feel; he truly had a sense of the space.”

Since Palm Royale always wants to portray aspiration via an elevated, lavish way of living – set in a world apart from reality but still grounded in truth – McMullen says Carlos “nailed it” while still giving him and Lanzenberg everything they could need. “Jon gave us camera ports and walls that would move,” McMullen explains. “He gave us a floor that we could roll and not have to lay track, a dance floor that accommodated our dollies; he gave us tons of practical lighting, wonderful windows and curtains –the whole package.”

Alix Friedberg, who hadn’t worked with any of the creative team before this series, says she and Carlos were pretty much joined

at the hip, sharing research and color and texture ideas via lookbooks. Sylvia wanted Palm Royale to stay period correct, including the costumes. “Even if the hair, makeup or print seemed impossible,” Friedberg recounts, “it’s all true to the time and place, and especially the women of a certain social circle.”

Friedberg’s team created and sourced costumes in the thousands (including background talent). She also sourced outfits from vintage shops all over the U.S., as well as vintage materials in Palm Springs, New York and Atlanta. Etsy.com was also a great resource. “We were lucky that there are still quite a few original pieces out there,” Friedberg adds. “We built a lot as well; I would say it was a 50/50 mix.”

The designer says a lot of the fashion moments were written into the scripts and Sylvia would sometimes set up a scene writing at length about a character’s gown, shoe or perfect bag. But her early discussion with him and Taylor focused more on world-building than details. “We needed to create the Palm Beach bubble that the

characters lived in before we got into the specifics of each of the characters, and how to differentiate them,” she says.

Friedberg also notes how important it was to be in sync with Lanzenberg, McMullen, and Carlos for every single set and location so that fabric patterns wouldn’t compete with production design or set decoration. “We would make conscious decisions based on whether it was sets or costumes that pulled more focus [depending on the scene],” she shares. “Mostly, it was just about getting the balance right. The late 60s were the era of bold psychedelic colors and prints, so we needed to be conscious of not visually overwhelming the audience.”

This played out in the bookstore set where a counterculture group would meet with Laura Dern’s character, Linda. The palette was warm and had earth tones mixed with late 1960s harvest colors. Carlos and his team created a graphic wall with lines and shapes that continued into the main carpet where Linda and her group of feminist women would congregate. “It was brilliant because the lines formed a

giant uterus,” Friedberg concludes. “We wanted that to be a focal point, so we kept the ladies in warmer tones and the patterns to a minimum. There were times when the costumes needed to be more of the visual focus, [such as] inside Ceil Chapman’s, where the ladies would go for fittings. There, Jon and his team gave us very soft-colored walls, carpet, and upholstery to set off the gowns and vibrant fashion shows that took place in that set.”

For McMullen, Ceil Chapman’s felt inspiring in a flamboyant and vibrant way. He says: “We splashed it with warm and sunny light to keep that Florida vibe of ‘attractive people doing attractive things in attractive places,’ just as Slim Aarons would have wanted.” Lanzenberg adds that one of the amazing surprises shooting on the Ceil Chapman set “was watching the actors work the scenes,” he shares. “Witnessing them move about in their gorgeous costumes on these beautiful sets reminded me of the mad and fantastic movies of Pedro Almodóvar, proving that storytelling is an ever-evolving, creative process.”

DP DAVID LANZENBERG (CENTER-RIGHT) SAYS HE AND CO-SERIES DP TODD MCMULLEN “TRIED TO BUCK THE TV TRADITION OF COVERAGE AND CLOSE-UPS. THE GOAL WAS ALWAYS A FEATURE PRESENTATION ON A TV SCHEDULE.”

How a Local 600 Publicity team captured the unique behindthe-series atmosphere in the latest Nat Geo’s Genius series.

BY PAULINE ROGERS

When Ron Howard and Brian Grazer’s Oscar-winning production company, Imagine Entertainment, takes on a project, you know the bar will be set extremely high. And with this latest entry in Nat Geo’s Genius series – MLK/X – the Imagine team went well beyond traditional real-life biopics. Howard, Grazer and producers Gina Prince-Bythewood and Reggie Rock Bythewood of Undisputed Cinema were determined to illustrate how Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, two icons central to the fight for justice and equality, were cut from the same cloth and had much more uniting – rather than dividing – them, as many other historical sources would have us believe.

In the eight-episode series, Guild Directors of Photography Trevor Forrest (see Manhunt , page 64) and Joe “Jody” Williams take audiences through both men’s lives, scars and all. We meet a 13-year-old King who battled with depression and even tried to take his own life, before competing in an oratory contest. We see a 15-year-old Malcolm Little being inspired by his Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA)leader father and getting elected class president. The series follows the two men’s lives until their assassinations, both at age 39 (Malcolm X’s in 1965 and King’s in 1968).

Forrest and Williams worked closely with Panavision, using ALEXA 35 cameras and Primo spherical lenses with modified anamorphic flare attachments for intense key moments. The scale of the story was epic. The two DP’s approached the years between the 1940s and 1960s in accordance with the socioeconomic movement of the time – and the danger lurking at every public gathering as Martin Luther King

PHOTOS BY RICHARD DUCREE / NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC FRAMEGRABS COURTESY OF NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

Jr. and Malcolm X developed into national leaders. They even used Kodachrome color reversal, a stock that photographers Gordon Parks and Ernst Haas used during that era.

While Imagine, Undisputed, and National Geographic knew the cinematography team would deliver great images, the producers/network wanted much more than just pulling key scenes for promotion. To complement the main unit’s work, Nat Geo turned to a powerhouse Atlanta-based PR team: Unit Publicist Shelly Williams, Unit Stills Photographer Richard DuCree, and EPK/BTS Camera Operator Jeremy Emerman. Together they helped create a robust marketing and PR campaign, with every image and pixel shot specifically for promotion. “Working with Nat Geo’s Communications, Photo, and Marketing/Digital/Social departments was of top importance,” Shelly Williams begins, “as our BTS camera team couldn’t be on the set every day. So weekly reports with fun facts; an overview of the scenes; even weather conditions, locations, press inquiries and what local press grabbed

were essential to our jobs.”

Williams began by dissecting the script and talking with the show’s creators, all to build a timeline for DuCree’s and Emerman’s days. “Balancing opportunities to capture footage of key cast or BTS of big scenes, while respecting the production and the actors’ boundaries, can be tricky,” she continues. “Add in a press day, or request for on-camera soundbites, juggling notices to personal publicists, notifying department heads of special needs, fielding prop photos, or managing double-up days – you really need a specific plan so we’re not stepping all over each other.”

One of the unit pub’s biggest challenges was planning the marketing shoot (a twoday event), complete with walkthroughs, prelight set-up, preparing interview questions, coordinating with personal publicists, and recruiting crew from the production. An outside production team was brought in to execute the shoot. Williams served as the point person for that team, as well as for the main unit department heads, the talent and crew, and studio executives.

“There were three separate components to the marketing shoot,” she describes. “A key art photo shoot, an interview/social media component, and a motion capture component. These required three separate areas for different crews with different needs. It required different hair, makeup, and wardrobes for each element. It required the use of props and set decoration. There were 70 outside crewmembers, a dozen executives, all of the main cast. We’re talking a large, bustling event that must be executed around Production’s schedule.”

Special marketing shoots aside, the team, on a day-to-day basis, was relied upon to capture various elements applicable to the promotional and release campaigns. “At one point, Marketing requested that we capture ‘promotional portraits’ of creators/directors and each cast member in character,” Williams recalls. “This wasn’t just a ‘shot needed’ thing. We all had deep feelings about this project. Richard DuCree, who did all the stills, has a personal heritage

that’s deeply entrenched with what we were capturing. And with Jeremy, his creativity ran high – especially with his introduction of motion capture video. Both their input and experience impacted everything from festival promos to teaser videos and social media content.”

Because of the trust Williams, Emerman, and DuCree had built with Nat Geo’s marketing team, Production didn’t have to micromanage the moments to be covered. Yes, there were requests and conversations, but each member of this Local 600 team knew what they were doing and what to get. “Sometimes it was a no-brainer,” Williams admits. “We all had our favorite moments that we knew needed to be seen to build interest and excitement.

“For me, filming on the Morehouse College campus, where Dr. King received his undergraduate degree and where there are halls and statues dedicated to him, was reverent,” she continues. “Also, shooting the only occasion that MLK and Malcolm X met in person, which was filmed at the Georgia State Capitol. While the company

was shooting in the Capitol Rotunda, I was scouting around. I noticed a portrait of MLK hanging in a Capitol hall. We got a photo of Kelvin Harrison [who plays MLK] in front of it. Those moments you don’t anticipate are surprise opportunities, like the scenes when Kelvin Harrison or Aaron Pierre delivered speeches and sermons. They were mighty and moving to watch.

“When we are doing these moments, it’s not just the actors who drive the story,” Williams adds. “I love getting on-camera ‘interviews’ and moments with the crew. During one such moment, Assistant Costume Designer Tamika Jackson shared a touching story about getting a corsage for Weruche Opia (Coretta Scott King) to wear in a scene. Jackson got the corsage from a local florist – it turned out to be the very florist who designed the casket spray for the real Coretta Scott King’s funeral. This only happens in Atlanta!”

With Nat Geo’s blessing, the PR team captured sensitive political moments that melded MLK/X’s world to the present day. “We were doing a paired interview

with LisaGay Hamilton and Lennie James (MLK’s parents),” Williams recounts, “and got pure gold that could be used in many areas. LisaGay mentioned the recent runoff election, comparing the grassroots movements of MLK and Raphael Warnock. She spoke about spotlighting the women in these stories, as well as having Black women represented behind the camera.”

Williams also points to a scene where MLK and members of the Montgomery Improvement Association exit a police station, and a big crowd of supporters and media are there waiting to cheer their release. An extra was spotted crying after the scene, and many extras congratulated the cast for what they were doing. “And don’t get me started on how we all had to balance our emotions and do our job when shooting the Selma riots, the lunch counter sit-ins, or the events at the Audubon Ballroom,” she adds.

Working closely with her union PR colleagues was key to each day’s success, Williams notes. “One of the high points of working with [DuCree] was creating the Gordon Parks shots, recreating historical

photos, taking prop shots, and more,” she shares. “Rich was on set every day, and I would generally highlight the key scenes that needed to be captured. He’s great about showing me frames on his camera. We are both supportive of each other. Even prop shots became ultra-important – this was history, and we had to get it right.”

There were times when DuCree and Williams would take a photo to recreate a historic moment – not necessarily something the marketing department asked for but images they knew existed in the real world. “One of us would have a historic photo on our phone that we could show to actors to use as a reference,” she says. “Then there were times we would stage a photo because a special moment presented itself. Like a family photo of Earl, Louise and little Malcolm on the porch, a father-son embrace between Daddy King and MLK Jr., wedding day photos, Strom Thurmond’s daily pushups regime, and more.”

Documenting the making of MLK/X held special meaning for DuCree. Born in Atlanta and raised in New York City, he says he’s always had a passion for documenting stories of the Civil Rights era. A longtime member of Ebenezer Baptist Church, where

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once served as co-pastor, DuCree now volunteers as the church’s historian and archivist. “As a member of the Church and the modernday movement, I’ve documented many moments and people, including the late congressman John Lewis, who is a character in the series,” DuCree explains. “Working on MLK/X with Shelly and Jeremy allowed me to recreate some wonderful – and historic –images from the past.”

DuCree photographed the real Congressman Lewis (whom DuCree says was always a gracious and kind subject) several times over the years. During one of those encounters, Lewis shared with DuCree that his most vivid memory from the day of the historic Selma bridge crossing – also referred to as “Bloody Sunday” – was the unforgettable smell of blood, a memory DuCree carries with him to this day. To create iconic scenes for MLK/X , DuCree opted to selectively incorporate vintage and modern camera equipment, including a Nikon Z 9, Sony A9 and Mamiya RZ67, using film and a Hasselblad 500c.

The photographer says there was a “certain passion and responsibility” he experienced as he researched images from the Civil Rights movement, which included the work of still photographers Gordon Parks,

DUCREE SAYS HE WANTED TO BUILD RELATIONSHIPS WITH THE ACTORS OF MLK/X MORE THAN ANY OTHER SHOW HE’S WORKED ON. “THEY WERE NOT ONLY REPRESENTING HISTORY,” DUCREE OBSERVES, “BUT ALSO REVEALING AN INCREDIBLE VULNERABILITY.”

Charles Moore, Roy DeCarava, Don Hogan Charles, and Steve Schapiro. “Reading their stories behind the creation of their images provided great insight,” DuCree recalls. “Gordon Parks was especially interesting as his work involves particular camera angles, lighting and selection of lenses.”

DuCree was also influenced by Steve Schapiro, a famed Civil Rights photographer. “A few days before Thanksgiving in 2021, I was summoned to Chicago by the master – Steve Schapiro,” he shares quietly. “At the time Steve was ill and not seeing visitors.” But after hearing about parallels in their interests and careers, Schapiro asked DuCree to visit. “He said photographers should strive to tell authentic stories by being a fly on the wall and capturing the humanity in people,” DuCree remembers.

And yet capturing the humanity during MLK/X “was not always easy,” DuCree admits, as the desire to make it real – and human – was all-consuming. “That’s where Production Supervisor Sue Smith let me build trust with the key talent early on,” he says. “This show, maybe more than any other, I wanted to build relationships with actors who were not only representing history but also revealing an incredible vulnerability.”

Capturing the street scene outside the Selma courthouse was one of the

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY TREVOR FORREST ON THE ATLANTA SET OF MLK/X

“COLLABORATING WITH RICHARD DUCREE AND JEREMY EMERMAN ON A SHOW OF SUCH MAGNITUDE WAS A DREAM JOB.”

most sensitive yet powerful moments of the production. “Martin’s face was on the pavement with the police officer’s knee on his back,” DuCree recounts, adding that the scene reminded him of George Floyd. To capture King’s expression, DuCree placed the camera on the ground near actor Kelvin Harrison’s face. He utilized the flip-out touchscreen technology to get the image in focus. The lens of choice was 24 mm on the Nikon Z9.

For Emerman, shooting the EPK footage was also personal. He grew up hearing about the civil rights movement from his father, who was often advocating for social change. Emerman’s father also attended the 1963 March on Washington, “so when we were capturing that day, it was extraordinary to talk to him about all the small elements that made up the March,” Emerman shares. Acknowledging the project’s added layer of sensitivity, either through firsthand experience or the inherent nature of feeling close to the material, Emerman credits Williams “with making everything go smoothly,” he adds. “Shelly would ensure the talent and filmmakers were comfortable having me or Rich on set capturing other angles of historical moments.”

During the big marketing shoot, Emerman was tasked with getting multiple concepts over a few short days, as well as motion content with the four key talents walking to the camera. “We moved around them using a Sisu Robotic robot,” he explains. “We filmed with the RED Digital Raptor VV, which allowed us to capture the talent in 72 frames per second at 8K for multiple platforms. At the same time we

captured the motion portraits, we also had a large crew capturing formal, sit-down-style interviews with the cast and department heads. We shot those with the ALEXA Mini LF and BlackWing tunable lenses. One cool element the studio requested was for us to film through crystals. It gave creative cutting points and dynamic-looking marketing footage to support the already great footage Trevor and Jodie got.”

Emerman, who has been an Atlanta resident for 10 years, says he could feel the memory of the historic events taking place in a city many consider the cradle of the Civil Rights movement. Seeing the character names on street signs and being able to capture “Andrew Young” or “John Lewis” or “Ralph David Abernathy” or “MLK” enhanced the weight of the project and gave him additional ideas for material and tools to show it best.

Ask him about his favorite images, and he’ll immediately talk about Aaron Pierre as Malcolm X standing outside the theater where he would eventually be assassinated.

“I found a puddle on set where, if I got low, I could see Aaron in the reflection,” Emerman recalls. “I captured a slow pan from the reflection up to reveal Malcolm. During the behind-the-scenes capture, I utilized the RED Komodo 6K camera as I needed a small, nimble camera that would allow for high-quality cinematic footage. As most of the film takes place during the mid20th century, a lot of the homes were tiny, even on a soundstage. The small camera allowed me to get into places I normally couldn’t. I also used the Zeiss Milvus Prime lenses. At the time, they were one of the

highest quality – and fastest – lenses, with astonishing clarity and size.”

New technology played a key part in Emerman’s work. Just ask another invaluable cohort of the Guild’s on-set PR team, Writer/Producer Chris Costa, who Emerman says told him, “‘Nothing is ever wrong’ and ‘go and try.’ When he saw the reflection images, he pushed to do more. When doing the motion poster, he often sent me a rendering of what they wanted to capture. The original concept had the two men’s and women’s faces merge half and half. The only way I could think to capture this, as it would need to be exact, was to shoot this with programmed robotics, which we could play back in reverse to achieve the desired footage.”

Genius: MLK/X breaks ground in a few areas: it’s the first time the series has focused on two individuals (actually four, given how much screen time Coretta Scott King and Dr. Betty Shabazz receive). “MLK and Malcolm X were two sides of the same coin,” Williams concludes. “For the creators and producers, the story of one man couldn’t be told without the other. This season shatters the misconception that these two icons were in opposition. They had different points of view and different ways of reaching people to affect the same societal change. They didn’t have a fraught relationship; and in front of the camera and behind the scenes, Genius: MLK/X corrects that narrative. We, as a marketing team, were tasked with highlighting the incredible care and reverence that went into this project. Collaborating with Rich and Jeremy on a show of such magnitude was a dream job.”

UNIT PUBLICIST SHELLY WILLIAMS

EPK/BTS CAMERA OPERATOR USED A RED DIGITAL RAPTOR VV, “WHICH ALLOWED US TO CAPTURE THE TALENT IN 72 FRAMES PER SECOND AT 8K FOR MULTIPLE PLATFORMS,” HE DESCRIBES. “AT THE SAME TIME WE CAPTURED THE MOTION PORTRAITS, WE ALSO HAD A LARGE CREW CAPTURING FORMAL, SIT-DOWN-STYLE INTERVIEWS WITH THE CAST AND DEPARTMENT HEADS. WE SHOT THOSE WITH THE ALEXA MINI LF AND BLACKWING TUNABLE LENSES.”

The killing of America’s 16th president flung a nation into mourning; the search for his assassin became high drama of Shakespearean proportions.

BY DEREK STETTLER

PHOTOS BY CHR!S REEL / APPLE TV+

FRAMEGRABS COURTESY OF APPLE TV+

Manhunt, a new AppleTV+ miniseries that premiered March 15th, provides a thrilling glimpse into one of the best-known and least-understood crimes in history – the assassination of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln (Hamish Linklater). America’s 16th president was shot at point-blank range while enjoying a light comedy at Ford’s Theater in the nation’s capital, made all the more dramatic by a leap from Lincoln’s box (where his wife and two guests were sitting) onto the stage by his killer, who raced backstage and outside to a waiting horse.

The series dramatizes the true story of the epic hunt for Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth (Anthony Boyle), and the reverberations of that fateful night, particularly on Lincoln’s friend and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (Tobias Menzies), who becomes consumed with the search for Booth and preserving Lincoln’s legacy. Showrunner Monica Beletsky based the series on the New York Times bestseller Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer from author James L. Swanson, and set out to explore the lesser-known events that occurred in those twelve days, including the vital role African-Americans played in tracking down Lincoln’s assassin. The series was deftly brought to life through the eyes of Australian Director of Photography Robert Humphreys, ACS, who lensed episodes one, two, five, six, and seven, and Trevor Forrest, responsible for episodes three and four.

Humphreys was brought onto Manhunt through director Carl Franklin, who had worked with the cinematographer on HBO’s The Leftovers . In conceiving the approach to the period look, Humphreys leaned into naturalism, with a respect for the practical lighting of the time and a preference for daylight filtered through windows. “We tried to honor the fact that there was no indoor electricity at that time,” Humphreys recalls. “All of our daytime scenes were lit from outside, through windows and doors. We rarely put lighting units inside a set or location.”

Humphreys and Forrest did utilize Astera Tubes as supplemental lighting to stretch the light from the windows, which was often from HMI M40s, M90s, Vortex8 or tungsten T12s, and ARRIMAX 18K’s bounced off of unbleached muslin or UltraBounce. The LED tubes were attached above windows and close to actors on the key side to wrap the light and bring up the exposure on an as-needed basis. Some bounce and diffusion were brought indoors for the same purpose, but the primary approach on day and night interiors and exteriors alike was to let the actors play in a space lit by windows, overcast skies, moonlight, gas lamps, or firelight. “Lights brought into the sets were only for touching up,” Humphreys adds, “as we aimed for source lighting. I like to feel and see where the light in every scene originates.”

Forrest had a similar game plan. “My approach was to create layers from front to back,” he describes. “I would light the world with practicals, have some daylight coming in for fill, and rough that in before blocking, then bring in one or two lights to enhance the characters depending on where they’d fall in the blocking. For me the way into Manhunt , was mainly through black and white photography, which went hand-in hand with the ENR process we emulated.”

Naturalism also extended to the use of atmosphere. “The use of smoke, which can be beautiful, is artificial and can distract from the reality of a scene and make it feel contrived,” Humphreys attests. “There is never any smoke in a Rembrandt,

Caravaggio, or Vermeer [when emulating source lighting].” To that end, the interiors of Manhunt are dark and moody, with deep shadows and a strong sense of light sources.

As Humphreys continues, “The scripts were rich in detail, so we felt Manhunt would greatly benefit from feeling natural and lived in. We needed to feel the dust and dirt.” The key visual reference for the series was The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, shot by Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC; but Humphreys also sought inspiration from source media. Finding the era’s paintings to have a strong romanticized quality, Humphreys says his research revealed just how pivotal photography was at that time. “It was still such a new art form that it completely changed people’s views of the world,” he offers. “And because of the slow emulsions of the time, long exposures were necessary and dead bodies made ideal subjects, so imagery of the carnage of the Civil War came to dominate.” Another notable aspect was the use of a very shallow depth of field, a result of the massive glass negatives used (10 × 8 or 5 × 4). This informed the decision to capture Manhunt in large format, using the ALEXA Mini LF from Panavision Atlanta.

Humphreys felt strongly about utilizing the classic anamorphic aspect ratio of 2.39:1 to complement the expansive story and provide a wide canvas for actors to live in. However, he wanted to avoid using anamorphic lenses due to their slower speed, which would compromise the lighting approach, along with a desire to minimize any unnatural visual cues characteristic of the anamorphic format, such as elliptical bokeh, blue-streak flares and soft edges. As a result, Manhunt was shot in a 4.5K ARRIRAW open gate to utilize the maximum sensor area and meet Apple’s 4K native capture mandate, while allowing for letterboxing in post.

The cameras were mostly paired with Panavision’s H Series lenses for what Forrest says were “their ability to add the right level of softness in the right parts of the image with a beautifully abrupt falloff. I loved them as a very expressive punctuation on emotional scenes.” Humphreys concurs,

adding that the H Series have “a classic portrait-style look with an ability to lift faces from the background with a soft roll-off, shallow depth of field, accurate skin tones and natural contrast.” For low light and night scenes, the H Series were complemented by PanaSpeed lenses due to their consistent T1.4 apertures and were detuned to match the H Series. Primo 70 Zooms were also utilized occasionally. In keeping with the grounded look, Manhunt rarely used wide or telephoto lenses, relying on focal lengths between 35 and 75 millimeters correlating more closely to human vision, and utilizing no lens filters beyond neutral density.

Without lens filtration or a reliance on literal atmosphere to put viewers back into 1865, Humphreys points to the custom film emulation process created by Pankaj Bajpai, Senior Vice President of Creative Color at Streamland Media (formerly Technicolor) as a key to the period look. As Bajpai reflects, “One of the main reasons I moved to Technicolor was its large library of film emulation data that had been created and archived by the brilliant image scientist Joshua Pines and his team while the lab was still functioning. There was a lot of math and color science that went into making sure what was being seen in the DI theater on DLP projectors stayed true to the film print when projected on xenon film projectors.”

In this current landscape of digital acquisition and delivery, Bajpai has been working with colleagues at Streamland Media to make use of the Technicolor transforms created based on photochemical film workflows and adapt them for use with digitally captured footage. “The challenge is how to make that data work for the different camera sensors, which keep evolving even as we speak,” Bajpai continues. With the resources of Technicolor’s film emulation library at his disposal, the colorist set out to build the look of Manhunt around a custom two-stage film emulation in Baselight, utilizing an initial film print LUT based on Kodak Vision 2383 print stock, followed by shot-specific grading choices, then filtered

through an ENR emulation LUT and added film grain before a final variable tonemapping for SDR and HDR deliverables. “The look of Manhunt is very much that of an ENR-developed film,” says Humphreys. “I think it’s just gorgeous, with rich blacks and the contrast characteristics of the silver retention ENR created.”

Apple TV+, Beletsky, and the producers supported the bold grading choices, with all immediately embracing the look Bajpai had created. “I had every argument under the sun ready to go for what we did, but they just took one look at the tests we shot and said: ‘That’s great, let’s do it,’” Humphreys recalls, a bit surprised. Based on the preproduction tests, which solidified the grading approach to Manhunt , a single LUT was made for on-set monitoring, which proved invaluable as a close-to-final look could be seen by all throughout production. “The LUT we created mapped film ENR colorimetry to ARRI’s Log C color space, and I manipulated the contrast to achieve the result we got,” Bajpai describes. “We stayed pretty close to that in the final grade, other than in a few night exteriors that were lit with firelight. I am fortunate to have the incredible work done in the past by some brilliant people be available to me to build upon, based on the specific needs of a show. It’s truly rewarding when a collaboration like we had on Manhunt delivers results.”

While Bajpai’s LUT helped to forge a consistent look across episodes, it was complemented by the two cinematographers’ lighting styles, though both credit the show’s authentic sense of time and place to the meticulous periodaccurate detail by Production Designer Chloe Arbiture and her Art Department. “The way that I approached it was trying to create as real of a world as possible,” Arbiture shares. “I had an incredible team of people who helped me research, digging through historical references and the Library of Congress for as much first-hand source material as possible to understand

the world we were trying to create. We took the task of recreating history very seriously.”

A prime example was the wallpaper in the room where Lincoln ultimately died. “That was one of the things I am most proud of, which was achieved with the help of my graphic designer, Gina Alessi,” Arbiture continues. “As of 2022, there was no complete record of what the wallpaper looked like, so Gina searched across databases and museums and the internet for resources, including items looted from the room, ultimately finding a ripped fragment of the wallpaper. She ended up building an entire composite based on that, which even the Ford’s Theatre Museum doesn’t have! To accurately recreate that historic room in a way that has never been replicated since Lincoln’s death was very gratifying.”

While most viewers may not fully ingest Arbiture’s attention to detail, Humphreys and Forrest certainly did. “Every time I do a project, it’s like making a soup,” Forrest describes. “You have lenses, lighting, LUT’s, and cameras, and then you have the production design all of that captures.” Reflecting on the collaboration, Arbiture notes, “Everything I do is in conjunction with the DP’s; my work only even shows up if it goes on camera, so it’s really important to me that I’m always in conversations with them. With Bob and Trevor, it was a dream collaboration. We designed sets with depth and always dressed them for at least 270 degrees of capture so that the camera could do whatever it needed to do to tell the story. It was important for this world to feel big and expansive.”

As the pressure to capture Lincoln’s assassin increases, the coverage style and production design also become more condensed. When the series begins, the coverage is mainly choreographed as master shots developing into coverage without much cutting within the scenes. This style was achieved by sticking to single-camera setups, which transformed

into a faster cutting style with more varied coverage and ultimately a twocamera setup as the story progressed. This approach to camera was complemented by production design and locations that felt smaller and more contained, to mirror the fact that John Wilkes Booth was being cornered and ultimately caught and put on trial in court.

Manhunt had a generous 16 weeks of prep time, with the majority of the series shot in and around Savannah, GA and in Philadelphia, PA for the interior of Ford’s theater. On stage in Savannah, one of Arbiture’s primary builds was a five-room War Department set with custom carpeting, 18-foot ceilings, two stories and Victorian decorative hand-painted wallpaper. “The amount of artistic hands that touched that set is too many to count,” Arbiture smiles.

Forrest says Humphreys’ “brother approach to cinematography allowed us to add talented individuals like Camera Operator George Bianchini and support all three directors when situations dictated; like stepping in to film Lincoln’s funeral, an essential moment that triggers the emotional drive in the story.”

For his part, Humphreys singles out the exemplary efforts of the crew he relied on, including Chief Lighting Technician Edison Jackson, A-Camera Operators Chris Cuevas and George Bianchini, and Key Grip Landon Ruddel. “Edison is brilliant; Chris and George are both geniuses with the camera and Landon introduced me to some toys I’ve learned to love.

“ Manhunt was the most amazing experience, from beginning to end,” he concludes. “I don’t think I’ve ever worked on anything where I’ve been so trusted and given so much freedom. Even when we got to the color timing of the show, they leaned fully into our approach. They made it darker than I did, which I don’t think has ever happened in my lifetime! So, we ended up with even moodier frames than I was expecting. What a treat.”

HUMPHREYS SINGLES OUT THE EXEMPLARY EFFORTS OF THE CREW HE RELIED ON, INCLUDING CHIEF LIGHTING TECHNICIAN EDISON JACKSON, A-CAMERA OPERATORS CHRIS CUEVAS AND GEORGE BIANCHINI, AND KEY GRIP LANDON RUDDEL. “ MANHUNT WAS THE MOST AMAZING EXPERIENCE, FROM BEGINNING TO END,” HE SAYS. “I DON’T THINK I’VE EVER WORKED ON ANYTHING WHERE I’VE BEEN SO TRUSTED AND GIVEN SO MUCH FREEDOM.”

How important is it for a newbie Sundance director to have an experienced Guild DP at his/her side? One word: essential.

by David Geffner

Even in a world where tech pundits predict featurelength films will be created in hours via artificial intelligence, getting into Sundance – and physically being in the room with 1300 indie film fans seeing your film for the first time – is a big deal. When it’s also your feature debut (and your first trip to Park City), the experience can take on epic proportions. What’s going through a new filmmaker’s mind – in the waning moments before a Sundance premiere – may well be a replaying of months before, when he or she was deep in the trenches of low-budget production. Often, those thoughts settle on one key individual, whose calm, reassuring demeanor (born out of years of being on set and having tackled the seemingly impossible issues indie filmmakers face) was the driving reason they made it to Sundance. And often that person is the director of photography – a Local 600 member, to be more precise – whose value to an indie movie can only be quantified moments before a festival premiere begins. I caught up with two first-time Sundance directors – and the Guild DPs they worked with – to hear more about a creative relationship that illustrates the core of what indie filmmaking is all about.

Photo by Sarah Shatz / Homegrown Pictures

Exhibiting Forgiveness is the extremely personal story of a painter (André Holland) grappling with past family traumas. When his long-removed father re-enters his life, the artist is plunged into a whirlwind of emotions, all backdropped by his aging mother (who urges him to reconcile his past) and his present-day family – wife and young son – who are witnesses to the artist’s mental struggles. Directed by Titus Kaphar, an award-winning, internationally renowned painter, the indie drama was shot by Lachlan Milne, ASC, ACS, NZCS, whose last film at Sundance was the Oscar-nominated Minari . What follows are excerpts from an interview with Milne in Park City and a Zoom call with Kaphar and Milne a few weeks later.

ICG: Lachlan told me at Sundance that he thought Minari was a prime factor in your wanting him to shoot your debut feature. What was it about that film that helped you decide who would go on this ride with you?

Titus Kaphar: I’m a fan of all of Lachlan’s work, but specifically when it came to Minari, it was that film’s sense of stillness. I’m a painter first, and I don’t like arbitrary movement. I don’t like when the camera moves and I don’t know why we’re moving. To me, all movement has to be justified by something – the characters, the situation, whatever. In Lachlan’s work, and especially in Minari, I’ve seen a willingness to be still and just let the characters do what they need to do. Exhibiting Forgiveness has a lot of internal – and external – tension, so for me, that sense of stillness was vital. In our earliest conversations, Lachlan told me about this philosophy he has used in his past films about “earning close-ups,” which connected with my vision for this film. We stay here [gestures to a medium-to-wide frame] and then only go here [gestures to a tight shot] when it’s required.

Lachlan Milne: I’m ashamed to say I was completely ignorant of Titus’ work as a painter before we had our first call. I’ve since become a huge fan [of his paintings], many of which appear in the film, of course. [Laughs]. He, on the other hand, did a huge amount of research about me before our first chat, and for someone who doesn’t know our world –meaning filmmaking – he asked all the right questions. With regard to Minari, Titus talked about lensing, fields of view, coverage and when – or more importantly, when not – to move the camera, which I believe in very strongly as well. One note about Minari : although many assume it was [Director] Lee Isaac Chung’s first film, it was [actually] his fourth, but the first he’d ever done with a director of photography. It was also his first union film – albeit with a Tier One budget.

Lachlan, you have a lot of experience [in filmmaking], and, Titus, you do not. Did you

want a DP who would bridge that gap or was there something else in play? TK: I wasn’t trying to change the way I see imagery if that’s what you’re asking. I watch movies as a painter. So, when I make a movie, it’s going to be with a painter’s view of the world. Mainly I wanted Lachlan to help me create a language around these many [cinematic] terms and ideas that I didn’t know because I’m not a filmmaker.

LM: Working with Titus was one of the main attractions to shooting this film as I wanted to learn how to look at filmmaking from a different perspective. I knew it was going to work once we got on set, because Titus and I got on so well as human beings. But to take two worlds that have completely different languages – but similar goals in telling a compelling story to the viewer – and make them mesh together seemed like a fascinating challenge.

TK: In many ways, we were bringing these two worlds – painting and cinema – back together. Once upon a time, they were intertwined and then went their separate ways. The way the lens works is different from how a brush works, but they have similarities. When I’m painting, I spend a lot of time thinking about angles and composition and where I’m landing. Lachlan’s thinking about many of the same things – just with a camera.

LM: One other similarity with Minari that just occurred to me is that I can’t speak Korean, and I only read the script in English. But when I got on set all the actors were speaking Korean, which, because I operated a bit on that film, meant I had to go more off their movement and physicality than their dialogue. With Titus, I forgot that his compositions [as a painter] are typically square or vertical. So, when it came to finding the right aspect ratio for the film, I pitched 2:39 in spherical, and he was like: “What does that even look like?” I mocked up some photographs in various aspect ratios, all of which, because it’s cinema, are going to be more horizontal than vertical. Just knowing Titus was used to thinking in vertical frames brought me to a place I hadn’t gone to in filmmaking.

Cinematographers have always turned to painting for inspiration, particularly when it comes to lighting and color. Titus, your paintings are strong in both those areas – how did you want to approach those elements in this film? TK: I had some ideas coming in, but the area where it presented the most challenge was when we see Terrell painting in the movie. We had to make a choice: light for the painting or light for the scene, because those were two different things. [Titus turns his Zoom camera to reveal more of his New Haven, CT studio. He runs to stand by two massive canvases on the wall to provide scale, then comes back.] Those

paintings are 10 feet by 9 feet, so we’re having to light these giant, flat objects – during the middle of the day! There also was a separate conversation in the DI about how to preserve the color saturation of the paintings while still maintaining what was best for the actors in the scene. Lachlan and his team came to my studio and did a bunch of tests to figure out how best to light the paintings.

LM: For a cinematographer, there’s always the temptation to backlight as much as possible. But with Titus’ paintings, if we shot them backlit, they’re in their own shadow and don’t have nearly as much saturation as you’d want. The best version of Titus’ paintings on film turned out to be direct frontal sunlight, which if we didn’t have, we would make. The compromise with that approach is that what’s happening in front of – or behind – the painting, won’t have the quality of light you’d like. I reckon there’s always one scene in every film that creates the most amount of conversation – and for us, it was the scenes with the paintings.

TK: [Laughs] Our line producer, God bless her, assumed all the paintings were going to be CG/VFX. She asked: “Let me get this straight: you’re going to shoot 10-foot-by-9-foot paintings, outside on a street in New Jersey?”

LM: Most of which hadn’t even been painted yet…

TK: Yep. And, of course, it started raining on that day.

Terrell’s creative process is clear on screen. Why he has to paint, what he has to paint, when he has to paint – it’s all there in the filmmaking. How did you arrive at those decisions? TK: It’s two-fold. I’ve turned off movies because it’s so clear the actor had never painted before that scene. I told André [Holland] that if you want this part, you will learn how to paint. That meant three months of him coming to my studio, getting lessons, reading books, and watching tutorials. The first day in my studio [gestures to the large painting behind him], I gave him a brush and said: “Start painting grass.” And he was like: “Dude, are you kidding?!” [Laughs.] I told him this is a painting; there’s nothing to break. I wanted him to be confident in making bold choices when he did have to paint on screen as Terrell.

LM: There’s a scene where Terrell is painting and we time-jump through from when he whitewashes the existing painting to when he paints something new over it. We had André start the shot. Then we’d cut and have Titus jump in to paint through, and then André would jump back in with the brush. I have to say those moments when Titus was painting were some of the most memorable I’ve had on a film set.

Everyone on the crew – some thirty people in the room – stopped to watch Titus paint. To see someone so good at their craft, on a film set, but not acting, was special.

Harking back to the look from Minari , Lachlan, did you try to apply some of the same lensing for this film? LM: I like to treat each project on its own value, so the short answer is no. I did use a similar focal-length set. But for [ Exhibiting Forgiveness ] I used Leica Summilux primes, partly because the set had at least six lenses between 18 and 50 millimeters, where I knew most of the film would sit. There was also a lot of interior work where I knew I’d need to go as wide as possible, without any distortion at the edges, so the actors could use the whole frame. Titus did not know what a 25 millimeter would look like on a 35-millimeter sensor, but I certainly did, so I led him down that road. The Summilux lenses go down to a 1.4, but I lit everything to a 2.8/4 split to help out our wonderful focus puller, Adriana [Lipman-Brunetto], as well as to make sure we could see the beautiful locations our production designer, Olivia Peebles, gave us.

Had you used the ALEXA 35 before this movie? LM: I’d done a few commercials. But this was the first feature, and it was primarily single camera, except for the heavy dialogue

scenes where we had two cameras crossshooting to give the actors as much freedom as possible. I’m a big believer in “if you don’t shoot it, you can’t use it,” so just because we had two cameras didn’t mean we’d use them. There’s always a temptation to put in that second camera, but making a creative choice on the day that best serves the story was what Titus was all about, and me as well.

How did your workflow go? LM: I’d show Titus photographs, cropped to the aspect ratio we were shooting in, and done with a quick color grade, as a possible way to go for each location. Sometimes, I’d do that with Artemis on my iPhone. But mostly I used a Canon R5, with a 24-105 as a variable prime, and then worked out what the equivalent lens was for the ALEXA 35 sensor. Those stills were also helpful to the art department and actors. I’d create a photo library for each location and then put them in Dropbox for all the HOD’s to use if they wanted. Costume designers, for example, never come to the scouts. For me, knowledge is always power, especially on these kinds of fast, low-budget films.

This started as a documentary, which you said wasn’t the right format to visualize the father and son’s past. Was it hard making changes or compromises on the day given how close you were to the material? TK: If

you look at my paintings, you’ll see that I’m very comfortable making something and then unmaking it. I’m used to that editing process in my painting, so I did not feel super sensitive to using everything we shot for this film. If something had to go for the sake of the story, then that’s how it is.

LM: I can confirm that Titus was definitely open to surprises and happy accidents on the day. And he was much better about letting go of material than many directors I’ve worked with, especially for a first-time project that’s so personal. Normally the first assembly has every single setup in every scene we did and is 17 hours long [laughs]. And they’re like: “It’s perfect! I can’t change a thing.”

TK: What was more challenging were the super-charged emotional scenes. There’s one upstairs in the gallery, towards the end of the film, where André and John [Earl Jelks, playing Terrell’s father, La’Ron] are going at each other. That’s pretty much verbatim of what happened in real life when my father showed up at my studio. Now, I’m not a guy who typically can’t control his emotions. But watching André in that scene, I had to leave the set for, like, half an hour because I could not stop crying.

LM: I was in the room for that one and I think everyone felt that same level of intensity. We all

EXHIBITING FORGIVENESS DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY LACHLAN MILNE, ASC, ACS, NZCS (RIGHT) SETTING UP A SHOT WITH DIRECTOR TITUS KAPHAR. PHOTO BY SARAH SHATZ / HOMEGROWN PICTURES

took away different things from it, perhaps. But it hit home for everyone.

TK: Exactly! And that’s what made this project so special. Nobody…nobody…was on it for the money. And seemingly everyone on the team had their version of this story. Our key grip, Rob Harlow, came up to me on the last day, just as we were about to wrap, and asked: “So, did you forgive your father?” And me and Rob had already had a bunch of conversations not at all related to the story, so I was a little surprised. I looked at him and said that I think I came to some degree of forgiveness, in my way. And Rob said: “Yeah. I never forgave mine.”

There are other long dialogue scenes. When Terrell sets up a video camera on a tripod to “interview” his father for their first reunion.

LM: That’s the first real use of handheld in the film, and I was operating A-Camera. It wasn’t about making it feel like Saving Private Ryan. It was more to give the actors maximum flexibility in the space and so that I could adapt to what they were doing in the moment. We ran the scene all the way through each time – ten-to12-minute takes.

TK: André and John Earl Jelks have worked a lot on the stage, so they had no issue memorizing the entire scene. My feeling was that we had to make enough space and just

get out of their way. I was enraptured watching them. Like that was already the movie playing out in front of me.

LM: The only way to light the room for that scene was from outside the windows, so the camera could look everywhere. Honestly, the hardest part was keeping the crew out of the way. Titus has a small monitor, and he’s zoned in on the screen and not aware of what’s going on around him. I remember trying to keep the boom and Titus out most of the time. [Laughs.]

So, I’m guessing having a union camera team was pretty important? TK: I’ve said this many times before, and I’ll say it again: It’s why the film works. If you want to give me credit for anything, it should be for making the right choices [in hiring the crew]. Trying to do all the things we did on this film with a lesser team, honestly, just would have been a big…mess.

Suncoast is drawn from writer/director Laura Chinn’s teenage years growing up in Clearwater, FL, where her terminally ill older brother was placed in the same hospice facility as Terri Schiavo, the young woman at the center of a nationwide right-to-die debate in the late 1990s. Shot by Bruce Francis Cole in South Carolina locations, the movie has a colorful, breezy look that counterbalances the

serious subject matter. Nico Parker stars as Doris, a high school senior eager to find friends and a social identity, despite the urgings of her mother Kristine (Laura Linney) to draw close to her brother in the little time he has left. I sat down with Cole and Chinn a few days after their Sundance premiere. Below is an excerpt from that conversation.

How did you connect with Bruce to shoot this film? Laura Chinn: I had been warned by other female directors to be very deliberate in selecting a DP. They all said to find someone who’s a good listener, who will hear and respect my vision and not talk down to me like I’m a student in their film school. There was that, as well as wanting someone whose work is beautiful and I can watch over and over again. When I met with Bruce he showed me all these images he’d put together like, “This is what inspired me when I read your script.” Not “this is how the movie should look.” It felt like he showed me images that had been in my head that I didn’t even know existed – he was that in sync with my ideas. Then I spoke to other female directors he’d worked with, and they all raved about him. One person said there will be a stressful day on set, and you will look over at Bruce, see him smile, and know everything’s going to be okay! [Laughs.] Who says that about any other DP?

SUNCOAST DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY BRUCE FRANCIS COLE / PHOTO BY TOBIN YELLAND

Bruce Cole: Working with a first-time director is always full of serendipitous moments and also comes with its own set of challenges [smiles]. I think one of the most important lessons I’ve learned working on past films is the importance of building trust. When I first talked with Laura, she was very clear about getting out of the way of the story. We wanted the filmmaking to disappear, while at the same time providing flexibility to build on certain aspects in post.

Laura, you’ve worked in television as a writer/producer/showrunner, so you’re not a stranger to production. LC: Yes, the only new part was the photography. I’ve worked with wardrobe, location scouts, production design, and casting, but I’ve always had a director to speak with the DP. So, photography was the part I was most nervous about. This film came out of my personal experience, but I always felt like we were creating something new. I wasn’t going to impose how I had lived this story onto the actors or creative team in any way. It was always its own thing.

BC: I want to say our references were much more classic than the styles many Sundance movies lean into. We wanted something timeless, like a Little Miss Sunshine , which was a Sundance movie that any DP would love to have on their résumé. In the same kind of way, Suncoast is a simple story where you don’t need a heavy cinematic treatment. It was all about leaning into the locations these

characters inhabit and letting that guide where we went with camera, lighting and color.

Locations are key to this story as we’re in the same three or four places the whole time –Doris’ home, the hospice facility, and her high school – with no stage work. BC: We were intent on searching for the truth in the lighting and spatiality of the locations we chose. This film deeply resonated with me because I spent a good amount of time in homes for the elderly, disabled and dying. That was at a time when I was trying to figure out if I could still be a cinematographer or if I was going to have to find some other profession that would allow me to be close to my mother. I remember how light could transform the room of the patients from a feeling of abandonment to optimism. There’s something special about the early morning sun breaking through the windows of an empty room with an empty bed, or the comforting glow from a very warm lamp in a room where a patient is approaching death.

What kind of challenges did the locations present from a logistical side? BC: A lot! [Laughs.] Doris’ home, for example, when the kids all came over for the party, was very tight. Yet it required two cameras to get enough coverage because of the limited amount of time working with minors. It also was raining, so video village was moved inside. And we were under COVID restrictions so we could not all be in the house at the same time. The art

department would have it, then camera would come in as they went out. The larger locations, like the school, presented less of a challenge, at least from the camera side.

This is a funny movie about a serious subject – caring for a family member who is much too young to die. How did the approach to camera reflect that? LC: I was aware that this movie is about grief and loss and where the ending would take our characters. And I wanted to juxtapose that with lightness and humor. For me, comedy always plays better in wider shots. Once you go in close, you’re heading toward melodrama and a more heavyhanded approach. Also, I wanted a feeling of the audience living through Doris, and she doesn’t see the world in tight close-ups and inserts. That’s not an observational perspective for the audience.

BC: Laura also talked about wanting things to feel like a vintage postcard from Florida, so we chose to shoot on Sony VENICE 1 with a set of Hawk V-Lite anamorphics, allowing for the edges of the frame to take on more character, like the edges of a withered postcard.

LC: We talked about using more handheld towards the end when things get more chaotic emotionally, but we ended up mostly on Steadicam. I always wanted a bright, colorful look throughout. I wanted the ending to be hopeful and the color to still be there, like the

ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES

final shot with the bright yellow truck and pink house. As much as it was a way to show who Christine was before her son was ill – a person who would buy a yellow truck and rent a pink house – they were also a way to keep the audience afloat and not pull them down in heaviness. As an audience member, I know I get overwhelmed when the film is moody and dark, and the camera is frenetic handheld. It’s like at the end of the year when you watch all the Academy screeners and it’s one heavy drama after another. I didn’t want that feeling for people when they left the theater.

You mentioned working with minors, another challenge on an indie film. BC: Working with young actors is a two-edged sword. Making an adjustment from the camera side won’t impact their performance because they’re not super-dialed into technique and process at that age, and they just roll with what you’re doing on set. However, when it came to the heavy emotional scenes, and dialing in a lot of preparation with rehearsals, blocking, lighting placement and screen direction, it became harder for me as a cinematographer to fully manipulate the image. You’re leaving things more up to serendipity, you trust the actors will land in the light, the tears will get shed when the camera’s in the right place, and it will all work out. [Laughs.] And, since the minors are limited to 10 ½-hour days, and the budget didn’t allow to add more days, the solution ends up being to add in more cameras. Then, something’s got to give with lighting and cross-coverage.

LC: I told the actors the camera team would just follow you and go wherever you go, with no limitations or restrictions. For the end, when Doris arrives at hospice, Nico requested no rehearsals. We said just do what you do and we’ll follow you, which she appreciated. We did four takes of that in the room.

BC: I had to leave that scene up to my operator, Chris Lymberis, to be intuitive and in the moment as he’s following the actors. It’s challenging to make sure the camera’s in the right place in a scene that sensitive – are you seeing enough of the eyes and facial expressions? That’s where a

great operator like Chris is so valuable, making sure throughout each take the Steadicam doesn’t miss those key emotional moments, even as the actors may shift their performances with each take.

There were several questions at the postscreening Q&A about how most people will see this film on Hulu [on a small screen], even with a short theatrical roll-out first. How do you both feel about that? LC: I find it pretty sad. We as a society have to value the theatrical experience. It’s the same as books when people began to value independent booksellers over Amazon. To keep cinema alive we have to vote with our dollars. These companies will abide by what consumers do. They’re not making money in theaters now, but if people go back in large numbers, they’ll start putting more films back into theaters. It’s up to us to change that.

BC: As an artist and technician, it’s so important, because we spend so much time during production paying attention to detail. Then we get into post and spend more time and effort coloring the movie – on a giant screen. We worked with Alex Bickel at Color Collective. They spend time at Harbor Post doing this incredible sound design and sound mix, and then to learn the only way that film will be available to people is through streaming is depressing. Why do we spend so much time and effort on these projects if the audience is never given the chance to appreciate all that hard work?

Very well said. To wrap this up, I want to hear, after you’ve premiered the film at Sundance and have distribution – both theatrical and streaming, thank you – how essential were Bruce and his Local 600 camera team to this film’s success?

LC: He was essential! I’m a writer, so my focus is always going to be on the story, making the script as good as I can so people will embrace it. Going from script to movie is a big mountain to climb, especially as a first-time director, and I felt like I could just trust Bruce with all the visual and technical aspects of getting us there. I’m not thinking about lighting; I’m thinking about story and performance. In that sense, I felt very taken care of. I didn’t have to lay awake wondering if the movie was going to look terrible. I need a DP that is a photography genius because I’m not. And that’s what I got with Bruce.

BC: A lot of my career has been working at this level and discovering new relationships, so I came away from this excited that I found a new collaborator. One of my favorite things about this movie was being on set, looking over at Laura, who’s having the time of her life. She had heard all the horror stories about how stressed first-time directors get, especially in the independent world where there’s never enough time or money to do what you want. But seeing Laura with a big smile and enjoying the process was so gratifying. She would always tell me: “This is the best [filmmaking] experience nobody ever told me about!”

PHOTO BY ERIC ZACHANOWICH / SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES

Regional filmmaking has always been the heart and soul of Sundance, as showcased in these 2024 Guild-shot festival hits.

by David Geffner

Ghostlight images courtesy of Drew Tieng / IFC Films

Love Lies Bleeding images by Anna Kooris / A24 Films

The history of the Sundance Film Festival is written in the distant margins of Hollywood, with regional stories taking center stage for a variety of reasons, most notably the compelling and fresh sense of place and time these lesserseen locations provide. Whether that’s the northern suburbs of Chicago, as Guild Director of Photography Luke Dyra lovingly renders in the Premieres Section drama Ghostlight; or the dark, dangerous desert-scapes outside Albuquerque that Local 600 cinematographer Ben Fordesman captured in the Midnight hit Love Lies Bleeding, the nuance and visual surprises found in regional stories has been a cherished part of the Sundance Film Festival since its inception. I spoke with filmmakers from both of these projects to hear more about why they chose to shoot where they did, and what kind of benefits shooting regionally provides.

For me, Ghostlight was the biggest surprise of any Sundance 2024 film. Beginning with its cast, a real-life family of theater actors who play an on-screen family dealing with recent trauma, to the playwriting roots of screenwriter Kelly O’Sullivan, who co-directs with her partner, Alex Thompson, to Local 600 Operator Luke Dyra, here making his debut as Director of Photography, everything about Ghostlight was a grassroots, only-in-Chicago affair.

Keith Kupferer (a founding member of Rivendell Theatre Ensemble) plays Dan Mueller, a sad, beaten-down-by-life construction worker whose current assignment lands him in front of a storefront where a troupe of adult misfits is rehearsing a production of Romeo and Juliet Led by the blunt-talking, pint-sized Rita (Golden Globe nominee Dolly De Leon), this community of actors is about as far off Broadway as humanly possible. And yet, one day, when Dan’s temper explodes at a reckless motorist, Rita takes notice, convinced he would benefit from channeling The Bard’s sublime prose.

Life at home, we soon find out, is the source of Dan’s frustration – his profanemouthed teenage daughter, Daisy (Katherine Mallen Kupferer), is in trouble at school, and his wife, Sharon (Tara Mallen) is fraught over an upcoming lawsuit. There’s a lingering feeling that something precious is missing from this family. And suffice it to say the loss is so crippling it sends Dan into the welcoming arms of community theater, where he ends up playing Romeo opposite Rita’s Juliet. A subplot, where Daisy and Sharon believe Dan is having an affair, gently unravels (as does the

long-simmering lawsuit), when they discover the real location of Dan’s weekend vigils. And when Sharon arranges for the troupe to perform their one-night-only production of Romeo and Juliet at the local high school where she teaches, the magic of Elizabethan theater and Dan’s off-stage journey intersect, wringing out plenty of tears (and laughs) at the Park City screening I attended. I spoke with Dyra, O’Sullivan, and Thompson over Zoom a few days after IFC Films and Sapan Studio had bought Ghostlight (the name refers to a bulb left burning in a darkened theater to appease the facility’s spirits) to hear more about why there’s no place like home (aka Chicago) to make an indie movie.

ICG: How did you connect with Luke to have him shoot this movie? Alex Thompson: Luke was the gaffer on my last feature, and he’s worked closely with [Local 600 DP] Nate Hurtsellers, who at one point was going to shoot Ghostlight. When Nate realized he could not do our movie, we all got excited by the idea of asking Luke to shoot it. Our project was structured the same way Nate and Luke had been working on Renfare, a documentary for HBO. Luke had been around me on set and had gaffed Kelly’s short film as well, so he knew our energies and how we worked. It was the first time I worked with a different DP on a feature in eight years, so I was pretty excited when Luke said yes.

Luke Dyra: I would add that keeping with the movie’s theme, much of the crew had already

worked together. It was like moving up to the next level with the family you already know.

Why Chicago and how key was that to the story and the production? Kelly O’Sullivan: We’ve been in Chicago a long time now; it’s where we shot our last feature, Saint Frances. When I was writing Ghostlight, I knew I wanted it to have a very Midwestern feel. Our main character, Dan, felt very Midwestern, and pulling from my experience in Chicago theater I wanted it to feel as authentic to the city – in this case, we shot in the northern suburbs – as possible.

LD: I went to school and came up in Chicago. And, maybe more importantly, even though I now live in Los Angeles, I have an Illinois driver’s license [laughs]. Having worked and lived in Chicago, I was able to draw on local vendors to help out with the budget – our lighting vendor, Atlas Lighting, gave us a great deal. And Panavision Chicago was fantastic, providing an ALEXA 35 with Ultra Speeds and Primo Zooms, and treating us not at all like the tiny indie feature we were. The ALEXA 35 gave us the flexibility we needed with such a small crew and a limited budget. Pairing that with the Ultra Speeds gave us an image that I think feels set out of time, nostalgic and unembellished. Alex had the idea to shoot a 1.66 aspect ratio, and I think it was a perfect choice for creating our proscenium.

Speaking of proscenium, the story builds toward the performance of Romeo and

Juliet , performed for one night at a local high school. How did knowing the film would climax with those scenes on a real stage impact everything that came before? LD: A lot of it was creating a real play, building the sets, and making it feel organic, as if this community theater group had done it all themselves. We wanted to take you inside the characters – in Dan’s case, being onstage for the first time and how that felt from his perspective – rather than have it be audiencebased. There’s a handful of wide shots in that final performance that show the stage from the audience, but mainly we are close in with the actors feeling what they’re feeling. There’s also a performance on the same stage that’s different from what comes later, so we had to set those moments apart. The ending leans into magical realism, and that sort of feels right for all that’s come before.

AT: None of us like working with marks, so Luke was great in using the nimbleness of our equipment package to get set up quickly and get the actors up onstage. As they were feeling out the scenes in the story, we were feeling out the scenes with the camera. In their rehearsal space, we lit to let the actors have complete freedom. Keith or Dolly would look over and say, “This feels good to me. Am I good here?” and from where I’m standing I can see a whole area that’s not lit, and we’re looking at the back of their heads [laughs]. Luke would go, “Yeah, no problem,” and then he’d scramble to get light and/or the camera where it needed to be to just let the actors do what they wanted to do.

KO: We’re all theater kids and did theater in high school, so we’d talk a lot about what Luke said about how different something looks from the audience versus what it feels like to be in that moment onstage. We used that both for comedy – like when they’re dancing in the disco – and for gravity, like the ending with Dan and Dolly.

It feels like we visit a lot of locations to get a sense of this community. How does that work on an indie budget? AT: Ten years ago, one of our producers, Ian Kaiser, was telling me what it’s like to make independent films. It’s a three-legged stool where you need money, time, and talent. If you’re missing one, it won’t work, and I was like, “Maybe we can do it with just one leg.” [Laughs.] We started the same way we did Saint Frances , with an absurdly low locations budget. This film had 22 locations, so we were often moving in the middle of a day. But we also had an unbelievably nimble and talented rigging crew as well as AD department, which meant we shot everything and had time left over for pickups/reshoots, all within our original schedule.

LD: I have to give a huge thanks to our AD department. It was me, the gaffer and our two AC’s, [Guild members] Joe Tello and Ron Ruanphae, who worked tirelessly with limited rehearsals, shifting marks, and f-stops as low as T1. Doing company moves in a small van was practically impossible, so the AD’s being able to schedule locations that could cover multiple scenes was great. Having time for pickups was also helpful as those weren’t the big emotional scenes so much as the little details that make up the film’s texture. Like when Dan goes with Daisy to the therapist and he’s outside in the waiting room – we added in Kelly, who was eight months pregnant – as a cameo. An Easter egg we tucked in due to the smart scheduling.

AT: Every day after we wrapped I would call the AD on the drive home and say, “Good day! Um, we’ve got something we want to add to the schedule tomorrow.” [Laughs.] Like the moment when Dan is driving home and he’s practicing a line – that was a pickup that came from an addition to the schedule of “where does Dan get his coffee? At a gas station, of course.” So let’s go find a gas station, and since we’re driving with Dan we might as well add in this moment.

Luke, how did you want to distinguish Dan’s different worlds – his home, where there’s so much tension, and the rehearsal space, which is dark and cozy like a womb?

LD: The key was determining which scenes we are observing Dan and which ones we are seeing from Dan’s perspective. The rehearsal scenes are more subjective – handheld, close lensing, et cetera . In the house or at the deposition, we’re on sticks and pulled back, so it’s more objective. Every once in a while that crosses over, like using handheld when Dan sees Sharon planting outside the house and they have a blow-up that pushes him back towards the theater, where we already have that camera language established. By the end of the film, the two looks converge, as real life and his theater life merge. I’m thinking of a Steadicam shot at the end, which we hardly used at all before when they’re leaving the restaurant after the performance and Dolly runs up to say goodbye.

AT: We talked about how in many indie films, handheld is used when something chaotic is happening or when you don’t have time to properly block a scene. For us, handheld meant any kind of emotion Dan was feeling –rage, joy, confusion. And the home was static, a place that felt suffocating for Dan.

KO: The idea was that when he enters the theater world he loses control, emotionally, in both positive and negative ways, and that

destabilizing camera language bleeds into his home life.

There are various emotional plateaus for Dan on this journey. As we get closer to the actual play, we wonder how he’ll perform the death scene with Juliet. How did you pace all those various moments from the camera side as well as your approach to directing? AT: We see the death scene several times, and we see Juliet’s body several times. One of the first times is in this ultra-wide proscenium framing outside the rehearsal space. In the rehearsal space, it was on a longer lens. We tried to use specific lensing or camera positions to let you know you’re seeing a specific person’s POV, but not necessarily revealing whose POV it is, at least at first. Or it was the inverse, where we’re deep with someone but don’t reveal what they are reacting to. Like when Dan walks out on stage as Romeo at the end, we were going to shoot a reverse of him stepping over Juliet’s body. But seeing it pass through Keith’s face was far more powerful. Since we’ve seen the death scene several times before that moment, you know what’s happening. Just seeing Keith’s face, rather than his POV, kind of allows Juliet to become the person he’s lost. You shoot it differently; I think you lose that magic.

KO: I feel like the deposition is a parallel moment to that scene. We stay entirely on Keith as he’s speaking, even though we know his wife, daughter, the lawyers, and the other parents are all in the room listening. He’s kind of losing control emotionally, letting all this painful history finally come out. He’s sharing his truth, and it’s all there in his face.

AT: Yeah, and although we are very tight on Keith’s face in the deposition scene, we’re on a longer lens.

LD: Those were shot on the 75 or the 100 millimeter.

AT: Right. So while they are compressed, we’re not up super close in his face, à la Terry Gilliam and a “feel the emotion!” moment, which would have felt silly.

LD: And since we do see the Romeo and Juliet scene three times before the final performance, I made a conscious decision with my gaffer, Sammy Hochberg, to light each scene a different way, with different sources. Even though the rehearsal space doesn’t change, each time Dan experiences that scene, it’s different and new. Sometimes, when he’s being asked uncomfortable questions, the lighting is harsh and direct in a way that’s not seen anywhere else in the film until the ending performance, when he’s being lit by theatrical sources. Like when he has his breakdown and is embraced and accepted by the rest of the

actors, we take most of the warmth out of the room and let the actors guide our choices with lighting and color.

AT: I love that moment because it isn’t visibly warm, and you don’t know what is going to fill that void. It gives the audience a chance to be surprised. Moira [Alma Washington] comes out of nowhere and that clarinet pipes up, and you’re like, “Oh, thank God.”

This film stars a family of actors who are highly respected on the Chicago stage and have plenty of film and TV credits on Chicago state. Did the world of theater overlap with the world of cinema? LD: There was a lot of stuff that translated easily from stage to film, and other things that did not. For example, when they’re doing theater games –it’s so fun being in the room watching all these actors go through these improvs together. But shooting that with a single camera didn’t translate. Kelly was leading one of the theater games, and I turned to Alex and said: “It’s not looking like what it feels like. How do we honor what’s goin’ on here?” The answer was for the camera to get in the middle of all of them. Then the moment we truly accessed that world was when they stopped being theater people and were just themselves.

KO: One other thing that was so great for the camera was the sense of ensemble theater actors have. They’re not just performing when it’s their coverage, they’re performing all the time. And that would inspire us to go get reaction shots we never could have imagined. That theater training of when you’re on stage, someone might be looking at you, guided –changed really – the way we would cover the scene.

LD: And it looks like there’s a lot of coverage in this film, but we would typically set just three or four shots for a scene that had eight people. Someone’s close-up would become another person’s over-the-shoulder, which became a wide shot, so it felt like a ton of coverage.

Circling back to where we started and the final performance of Romeo and Juliet at the high school – what kind of visual texture were you after, Luke? LD: The most important thing was to not upstage the actors in any way with the cinematography. The only scene that has any theatrical color, per se , is the dance scene; everything else is lit with standard movie lighting, and the rest is all production design [by Linda Lee]. That helped the actors feel like they were in a Shakespearean play. Using a touch of haze for the final performance, along with the spotlights, emphasizes that they’ve left their rehearsal space, which was very lowbudget and DIY.

KO: That haze was one of the funniest and saddest moments of the shoot. The fire department got called out because the smoke set off all the fire alarm detectors in the high school where we were shooting. I think we got one shot with…

LD: We got three shots with the haze [laughs.] Two wide shots and one from the side…

Sundance is top of the mountain – no pun intended – for American independent filmmakers. What was your experience like during the festival? KO: I was just so thankful to get into the festival. Then after the film started screening and hearing how much people liked it, it went from “thank God we got in” to “wow, people are responding to this!” That’s what I’ll take away – those conversations after each screening. Or the random moments walking down the street and being stopped by someone to hear how much the film resonated with them. The opportunity to have a direct connection, in person, with the audience seeing your film is what makes Sundance so special.

AT: This was my first Sundance. And, for me, it’s a great reminder that “independent” is a descriptor of freedom, not size. We had a lot of freedom making this movie, and while it was extremely modest in size and scope, it got to play in front of the same audiences seeing movies that are pre-sold and come in with theatrical and streaming distribution. The same audiences watching movies with Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin can also lose their minds for Keith Kupferer, Katherine Mallen Kupferer, and our whole crazy ensemble. I saw a late-night horror film at Sundance with Keith and one of our producers, and one of the volunteers said to Keith, “You look just like the lead actor from Ghostlight ! You smile more than he did, but you look just like him.” At that same moment, someone walked up to Keith, asked for his autograph, and took a selfie with him…just seeing the look on that volunteer’s face, and experiencing that whole moment in real time was amazing, surreal, crazy. Totally Sundance.

Love Lies Bleeding , which screened at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival in the Midnight Section, and premiered theatrically from A24 Films in March, is a wild ride through an evocative Southwestern landscape that is as bold visually as it is narratively unconventional. The film, shot outside Albuquerque, New Mexico, centers on a gym manager named Lou (Kristen Stewart) who falls in love with Jackie (Anna Baryshnikov), a bodybuilder passing through town on her way to a competition in Las Vegas. Lou’s father, Lou Sr. (Ed Harris), overlords a local criminal enterprise that specializes in making people disappear in the remote ravines and canyons outside of town. When Lou and Jackie’s relationship runs afoul of Lou Sr.’s malicious web, all hell breaks loose – in the most unexpected ways. The film was shot by U.K.-based Director of Photography Ben Fordesman, working for the second time with fellow Brit, Writer/Director Rose Glass (Saint Maud), and a veteran New Mexico-based Local 600 crew that included A-Camera/ Steadicam Operator Twojay Dhillon, DIT Tim Gregoire, B-Camera 1st AC Dan Baas, Utility Nate Martinez, Camera Operator Corey Weintraub, and Unit Still Photographer Ursula Coyote. Chief Lighting Technician Jon McGinty and A-Camera 1st AC Karla Marie Christensen came in from L.A. Fordesman plays freely with color throughout the film, particularly in the many night exteriors. I corresponded over email with Fordesman, who is back in the U.K., deep into his next project.

You shot Saint Maud for Writer/Director Rose Glass in London, which was her debut feature. How did you originally connect for that film and what were your early conversations about regarding the overall look of Love Lies Bleeding? Ben Fordesman: Rose and I were connected through my agent at LUX Artists, who represents me in Europe. We had a couple of meetings and our aesthetics clicked. I seem to remember that our early conversations about Love Lies Bleeding were about the 1980s and excess and Paul Verhoeven movies, like Showgirls

Knowing you were going to shoot in New Mexico, how much did the locations there factor into your preproduction process regarding lighting, color and texture? BF: New Mexico was selected for its appearance, which suited the film. We needed the vast desert space all the way to Lou’s unaired apartment. I would have preferred to shoot in spring or autumn for the lower-hanging sun path, but at times the high-angle sun provided the right kind of temperature on screen. I love the size of Albuquerque – things felt spacious without a cluster of people. It was a quiet setting removed from the clutter of everyday life, at least for me coming from an overpopulated city like London.

You mentioned to me that you’ve always wanted to shoot a film in the U.S. and were excited for this one to be done in New Mexico – can you elaborate more on what about the region/light/physical spaces made this so ideal from a cinematography standpoint? BF: My entire life has been spent watching movies made in the U.S. They impact the whole world; the American culture is discovered through film, and from afar we feel deeply affected by it, for better or worse. American films undeniably shaped my worldview as a child, and I imagined a version of Americana that possibly only exists in the film world. And then, sometime later I’ve helped spread that version of America onto the big screen. I feel like I’ve always had a calling to shoot a movie in the States, a kind of rite of passage for a DP, I suppose. I had shot a few commercials in the U.S. before Love Lies Bleeding, but I’d never even set foot in New Mexico, let alone shot an indie feature there. And in either case, I didn’t have a lot of experience shooting in the desert. I honestly didn’t know what to expect. I just went in with a childlike sense of wonder, and New Mexico did not disappoint.

On the flip side, shooting in New Mexico can pose some very unique challenges, especially in summer, where you may be waiting out lightning storms and lighting big exterior spaces where the clouds play havoc with the sun. BF: Summer in New Mexico brings a lot of storms, usually the day would start sunny and lovely, and then after lunch, in the distance, angry clouds would form, hugging a mountain. And we’d have to take lightning cover. This happened frequently and really impacted our schedule. The frustrating thing was that 85 percent of the time the storms were too far away to physically impact us, but just inside the eight- or nine-mile distance –can’t remember the actual figure – where we had to down tools and wait for 30 minutes from the last lightning flash. One day we were quite far out in the desert at a gun range, and we got hit pretty bad with a ton of rain, which ended our day early. The only good thing to come from shooting this time of year is the interesting clouds and stormy backdrops; clear blue skies are a little dull in my opinion.

The canyon location where they set the car on fire and dumped it over the ledge appeared remote with difficult terrain; not sure if that’s true, but wondering how you approach a location like that (that’s meant

to appear extremely remote) camera- and lighting-wise, again given the indie budget/ schedule. BF: It feels very remote on screen. But there was a lovely big unit base moments away. And, yes, we did have to drive an hour or so to get there from the city.

You had a great New Mexico-based ICG camera team on this, including longtime veterans such as A-Camera/Steadicam Operator Twojay Dhillon. Can you talk about the local knowledge this team brought to the project, and about working with them for the first time in a place you’d never been before? BF: Filmmaking is a universal skill, and it’s a language crews share the world over. I feel blessed to have been able to work in many different countries, with some incredibly talented and pleasant crewmembers. But on a demanding job that requires the very best, you always go in a bit apprehensive when working with new people. Although it’s an indie film, Love Lies Bleeding was a big undertaking, and I came in with very high expectations, which meant I needed the very best team. This was also the first time I had to step back and use an A-Camera operator, having operated everything myself in the past. It was a big deal, and I wasn’t sure what to expect. Luckily Twojay agreed to come on, and he came in very well recommended. It was such a joy to watch him work. He totally tuned into my style of framing and provided so much more than I imagined was possible. I learned a lot from him, and he certainly took a lot of pressure off me while I was coordinating the frontline duties. I brought in my 1st AC Karla from L.A., and she sourced the rest of our wonderful camera team in New Mexico. Same with my gaffer, Jon, who put together an incredible local lighting department. Our New Mexicobased key grip, Trevor Rogers, is an incredibly kind and generous human being who opened my eyes to a whole new level of sun control, car rigs and speed, all done in a calm and measured tone. It was an amazing team, and I think that shows in the final product.

The use of color and texture was quite bold, particularly the night exteriors. Can you talk about any specific scenes/shots that stand out for you, especially given the demands of a low-budget, location-based shoot? And I assume not much was done on stage? BF: I think I went full Robbie Muller with the bilious green artificial lighting! [Laughs.] I could not shoot a night parking lot scene without directly

referencing Paris, Texas or To Live and Die in L.A. Honestly, this project didn’t feel super low budget to me, as I don’t typically light in such elaborate ways.

You’re a self-avowed “Panavision guy,” so having their local New Mexico office ship in a variety of lenses must have been important. Can you talk about what capture system you used, what lenses Panavision provided and the overall approach to lensing, maybe with one or two specific examples? BF: I love Panavision. They’ve been a great supporter of my career, and their lenses are unique. Originally, we wanted to shoot film since we wanted this to feel like it was straight out of the 1980s, and digital can often take you to a contemporary place. For many reasons, mostly budgetary, we ended up on digital. I chose the ALEXA Mini because I wanted something close to Super 35 rather than the larger sensor feel, which in my opinion feels way more digital and contemporary. Selecting the lenses was easy as I usually only ever shoot on the Canon K35s or the Panavision PVintage lenses, and for this, we chose the latter. I wanted a few more focal range options, and I love the softness and imperfections in the PVintage line.

You had several locations that we returned to a lot – the gym, Lou’s house, the gun range bar. I’m wondering what kind of lighting package you had to work with for all of the interiors (and exteriors) of these, and what the main challenges were. BF: Lou’s house was challenging as it was a small location that was very hot and sweaty, and on the first floor. So lighting for night during the day just meant we had to use a few more machines. There are a lot of low-power cables crossing the street to dance around, so there was a bit of delicate maneuvering from Trevor and Jon. But that location was just too good and well worth the extra effort. I love shooting in real locations, using natural light, and adding to that. Our daylight scenes were always lit from outside, and the night interiors were done with practicals and a little shape with Tungsten ring lights, LiteMats, and Leko bounce against ceilings. Although everything is LED now and controlled from an iPad, I do like to keep a few real old-school tungsten lights for the close-up shots of skin. There’s a genuine color from dimming down a bigger bulb that I still feel is better than anything an LED can reproduce – yet.

Two Sundance features that dive deep into uncharted visual (and narrative) territory highlight the risks/reward factor of ICG indies in Park City.

by Michael Chambliss

Bleecker Street Media

This year Local 600 directors of photography scored slots in both the Sundance Premieres and Midnight films. Premieres are for new films that are noteworthy due to the subject or approach. Sasquatch Sunset, a thoroughly nontraditional comedic mock docudrama about a squad of Sasquatches without a single word of dialogue, certainly checks off those boxes. It’s What’s Inside is a slick independent execution of a classic horror-suspense popcorn trope that Netflix judged worthy of a record-setting purchase price. Being independent films, both have their backstories that we explored with Directors of Photography Mike Gioulakis and Kevin Fletcher, and both films shone because of their willingness to travel far off the grid, even in the notoriously adventurous world of Sundance.

Sasquatch Sunset

From the writing/directing team of Sundance veterans David and Nathan Zellner ( Damsel , Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter) comes Sasquatch Sunset, a genre-busting surreal comedy/nature film that follows a family of nomadic Sasquatch on a journey through primal wilderness to find more of their kind. The actors – including Emmy-nominated Riley Keough, Oscarnominated Jesse Eisenberg, Christophe ZajacDenek .and co-writer/director Nathan Zellner – are completely unrecognizable under their thick layers of fur, relying on body language and the expression in their eyes to tell a story

with no dialogue beyond grunts and whoops.

“Photographically, we didn’t think of it as a silent film,” shares Director of Photography Michael Gioulakis. “We were focused on the need to tell a story without dialogue and what that meant to camera placement in relation to blocking and reading the emotional beats of the scenes through the lens. Ryan, Jesse, Nathan and Christopher did a remarkable job of communicating through the masks with their eyes and using the whole of the costume to allow for their emotions to come across. They had to continually overemphasize so it could be read through the suits, which were fantastically designed and built. I was amazed at how well the costumes worked and that there were only a few things we had to watch out for when shooting.”

Due to the obvious lack of any real-world reference for how a pod of Sasquatches might behave, the actors worked with a mime/ movement coach for weeks in preproduction to develop a shared concept for how Sasquatches might interact without language, eat, and react to the environment while exploring the world around them.

The film opens with sweeping shots of a timeless primal forest. Gioulakis describes the structure of the story as being “very much like a documentary with a surprise ending. We wanted the approach to be observational in the first act, and then slowly become more subjective to build empathy and an emotional connection with the audience. It was challenging to maintain the balance between

maintaining an observational distance while making sure the emotional beats came through visually.”

Maintaining the spontaneity of a documentary and more classic feature-film storytelling was part of the production team’s conversation from the beginning. “We began by contemplating every screen format ever invented, even vertical, before we settled on 2.35 because it has a classic scope and presentation,” Gioulakis continues. “We were going to have to move fast and keep ourselves nimble as it would become unshootable under the forest canopy after 4 or 5 p.m. We tried to be economical, not just financially, but knowing that we’d have to be moving around quickly in the deep forest. That meant that we’d work mostly with one camera from fixed positions with a long lens and sometimes Steadicam. I think we only laid dolly track a couple of times.”

Gioulakis came on a month before principal photography, with both Zellners having been on site for a few weeks before for a pre-scout. “Our main location was a large plot of private land in northern California outside Eureka,” Gioulakis recounts. “We tried to cluster our locations around a central base, so we didn’t have to be trekking too far while keeping any roads outside the frame. We moved to Redwood State Park for a few days, which took us to the next level of beauty.”

The Guild camera team, which included 1st AC Scott Johnson, B-Camera 1st AC Anton Miasnikov, and Loader Julie Nhem, worked with the ALEXA Mini LF with a mix of Cooke

Sasquatch Sunset Photos Courtesy of

BELOW: IT’S WHAT’S INSIDE DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY KEVIN “FLETCH” FLETCHER SAYS WHEN WORKING WITH A SMALL CREW ON AN INDIE BUDGET, “WHAT I TRY TO ELIMINATE IN PREP ARE THE CONVERSATIONS THAT WE DON’T HAVE TIME FOR ON SET.”

COURTESY OF NETFLIX

Varotal and Xtal Xpress Anamorphic primes. “We worked mostly available light,” Gioulakis adds. “We carried Astera Titan Tubes and self-powered SOC lights to give a little fill. The Mini LF is so sensitive that we’d be running the lights at 30 percent even under the canopy.” At the end of the day, shuttle drives were shipped to Picture Shop with dailies posted to PIX.

“It was a pleasure to be able to support the Zellner brothers,” Gioulakis concludes. “I had interviewed with them a year or two before on another film. That script was great too, but things happened and it didn’t quite have the follow-through it deserved. And then they had Sasquatch Sunset. Even though everyone was trudging through the rain and mud the whole time, making movies on this smaller scale is really nice. It’s a pure kind of filmmaking. When there’s less equipment and less money, there’s also less fear and distraction.”

It’s What’s Inside

The Midnight section at Sundance is fast becoming one of the festival’s most creative (and commercial) categories, and It’s What’s Inside fits snugly into both camps. The film takes viewers to a pre-wedding party inside a mansion somewhere in the woods. The story unfolds as the guests encounter a series of dark and intricately entangled comedic twists and surprises as the guests drop one by one. Director of Photography Kevin Fletcher (aka Fletch) came to the film having an established working relationship with its first-time feature director, Greg Jardin. “We had traveled well all over the world together doing these rather large and intricate promos for Netflix shows,” Fletcher recalls. “Greg has a unique vision that he would bring to those that were often difficult to execute. I would sometimes spend a couple of weeks to just prep for a one-day shoot. He had been trying to get this script off the ground, and when that happened, he called.”

Fletch says the short shooting schedule – 18 days for principal photography – and a complex script made for a challenging preproduction process. “What I try to eliminate in prep are the conversations that we don’t have time for on set,” he continues. “I had a bunch of ideas when I first read the script, but I also knew that Greg is very visual, and when

he’s writing he’s also seeing. We both love Dario Argento’s film Suspiria and Nicholas Winding Refn’s work, and they were the sources for many visual references. We also watched several films together to close in on camera movement, editing styles and color references. Then, I made a lot of sketches. When we got into actual prep we just kept talking, talking, talking. How are we going to shoot this? How are we going to move through the house?”

With the majority of the story taking place across one night in one location, Fletch saw color, design, and camera motion as the key elements to keeping the visual engagement high. “The film has a distinct color palette, so I built something like color schematics using the architectural plots of the house that Production provided,” Fletch shares. “With our smaller crew and short schedule, we had to be extremely efficient, and that helped us a lot when we were shooting because the crew knew what color palette we were in depending on where we were. One specific color has a significant role in the film, so we avoided that color until it was needed. We relied on practical lighting for those scenes with several characters in the shot. How we were going to key everybody around the table or on the circular couch was always on our minds. The production designer and I worked closely to establish what those light sources were going to be.”

As Jardin was also editing the film, he had a clear vision on set. Fletch says one of the keys to keeping the schedule was knowing how the edit was going to go. “Sometimes a room would be covered by different camera angles, and sometimes it was a single shot that wraps around,” he explains. “It’s a matter of thinking about cinematography as a service to the script and the director. Camera movements are like decisions a writer would make. What is an exclamation point? What is a semicolon, dash, or period? Is this a run-on sentence, or are we saying something very clear with an exclamation point? Closing in on that again took a lot of conversations with Greg about what we were trying to say in the scene; and of course, he had ideas about split screens that we had to incorporate as well.”

Fletch is quick to add that “it doesn’t matter how good of an idea the director or I have, if you don’t have a crew that can execute that idea then they are rendered meaningless.

No one works alone in a vacuum, you need a skilled team, especially on an ambitious indie film.” The main unit Guild camera team included A-Camera Operator Brian Freesh, 1st AC Kyril Cvetkov, 2nd ACs Miguel De La Rosa and Peggy Knoebel and DIT Sean Rawls. Fletch says he was “so excited” to have Steadicam Operator Freesh on the film. “Brian’s a brilliant artist when it comes to camera movement, and he is a huge reason that this film is a success,” Fletch insists.

“Brian, myself, and Greg would kind of mind-meld about what the shot was going to be, and then Brian would take over camera movement so I could move into lighting,” he continues. “By the time I had finished what we needed to do in terms of lighting, he had worked out the camera movements, so we were able to work at an incredibly efficient pace. I did not have a large crew, so it wasn’t like there was a pre-rigging team that could set everything up. Oftentimes we had to pull the lights from one room to light the next room and then come back and relight that room when we had all of the cast. I made a lot of sketches and drawings of how we thought a scene was going to go. A lot of times we knew days in advance what a camera move was going to be, so we could get the right gear there with the right people.”

Selecting a capture system was keyed off Fletch’s experience. “I had tested the ALEXA 35, and I was blown away,” he describes, “especially with the new color science and its low-light capabilities. As soon as I read this script, its look popped into my brain, and I started talking to Greg about it. We were going to be intricate with our colors and I knew the ALEXA 35 would handle that well.” For glass, Fletch relied on a set of Leitz Summilux-C lenses and Angénieux Lightweight zooms for the Steadicam work along with day-playing a large Optimo zoom for certain shots. They worked with a single camera for the bulk of the shoot, bringing in a B-Camera team for inserts and pick-ups. Lighting was primarily LED’s due to the color treatments, some battery-powered lights and even a 16-mm projector. “Our LED’s were DM mixable, which was a huge advantage,” Fletch concludes. “Looking at the film, I think, ‘Wow.’ With our limited crew size and tight schedule, and given the complexity of the script, I feel we achieved something very special. I’m so proud of the team and the film.”

How will AI make its presence felt in the indie world? An in-depth Sundance 2024 panel of “deep thinkers” may provide some hints.

by Michael Chambliss

Indie productions simultaneously mirror our culture and drive change, reflecting where we are and often shining a light on what could or should be. The Sundance Beyond Film presentations make up an ongoing part of the festival that digs into the deep interwoven connections among art, science and culture that influence the imaginative currents shaping independent media experiences. With artificial intelligence rippling through the zeitgeist, the new technology earned time at the podium this year with scientists and filmmakers talking about what AI is, how its portrayal in the media has shaped our initial perceptions, and some of the things that might change as AI evolves as a technology, a tool and possibly a companion.

For the panel, The Big Conversation: Screen of Consciousness, sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Sundance Senior Programmer John Nein introduced the discussion by noting that “our esteemed panelists are a mix of filmmakers and scientists who are going to explore the vast landscape of imaginative, dystopian, and prophetic narratives storytellers have crafted in their exploration of AI. We’ll explore thought-provoking perspectives on AI as a technology tool and companion, and also delve into the emotional connections that humans forge with AI and the complexities of sentience and

consciousness.”

Nein then added: “Since this is a panel about AI, I thought it might be interesting to have an AI introduce it, which is what just happened.”

Then Doron Weber, VP and program director for the Sloan Foundation, announced that large language models like Chat GPT are about 67 percent accurate and have no idea about what they’re saying. “There’s a phrase, ‘stochastic parrot,’” Weber shared, “which means they’re repeating things based on probability, but they have no sense of meaning. So, it’s just, What is the most likely next word to come up? That’s important to keep in mind.”

Panel moderator Heather Berlin, Ph.D., who is a neuroscientist and clinical psychologist, noted that “one of the most interesting questions we have as scientists, but also, I think, as humans, is: Are these AI systems going to be conscious? Will they feel things? Will they feel emotions? And why does that matter? It matters in terms of how we’re going to treat them. If your refrigerator isn’t conscious, you can get mad and kick it. But if it can feel pain, you can’t do that. Which begs the questions: Can we measure consciousness? And how will we know if these systems are conscious?”

UCLA Cognitive Psychology

Researcher Martin Monti, Ph.D. has been deeply involved with this question in the lab. “I don’t have access to what it feels like to be you,

but I think it’s a reasonable inference that you also have a human brain, and the human brain through evolution evolved certain characteristics, one of which is ‘this what it feels like,’” Monti said. “As hard as it is for me to decide whether someone else is conscious, we are developing lab techniques that allow us to understand if somebody else is likely to have these feelings or not.” These developments led Monti to conclude that this is an issue when dealing with things that are not human. “We don’t quite have the starting point of knowing that. We’re never going to know,” he added.

But that doesn’t mean indie filmmakers won’t try. A case in point was the Sundance Dramatic Competition feature Love Me, shot by Local 600 Director of Photography Germain McMicking and winner of the 2024 Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize. It’s a love story between a satellite and an ocean buoy that takes place long after the extinction of humanity, where all their AI’s can know about humans is limited to the internet. Dr. Monti sees this as a perfect exploration of the question, Can AI ever be conscious? And, if so, how would we know?

“I think the relationship that is portrayed [in the film] is a bit like what if an embodied avatar of Wikipedia fell in love with an embodied avatar of Chat GPT?” he said. “They know everything there is to know about humans, every single detail, every

CO-WRITER/DIRECTOR ANDY ZUCHERO OF THE SUNDANCE 2024 FEATURE LOVE ME

– SHOT BY GUILD DP GERMAIN MCMICKING – SAYS THE BUOY IN THE STORY (WHO FALLS IN LOVE WITH A SATELLITE) “IS SUPPOSED TO MONITOR OCEAN TEMPERATURE AND SALINITY. SHE DOES THAT TERRIFICALLY. BUT THERE’S A MYSTERY WITHIN ALL THE DATA THAT SHE DISCOVERS ON THE INTERNET THAT IS...ELUSIVE...THAT FEELING OF BEING ALIVE. EVEN THOUGH SHE CAN ALREADY DO WHAT SHE NEEDS TO DO, THERE’S SOMETHING THAT SHE CAN’T DO THAT SHE’S REACHING FOR.”

movie that’s ever made, every YouTube video. So, they can act it, and simulate, but does it feel like anything to them? That’s hard for us to say. In a sense, this highlights what [British Mathematician/Philosopher] Bertrand Russell called ‘the difference between knowledge by description,’ all the facts that you know, and ‘knowledge by acquaintance,’ when you feel when you have experience. We will presumably live with increasing levels of AI’s that will look at the sunset and say, ‘Oh my gosh, isn’t this beautiful?’ They will tell us, ‘Of course I care for you’ and they will say to us, ‘Good morning, did you sleep well? I had a wonderful night.’ But inside we will always have that nagging doubt that unless we develop a theory of what makes something conscious, we will never know if they’re acting the part or if there’s anything that [they feel].”

“What’s interesting is that you can say the same thing about humans,” Dr. Berlin responded. “You have a romantic partner and they’re telling you how much they’re in love with you. Do you really know they love you, or are they just saying that? That’s why I love this film, because it really is a love story.” Berlin went on to ask if the lack of judgment from AI raises ethical questions about how we should relate to the technology. “We have these fake bots and these deep fakes and we’re communicating with them, we’re talking to them, and people are getting advice from them. If they don’t have emotions, then it’s kind of like a psychopath. In Ex Machina , she just kills her creator. It was like slicing a tomato.” She asks “Are they friends or are they foes? They can help us in many ways, and there’re all these positive benefits from

AI, but also these risks.”

Monica Lopez, Ph.D., Co-Founder/CEO Cognitive Insights for Artificial Intelligence, noted that the public release of Chat GPT in November of 2022 was the moment the general public came to understand that AI systems were real. “It’s an interface that we can use. It’s easy, it’s accessible. And it was fun for many people. For those of us who were in the field, it was just the natural next step in science.” But they also soon discovered issues.

“When we say that system X is going to do Y in Z context,” Lopez continued, “then it should be that system X does Y in Z context. And that’s not what happened. This large language model in which the data from which it’s being trained is essentially all of humanity’s written works up to now [which Lopez caveats

PHOTO COURTESY OF AGX

as not including many indigenous languages], means that it’s all of our stereotypes, all of our biases, all of our different concepts of how we view one another now and, historically speaking, are embedded in that data. It should have been obvious really, and says a lot about how developers don’t necessarily take the time that they should be taking to think about the potential risks once you exit the lab.”

Alex Rivera, Director/Writer of Sleep Dealer and winner of the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award and the Alfred P. Sloan Award 2008, took a narrative filmmaker’s perspective on AI. “The piece of the puzzle that’s been fascinating to me is the question of labor,” Rivera shared. “I believe technology and the sort of resources thrown at it are primarily there to create disturbances, what we might call ‘efficiencies’ in labor systems. The word robot derives from a Czech word for slave . So, the history that we’re living through, this slipstream of systems and networks that we’re inhabiting, they’re sort of thrust into our society primarily out of that impulse. And we need science fiction to help us understand it.

“AI is producing all of these disturbances in society,” Rivera added. “Philosophical questions, like: ‘What does it feel like? What does it mean to talk to math?’ I’ve been working with the visual ones – still and moving images. And when I started, I couldn’t sleep. I was disturbed, fascinated, thrilled and frightened all at once because these systems are built from us, they’re built from what I would think of as a collective sculpture: the internet that we’ve been building, billions of us, over the past 30 or 40 years that’s reached this point and crystallized and can now talk and make pictures. What is it and who does it belong to? Who’s going to control it? It’s just creating so many questions. And so we need these conversations and we need independent science fiction to wrestle with it all.”

“It’s almost like humanity is now reflecting on itself,” Dr. Berlin described, “and this film [ Love Me ] points it out. What are we leaving behind as our imprint of what it is to be human? And then it’s these AI’s interpreting what it would be like to be human. It’s almost like they’re aliens from another planet trying to look at all the data, and they’re like, ‘Oh, this is what it must be like to be a human.’ And then they’re kind of mimicking it.”

Speaking to a clip from Love Me , where the buoy makes an out-of-control attempt to teach the satellite how to use Instagram because that’s how humans make friends, Love Me Co-Writer/Director Sam Zuchero reflected upon her sense of human behavior being interpreted by AI’s. “I think we always want AI to be better than us, and that was the source of some comments when we were making the movie and writing the script. Why

are they doing these things? They’re more intelligent than us. But something that we’re constantly confronted with is that we did make it, and it is a reflection of who we are. So, the hope for a utopia or a better-than-us version is sometimes very funny to me.”

Dr. Berlin offered that “it was trying to be creative, and it was an attempt at creativity and making novel associations between ideas. But we as humans have this filter system that’s based on experience. An AI might know a tomato is a fruit, but [we] may not put a tomato in a fruit salad because of our experience, because of taste and flavor. That difference between just having pure knowledge and creating something with it and knowing these subtleties that are very different. It leads me to this question of, What does it mean to be human? Is it creativity? What is it?”

Dr. Monti said, “You picked a great example. An AI might someday know something about what it feels like to be AI, but I wouldn’t expect it to be anything similar to humans. The human brain exists in the way it does because it evolved, it went through stages, and, in particular, it responded to the pressures of the environment. So, it evolved the capacities that it has to face the complexity of the outside world. AI wasn’t created this way; and so, in a sense, we work completely differently than AI.

“You might’ve seen the movie about Garry Kasparov playing against Deep Blue from IBM,” Monti continued. “Gary looks at a chess board and has a couple of strategies in mind, and that’s about it. Deep Blue goes through 200 million positions a second, calculates up to 21 moves ahead, which is an exorbitant number of possible unfoldings in the game of chess, and then tries to optimize given a function of – I forget if it’s 15 or 27 parameters. So, if an AI ever feels anything, it’ll be completely different from us. For example, emotions are an important source of rationale for us, even though we consider them irrational. They’re a source of good decisions. Positive emotions, good – seek; negative emotions, bad – avoid. An AI would never want this because the AI would decide by optimizing, by having a long equation with a million parameters.”

Dr. Berlin added that even though Kasparov was beaten by Big Blue, the fact that he could compete says something. “What is it about humans?” she asked. “Our consciousness has a very limited capacity, but our unconscious is virtually limitless. And when we have intuition and feelings, that’s our processing and our brain that’s happening outside of awareness. But what is it? Why is it special to be human? And maybe it’s creativity, right? We dream. It was interesting in the film that the AI’s dreamed and hallucinated.”

Love Me Co-Director/Co-Writer Andy Zuchero said, “I think you can view our film as just one long hallucination of AI. The machines in our movie begin as optimized for

their tasks. The buoy is supposed to monitor ocean temperature and salinity. She does that terrifically. But there’s a mystery within all the data that she discovers on the internet that she’s searching for the entire time. And that’s because it’s so elusive, that feeling of being alive, that even though she can already do what she needs to do, there’s something that she can’t do that she’s reaching for. We felt that we are sort of the gods of these creations and that our ideas are the founding ideas for them. All that we were is where they begin. So, they do end up evolving into living, thinking, feeling human beings like us, because in a way they are descendants.”

Dr. Berlin drew a circle around the importance of the big questions by pointing out that we are likely to be ultimately merging with technology. “Your iPhone will become much smaller, and an implant in your head. You’ll say, ‘Call Mom,’ and you’ll think it, and it’ll call. So, there is this philosophical question of: if you can replace one neuron with a silicon chip that can do the same function, are you still you? What about two, what about three, what about four? At what point are you conscious? Are you you? Or are you the technology?”

“There’s a lot more in our film than AI that was inspired by science,” Andy Zuchero observed. “The first shot in the film is the first five billion years of earth. You see the creation of our planet from all these planetesimals that collect into a little tiny ball. And then you watch in silence as this ball evolves, you see Pangaea, you see extinction events, and then finally there’s a little blip at the end that is humanity. It’s a cacophony. You see tiny satellites set up here. You hear Edison saying ‘Mary had a little lamb.’ And then you hear heavy metal and everything blows up very, very quickly, and all of a sudden you see a cascade of nuclear explosions and the lights go out and we’re gone.

“That opening image was inspired by Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot photo,” Zuchero concluded. “If anybody isn’t familiar with that, as they sent Voyager out into our solar system, Sagan appealed to NASA to have them turn the camera around and point it back at Earth, which was scientifically unimportant to a lot of people at NASA. It was an artistic choice, and it would waste a lot of energy, which is not what you want to do with your Voyager satellite. But Sagan appealed and they turned it around and shot a little photo of us amidst all the other stars, all the other heavenly bodies. And we seemed so insignificant. It’s a feeling that you get that we are giant but we’re also so small. Sagan was hoping that when you looked at that, it would inspire us to treat each other more kindly and to realize that this land base that we’re on, this tiny little pale blue dot, is the only home that we’ve ever had and might ever have.”

PRODUCTION CREDITS

COMPILED BY TERESA MUÑOZ

The input of Local 600 members is of the utmost importance, and we rely on our membership as the prime (and often the only) source of information in compiling this section. In order for us to continue to provide this service, we ask that Guild members submitting information take note of the following requests:

Please provide up-to-date and complete crew information (including Still Photographers, Publicists, Additional Units, etc.).

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“HUNTING WIVES”

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DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: ANDY BADER

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LE GRAN DESILUSION, LLC

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UNIT PUBLICIST: LAURA MAGRUDER

LIONSGATE

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MAIN GATE PRODUCTIONS, LLC

“SEX LIVES OF COLLEGE GIRLS”

SEASON 3

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DIGITAL UTILITY: JUNIOR PEREIRA

MESQUITE PRODUCTIONS

“THE NIGHT AGENT” SEASON 2

NY UNIT

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NARROW ISLE PRODUCTIONS, LLC

“OUTER BANKS” SEASON 4

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CAMERA UTILITIES: PAIGE MARSICANO, DOUGLAS TORTORICI, HAILEY NELMS

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STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: JACKSON LEE DAVIS

NBC UNIVERSAL TELEVISION, LLC

“CHICAGO P.D.” SEASON 11

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OPERATORS: VICTOR MACIAS, JAMISON ACKER, CHRIS HOOD

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STEADICAM OPERATOR: VICTOR MACIAS

STEADICAM ASSISTANT: KYLE BELOUSEK

LOADER: STEVEN CLAY

DIGITAL UTILITIES: REBECCA JOHNSON, JACOB OCKER

STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: LORI ALLEN

EPK: MADELYN MOMANO

“FBI INTERNATIONAL” SEASON 3

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OPERATOR: BUD KREMP,SOC

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“HARLEM” SEASON 3

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LOADERS: OFELIA CHAVEZ, VINCENT FERRARI

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“LAW & ORDER” SEASON 23

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LOADERS: LUKE HEALY, AMANDA LETTIERI, MICHAEL CRESTA, ANDREA ANGELL

STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: VIRGINIA SHERWOOD, IAN BRACONE, MICHAEL PARMELEE

“LAW & ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS

UNIT” SEASON 25

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STEADICAM OPERATOR: JONATHAN HERRON

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STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: PETER KRAMER, VIRGINIA SHERWOOD, EMILY ARAGONES

“THE EQUALIZER” SEASON 4

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OPERATORS: JOSEPH BLODGETT, MALCOLM PURNELL, RICARDO SARMIENTO

ASSISTANTS: ADAM GONZALEZ, ROBERT WRASE, JELANI WILSON, ZAKIYA LUCAS-MURRAY, GUS LIMBERIS, DARNELL MCDONALD

STEADICAM OPERATOR: JOSEPH BLODGETT

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: TIFFANY ARMOUR-TEJADA

LOADERS: MARINO SANNUTI, CHRISTOPHER BAZATA, NATHAN CARR

TECHNOCRANE OPERATOR: PAUL GOROFF

STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: MICHAEL GREENBERG

NETFLIX

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“ARTICLE TWO AKA ZERO DAY”

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OPERATORS: GREGOR TAVENNER, WYLDA BAYRON, JON BECK, CHRIS REYNOLDS

ASSISTANTS: COURTNEY BRIDGERS, AMBER MATHES, MARC LOFORTE, COREY LICAMELI, CHRIS ENG, PATRICK BRACEY

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DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: TA

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“COBRA KAI” SEASON 6

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OPERATORS: BRIAN NORDHEIM, BRIAN DAVIS

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“THAT ‘90S SHOW”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: GARY BAUM, ASC

OPERATORS: DAVID DECHANT, LANCE BILLITZER, JON PURDY, BRIAN GUNTER

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UTILITIES: DAN LORENZE, RICHIE FINE

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: DEREK LANTZ

VIDEO CONTROLLER: JOHN O’BRIEN

STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: PATRICK WYMORE

“THE LIFE LIST”

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OPERATORS: DAVID THOMPSON, ROBERT MANCUSO

ASSISTANTS: TONY COAN, JUSTIN MANCUSO, DAVID ROSS, TYLER MANCUSO

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: BJORN JACKSON

LOADERS: MARGARET HUGHES, LUISA ORTIZ

STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: NICOLE RIVELLI, EMILY ARAGONES

PARAMOUNT

“A REALLY LOUD HOUSE”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: BRANDON

MASTRIPPOLITO

OPERATORS: REID RUSSELL, GREG MATTHEWS

ASSISTANTS: DOMENIC MASTRIPPOLITO, JASON SEIGEL

DANIEL MAESTAS, HILLARY BACA

STEADICAM OPERATOR: REID RUSSELL

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: TREVOR MURPHY

LOADER: COLBY HOPKINS

CAMERA UTILITY: MEGAN KAMAUOHA

DIGITAL UTILITY: MIKEY SLAVICH

STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: KAREN KUEHN

RANDOM PRODUCTIONS, LLC

“TASK FORCE”

DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: LOWELL MEYER, ALEXANDER DISENHOF

OPERATOR: SHAWN SUNDBY

ASSISTANTS: TROY DOBBERTIN, KIMBERLY HERMAN, ALEC FREUND, JAMES MCCANN

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: MATTHEW SELKIRK

STEADICAM OPERATOR: STEWART CANTRELL

LOADER: CORRINE MCANDREWS

STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: PETER KRAMER

SALT SPRING MEDIA, INC.

“FRIENDSHIP”

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OPERATORS: SHANNON MADDEN, AARON BROWN

ASSISTANTS: MICHAEL BELARDI, STACY MIZE, STEPHANIE GUZMAN, PETER PERLMAN, CHRISTINA CARMODY

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: MALIKA FRANKLIN

LOADER: PHILIP BABICH

STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: SPENCER PAZER

“THE SAVANT” SEASON 1

DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JANUSZ KAMINSKI, BARTOSZ NALAZEK

OPERATOR: THORSTEN THIELOW

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DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: DOUGLAS HORTON

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“SEVERANCE” SEASON 2

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DIGITAL IMAGING TECHS: LUKE TAYLOR, MATT RICHARDS

LOADERS: TOM PARRISH, AMELIA SUMMAR

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SONY PICTURES TELEVISION

“JEOPARDY!” SEASON 39

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OPERATORS: DIANE L. FARRELL, SOC, MIKE TRIBBLE, JEFF SCHUSTER, L. DAVID IRETE

JIB ARM OPERATOR: MARC HUNTER

HEAD UTILITY: TINO MARQUEZ

CAMERA UTILITY: RAY THOMPSON

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“LONG BRIGHT RIVER”

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OPERATORS: SAM ELLISON, MICHAEL JUNIPER BURKE

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“WHEEL OF FORTUNE” SEASON 40

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JEFF ENGEL

OPERATORS: DIANE L. FARRELL, SOC, L.DAVID IRETE, RAY GONZALES, MIKE TRIBBLE

HEAD UTILITY: TINO MARQUEZ

CAMERA UTILITY: RAY THOMPSON

VIDEO CONTROLLER: JEFF MESSENGER

VIDEO UTILITIES: MICHAEL CORWIN, JEFF KLIMUCK

JIB ARM OPERATOR: STEVE SIMMONS

STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: CAROL KAELSON

SQUARE PEG PRODUCTIONS

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OPERATORS: BRIAN OSMOND, TWOJAY DHILLON

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DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: GABRIEL KOLODNY

LOADER: OSCAR MONTEZ

DIGITAL UTILITY: JORDAN RAE HERRON

STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: RICHARD FOREMAN

UNIT PUBLICIST: DIANE SLATTERY

STAMFORD MEDIA CENTER AND PRODUCTIONS, LLC

“KARAMO” SEASON 2

OPERATORS: RON THOMPSON, VICTOR MATHEWS, DOMINICK CIARDIELLO, JON ROSE, CHARLES BEDI

JIB ARM OPERATOR: ANTHONY LENZO

CAMERA UTILITIES: ROBERT BENEDETTI, ANTHONY DEFONZO, ROBERT FRITCHE, FRANK CAIOLA

CHYRON OPERATOR: DAVID KATZ

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JOE MANCUSI

“STAMFORD MEDIA CENTER-WILKOS”

SEASON 17

OPERATORS: RON THOMPSON, VICTOR MATHEWS, ANTHONY LENZO, MARC NATHAN, DOMINICK

CIARDIELLO, JON ROSE, CHARLES BEDI

ASSISTANT: ROBERT BENEDETTI

CAMERA UTILITIES: JOE MANCUSI, ANTHONY DEFONZO, ROBERT FRITCHE, FRANK CAIOLA

CHYRON OPERATOR: DAVID KATZ

SUMMER 1, LLC

“THE SUMMER I TURNED PRETTY”

SEASON 3

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: SANDRA VALDE-HANSEN

OPERATORS: MATTHEW DOLL, MICHAEL REPETA

ASSISTANTS: ALAN ALDRIDGE, SEAN YAPLE, SETH LEWIS, NICK COCUZZA

CAMERA UTILITY: HAILEY NELMS

LOADER: BRANDON ROBEY

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TCS RHODE ISLAND PRODUCTIONS, INC.

“ELLA MCCAY”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ROBERT ELSWIT, ASC

ASSISTANTS: ERIK BROWN, JAMIESON FITZPATRICK, LARISSA SUPPLITT, MATTHEW HEDGES

STEADICAM OPERATOR: JOSHUA FRIZ

CAMERA UTILITY: EMILY BARONE

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: MATTHEW DORRIS

LOADER: GABRIELLA PEZZELLI

STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: CLAIRE FOLGER

UNIT PUBLICIST: GABRIELA GUTENTAG

UNIVERSAL TELEVISION

“A CLASSIC SPY”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DAVID MILLER

OPERATORS: ERIC DYSON, JOSH WILLIAMSON, JOHNNY MARTIN

ASSISTANTS: MARK FIGUEROA, AARON BOWEN, TONY MARTIN, CHRIS GARLAND, WILLIAM EVANS, RACHEL MANGUM

STEADICAM OPERATOR: JODY MILLER

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“BEL-AIR”

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OPERATORS: GRANT CULWELL, DEAN MORIN

ASSISTANTS: JAMES RYDINGS, KAORU “Q” ISHIZUKA, CHRIS BURKET, BASSEM BALAA

STEADICAM OPERATOR: GRANT CULWELL

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: TIM NAGASAWA

LOADER: BEAU MORAN

CAMERA UTILITY: JOE PACELLA

DIGITAL UTILITY: ALEKSEY SOLODOV

STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: GREG GAYNE

WARNER BROS

“THE CLEANING LADY” SEASON 3

DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ALAN CAUDILLO, VANESSA JOY SMITH

OPERATORS: MATTHEW PEARCE, DEMIAN SCOTT VAUGHS

ASSISTANTS: SEBASTIAN VEGA, RYAN BUSHMAN, TAYLOR HILBURN, RYAN EUSTIS

STEADICAM OPERATOR: MATTHEW PEARCE

STEADICAM ASSISTANT: SEBASTIAN VEGA

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: RAFEL MONTOYA

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DIGITAL UTILITY: ELLEOTT HERRERA

“YOUNG SHELDON” SEASON 7

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: BUZZ FEITSHANS, IV

OPERATORS: NEIL TOUSSAINT, SOC, AARON SCHUH, SOC,

ASSISTANTS: MATTHEW DEL RUTH, GRANT YELLEN, JAMES COBB, BAIRD STEPTOE

STEADICAM OPERATOR: AARON SCHUH, SOC

STEADICAM ASSISTANT: GRANT YELLEN

LOADERS: CONNER MCELROY, BAILEY SOFTNESS

TECHNOCRANE OPERATOR: DAVID HAMMER

REMOTE HEAD TECH/OPERATOR: CHRIS GARCIA

STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: ROBERT VOETS, BILL INOSHITA

WOW THE LAW, LLC

“SORRY, BABY”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MIA CIOFFI HENRY

ASSISTANTS: NOLAN RUDMAN-BALL, THOMAS BELLOTTI

STEADICAM OPERATOR: DEAN EGAN

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: NICK PASQUARIELLO

YOUNG COLLECTIVE, LLC

“COLAPSO”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: SONNEL VELAZQUEZ

ASSISTANTS: ABNER MEDINA ALEJANDRO, ANTONIO SILVA

COMMERCIALS

IST AVE MACHINE

“PRADA”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ROB HAUER

ASSISTANTS: WILLIAM POWELL, TRICIA COYNE

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JASON JOHNSON

76 WORDS

“WORKING AMERICA CONFERENCE”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JOSE SARMIENTO

ASSISTANT: AIDAN GRAY

ANONYMOUS CONTENT

“WALMART”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: KELLY JEFFREY

OPERATOR: JUN LI

ASSISTANTS: PAYAM YAZDANDOOST, STEVE DOYLE, CHRIS MARIUS JONES, TAMARA ARROBA

STEADICAM OPERATOR: JUN LI

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: NINA CHADHA

TECHNOCRANE OPERATOR: DERRICK ROSE

TECHNOCRANE TECH: COREY KIEFER

REMOTE HEAD TECH/OPERATOR: CHRISTIAN HURLEY

BISCUIT

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ASSISTANTS: KARLA MARIE CHRISTENSEN, DUSTIN MILLER, JENNIFER LAI, SASHA WRIGHT

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: NINA CHADHA

CANADA

“TOYOTA CAMRY”

OPERATOR: JUN LI

ASSISTANTS: MIKE LEMNITZER, ADAM MARQUEZ, MICHELLE SUH, NIC VANNATTA

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: MICHELE DELORIMIER

CMS PRODUCTIONS

“MCDONALD’S”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: TODD BANHAZL, ASC

ASSISTANTS: DAVID EDSALL, JASON ALEGRE

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: NINA CHADHA

“TRONE”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JOSEPH LIPARI

OPERATOR: CHARLES BEYER

ASSISTANTS: JAY ECKARDT, ALEX GUCKERT

EPOCH

“MATTRESS FIRM”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: BOBBY SHORE

ASSISTANTS: KARLA MARIE CHRISTENSEN, LILA BYALL, SASHA WRIGHT, COLLEEN MLEZIVA

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: NINA CHADHA

HUNGRY MAN

“HYUNDAI”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JO WILLEMS

OPERATOR: JOE AGUIRRE

ASSISTANTS: STEVE MACDOUGALL, BOB SMATHERS, JOEL MARTIN

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: BRANNON BROWN

INVISIBLE COLLECTIVE,LLC

“SAMSUNG”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: SING HOWE YAM

OPERATORS: JUN LI, GREG LEFEVRE

ASSISTANTS: ADAM MARQUEZ, JOE CHEUNG, ANTHONY HWANG, BRENDAN DEVANIE

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: DAN SATINOFF

JOJX

“BUICK”

DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MATTHIAS

KOENIGSWIESER, IAN RIGBY

ASSISTANTS: JONATHAN BOWERBANK, SYDNEY COX, AUSTIN PEDRONI

DIGITAL IMAGING TECHS: JORDAN LIVINGSTON, SIN COHEN

MOXIE PICTURES, INC

“GOLF GALAXY”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: PETER KONCZAL

ASSISTANTS: PATRICK KELLY, MARY ANNE JANKE, MICHAEL RODRIGUEZ TORRENT, TALIA KROHMAL

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: MATTHEW DORRIS

PARK PICTURES

“USPS”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: EVAN PROSOFSKY

ASSISTANTS: JASMINE CHANG, JOE ASHI

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: NINA CHADHA

RADICAL MEDIA

“NY LOTTERY”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: PETER DONAHUE

OPERATOR: CHARLES LIBIN

ASSISTANTS: PETER MORELLO, WALTER RODRIGUEZ, NATHAN MCGARIGAL

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JOE BELACK

CRANE OPERATORS: JOSH PRESSGROVE, MICHAEL BUCK

“PROPEL”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: SCOTT CUNNINGHAM

ASSISTANTS: WALTER RODRIGUEZ, MATT DEGREFF

STEADICAM OPERATOR: MICHAEL HAUER

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: THOMAS WONG

RAKISH

“TOYOTA”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: RINA YANG

OPERATOR: ARI ROBBINS, SOC

ASSISTANTS: JONATHAN BOWERBANK, AARON KIRBY, THERESA WONG

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JORDAN LIVINGSTON

PHANTOM TECH: TOM HEIGL

HEAD TECH: SIMON SHIN

CRANE TECH: ROB RUBIN

SCHOLAR

“KOHLER”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DALLAS STERLING

ASSISTANT: MIKE GUASPARI

STIR FILMS/SWEET RICEY

“MEET BOSTON 24”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: PATRICK RUTH

ASSISTANTS: DANIEL MASON, MICHAEL RODRIGUEZ

TORRENT

SUPPLY & DEMAND

“PROJECT ALIEN”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DAVID WELDON

ASSISTANTS: MIKE PANCZENKO, BRIAN WELLS, MIKE PRIOR

LOADER: JOHN GOODNER

TOOL

“AMERICAN SHIELD”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ISIAH DONTE LEE

OPERATOR: NATHAN CONANT

ASSISTANTS: ANTHONY GOODMAN, KYLE FRANK, ANA FLORES, CHRIS GRIGGS

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: MARGARET PARUS

SCORPIO HEAD TECH: JAY SHEVECK

“SAM ADAMS”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JONATHAN FREEMAN

OPERATORS: PATRICK RUTH, NATHAN SWINGLE

ASSISTANTS: PATRICK KELLY, MARY ANNE JANKE, JILL TUFTS, MICHAEL RODRIGUEZ TORRENT

DIGITAL IMAGING TECHS: NICK PASQUARIELLO, MATTIE HAMER

MUSIC VIDEOS

SUPPLY & DEMAN

“PROJECT ALIEN”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DAVID WELDON

ASSISTANTS: MIKE PANCZENKO, KEVIN POTTER, KEVIN MILES

LOADER: BEN IKER

CHR!S REEL

Ah, yes, the sequence of moving President Lincoln’s coffin. That emotional scene made it hard to convey the energy of the day in just one image. Watching this scene from the first episode reminded me of all the hard work the entire cast and crew put into making this series happen. The artificial rain that was created on the backlot made for a tough shoot, but we all endured through it. The camera crew’s equipment was obviously put to the test, as was the patience of the actors and the extras. We had to go through a “few” takes of that scene, and I remember using up several of my protective camera sleeves. When the day finally wrapped, we were all happy to head home much drier than we originally started and unaware of a similar day to come, but that time with snow.

MANHUNT