ICG Magazine - June/July 2020 - The Interview Issue

ICG MAGAZINE

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interview

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Member stories, profiles, safety articles and more...

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600 LIVE! l i v e . i c g 6 0 0 . c o m

pictured: Polly Morgan, ASC, BSC

contents THE INTERVIEW ISSUE June/July 2020 / Vol. 91 No. 05

DEPARTMENTS gear guide ................ 14 zoom-in ................ 24 first look ................ 28 exposure ................ 32 production credits ................ 130 stop motion .............. 140

SPECIAL The Interviews ........ 92

38

FEATURE 01 DEVIL IN THE DETAILS Season 3 of Netflix’s rural family drug saga, Ozark, hits new visual highs (and dark narrative lows).

Photo by Steve Dietl

FEATURE 02 LAW & DISORDER Welcome to Los Angeles 1932 and HBO’s noir reboot of a classic television series.

FEATURE 03 BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU? Jody Lee Lipes doubles down on cinematic intensity for the HBO limited series I Know This Much Is True.

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58 76

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Publisher Teresa Muñoz Executive Editor David Geffner Art Director Wes Driver

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Tyler Bourdeau

STAFF WRITER Pauline Rogers

ACCOUNTING

Glenn Berger Dominique Ibarra

COPY EDITORS

Peter Bonilla Maureen Kingsley

CONTRIBUTORS

Elizabeth Fisher Matt Hurwitz Kevin H. Martin Merrick Morton, SMPSP Jeong Park Valentina Valentini

COMMUNICATIONS COMMITTEE

Spooky Stevens, Chair

CIRCULATION OFFICE 7755 Sunset Boulevard Hollywood, CA 90046 Tel: (323) 876-0160 Fax: (323) 878-1180 Email: circulation@icgmagazine.com

ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVES WEST COAST & CANADA Rombeau, Inc. Sharon Rombeau Tel: (818) 762 – 6020 Fax: (818) 760 – 0860 Email: sharonrombeau@gmail.com EAST COAST, EUROPE, & ASIA Alan Braden, Inc. Alan Braden Tel: (818) 850-9398 Email: alanbradenmedia@gmail.com

June/July 2020 vol. 91 no. 05

Local

600

International Cinematographers Guild

IATSE Local 600 NATIONAL PRESIDENT John Lindley, ASC VICE PRESIDENT Dejan Georgevich, ASC 1ST NATIONAL VICE PRESIDENT Christy Fiers 2ND NATIONAL VICE PRESIDENT Baird Steptoe NATIONAL SECRETARY-TREASURER Stephen Wong NATIONAL ASSISTANT SECRETARY-TREASURER Jamie Silverstein NATIONAL SERGEANT-AT-ARMS Deborah Lipman NATIONAL EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Rebecca Rhine ASSOCIATE NATIONAL EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Chaim Kantor

ADVERTISING POLICY: Readers should not assume that any products or services advertised in International Cinematographers Guild Magazine are endorsed by the International Cinematographers Guild. Although the Editorial staff adheres to standard industry practices in requiring advertisers to be “truthful and forthright,” there has been no extensive screening process by either International Cinematographers Guild Magazine or the International Cinematographers Guild.

EDITORIAL POLICY: The International Cinematographers Guild neither implicitly nor explicitly endorses opinions or political statements expressed in International Cinematographers Guild Magazine. ICG Magazine considers unsolicited material via email only, provided all submissions are within current Contributor Guideline standards. All published material is subject to editing for length, style and content, with inclusion at the discretion of the Executive Editor and Art Director.

Local 600, International Cinematographers Guild, retains all ancillary and expressed rights of content and photos published in ICG Magazine and icgmagazine.com, subject to any negotiated prior arrangement. ICG Magazine regrets that it cannot publish letters to the editor.

ICG (ISSN 1527-6007) Ten issues published annually by The International Cinematographers Guild 7755 Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood, CA, 90046, U.S.A. Periodical postage paid at Los Angeles, California.

POSTMASTER: Send address changes to ICG 7755 Sunset Boulevard Hollywood, California 90046 Copyright 2020, by Local 600, International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employes, Moving Picture Technicians, Artists and Allied Crafts of the United States and Canada. Entered as Periodical matter, September 30, 1930, at the Post Office at Los Angeles, California, under the act of March 3, 1879. Subscriptions: $88.00 of each International Cinematographers Guild member’s annual dues is allocated for an annual subscription to International Cinematographers Guild Magazine.

Non-members may purchase an annual subscription for $48.00 (U.S.), $82.00 (Foreign and Canada) surface mail and $117.00 air mail per year. Single Copy: $4.95 The International Cinematographers Guild Magazine has been published monthly since 1929.

International Cinematographers Guild Magazine is a registered trademark.

www.icgmagazine.com www.icg600.com

president's letter

This column was written to meet a deadline before the recent protests sparked by yet another senseless death of an African American citizen. Our Local rises from a foundation of organized labor that battles for equality and justice, not only for our members and their families but for all Americans. Local 600’s membership shares in the grief and anger that catalyzed the ongoing demonstrations, and every one of us hopes that this time a brighter future will emerge from tragedy. Such systemic changes will require us to elect leaders who recognize and empathize with the pain racism and poverty cause, to vote and get others to do the same, and to embrace a labor movement that understands economic opportunity is the antidote to hopelessness. Local 600 will continue to strengthen our bonds with groups like Made in New York, Hollywood CPR, Manifest Works, and others that advance access and opportunity in our industry. The moment of truth is now. We simply cannot look away.

Unprecedented …is a word I have recently come to loathe, as it is now attached to a virus that has attacked us and knocked the world off its axis. But while COVID-19 has driven us apart physically, let us take a moment to acknowledge that it has brought us and our union closer to one another, as Local 600 members have joined together to launch new initiatives in unprecedented ways.

You created and hosted multiple group meetings via Zoom that have provided opportunities to share information and experiences, and offer comfort.

You re-purposed and donated to the Local 600 Hardship Fund that has now provided grants to more than 300 fellow members in need.

You’ve sewn masks and made clear face shields with 3D printers for first responders, and donated and distributed food to medical facilities and food banks in all our regions.

You signed up for IATSECares.org in large numbers, and many of you made phone calls to members who are isolated and feeling overwhelmed by fear and loneliness.

You have donated computing power to Rosetta@ home to assist in vital research to fight the virus.

You ran a virtual camera-gear yard sale and raised money for our Hardship Fund.

Meanwhile, your Local converted to working remotely quickly and efficiently, without any preparation for that eventuality. Local 600 staff members have reached out and spoken with thousands of our members, and they have responded with appreciation.

One example: “A kind soul named Maria just called me from Local 600 to check in on me and see if I had any questions. I almost cried into the brownie batter I was stress-baking at that precise moment. Thank you, Maria.”

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Our members are working as volunteers at testing sites and donating much-needed blood at the Red Cross.

All these acts and more have strengthened our bonds with one another and with our communities and beyond our borders.

The Motion Picture Industry (MPI) Board of Directors granted qualifying hours to health-plan participants whose ability to accrue benefit hours was stopped by the industry shutdown. This enabled hundreds of members to retain health insurance. The MPI Board of Directors provided the ability to draw upon individual IAP savings, which created another safety net for those in financial peril. MPI had never before extended the plan resources in this manner.

So, what is truly unprecedented is our collective response to this crisis. You have helped strangers and friends; and by taking care of each other, you have taken care of yourselves and all of us. That is what a union does.

There are still many challenges ahead, but we will be better equipped to confront them thanks to your unprecedented responses to this disaster, to our stronger bonds across our union, and our knowledge that when it matters most, we know how to come together.

Please remember that your health, well-being, and safety are paramount.

Give care and take care.

John Lindley, ASC National President International Cinematographers Guild IATSE Local 600

M AT R I X COVID19 RESPONSE VIDEO

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wide angle

T

hese past months have been challenging in so many ways. And now, just days before this issue is to be finalized, the never-ending scourge of racial intolerance has catapulted our nation into a “tipping point” of social change that our entire industry must embrace and act upon. Although we at ICG Magazine can point with pride to highlighting work by Local 600 members of color over the years, like Atlanta-based Unit Still Photographer Richard A. DuCree’s astonishing photo essay on the Martin Luther King Jr Memorial dedication in Washington D.C (Dreams Fulfilled, November 2011), I urge ICG readers to revisit, we can always do better, and we can always do more.

And yet, as uncertainty reigns, one thing that feels solid (emphasized by Local 600 President John Lindley, ASC in his letter this month) is how IATSE film and television workers have, and will continue to be, a galvanizing force of positivity. I can personally attest to this via the two virtual panels I moderated for NAB Show Express (a digital alternative to our industry’s largest trade show, which was canceled for the first time in nearly 30 years due to COVID-19.)

The “Let’s Talk Cine” sessions were with filmmakers from Netflix’s Emmy-winning drama, Ozark, followed by an AMA (Ask Me Anything) with three-time Oscar-nominated Director of Photography Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC. The Ozark panel, which dovetails neatly with our cover story for this Interview Issue (page 38), included Directors of Photography Ben Kutchins and Armando Salas, A-Camera/Steadicam Operator Ben Semanoff, SOC (who has also directed two episodes of Ozark), and Production Designer David Bomba. It drew more than 400 attendees and highlighted the show’s distinct workflow, which includes all four panelists being given generous amounts of creative decisionmaking power. The respect each of these IATSE members (David Bomba is a member of Local 800, Art Directors Guild) has for each other, as well as the trust star/executive producer/director Jason Bateman invests in their problem-solving skills, was magnificent to highlight, quarantine limitations notwithstanding.

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My Q&A with Rodrigo Prieto (both sessions are available online at www.nabshow.com/express) enjoyed an equally strong interactive component from Guild members. Examples abounded in my Zoom pop-up menu, including Local 600 Director of Photography and SOC member Jendra Jarnagin’s identifying the camera used on Prieto’s early-career hit, Amores Perros, and queries about his many films with 1st AC Zoran Veselic, whom Prieto described as “a mentor for life, as much as for his filmmaking.” (ICG readers can learn more about Veselic, who passed away in August 2018, at icgmagazine.com/web/thevoice.) Other questions from Guild members included those addressing Prieto’s legendary testing of cameras and lenses in preproduction, and safety risks taken early in his career (in Mexico) that he regrets and that have contributed to his passion for crew safety on today’s sets.

These pandemic-inspired “virtual interviews” offer a personalized way of extending educational opportunities to Local 600 members; and they’re echoed in the written words of the Guild members we asked to buddy up (virtually, of course) with other industry colleagues for this issue. Those pairings included 1st AC’s and dolly grips, directors of photography and 1st AD’s, and directors of photography with digital finishing artists. Terms like trust, faith, teamwork, and support, which appear throughout this issue are common enough on a set; but they’ve become watchwords for these challenging times. Just as the windows on all the laptops of the Guild members on our NAB Show Express panels offered an outpouring of community (not to mention the welcome relief of talking about craft, not COVID), so too do the words from these interview subjects.

Perhaps no better hope for regaining a workplace taken away comes from 1st AC Jamie Felz and Dolly Grip Eric Zucker, who not only have their own backs, but everyone else’s on set.

As Zucker noted (page 102): “We’ve had the camera hanging 30 feet in the air on chain motors. Or me shooting a crane at the lead actor’s face while the director is screaming, ‘Faster! Faster!’ Sometimes the director doesn’t understand that the camera can only move as fast as the focus motor can go, and we can only do what is safe.” To which Felz responded: “Eric may swing a crane close to an actor’s face, and I would tell him, sometimes by focus distance, if he was too close and the shot might then be dangerous.” “And that’s when Jamie sometimes gives me that ‘I love you.

But I will kill you’ look,” Zucker replied, generating the smiles and laughter these union members often share, no matter the time or place.

CONTRIBUTORS

Elizabeth Fisher Zoom-In During the COVID-19 shutdown, I am spending time with my family in Rhode Island. I’m trying to make the best of this time off to be in nature and enjoy some quality time socially distanced from my parents!

Valentina Valentini Devil In The Details Taking a deep dive into the technology and aesthetics of a show is the best way to find its heartbeat. The actors, the writing, the directing: they’re all incredibly important and interesting; but this exploration of the soul of Ozark – a deep and dark story – was, paradoxically, illuminating.

ICG MAGAZINE

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David Geffner Executive Editor

Twitter: @DGeffner Email: david@icgmagazine.com Cover photo by Steve Dietl

p e r r y

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MICHAEL KUBEISY Local 600 Unit Still Photographer

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LES ZELLAN Chairman, Cooke Optics

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DONNA VEGA Chief Lighting Technician

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ZOOM-IN

0 6 / 0 7. 2 0 2 0

Elizabeth Fisher

BY PAULINE ROGERS PHOTOS BY ELIZABETH FISHER

“There’s nothing like working in a darkroom,” Elizabeth Fisher says excitedly. “I remember shooting with a film camera my parents gave me when I was around the age of 12, and decided to take a darkroom class at summer camp. I fell in love with the process, seeing the images appear as you developed them.”

Painting classes, alongside her architect father, fostered the future Local 600 unit still photographer’s appreciation of artistic expression.

And while attending Brown University, Fisher concentrated in art and took photography classes at the nearby Rhode Island School of Design.

“About that time, my brother had a serious accident, and his recovery took over a year,” she

explains. “I found photography cathartic – the ability to observe things in nature and use the camera as my voice for things that were difficult to express to other classmates, who were having more traditional college experiences.”

During her junior year, Fisher had the opportunity to work in the art department on the movie Evening. “One of the characters was a photographer, and the production designer utilized me to do a few shots of the family to dress the sets,” she recalls. “That was the first time I felt like this could be a career.”

Not long after, Fisher was offered an internship with Annie Leibovitz’s studio, but reluctantly turned it down to complete work as Production Designer

Shepherd Frankel’s assistant on 27 Dresses.

“It was the right decision,” she says. “[Frankel] really championed my photography, using a lot of my personal work on the sets and had me do architectural photography of all the sets for him,” she recalls.

A move to the AD department taught her a lot about working with actors, scheduling and running a set. “That knowledge is a huge benefit to still photography,” she acknowledges. “When I decided to concentrate on photography, I was in touch with Mike Parmelee, who advised me about joining the union and was an early mentor. I was able to get to work right away doing mostly art department photography.” (cont'd on page 22)

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THE IN TERVIEW I S S UE

25

ZOOM-IN

Fisher remembers those years as a “way to learn new skills and explore different types of shots and lenses. In the final season of Elementary, the producers offered me a full-time position to run and photograph the Art Department photo shoots. It was a great experience – being in prep meetings, having access to all scripts and schedules. And to collaborate with the producers and directors to achieve all the photography needed for each episode.”

She recalls one memorable photo she needed to capture – high-magnification images of cloth fibers found in evidence. “It was something that would typically be pulled from stock or created by graphics,” Fisher explains.

Instead, she used a microscope with a camera attachment to take actual images of the fibers.

As her career shifted into unit photography, the set camaraderie and the chance to promote the project through her work became added draws. “There’s something I love about capturing the magic of the behind-the-scenes,” she shares.

Mr. Robot was a particularly rewarding experience.

“They were often shooting from cranes and doing technically challenging camera moves,” Fisher adds. One example was a train sequence at the end of the season where Show Creator Sam Esmail had a vision for a seamless jump – Elliott running away from Mr. Robot in one car, then crossing into the next car, only to find Mr. Robot there waiting for him.

“Christian Slater had to run out the side door of the first car while Rami Malek and the camera crossed through the train,” Fisher describes. “Christian had to make it to the other side before they came through the car. I shot it in two parts, covering the first car in one take, and then finding a hiding place squished under a seat in the other car for the second part. I love finding those little hiding spots to get the shot.”

Fisher has covered all four seasons of the CBS All Access series The Good Fight, working on what is considered a well-oiled New York City production machine.

“One of my favorite behind-the-scenes photos was of Christine Baranski,” she offers. “We were shooting in this old-school auto mechanics’ shop, and there was a rustic shelf with all of the auto equipment beautifully dressed in. I had been eyeing it all day. Christine had been eyeing it too and asked me to take her portrait sitting on the workbench.

It was such a quick setup and one of my favorite fun moments with her.”

Fisher says that her keen artistic eye and easy adaptability are what distinguish her on sets, or when shooting her own personal photography, which is often live music or on the streets. “Every tour is different,” she concludes. “There are always surprises and magical moments. On the street, energies shift, and the photographs change in ways you can’t always anticipate; so you have to adapt. The same can be said with unit photography – energies shift, scenes change, and behindthe-scenes moments often provide glimpses of those magical surprises.”

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0 6 / 0 7. 2 0 2 0

Christine Baranski, on location in New York City for The Good Fight / Courtesy of Elizabeth Fisher / CBS All Access

THE IN TERVIEW I S S UE

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FIRST LOOK

0 6 / 0 7. 2 0 2 0

Qianzhi Shen (Tsyen Shen)

BY PAULINE ROGERS PHOTOS BY JEONG PARK

“It is rare to work with a camera assistant like Tsyen, who can talk at length about the story that we are all working to bring to life,” describes Russian Doll Director of Photography Chris Teague.

“It’s her connection to the material that helps her understand better what tools might be best for the job. She knows what camera accessories will give me the most creative flexibility and the most efficient workflow. She’s also just a lot of fun to

she says softly, “I never knew there were other ways to make a living.”

Tsyen, who explored different aspects of China’s film business, says the decision to move to the U.S. was not an easy one. “I didn’t know what I was capable of, but I just kept challenging [myself] and trying new things,” she reports. After graduating from the directing program at New York City’s School of Visual Arts (SVA), she worked

I wanted to be in camera – just to be able to see how the magic was revealed was fulfilling enough for me.”

Her career began in New York’s low-budget feature scene, building her skills – and friendships.

In 2016, Tsyen joined Local 600 with the movie Landline, shot by Teague. She says joining the union was “the best thing that I have done for myself. Not only was I able to expand my skills, but

have on set, bringing positive energy that helps to set a great tone on the job.”

Energy, knowledge and enthusiasm are in Qianzhi Shen’s (Tsyen Shen’s) genes. Born into a filmmaker’s family, she was raised inside a film studio in Beijing, China. “Under such influence,”

as an assistant editor and learned “working all the time in a little dark box was not for me,” she laughs.

While at SVA, working on other student films, she fell in love with the camera. “The idea of compositions and camera movement were like magic tricks in storytelling,” Tsyen recalls. “I knew

I was also able to take the Mentorship Program. I would never have been able to connect with some very experienced camera operators without the support and encouragement of Local 600.”

Because she spoke Mandarin, Tsyen was hired to be part of the New York crew on Detective

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CREATING AN ALTERNATE UNIVERSE CINEMATOGRAPHER JON JOFFIN, ASC DISCUSSES SHOOTING THE NEW EPISODIC MOTHERLAND: FORT SALEM

Motherland is an epic concept. I was immediately attracted to the project when I read the pilot script -women running the world, defending their nation using song to control weather and fight huge battles.

Grand, yet at the same time intimate… ripe with visual opportunity.

Our writer/creator Eliot Laurence created a rich alternate universe that needed to feel warm and real.

Pilot Director Steven Adelson and I wanted the look to be as epic as the script - rich and cinematic. We wanted our world to be real yet magical. Since the world is controlled with magic, the conceit is that technology has not progressed as fast as today. The world is analog and it's difficult to tell what time period we are in. We also wanted the world to feel somewhat antique. We used tungsten lights only, and colored the lighting with warm sepias and yellows. We wanted the show to look classic, elegant and painterly, framing shots deliberately.

We only used Primes, and did not use Zooms at all. I had just shot a short for Director Aisha Schliessler called “Passing” with the prototype ZEISS Supreme Primes -- and had fallen deeply in love with the lenses.

They were the obvious choice for the pilot. In addition to their beautiful image, I was amazed at how compact and light they are for FF lenses! We paired the lenses with three SONY VENICE cameras. For the series, we had two sets of Supreme Primes, including one pre-release 135mm. We shot 4K Super 35 FF, and we framed 2:1. We were also very lucky to have the new Radiance Primes for our Season Finale.

We used the VENICE Rialto to get the lens into tight spaces and also get close to actors for action. We even used a POV Rig with the Rialto from Radiant Images to shoot an entire scene. Our second unit DP Jan Wolff wore the rig and got some amazing footage.

Jon Joffin, ASC is an inspired cinematographer, whose intriguing visual ideas grace some of today’s most innovative films and television shows, including The X-Files, Masters of Horror, The Andromeda Strain TV series, Crusoe, SyFy channel’s Alice, Julie and the Phantoms, and Motherland.

FIRST LOOK

0 6 / 0 7. 2 0 2 0

1ST ASSISTANT CAMERA REBECCA RAJADNYA, WHO HAS WORKED WITH TSYEN FOR SIX YEARS, SAYS THE CHINA-BORN 2ND AC

“Has a fantastic instinct for the order of operations to make a camera department run smoothly.”

Chinatown II, a production that came from

of the department and pulling focus. On indie

[Rajadnya].”

Mainland China. But her ability to pull off what they didn’t expect from her was a bonus, and the praise helped build her confidence. “It’s not common to be a woman and work in camera in China,” she explains. “It’s less common to see a young Chinese girl managing a camera department in a foreign country, like the United States.”

To Tsyen, one of the keys to success is the mutual respect she’s found with her “camera family” – Director of Photography Todd Banhazl and 1st Assistant Camera Rebecca Rajadnya.

They’ve all worked together on projects like Hustlers, Braid, and The Strange Ones, as well as many commercials and fashion spots.

“We started working together about six years ago,” Rajadnya explains. “I immediately found I never had to micromanage [Tsyen’s] role as a 2nd and could focus solely on the general running

features, we never had a loader. I would watch her tackle tasks as though she had four arms! She has a fantastic instinct for the order of operations to make a camera department run smoothly.”

Tsyen says Hustlers was the biggest job she’s yet tackled. “Todd is very specific,” she relates. “I learned his style from previous features, and I was able to memorize some of the important details and give it back to him right away.”

Working on Netflix’s hit series Russian Doll (ICG Magazine, May 2019, Twisted Sister) was a challenge. “I spent most of my spare time on set flipping through one-liners, comparing them day by day,” she remembers. “The unique style of the show, with a low budget, often had day-play items every week. To keep track of that over two months of overnight shooting was a challenge. I couldn’t have done it without Chris [Teague] and Rebecca

Tsyen’s unique approach and solid technical background were recently rewarded when Guild Director of Photography Eric Branco (ICG Magazine, April 2019, Tell It On The Mountain) bumped her up to 1st AC on the 2020 Sundance indie The 40-Year-Old Version.

“I enjoy contributing to storytelling and being involved with every setup,” Tsyen describes about working with Branco. “It was a challenge to fully swap camera bodies every time we went from black-and-white [35mm] stock to color and back.

But I was able to do it in time without delaying the production. I’m forever thankful to Eric for his trust.”

As Banhazl concludes: “Tsyen’s unique workflow and adherence to the highest quality attention to detail make her an invaluable contribution to our industry.” (cont'd on page 26)

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EXPOSURE

Derek Cianfrance DIRECTOR - I KNOW THIS MUCH IS TRUE

BY KEVIN H. MARTIN PHOTOS BY ATSUSHI NISHIJIMA / HBO

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Writer/director Derek Cianfrance dreamed about going to film school when he was a child, even sleeping under a picture of Martin Scorsese and wanting to attend NYU like his hero had. Unable to afford that school, Cianfrance “settled” for the University of Colorado, Boulder, and was exposed to a variety of unique films that helped shape his future cinematic personality. After college, Cianfrance made documentaries, including musician-oriented projects; but it was a pair of indie features that premiered at Sundance – Blue Valentine (2010) and The Place Beyond the Pines (2012) – that pushed him into the more elite category of sought-after writer/directors. In 2016, Cianfrance adapted the novel The Light Between Oceans for Walt Disney Studios; and now, four years later, he makes his first major foray into television with I Know This Much Is True, a sixpart series for HBO, adapted by Cianfrance from the 1998 Wally Lamb novel and shot by Local 600 Director of Photography Jody Lee Lipes.

The series is produced by Mark Ruffalo, who plays dual roles as twin brothers, one severely mentally ill and the other his caretaker/champion, struggling with marital challenges.

This very thoughtful filmmaker ’s skill at communicating his point of view to his collaborators may best be summed up by an observation from B-Camera 1st AC Kali Riley, who notes that the filmmaker doesn’t say, “Action!”

“The last thing before we roll on a rehearsal is, ‘All right, let’s make a pancake!’” Riley smiles.

“Much like the first pancake in a batch, it’s not going to be perfect – but it can still be good.”

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EXPOSURE

ICG: How did Boulder’s film program open you up to new cinematic influences? Cianfrance: I went into their film program with an open mind and heart. They showed us Rear Window and Mothlight by [Stan] Brakhage. Now, I’d seen Hitchcock films before, but I had never before come across an experimental film demonstrating the plasticity of the medium. Treating film as sculpture when he was tired of photography, Brakhage emptied dead moths out of light fixtures, then taped them onto film leader in a rhythmic pattern. The flutter and flurry of wings through the projector was a transcendent moment for me, as was studying under him. I became close with filmmaker Phil Solomon, who was a huge influence, showing me what life could be like as an artist. He challenged all of my assumptions, and even though he passed away this time last year, he remains my Jiminy Cricket, my ccinematic confidant. My longtime collaborator, [Editor] Jim Helton, also studied at Boulder, and he still hears Phil’s voice too; Phil has infiltrated our subconscious.

What was your main takeaway from these filmmakers? Stan and Phil communicated the importance of risking failure in your work, knowingly experimenting without a safety net and making the process into a quest. Other films screened there conveyed sensory aspects that seemed to transcend the medium. For example, I remember seeing Pasolini films that caused me to experience sensations of temperature and taste.

More recently, Call Me By Your Name was so very tactile that the viewer actually feels the things up on the screen, like the heat of the sun. I think that kind of experience is best communicated when the work being done is handmade, where you let mistakes creep in and don’t try to buff out all the life. It’s about balancing chaos with control.

On your early films, you are credited as cinematographer and/or editor. At Boulder, you didn’t go into a dedicated directing or writing program; you learned to do everything. It wasn’t until I entered the business that I realized there were such divisions. That comes full circle right now, as I sit in front of an AVID in my basement during [COVID-19] quarantine, working on every frame of the cut. But back when I first moved to New York City, I was glad to have those skills, which got me various shooting and editing jobs.

Those were never wasted hours, as the more work I did helped get me to a place where I could direct.

Have your thoughts about what goes into a productive collaboration with your director of photography evolved over that time? I always thought I was going to shoot my own films, but then I started meeting some really good DP’s

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[laughs] and realized that by entrusting the look to them, I could still steer the vision without keeping my eye against the eyepiece – that is, letting me put more effort into the performances. After doing Blue Valentine with him, I thought Andrij Parekh [ASC] would be my DP forever. But right before The Place Beyond the Pines was going to start, he had a dream that he died while shooting it!

So I wound up with Sean Bobbitt [BSC], who was a perfect fit. He had shot Hunger for Steve McQueen, whose work is all about not cutting and holding tension in the frame. Sean was a good choice for charting these waters. [Pines star] Ryan [Gosling] used to call him “Tough Terry Malick.”

The Place Beyond the Pines has a very elaborate sustained opening shot. Can you talk about that? That movie was originally supposed to be a western. In the fifth year of writing, we changed it

from horses to motorcycles. I had the idea to open with something like the Touch of Evil shot, with the camera following the guy leaving a trailer. We go into a circus tent with the Globe of Death, and he gets on a motorcycle. There’s a Texas Switch as we go from Gosling to the [stuntman], and Sean thought that the shot should go further inside with the bikes. I figured it might be too much, because being in so close, the motorcycles passing would just be a blur. At the end of the take, the monitor went black as Sean had gotten run over by the motorcycles! He was mad that he didn’t get the shot, so we went again – and the same thing happened: monitor black, run over a second time, now with a concussion. The next day he was back, but I didn’t let him do that last part, and it took a year and a half for him to forgive me.

You’ve had a different director of photography for subsequent projects. [Laughs.] While I

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realized that I’m monogamous in my personal life, maybe working with different DP’s would add their vision and instincts to my point of view and create something new. The Light Between Oceans demanded I find somebody who had a sense of the world and the spaces down there, and [Australian] Adam Arkapaw [ACS] was that guy. For I Know This Much Is True, Jody Lee Lipes’ work had always appealed to me, and we had done some commercials together, where I found his demeanor and warmth as a human being was a good counterpoint to me [laughs], because I can get kind of angsty and aggressive. It turns out we work together in a very interesting way. The technical side of things never overshadows the story being told, and he helped lead that charge.

landscape is that of the human face. I have an obsession with close-ups, and throughout the series, we are looking at Dominick [Mark Ruffalo] as if under a microscope, unpeeling the layers of this onion. We tried to be as honest as possible, letting dramatic moments be dramatic while allowing joy to peek through. There has to be tremendous trust flowing on set in order to make this situation work in a sustained way for the actors. You can’t have people worrying about how much time is being spent in the makeup trailer. Sometimes we used first takes, other times it might be take 40. We shot 590 hours, around 1.6 million feet of film. Whatever it took to explore the scene to its fullest.

own constraints in mind before effects even entered into the equation. In Michael Mann’s Heat, DeNiro and Pacino have that diner scene where it is all shot/counter shot – their faces are never on screen together. I thought that was such a masterstroke when I first saw it – the confidence to know he didn’t need to put these two titans together in frame. I conceived shot/ counter shot as a basis for most of our work.

But the difference was that we’d have to wait to do B-sides until Mark put on the weight to play brother Thomas, which meant having to recreate lighting and camera position exactly.

Shot/counter shot had to match stylistically; otherwise, intercutting would set off alarm bells.

Your collaborators mention how you like the

Was it difficult to get the okay to shoot

How did that play out on set? Mark had to act off someone for both sides, not just react to

set to be very accommodating to performance.

I think John Ford said that the most interesting

film? Shooting film instead of digital was a big discussion, and there were various facets to it. On Ocean, the labs in Australia had shut down, so digital was forced upon me. With this series, HBO allowed us to shoot tests, and I thought film was a way to unify the disparate time frames, which span most of the twentieth century. I wasn’t going to do our scenes in the 1920s with sepia tone [laughs.]

You have shot digital in the past; what other criteria factor into the decision? I’m a fan of shooting digital – it’s great for conveying the mundane aspects of a moment, and I shot half of Blue Valentine on a RED. By letting the camera run on, the actors get to a point where they could forget they were on camera. It was like surveillance footage in some ways. I found moments during a 45-minute dinner-scene take with Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling where he fell asleep! Digital is very useful when capturing the way things die-out in life.

And contrasted with film… Film turns actors into athletes; there’s only so much time in the quarter to put points on the board, and that creates a certain urgency. Our first day in Dr. Patel’s office ran nearly twenty pages, so even when shooting 2-perf 35mm with a 1000-foot magazine, to have roughly 22 minutes of film, it was going to be tight to get it all. On the very first take, we ran out of film when Mark was just getting going, maybe two-thirds of the way done. If I had shot that scene digitally, we would have had a 30-minute scene – and the energy would have been less. Film inspires actors and crew to prick up their ears and be more alert in the moment.

Often, technical concerns for twinning scenes with VFX can put limitations on shooting.

How did your plan for that proceed? I had my

a tennis ball or stand-in. I cast my very good friend, Gabe Fazio, from Inside the Actor’s Studio, who had done The Place Beyond the Pines. He shaved his head, put on thirty pounds, and became Thomas for the A-side scenes with Mark as Dominick. Early on, Mark sometimes told me, “He’s not doing Thomas the way I’m going to do him,” and I told him, “Great!

Your brother isn’t acting according to your expectations, so use that as Dominick. Forget that you’re going to be the other guy, or if you want him to act differently – try to get that out of him while you play Dominick in the scene.” When Mark came back to play Thomas thirty pounds heavier, Gabe had lost thirty pounds and was ready to play Dominick.

And for the shots where they are in frame together? In addition to shot/counter shot, we also used motion control to put them together some of the time, for interiors and also out on location. Those shots, like most of the series, were done 80 percent on tripods, plus there was some handheld, like on an extended oner when police take Thomas to the hospital. Working with editorial, I’d pick the best takes and have them ready to play-back on set when we did the B-sides. We’d either create matching light or wait for the sun to get in position, then play the A-side back, along with audio.

Do you think you’ll return to long-format TV again?

Oh, sure. I’ve got a few ideas, and I like working with HBO. Back when the world was still open and you could still go into a theater, Mark and I watched the whole series together. Our projectionist, a 50-something guy named Joey, was in tears afterward and talked with Mark for something like thirty minutes about how moved he was. But his last question was, “Who’d you get to play your brother?”

[Laughs.] I definitely want more opportunities to be able to get those kinds of responses.

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Season 3 of Netflix’s rural family drug saga, Ozark, hits new visual highs (and dark narrative lows).

BY VALENTINA VALENTINI / PHOTOS BY STEVE DIETL FRAMEGRABS COURTESY OF NETFLIX

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When Marty Byrde (Jason Bateman) walks into an office full of large glass windows, he’s the guy who will note the windows are south-facing, and the cooling bill will be about fifteen percent higher in summer. And it’s that same attention to detail that drives the behind-the-scenes team of Netflix’s Emmy-winning crime drama, Ozark, now streaming its third (and many would say its most visually ambitious) season. The series was created by Bill Dubuque and Mark Williams, executive produced by showrunner/ writer Chris Mundy, with star Bateman also serving as an executive producer and director for nearly one-third of all shows produced so far.

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Photo by Guy D’Alema

Season 1’s final episode earned Bateman his first directing Emmy nomination along with a nomination for Local 600 Director of Photography Ben Kutchins, who has shot roughly half of all three seasons. Bateman went on to win an Emmy for the opening episode of Season 2, which Kutchins also shot. Guild Director of Photography Armando Salas came aboard in Season 2 to split the schedule with Kutchins. For this most current season, Kutchins shot Episodes 1, 2, and 6 while Salas shot 3, 4, and 7 through 10. (Manuel Billeter shot Episode 5.)

“There are so many things that have to go right for anything to be good,” observes Executive Producer/Writer Chris Mundy. “So, the attention paid to detail is everything.

And that’s the beauty of being able to have two DP’s – one is always shooting, and one is always prepping. That’s a godsend for the director in prep, to have their DP fully [there

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with them] the whole time so they know exactly what the other one is thinking. I think it’s helped the show, and both of [our] guys are so good [at it].”

At its core, Ozark is a family drama, even if its elaborately staged crime segments (raised to a new level of ambition in Season 3) can overshadow the familial themes.

When we first met Marty, his wife, Wendy (Laura Linney in an Emmy-nominated role), and their children, Charlotte (Sofia Hublitz) and Jonah (Skylar Gaertner), in Season 1, they were an average white-collar Chicago family who unwittingly became wrapped up in laundering money for a Mexican drug cartel out of the Missouri Ozarks. With Season 3, the Byrdes’ operation has grown, exponentially, even if their destinies are forever in jeopardy of being snuffed out.

From inception (Pepe Avila del Pino shot the pilot and Episode 2 of Season 1), Ozark has been a narratively (and visually) dark series. That means even the ostensibly “fun”

moments – teenagers hanging out at a lake on a sunny summer day; wine and terrycloth bathrobes at a cozy bed and breakfast; winning the jackpot at a casino – are laced with violence and fear. “You know those joyful scenes in a thriller or horror movie, right before the hammer comes down, that trick the audience?” Kutchins posits. “Well, Ozark is a completely different meditation.

It’s always bleak for our characters. We don’t allow them those joyful moments; it just goes from bad to worse.”

Though the tone in Season 3 is consistent with what came before, the creative team believed a slightly softer feel was appropriate for the story’s evolution. It was a creative as well as practical decision, since the darkness of the show wasn’t translating to all viewing platforms. “You can’t assume or depend on pristine viewing conditions when you’re [filming a show] for a streaming service,” Bateman offers. “People are watching at home, sometimes during the day, and there’s

SALAS (MIDDLE) BROUGHT OVER AN HDR WORKFLOW HE’D IMPLEMENTED ON ANOTHER NETFLIX SERIES, RAISING DION, ALLOWING HIM AND KUTCHINS TO CHECK BOTH “SDR AND HDR VERSIONS WHENEVER WE WERE DEALING WITH HIGH-CONTRAST SITUATIONS, I.E., WINDOWS, BACKINGS, AND PRACTICALS ON SET,” HE SHARES.

A-CAMERA OPERATOR BEN SEMANOFF (LEFT) DIRECTING S3 EPISODE 6, SHOT BY KUTCHINS, RIGHT. SEMANOFF SAYS HE APPLIED HIS OPERATING ETHOS TO DIRECTING, DRAWING UP SOME 15 “ONERS” FOR THE EPISODE.

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COMPANY 3 COLORIST TIM STIPAN, WHO FINALIZED THE LOOK FOR ALL THREE SEASONS, DESCRIBES S3 AS BEING “BRIGHTER, AND THERE ARE SOFTER BLACKS. HOWEVER, THE COLOR TONALITY IS MUCH THE SAME, WITH THOSE STRONG SIGNATURE CYANS.”

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ambient light. We always try to play right on the edge of just the right amount of exposure and contrast.”

Company 3 Colorist Tim Stipan, who has finalized the look for all three seasons, adds that this year’s model has a softer contrast.

“It’s brighter, and there are softer blacks.

However, the color tonality is much the same, with those strong signature cyans.”

Kutchins (who came on right after the pilot) and Bateman wanted to create a world that was harsh and uninhabitable, despite its idyllic location on Lake Ozark – doubled

by Georgia’s Lakes Lanier and Allatoona.

Their goal has always been to show darkness as a feeling of imminent threat; to do that photographically, Kutchins used the negative and positive parts of the image to create enough shadow to allow the audience’s minds to wander into what’s coming next without knowing what exactly that is – only that it’s bad.

“I light the characters just enough to

read their expressions,” Kutchins describes, “with enough light on the walls behind to create some separation. Ozark has been very much about controlling the amount of information we reveal in any given image.”

While that approach was repeated in Season 3, Kutchins and Salas knew they had to evolve the look with the Byrdes’ progression. They’re doing business at the state-government level; there are new characters, like a sly forensic FBI agent, Wendy’s bipolar brother, and a spoiled son of a Mafia boss, and they’ve opened a bustling new casino, The Missouri Belle, a massive addition to the few sets the show used at Eagle Rock Studios Atlanta. (Most of the show has been shot on location in Georgia, doubling for the Ozarks.)

“My first question to Jason was about tone,” says Production Designer David Bomba, who, after replacing two previous

designers, was the new kid on the block.

“Ozark has a very blue-gray, overcast feel, and I asked if that was the direction I should pursue [for Season 3], and Jason was adamant I should not.”

Bomba, whose previous credits include the Sundance indie hit Mudbound (shot

by Oscar nominee Rachel Morrison, ASC) and the Oscar-winning feature Walk the Line (shot by Phedon Papamichael, ASC), markedly expanded the show’s color palette. The designer took research trips to Rising Star Casino and Resort near Lawrenceburg, IN, and the Lady Luck Casino in Caruthersville, MO, before landing on a New Orleans riverboat theme with red and gold interiors. Having grown up in NOLA, Bomba expanded on what was familiar, modeling Marty’s office, the casino entrance, and The Marquette bar (the land-based parts of the casino) on older structures in the now-gentrified Warehouse District and the Napoleon House in the French Quarter.

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ABOVE AND OPPOSITE PAGE: KUTCHINS AND SALAS WANTED LOTS OF PRACTICAL LIGHTING UNITS IN THE NEW MISSOURI BELLE CASINO SET, AND PRODUCTION DESIGNER DAVID BOMBA OBLIGED WITH EXPOSED CARNIVAL-LIKE BULBS ABOVE THE GAMING PITS. “JASON [BATEMAN] SUGGESTED AN OVERALL RED AND GOLD SCHEME TO CONTRAST ANY OTHER SET PIECE THAT HAD BEEN ESTABLISHED IN THE SERIES,” BOMBA RELAYS. “I WAS THRILLED TO EXPAND THE PALETTE OF THE SHOW.”

He describes the Missouri Belle riverboat casino as fashioned after the paddle steamers that traveled up and down the Mississippi River in the 19th century. “Think Mark Twain, Victorian embellishments, opulent grandeur, elegant detailing, and warm light sourced by what would have been gas or oil-flamed fixtures,” Bomba reveals.

“Jason suggested an overall red and gold scheme to contrast any other set piece that had been established in the series, so I ran with it. I was thrilled to expand the palette of the show.”

Salas says Bateman has always been intimately involved in the evolution of the show’s look. “The casino was going to have a very different feel from the majority of what we’d done before,” he adds. “ [We wanted] the casino floor [to feel] engulfing and sophisticated, like you could really be sucked into gambling all your money away.

It needed to be a relief from the oppressive and cool [blue] world that we so often see.”

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Kutchins and Salas wanted a wealth of practical lighting units in the casino set, and Bomba obliged, with a central gaming pit area and its ceiling coffers comprising exposed carnival-like bulbs. Bomba also wanted antique brass chandeliers, sconces, and pendant fixtures – created by decorator Kim Leoleis and her team – both in the casino and the bar and entrance areas.

Both Kutchins and Salas wanted more light, specifically additional softer, indirect sources as well as accent lights for the gaming tables in the central pit area. In the end, ninety percent of the casino was lit by practicals incorporated into the design.

“We went with a spot-lighting system for the table accents,” Bomba recounts. “For the alleys flanking the central pit that were lined with the slot machines, Joy Britt, our fixture’s genius from Edison Jackson’s electrical team, retrofitted some 40 ceiling-mounted star fixtures with RGBA-hybrid tape lighting.

Another 30 or so ceiling fixtures were added

to the second floor, retrofitted in the same manner. Joy also suggested using RGBA LiteRibbon with an architectural extrusion lens that resembled a neon strip.”

Season 3’s new tribulations for the Byrde family required Kutchins and Salas to dive ever deeper into the narrative rabbit hole, with full-frame capture and a shallow depth of field proving the best visual track.

“Shooting full-frame brings the characters forward in the image,” describes Kutchins, who (at the suggestion of A-camera/ Steadicam operator Ben Semanoff, SOC – see below) switched, in Season 3, from the 4K Panasonic VariCam to the 5.7K Sony VENICE. “It’s almost equal to old VistaVision film, where you have these wide landscape shots, yet there is character in it, too,” Kutchins notes. “It manages to be both, simultaneously, and the characters come right into living rooms.”

The Sony VENICE offered Ozark’s directors of photography a much larger capture sensor, but in a small, lightweight body. Semanoff, who also has directed two episodes of Ozark, says he had used VENICE as A-Camera/Steadicam operator on the Peter Berg feature Spencer Confidential (shot

by Tobias Schliessler, ASC) and loved the form factor along with the Rialto attachment, which allows users to pull off the front block of the camera, essentially making it just a small housing for the sensor that is tethered via a fiber umbilical cable back to the main body to record the data. “[Guild Director of Photography] Igor Martinovic and I pushed to use VENICE on [the HBO limited series The Outsider] with [actor/director] Jason Bateman,” Semanoff recounts. “I was a huge fan, as it has a great form factor for Steadicam and would facilitate the different locations we were looking at for Season 3 [of Ozark] – on the water, in the woods – some very remote

areas. Although the ARRI LF was high on everyone’s list for image quality and color rendition [the ARRI LF Mini was not yet available], the VENICE met a wider range of our concerns.” First AC Liam Sinnott adds that the Rialto accessory “made it possible to put the camera in a multitude of positions you would not be able to achieve with a regular-sized body, even one as small as a RED or ALEXA Mini.”

The Ozark camera team also swapped out its lens package, using a Leica Noctilux and a set of Leica Summicrons and R-series.

The Noctilux is a 50mm lens rehoused from a still lens by True Lens Services. It opens to a .95 aperture, one of the fastest lenses out there, and it allowed them to shoot in extremely low light situations as well as isolate their characters during daylight exteriors. Switching to a large sensor, with a lens that opened the aperture more than a stop, did increase Sinnott’s challenges as a focus puller, as well as the visual aesthetic.

Multiple camera setups required a diopter with whatever camera had a Summicron or Leica R lens to achieve the same shallowness as the Noctilux.

“Ben and Armando are constantly trying to push the look of the show,” Sinnott adds, “be it through shot design, exposure, or depth of field. A lot of the conversations concerning the use of the Noctilux revolved around isolating the characters. They wanted scenes with a single actor in wide shots to separate from the foreground and background and be the only element in focus within the frame. With scenes involving multiple characters, they wanted the ability to detach story beats and use the focus as a storytelling tool.” Kutchins adds that “as the Byrdes further isolate themselves from each other, we wanted to use this lack of depth of field to isolate them visually from one another.”

Salas cites an example from the opening moments of Episode 4 when Marty, having

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been kidnapped by the drug lord Navarro (Felix Solis) to Mexico, awakens in a dark cell.

Shot in a series of three set-ups, “the camera is very close to [Bateman], experiencing the same disorientation that Marty is feeling,” Salas explains. “The background is all abstract shapes and textures, and as Marty gets his bearings, so does the viewer.”

Although Kutchins had established the warm contrasty look of scenes in Mexico in previous episodes, the introduction of Marty’s dungeon-like hole that opens Episode 4, became an interesting challenge for Salas. As he continues: “I created a neutral/ cool look for when the room was darkened, and then warm incandescent flood lamps for the torture lights [Byrde is subjected to sleep deprivation and incessant loud music]. I tested different lights with David [Bomba] and ended up having our electricians swap out for lower wattage halogens, and then added a streak filter to enhance and distort the lights when they kick on. “We wanted viewers to feel Marty was having his eyes blown out without having it be actually hard on the eyes of those watching the show.”

The VENICE and Leica lens package dynamically alter Ozark’s visual landscape in Season 3. But those weren’t even, perhaps, the biggest changes to the look of the series.

Before Season 2, Netflix changed its release delivery to require Dolby Vision, with new home displays now mostly being HDRequipped, and even tablets and other smaller display devices becoming HDR compliant.

That meant the show had to be versioned (mastered) in HDR, with many legacy [SDR] viewers seeing the end product in HDR generated by a computational analysis within the Dolby Vision process.

Salas had gone on to shoot another Netflix show, Raising Dion, and immediately implemented an HDR workflow to view both HDR and SDR simultaneously on set. When it came time to prep Season 3 of Ozark, Salas tweaked his Raising Dion workflow to work on Ozark. He and Kutchins flew to Atlanta for a camera and workflow test, and, based on that, Stipan created their HDR LUT for on-set viewing.

“I made a global trim that matched the HDR as close as I could get,” Stipan recounts, “and then I went through the SDR episode to make sure it looked as good as it could be, and nothing bumped me in terms of highlights and shadows.”

Kutchins and Salas were then able to check both SDR and HDR versions whenever they were dealing with high-contrast

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TOP: “SHOOTING FULL-FRAME BRINGS THE CHARACTERS FORWARD IN THE IMAGE,” DESCRIBES KUTCHINS OF THE MOVE TO SONY VENICE IN S3. “IT’S ALMOST EQUAL TO OLD VISTAVISION FILM, WHERE YOU HAVE THESE WIDE LANDSCAPE SHOTS, YET THERE IS CHARACTER IN IT, TOO.”

BOTTOM: DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY SALAS SOLVED A CHALLENGING NEW LOCATION FOR S3, EPISODE 4, WHERE BATEMAN’S CHARACTER IS HELD IN A DUNGEON-LIKE CELL IN MEXICO,

BY CREATING A NEUTRAL/COOL LOOK “FOR WHEN THEN THE ROOM WAS DARKENED, AND THEN WARM INCANDESCENT FLOOD LAMPS FOR THE TORTURE LIGHTS,” SALAS EXPLAINS. “WE WANTED VIEWERS TO FEEL MARTY WAS HAVING HIS EYES BLOWN OUT WITHOUT HAVING IT BE ACTUALLY HARD ON THE EYES OF THOSE WATCHING THE SHOW.”

situations, i.e., windows, backings, and practicals on set. Their digital imaging cart consisted of two Canon V2411 HDR monitors fed by an AJA FS-HDR rack, which held the show LUT’s and simultaneously fed an SDR version downstream to Video Village, which approximated the Dolby Vision downconvert. “[Being able to look at both versions simultaneously] informs how you expose faces, especially on a show like Ozark, which lives in the shadows,” Salas concludes.

“We could all make those decisions in our delivery format versus having to deal with it later. To use an analogy: it would be as if we were shooting a color show, and the monitors on set were all black and white. Now, we could have a good idea of what the transform is going to be and could make a judgment based on that, or we could just be viewing it in color instead of in black and white. It really is that extreme of a difference when it comes to a show that is finishing in HDR or SDR. This new workflow got us a lot closer to seeing what we were going to eventually be grading in the DI suite.”

Semanoff, who describes Ozark as the “highlight” of his career, says he has been “spoiled for life” by Jason Bateman’s trust and partnership. “Over the several productions Jason has brought me onto, he’s always treated me like a collaborator,” Semanoff says.

“On Ozark, in particular, he has encouraged me to help set and maintain an aesthetic for the way the camera moves, or doesn’t move. Beyond which he entrusted me with directing two episodes, which is a special experience. Besides the amazing cast and crew, [Bateman] and [Chris] Mundy encourage directors to approach their episode[s] with a freedom more indicative of a feature film. It’s liberating!”

For his part, Kutchins says he’s “so pleased” the dark drama has found such a huge audience. “My Ozark experience simply wouldn’t be the same without the amazing team of people who came together to make the show,” Kutchins concludes. “Everyone is operating at such a high level that we all feel inspired to do our best work. [Viewers| would never know it from [Ozark’s] serious tone, but this show is fun to shoot! Behind every intense scene is a crew that is having the time of their lives.”

“With Season 3,” Salas finishes, “the canvas and scope [of the series] became larger, while simultaneously delving deeper into these intimate character studies of our anti-heroes.

The combination of a larger sensor, extremely limited depth of field, when appropriate, and expanded color and tonal range combined to enhance the visual language of Ozark without straying too far from the familiar look.”

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LOCAL 600 CREW SEASON 3 Directors of Photography Ben Kutchins Armando Salas A-Camera Operator Ben Semanoff, SOC A-Camera 1st AC Liam Sinnott A-Camera 2nd AC Kate Roberson B-Camera Operators Greg Faysash, SOC Christopher Glasgow, SOC B-Camera 1st AC Cristian Trova B-Camera 2nd AC Johnny “Utah” Hoffler Loader Taylor Seaman Utility Walker Markey Still Photographers Steve Dietl Guy D’Alema Jessica Miglio, SMPSP Tina Rowden

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Welcome to Los Angeles 1932 and HBO’s noir reboot of a classic television series.

BY MATT HURWITZ

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PHOTOS BY MERRICK MORTON, SMPSP

It’s Thanksgiving week 2019, and actors Matthew Rhys and Juliet Rylance are walking purposefully up the vast front steps of Los Angeles City Hall, immersed in conversation. The stars of HBO’s Perry Mason, a new version of the classic black and white TV series, are being swarmed by 200 extras “protesting” Perry Mason’s (Rhys’s) defense of an accused baby killer. As the outraged crowd – beautifully costumed as Depression-era Angelenos

by Costume Designer Emma Potter and her team and herded by 2nd AD Mollie Stallman – performs, a 73-foot Hydroscope crane and camera system follows Rhys and Rylance up the stairs. Soon after, Steadicam Operator Christopher Glasgow, SOC, meets them partway up, walking backward up the remaining steps as they continue their dialogue. Director Timothy Van Patten (Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire) and Local 600 Director of Photography David Franco study their respective monitors, seeing a somewhat desaturated (but not sepiatoned) scene, and smile.

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AC PETER GERAGHTY DESCRIBES A-CAMERA OPERATOR DON DEVINE, SOC (PICTURED AT CAMERA WITH DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY DAVID FRANCO STANDING) AS “ONE OF THE MOST STORY-DRIVEN OPERATORS I’VE EVER WORKED WITH.”

This is clearly not your father’s (or grandfather’s) Perry Mason.

Van Patten and Franco, along with IATSE camera, grip, and art department teams, are working toward a more faithful interpretation of Erle Stanley Gardner’s original source material – a series of novels set in 1930s Los Angeles, which introduce Mason as a rundown private eye who reluctantly becomes a criminal defense attorney. The eight-episode series steers clear of the contemporary look made famous in the CBS show, which ran for nine seasons starting in 1957 and featured Raymond Burr (whose star on Hollywood Boulevard was later cemented in his role as the wheelchairbound detective, Ironside). Perry Mason is a return to Los Angeles for Van Patten after shooting for decades in New York, most recently with Franco on HBO’s Boardwalk Empire, on which the two developed a

shorthand (and friendship) so keen, Van Patten says they tend to work with “one mind.”

Perry Mason was scheduled in blocks, with Van Patten and Franco filming three episodes, and Guild Director of Photography Darran Tiernan (Westworld, Star Trek: Picard) and director Deníz Gamze Ergüven shooting three more episodes (with the first team returning for the final two episodes.) Tiernan recalls first seeing the Perry Mason series “in my grandmother’s house, back in Ireland, on a Sunday afternoon visit. She watched every episode,” he says. Tiernan describes Van Patten and Franco as “amazing collaborators.

I came in the first week they were shooting and could see where they were starting from and where they were going,” he adds. “I felt comfortable, completely embracing what they were doing.”

Franco hired A- Camera Operator

Don Devine, SOC (ICG Magazine, May 2020, Greyhound), as well as Glasgow, who was brought on by A-Camera 1st AC Peter Geraghty. Franco says he welcomed Glasgow’s rich Steadicam skills, while the operator relates that Franco “designs shots that look amazing and are reasonable to pull off, versus DP’s who’ve never worn the rig,” he offers. “David doesn’t ask you to run down the hallway on a 180 chasing somebody in a super-tight close-up. He and Tim would say, ‘Let’s break the shot into pieces and not have Christopher running around with the rig on, when we know we’re going to cut it up.’”

Geraghty not only suggested Glasgow, he brought along his own younger brother, Dennis Geraghty, to pull focus for him. “It was his second gig as a focus puller, and he did a great job,” Peter states. “And what a project to cut his teeth on!” Glasgow brought in Dolly Grip Jim Wickman (for

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TIERNAN SAYS PANAVISION’S T-SERIES ANAMORPHIC LENSES – COUPLED WITH FULL FRAME CAPTURE – “WERE THE BIG HEROES ON THIS SHOW. THEY’RE NOT FUSSY, AND THEY HAVE THEIR OWN LOOK, WHICH WORKED WELL WITH OUR LUT.” ADDS FRANCO ABOUT THE T-SERIES, WHICH HAVE NATURAL VIGNETTING, AND AN OVAL FOCUS AREA. “THERE’S A LITTLE BREAKDOWN AFTER CROPPING,” HE EXPLAINS. “IT’S AN ORGANIC WAY TO MAKE [THE IMAGE] AS DIRTY AS POSSIBLE, EVEN WITH DIGITAL.”

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A-Camera), who would play a key part in the overall production (see page 68). Additional C-Camera operators included Steve Matzinger, SOC, and relative newcomer Jess Lakoff, the latter of which Tiernan describes as a “fantastic operator and one to watch.”

Franco, who shot on Sony VENICE, was keen to take advantage of the capture system’s large (5.7K) sensor and high exposure index. A fan of Panavision’s T-Series anamorphic lenses, Franco had begun exploring their use in tests with a large-format sensor for a series he and Van Patten had been pursuing. Panavision had to modify the lenses for Mason, adding in a ground-glass shim element to allow the squeezed image to (nearly) cover the entire VENICE sensor. “The T-Series lenses were the big heroes on this show,” Tiernan states.

“They’re not fussy, and they have their own look, which worked well with our LUT.” The image was also shot-cropped, left and right, to a 2.0:1 aspect ratio, which, Geraghty notes, meant doing things a little differently.

“We could never find the correct size frame unless we were actually on the camera,” he reveals. “It would never match using a finder or smartphone app.” The lenses have a natural vignetting, which Franco says offers an oval focus area and, after cropping, the perfect desired look. “It creates a little breakdown of the image,” Franco explains. “It’s an organic way to make the image as dirty as possible, even with digital.”

Franco and Van Patten spent years creating a look for a similar time period in Boardwalk Empire, but they wanted something different for Mason.

“Boardwalk was all proscenium,” Franco continues. “The frame, and the way we staged people, was very precise. This was freer, less presentational.” Notes Van Patten: “We wanted a deconstructed version of Boardwalk – from the inside out. Not a lot of big tableaux, but very generous frames with just a whisper of scope.”

The director referenced Edward Hopper’s paintings, “where you see a lone person in a room,” he explains. “The person isn’t always in focus, and it isn’t even centered. Yet the canvas tells a story.” The look, particularly during the first half of the season, in which Mason is struggling to make a name for himself, fits the narrative arc. “It’s as if we’re putting Perry Mason’s eyes in your own head,” Tiernan states.

A major part of the look took place in the development of Mason’s LUT’s. While it was originally hoped to shoot in black and white, color ended up being the call, but, as Franco shares, “we’ve been so brainwashed about the sepia tone of the period that when portraying it in color, you have to be careful not to shock people.”

Many visual references from the 1930s are from black and white movies and photographs taken by FDR’s famous WPA (Works Project

Administration). But Production Designer John Goldsmith found some color WPA photography from the late 1930s that documented working Americans. Technicolor Los Angeles Colorist Pankaj Bajpai says the team also studied contemporary cinema that depicts the era, to see other interpretations, along with artifacts from the period.

“What kinds of colors were being used in glassware?” Bajpai wondered. “What were the greens in the glass in a lamp? How did colors appear in things represented in paintings from the day, which reflected the tastes at the time?” Notes DIT Kevin Britton, “It’s a modern interpretation of what color would have looked like back then.”

Franco and Bajpai created three LUT’s, rooted in a favorite base of Franco’s, which were sent to Technicolor dailies with their CDL’s. Bajpai also studied the effect of tungsten lighting on skin tones of contemporary films, and then digitally applied something representative of Vittorio Storaro’s (ASC, AIC) “ENR” process, “which gives it those rich, deep blacks and doesn’t crush,” the colorist shares.

Bajpai also added cyan into the contrast layer of the shadows. A single LUT was selected from the three produced, with more tonal adjustments made in design and through Chief Lighting Technician Dave Maddux’s lighting schemes. “I would often switch between the LUT and black and white, just to check the translation was there,” Tiernan recounts.

An additional LUT was made solely for Mason’s flashbacks to his days fighting in World War I. “We toyed with the idea of monochromatic imagery, but still with some character to it, versus just plain black and white,” Bajpai notes.

As for the approach to camera, Franco kept things simple. “We didn’t have a shooting bible,” he explains. “It was mainly about staying on the wide end of the range. I don’t like to shoot close-up from across the room with a long lens,” something the anamorphic helped with. To their delight, the operators found both cinematographers favored a more instinctual approach, setting aside traditional A and B roles. “Sometimes Don would do a big wide, then maybe I’d jump in,” explains Glasgow.

“Other times, we’d start off with two wides, and we’d both do two masters, one from this corner of the room, one from the other. We didn’t really have a formula. David and Darren liked to keep it fluid.”

“This is one team,” Tiernan insists.

“Hierarchy is important, but trust is essential.”

Adds Devine, “If you hire the right people, then you’re going to be able to trust everybody.”

Seventy percent of Perry Mason was shot on location, with the remainder shot on four stages at Paramount Studios. Location work included a spectacular sequence recounting Mason’s service in World War I in Montfaucon,

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France. Seen in pieces over several episodes, as flashbacks while Rhys is deep in thought, Van Patten says the war service is both “Mason’s engine and his paralysis.” Drawing on his experience producing and directing HBO’s The Pacific, he adds that “the best depictions of war are the most visceral ones.

You have to be right in there.”

The World War I scenes occur in trench warfare sets designed by Goldsmith, as well as in a massive all-out “charge” across the battlefield, inspired by a similar scene in Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory. Mason is seen running across the field in a single dolly shot, surrounded by explosions and stunts.

After weeks of study using a scale model, the set was constructed over a four-week period at the popular Mystery Mesa location, north of downtown L.A. Filming took place over the first two days of production, with the “Kubrick shot” coming on Day 1. “We wanted to galvanize the crew,” Van Patten describes. “Every department had to put out everything they had to get that shot. It tested everybody’s mettle.”

Goldsmith says filming on a set as complicated as the Trenches and No-Man’s Land was an energizing experience. “We spent four weeks at the location working from a table-sized scale model we’d built that Tim and David used to develop their shots and choreograph the action,” he relates. “Earth movers, construction crew,

OPPOSITE PAGE, TOP: PRODUCTION DESIGNER JOHN GOLDSMITH SAYS FILMING ON A SET AS COMPLICATED AS THE TRENCHES AND NO-MAN’S LAND WAS AN ENERGIZING EXPERIENCE. “WE SPENT FOUR WEEKS AT THE LOCATION WORKING FROM A TABLE-SIZED SCALE MODEL WE’D BUILT THAT TIM AND DAVID USED TO DEVELOP THEIR SHOTS AND CHOREOGRAPH THE ACTION.”

OPPOSITE PAGE, BOTTOM: TIERNAN CALLS FRANCO’S PREFERRED APPROACH TO LIGHTING – BIG SOURCES FROM THE OUTSIDE, WITH A SMATTERING OF INTERIOR PRACTICALS – “STYLIZED, BUT ALSO QUITE ORGANIC. THAT QUALITY OF LIGHT, AND THE DIRECTION IT’S COMING FROM, IS VERY CENTERING.”

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set dressers, greensmen, all transformed the gently sloping ground on the top of the mesa into an other-worldly moonscape of deep craters, architectural ruins, and miles of tortured barbed wire fences and supports.

It was anchored at either end by trenches cut into the ground, each faced using the respective construction methods of the Allies on one side, and the Germans on the other.”

Glasgow’s Steadicam was key to the scenes, as it led Mason through the trench.

“Tim wanted it crowded, with guys on each side of the trench,” the operator explains. “We kept things smooth, thanks to a WAVE1 Horizon Stabilizer [by BetzTools.] It’ll save you in a situation like that, where you’re banging into guys. You just walked 100 feet backward, winding through a trench, and you get to the end and some guy bumps into you – you don’t want to have the shot totally blown. It made it much more forgiving.”

Another key location was L.A. City Hall, which provided some courtroom and jail scenes, and features long hallways perfect for intense legal conversation. The building’s west façade, with entrance plaza and grand steps, gets plenty of screen time as the characters venture in and out of the edifice.

The extended Hydrascope crane, from Chapman/Leonard, was one of the largest

telescopic cranes available in Los Angeles. As Van Patten remembers: “David and I would be blocking shots and going, ‘How do we do this shot? We can’t expect Christopher to go backwards up 75 steps.’” Local 80 Key Grip John Minardi recalls that Van Patten and Franco “wanted this big pullback from the top of the stairs, and then I’d start putting up Luma beams, which is ridiculous when we could get what they wanted with the Hydrascope,” handing off to Glasgow to continue the shot at the end of the crane’s reach near the top of the long stairs.

Devine says the most important element of a crane system is a stabilized head, like the Scorpio that was used on Mason. Devine’s close creative partnership with Dolly Grip Wickman resulted in plenty of handling left/ right and up/down movement of the crane, with the crane’s “pickle” operator controlling extension. “Both [the pickle operator] and Jim’s movements are going to change,” Devine continues. “They’re constantly dancing together, with me trying to figure what they’re doing.” The team would rehearse several passes and then break it into three to five pieces, following Mason and Della Street from high above as they exit their car, and then drop and either lead them through the crowd of protestors or follow.

In some cases, Wickman would place himself at the camera, guiding it through the extras, which was particularly necessary

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when that end of the crane was negotiating the stairs. “I think we only bounced the crane once,” he notes. “We try not to stay high and above – we want to be with them, in their experience,” states Van Patten. “I always say, ‘Stay under the fedoras.’”

For another fascinating shot, outside evangelist Sister Alice’s Radiant Assembly of God (modeled after Aimee Semple McPherson), Ergüven wanted a shot that traversed busy West Adams Boulevard toward the former First Church of Christ Scientist structure, over a billboard, to reveal a speaker and protestors. While Ergüven envisioned a Cablecam setup, ongoing traffic precluded its use, so Minardi conceived of combining a Titan crane with a Technocrane sitting on its platform. The Titan made a “hot seat move” across West Adams, after which the Techno team captured the remainder of the move. Eight people, including Devine and Geraghty, were needed for the shot.

The church interior was shot at the historic Trinity Auditorium, which was being renovated into a concert venue and residential structure. Goldsmith constructed the stage and many bleachers to achieve what Van Patten described as a “bowl of humanity,” upon which Sister Alice looks down and preaches.

“There was discussion of Sister Alice’s church not being a beautiful, sacred sanctuary,

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as expected, but something rawer, less clearly ecclesiastical,” Goldsmith recounts. “Tim had the great reference of Billy Sunday, a wildly popular precursor to Billy Graham, who held his revivals in temporary wooden tabernacles with rows of people on risers, preacher and musicians and attendants on raised stages, flowers, banners, and bunting.

Trinity, stripped down to its bones in its current state of renovation, allowed us to insert steep bleachers, stage, banners, organ and neon cross – essentially this vaudevillian theatricality. It was all done in this nonornamental container that still had subtle markers, like the non-pictorial, colored glass windows, of being a religious space.”

Shining down on Sister Alice is light from a clear reference. “Tim wanted it to look like a boxing ring, so I tried to reproduce that,” Franco adds. Gaffer Dave Maddux had Rigging Gaffer Glenn Moran construct a cable rig system to support the lights, “which were assembled from vintage Mole-Richardson scoop lights rescued from Paramount’s junkyard,” Maddux shares.

The show’s primary (and massive) courtroom set was constructed by Goldsmith on Paramount Stage 27. As with many of Franco’s past stage work, it was lit from the outside with a few practicals inside. “It’s something I bring to every project and keeps things as natural as

possible,” Franco shares. Tiernan calls the approach “stylized, but also quite organic.

That quality of light, and the direction it’s coming from, is very centering,” he says.

“David’s a large-source guy,” Maddux adds. “We used 8-by-12 LCD’s, with doublediffused ARRI LED 360s and ARRI S60s hanging between each window.” And while courtroom action can often be lacking dynamism, Devine, Glasgow, Geraghty, and the rest of the Guild camera team were always looking for ways to keep it interesting. Especially important was the creative input they were afforded.

“Peter and I would play with the focus,” Devine recalls. “Regardless of what the scene was or who was speaking, we would focus on Matthew [Rhys], even if it was just at the back of his head,” Geraghty adds. “And most importantly, we wanted to place the viewer inside Matthew’s mind, wondering what he’s thinking. Don is one of the most story-driven operators I’ve worked with.”

Van Patten confirms the confidence placed in Devine and the entire Guild crew.

“Don has our trust, and that trickles down,” the director concludes. “Those guys have opinions, and they have vision. They take their cue from what they see, what they feel, and what they see in the story. If Matthew’s ear is in focus and the judge is talking – that works. And it’s brilliant!”

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LOCAL 600 CREW Directors of Photography David Franco Darran Tiernan A-Camera Operator Don Devine, SOC A-Camera 1st AC Peter Geraghty A-Camera 2nd AC Brent Egan B-Camera Operator / Steadicam Christopher Glasgow, SOC B-Camera 1st AC Dennis Geraghty B-Camera 2nd AC Jared Jordan DIT Kevin Britton Loader Andy Macat Still Photographer Merrick Morton, SMPSP

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Jody Lee Lipes doubles down on cinematic intensity for the HBO limited series I Know This Much Is True.

BY KEVIN H. MARTIN / PHOTOS BY ATSUSHI NISHIJIMA FRAMEGRAB COURTESY OF HBO

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Wally Lamb’s bestselling 1998 novel, I Know This Much Is True, depicts twins whose lives take different courses.

Often delving into dark subject matter ranging from self-mutilation to infidelity and suicide, the material attracted Mark Ruffalo, who convinced Lamb that longformat television was the best format to convey the book’s nuances. Ruffalo, who executive-produced in addition to playing the dual leads Dominick and Thomas Birdsey, chose writer/director Derek Cianfrance [see Exposure, page 32] to adapt the material. The filmmaker, known for his character-driven indie-features, recruited Local 600 Director of Photography Jody Lee Lipes. “When Jody and I planned this,” Cianfrance recalls, “we agreed as filmmakers to humble ourselves, so everything happening behind the camera would be in service to the humanity coming through the lens.”

Lipes, whose most recent feature was A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood and who counts Manchester by the Sea, Martha Marcy May Marlene and Tiny Furniture [for which he earned an Independent Spirit nomination] among his other credits, had worked with Cianfrance once before on an Apple commercial. He says the director gives the camera a Cassavetes-esque quality, “to the point that things feel a little out of control. You capture events as they occur, but as with documentaries, sometimes you’re a little too late to follow smoothly, or maybe you cannot hold the shot as it develops, which helps bring tension, like things are really happening for the first time,” Lipes explains. “We shot with lenses that were too long and captured from afar,

because the camera itself is away from the actor, like a fly on the wall.”

Both agreed that with a story spanning the majority of the 20th Century, 35mm film (via Arricam LT’s) was the best capture format. “Sometimes people shoot film, but by the time they’re done in post, you can’t even tell as the image looks so healthy,” Lipes observes. “Favorites of mine, like Gordon Willis [ASC] and Harris Savides [ASC], made an art form of starving the negative, and I emulated that muddy, low-con look. It’s a quality I can’t get to the same degree with digital.” (Lipes found the grain structure most apparent on Kodak 500T, which he used throughout, rating the film a stop under, at 1000.)

Owing to Cianfrance’s preference for long runtimes on each film magazine, production shot 2-perf. “I like the smaller negative area, as the grain is more present,” Lipes continues. “HBO would not allow us to frame for wider than a 2.00:1 aspect ratio – 2-perf is natively 2.66:1, so to get to 2.00:1 we had to cut off the sides of the negative while blowing it up, which meant we were using even less than the traditional 2 perf negative area and that brought the look closer to 16mm. We were going to use Cooke s4s primes – with Canon K-35’s for emergency low light backups – and minimal zooms because Derek felt that zooming would only fit the language in contemplative moments. But he reconsidered and we shot the bulk of the show with two Optimo 24-290mm’s, zooming in throughout very long takes, which meant being on the long end of the lens in very small rooms.”

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Such challenges were welcomed by A-Camera operator Sam Ellison, SOC, who says Lipes told him they would not necessarily know what was going to happen in a given scene until shooting began. “We rarely had blocking sessions,” Ellison reports, “so the most advantageous place to put the camera was a matter of taking the best guess, and then, after Take 1, repositioning to dial it in. Letting things live in the frame is an important part of this show; if Derek felt too on-the-nose, or too controlled or perfect, it was wrong.” Lipes adds that “about a month into the show, I figured out the visual language – the camera’s always in the wrong place. Derek liked that a lot and [that knowledge] helped guide me forward.”

Ellison cites a 19-page scene with Dominick and his therapist shot on Day 1. “Derek wanted to be rolling from the moment Mark walked on set,” the operator continues, “so we had to be in the right place, and then trust the actors to lead us into the coverage.

That often meant letting the camera run through the entire magazine [2-perf 35mm translates to a 22.5-minute roll], and my hand would be on the [Preston] MicroForce zoom controller for most of that shot, zooming in very slowly.”

Long lenses, low light levels, and blocking that could change from take to take, meant pulling focus was a challenge. “We had an HD monitor, but even the newest taps don’t let you see everything,” Ellison describes, “especially with the way Jody was exposing on this project. Plus, overheating is a problem in summer on long takes, which affects the tap image.

I give all the credit in the world to my A-Camera 1st AC Aurelia Winborn, who is a legend in New York and able to pull by eye. The same goes for B-camera 1st AC Kali Riley, who did excellent work. Kali is younger but grew up in the New York indie world and worked with the Safdie Brothers, who love shooting film.”

Winborn says I Know This Much Is True was, “by far” the most challenging focus pulling of her career. “I rely on my trusty tape measure, marks and watching actors movements closely,” she shares. “But as the job unfolded, we shot more at the long end of the Angenieux 24-290 zoom. Being at 290mm for close ups from a distance and extremely tight inserts on [Ruffalo’s] eyes during emotional scenes, made using a focus monitor a must. Sam was often operating remotely, so there was no checking focus through the eyepiece during the take. We would roll with no blocking or rehearsals, and no one knew where the actors would end up.” Winborn adds that although the workflow was “demanding” for everyone, “Jody and Sam are both patient, understanding and supportive.

I felt like they always had our backs.”

Riley, who joined the production about four weeks in, says there are a few things that make her feel more confident about nailing focus. “Good HDIVS maintenance, the almighty Preston Light Ranger, and trusting my operator,” she smiles. “I was so happy to have Erin Henning as my [B-Camera] operator because he’s very detailed and aware, especially shooting on film. He was great at checking supertight stuff in the eyepiece.”

A-Camera 2nd AC Liz Hedges notes that having time to coordinate gear and personnel was a challenge due to Cianfrance’s shooting style. “Without rehearsals, there was no time to step away from set,”

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SHOOTING ON FILM, DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY JODY LEE LIPES SAYS HE LOOKED TO FAVORITES LIKE GORDON WILLIS, ASC, AND HARRIS SAVIDES, ASC, “WHO MADE AN ART FORM OF STARVING THE NEGATIVE, AND I EMULATED THAT MUDDY, LOWCON LOOK.”

A-CAMERA OPERATOR SAM ELLISON, SOC (NEAR RIGHT) SAYS “LETTING THINGS LIVE IN THE FRAME IS AN IMPORTANT PART OF THIS SHOW. IF DEREK [WRITER/DIRECTOR DEREK CIANFRANCE - FAR RIGHT] FELT TOO ON-THE-NOSE, OR TOO CONTROLLED OR PERFECT, IT WAS WRONG.”

PHOTO BY SARAH SHATZ

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Hedges explains. “If we weren’t shooting, we were moving on to the next shot, and the camera department had zero down-time.

And because of the volume of film [being shot], the loaders were not available to cover so I had to find ways to send emails between shots. I was lucky to have experienced loaders like Toni Sheppard and Katie Greaves, who picked up film loading quickly.” Adds Riley: “I really looked up to Aurelia, Liz, and my 2nd AC Alisa Colley. It was invaluable to hear their war stories and to see how they ran a complex 35mm show.”

“ We didn’t want to keep having electricians go inside to adjust light levels on the interiors of the family house,” Shibata explains. “So we rewired all the practical lamps there and at our other major location, Dominick’s apartment. Everything went on a dimmer board. We often used 60-watt house bulbs, but when one of these practicals was needed to key off, there were 150-watt bulbs, too. We used LED’s in the smaller locations, just to be able to hang up some bounce.”

Outside the home, the gaffer employed HMI’s with [LumiQuest] UltraBounces.

Erbes-Chan adds that, “we’d be shooting from early in the day to night on the same Chief Lighting Technician Ken Shibata scene, and had to match the look. That also had a tough job – with two-camera meant breaking out all of our bounces while set-ups for interiors, nearly all of the room papering strategic windows to maintain a would be revealed. And with production daylight look. We used three 12-by-20s, twobased in Poughkeepsie, rental houses were 12-by-12 bounces, and an 85 bounce. It was two hours away, necessitating a fairly heavy just me plus seven on the team, even when lighting package. Lipes says Key Grip Johnny we had huge setups. One producer wanted Erbes-Chan and Shibata helped to guide him just me and three [other grips], but I resisted. through the tougher setups when he was He came in later while we were rigging the concerned about what would show up on film. doctor’s office – using three flyswatters and

four ARRIMAX’s – saw how big the job was and told me, ‘Forget what I said.’”

By shooting almost exclusively on location, the camera crew found itself literally up against the wall much of the time. “We were always stuffing ourselves in closets,” Ellison laughs. “Derek and Jody are both allergic to wide-angle lenses, so there was no help there.”

Some of the tightest interiors are in the driving scenes, which were shot with a Biscuit Rig. “Even though this often felt like an indie movie, I got to do some big movie stuff, like cutting four cars into pieces,” Erbes-Chan offers. “We wound up driving on the Biscuit with the operator and AC up front in awkward positions, shooting and pulling focus, while the driver was in a pod on the side or up top. It got crowded, especially when there was motion-control equipment for shooting the brothers together.”

Credibly putting two Mark Ruffalos on screen together was always the elephant in the room. Even with recent developments in VFX for motion control, Cianfrance was wary. “I didn’t want the technical side to run the show,” he maintains. “Other twinnings I’ve watched while thinking, ‘Actor shot A-side in the morning, came back after lunch with a mustache and wig, then shot B-side.’ That only works if the twins remain identical years later. Our characters had decades of changes; Thomas takes medications, resulting in water weight. So Mark and I figured we’d shoot Dominick’s side first. Then I’d shoot other stuff while Mark took six weeks off to gain thirty pounds before coming back to shoot the Thomas sides.”

“Whenever we shot motion control or anything requiring heavy visual effects enhancement, production used 3-perf bodies,” says Lipes. “We were still framing for the same negative area as 2-perf, but we had flexibility to adjust the frame after the fact.”

VFX supervisor Eric Pascarelli, a longtime Local 600 Director of Photography member whose motioncontrol history dates back to Batman Forever, says he rarely recommends the process “because there is generally such resistance,” he notes. “But that wasn’t the case here, as I could get the best crew and equipment. We only rarely preprogrammed anything, instead recording the A-Cam moves. Rather than use a memory head, we used it to store the files safely for the B-Cam shoots. By being selective about what we had to show on the B-side, we only needed to recall cast members affecting our view of the character.”

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PUTTING TWO MARK RUFFALOS ON-SCREEN TOGETHER WAS OFTEN ACOMPLISHED THROUGH MOTION CONTROL CAMERAWORK, SHOOTING “A-SIDES” WITH DOMNICK FIRST, AND THEN “B-SIDES” WEEKS LATER AFTER RUFFALO HAD PUT ON SOME THIRTY POUNDS TO PORTRAY TWIN BROTHER THOMAS.

Pascarelli says his team could play back the A-side “and mix it with the image we were then shooting for the B, so you could see how Mark was acting against himself.

The success of the scenes is partially due to the VFX compositing, but even when there were big fat split-screen lines with different color values, the shots still worked because Derek designed everything so effectively.”

Ellison affirms its success. “The team from Pacific Motion Control was great,” he says. “I have never seen motion control work under such conditions before, only when everything was very controlled. I figured it would be a huge mess to shoot the B-sides months later, but as things turned out, I was very pleasantly surprised.”

One of the most ambitious twinnings takes place near the end of Episode 1, when Dominick accompanies Thomas, under police custody, as the latter is turned over to hospital attendants. “Jody suggested the intake at the hospital be shot as a handheld oner,” Cianfrance recalls. “I wondered about how that might be possible, and saw the opening of Son of Saul [directed by László Nemes], which showed us the way; when we brought it to Eric, he wasn’t scared by the approach.”

“Since the oner is handheld,” Pascarelli recounts, “the B-side had to be painstakingly

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matched, which involved duplicating a tilt-down and other movement. We did preprogram the B-side with Thomas for that; fortunately, he is not seen through the whole shot, since there are all of these officers in frame and a lot of jostling going on.”

A small number of other twinning shots, including a convincing view of the brothers as one passes behind the other while walking uphill from a lake, could only be accomplished with a full-CG Ruffalo head.

“Rodeo FX supervisor Keith Kolder did the CG heads, along with de-aging of characters for flashbacks,” Pascarelli reports. “There was also a large bulk of utilitarian fix-it work, plus invisible bits like a CG truck, which were handled by FuseFX.” There were also shots of the Birdsey family home from early in the 20th century, which VFX supervisor John Killshaw tackled.

“You get to see how the house is built up and the surroundings change over many years,” Pascarelli adds. “Matte paintings helped show changes to the structures and vehicles, decade by decade.” Pascarelli and art director Alison Ford met with Framestore during the design phase, ensuring her research into the various eras would be visualized in a historically accurate manner.

One major off-screen challenge came when a used-car dealership featured in the series burned down after the crew had left for the night. “Our truck was parked next to

the building and it was destroyed in the fire,” Ellison laments. “We realized how key it is to maintain an insurance policy for your own equipment, especially the AC’s, who often bring their own.”

Winborn describes the fire as, “devastating for the whole camera team.

Losing kits and gear collected over the years was heartbreaking,” she laments. “But I have to give a big shout out to Alisa Colley who gave us the use of her carts and entire kit. There was no time to replace anything as we started prep immediately, with just two days to prep the entire package, over a weekend. Another shout out to Gus and Phil at ARRI Rental.

They worked so hard to get us back up and running. We had calls and texts from fellow NYC camera assistants offering their own gear. It was truly amazing.”

Hedges adds that, “we definitely bonded as a department after [the fire]. It happened in the early morning hours on a Thursday and we were in ARRI prepping a new package on Friday. Luckily, Alisa [Colley] was joining our crew that Monday and was able to bring her entire kit and carts. Otherwise we would have had nothing. My takeaway for fellow Guild members [from the fire] is that everyone read the fine print in their deal memos because there is a chance there is a line inserted somewhere that states the producing company is not responsible for personal gear.”

The final color grade at Company 3 New York was in progress at press time, with VFX shots still coming through and Cianfrance finessing the cut. Lipes has worked with Senior Colorist Sam Daley for ten years, from the feature Afterschool to A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, and their collaboration began developing a workflow before prep.

“Our LUT was tailored for film print emulation, working for Log-C or film, and was developed with the way Jody shoots, allowing him to underexpose a source to create smoky blacks that fit his style,” Daley recalls. “Jody treats the image almost more like reversal film than negative, with a burned-in exposure that resists being taken in another direction. Our part in the grade is more like an exploration to find added qualities that support what he shot.”

Daley says DI fine-tuning was far greater than the norm.

“On A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, there was a grade for each scene,” he continues. “But Derek’s method requires grading every shot independently.” Lipes and Daley spent a few days together on Episodes 1-3 before Lipes left the country to shoot several commercials. “When Jody came back, coronavirus was hitting, so we had to deal with this new world where we couldn’t be in the room together,” Daley adds.

“The workflow is what everyone seems to be calling ‘fluid,’ where, for everyone’s safety,

we all work as small little islands instead of one big continent. There are security issues with modified workflows, so respecting that while getting all the pieces of the puzzle together is a dual challenge. We have to deal with remote streaming, file-sharing, and understanding what monitors can be used to guarantee we’re all seeing the same thing.”

An early adopter of DaVinci Resolve, Daley is pleased that color-management developers continue to add new tools. “I find it to be flexible and intuitive, which helped with the twinning shots,” he relates. “Those often need more work to get A- and B-sides feeling that it was all shot together at the same time. The VFX vendors received CDL’s from our dailies colorist [John Bonta] as well as our show LUT, so a lot of issues were resolved by having that baseline.”

Lipes says everyone was “all in” for I Know This Much Is True.

“It had an indie feel, but on a huge scale,” Lipes concludes. “Production Manager Marshall Johnson, Line Producer Jeff Bernstein and Executive Producer Gregg Fienberg always got us what we needed, but there was a ‘scrappy bunch of kids’ feel that made for a life-changing experience. I’ve never had this much trust in a director before.

I put myself out on a limb for Derek, because I knew his visual choices were going to work.

I strapped in and went along for the ride, striving to remain as open as possible.”

LOCAL 600 CREW Director of Photography Jody Lee Lipes 2nd Unit Directors of Photography Matt Woolf Ari Issler A-Camera Operator Sam Ellison, SOC A-Camera 1st AC Aurelia Winborn A-Camera 2nd AC Liz Hedges B-Camera Operator Erin Henning B-Camera 1st AC Kali Riley B-Camera 2nd ACs Alisa Colley Casey Johnson Additional 1st AC Zach Rubin Loaders Toni Sheppard Katie Greaves Utility Eric Van der Vynckt Still Photographers Atsushi Nishijima Sarah Shatz

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ROLL WITH IT / BY PAULINE ROGERS

The on-set partnership between a camera assistant and dolly grip is not one that is often highlighted in behind-the-scenes articles, but it should be. The support a dolly (and/or crane) grip provides, particularly at a time when assistants are being asked to pull focus from unlikely (i.e., potentially unsafe) positions, is absolutely vital. Such is the case with our first of three pairings we’ve profiled, Todd Schlopy and Local 80 Dolly Grip Brad Rea, who met on the “action unit” for Seabiscuit , helmed by 2nd Unit Director of Photography Mitch Amundsen.

(John Schwartzman, ASC, led the film’s main unit.) The two have worked together on more than a dozen projects since, including features, such as CHiPs , and concert movies, including Miley Cyrus and Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience . Things recently came full circle on another John Schwartzman project, The Little Things , written and directed by John Lee Hancock, which, they both agree, “was a different kind of movie.”

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Seabiscuit, your first film together, was a trial by fire. Todd Schlopy: We were going to be dealing with a thundering herd of horses for the better part of three months. We learned very quickly that as skilled as the jockeys were, they were only marginally in control of the horses. Racehorses are pack animals that move at nearly 40 miles per hour and are susceptible to distractions. Anything they weren’t used to seeing could potentially make them bolt, putting jockey, horse and crew in danger. We started referring to the horses as “helicopters” because you have to take all the same precautions. I had to know that our grip team could help us tap the brakes if we were moving to the wrong side of the safety line. Brad Rea: Key to that were our morning meetings with the AD’s and directors, to go over the setups for the day. They used toy horses and miniature cars to review shots and camera positions. Everything had to be exact. There were very specific things that happened in each of the races. Director Gary Ross insisted on being historically accurate.

You began with a fixed camera, but that changed when you got to Santa Anita. TS: [Laughs.] We met up with the arm car trailer.

BR: Allan Padelford custom-built his MTV [Mobile Technocrane Vehicle] for our show, and it worked great. It could corner at 40 miles per hour before it would start to slide on the dirt tracks, the same speed the horses could run.

TS: The stabilized WesCAM head allowed us to use a Panavision 11-1 zoom with a doubler, so [we had] 550mm shots of horses, jockeys, and stirrups, and a crane arm you could operate simultaneously swinging in and out of the pack trying to pick out Seabiscuit and his foes. BR: With Michael Pagan on the “Pickle” and myself on the arm, we had a great time running with the pack, positioning the camera in and out of the race sequence while you grabbed focus on whatever was in our roving frame. TS: Safety rigging here was critical. You and the grip team always made sure everyone was secured to their positions. I can’t tie a knot, but you guys were kings! [Both laugh.]

Why was the film The Little Things so different? TS: It’s about a serial-killer cold case that becomes active again, and we were constantly shooting off the 50-foot Technocrane with a Libra head [operated by Libra Tech Jon Philion] – using it like a Steadicam. If it wasn’t crane, it was a dolly. The detectives were getting in and out of their cars, moving through crime scenes, apartments, the police station. Always in motion. I had some fun calling it “Riding in Cars with Oscars.” [The three leads all have statues.] The positioning of the camera was all on you. BR: The 50-foot arm gave us 100 feet of possible movement, and we could tuck the Libra head into some tight spots, like a

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Steadicam. After John Schwartzman and Ian would set the shot, it was up to Todd, Derlin, and me to get them what they wanted. Things always have a way of changing once the action starts, and having a relationship like Todd and I have makes it easier to go with the flow. We’re always looking out for each other.

Has your process evolved with technology?

TS: It’s headsets all the time so we can communicate. We talk the shots out and fall into a great rhythm as a team [operator, assistant, Pickle operator, and dolly grip]. On this picture, Brad and [Pickle Operator] Derlin could move the immense crane into the perfect spots, sometimes a dozen different marks for a single take. [Camera Operator] Ian [Fox] would find the frame, and I would look at where to play focus. BR: There are always changes that happen in cop dramas, where there are lots of moving parts. We have to be able to talk quietly on the headsets during the shot. We have great chemistry that allows for attempting more difficult shots. And, on the rare occasion where things break down, Todd and I always have the right to pull the camera out and make it safe.

How would you sum up your partnership on this most recent project? TS: Dropping a 50-foot Technocrane with a long lens on it from a sky-high cityscape at night to meet a police sedan and landing in a dramatic close-up through the windshield? There isn’t a piece of focus-pulling technology in the world to make that happen easily. You need a dolly grip who can put the camera on the spot, adjusting to where an actor actually stops the car, regardless of where his mark is. BR: We both need to be well-versed in the new tools available these days. The Technocrane is one of the best pieces of filmmaking equipment ever. It makes my task easier and the results better. But easier and better for me doesn’t always translate to easier for Todd! [Laughs.] I’m convinced there is a little voodoo going on with Todd and his craft. As a former NFL placekicker, I think he goes to a different zen place when it comes time to keep the actors sharp. He is great at avoiding distractions once the camera rolls.

Honestly, Todd’s one of the best ever. TS: Yes, but Brad was already known as the best in the business when I met him. It has taken me another 18 years to catch up. [Both laugh.]

“I ’M CONVI NCED THER E I S A L I TT L E VOO DO O GOI NG ON WI T H T ODD AND HI S CR AFT . AS A FOR MER NFL P L ACEKI CKER , HE GOES TO A DI FFER ENT ZEN P L ACE WHEN I T COMES TI ME TO KEEP THE ACT OR S SHAR P .”

BRAD REA

ROLL WITH IT / BY PAULINE ROGERS

Local 80 Dolly Grip Darryl Humber and 1st AC Greg Irwin, met – well, waved to each other – on Universal Pictures’ megafranchise Furious 7 . Irwin was on a VFX camera; Humber was on A-Camera with 1st AC Julie Donovan. They knew each other’s names and wondered when they would work together. That opportunity arose on Columbia Pictures’ J umanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017). And, as Irwin says, “We’ve had a good track record together” on successive films, such as Paramount Pictures’ Instant Family (2018) and briefly when Darryl filled in on Warner Bros.’ Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019). Most recently, the two spent several months paired up on A-Camera for a new Marvel streaming project.

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ICG: You describe this as a “strong creative marriage.” Why? Greg Irwin: On Fast 7, I could see that Darryl had a high cinematic IQ. That sort of intuition is never taken for granted.

It’s always a privilege to work with someone who has an understanding of not only his challenges but the challenges of the team as well. Darryl Humber: We both take our work seriously. Greg is a “focus puller’s focus puller,” so it’s important for me to have the camera in the right place – not just for composition, but also to make Greg’s job easier. He doesn’t suffer fools easily [laughs]. So I knew when he invited me to his Christmas party, I was in. GI: That’s a very selective guest list, my friend. You bet you’re in!

How has the relationship changed with digital technology? DH: You rarely see a first AC pulling focus from the lens anymore. I may only see Greg once or twice a day, but he knows I’ll be as consistent as I can, even though we often make up shots on the fly now. And I know that he’ll always nail [focus]. That’s liberating for a dolly grip because if an actor changes a position, or the operator and I see something new to go for, I don’t worry that Greg’s going to get it. I’ve stuck my head in the tent once or twice to let him know I may get tighter on an actor or the actor is doing something different, and his response is always, “I go where you go.” Even with diopter shots on the Technocrane – we don’t have to talk about it.

We set a distance and start wrapping around an actor’s face, and he nails it every time. I’m not that consistent. GI: [Laughs] Darryl is very consistent. It’s amazing to me because I will be studying the shot on the monitor as we are rolling, and I’ll be thinking, “Time to push in,” and we suddenly push in – like magic. Then I think, “Stop pushing in. Minimum focus.” And just like Darryl can hear me, we stop pushing in. It’s so cool.

What about this current project highlights your strengths together? DH: The shots often unfold as we are doing them, and no two takes are the same. [They are either] Technocrane or Oculus head on the dolly, so we aren’t locked onto tracks or even restricted by the area of the dance floor. With Greg on the focus, I don’t even think about whether I need to let him in on everything we’re doing because he just follows me wherever I go. Sometimes I’ll ask him what his minimum focus is, just in case. Then we may or may not get to it. GI: It used to be that actors were accountable for their part in hitting marks and finding their light. They would also have the awareness to find the lens every time and understand frame size. Those days are over. Now we have to adjust to where and when they move, try to unbury them from behind another actor who has also missed his or her mark. A lot of my success is knowing when and how the camera will move to compensate and

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in Darryl’s understanding the same.

Even the best preparation can fall short.

How do you handle the unexpected? DH: Most of my difficulties are physical ones, like safety issues with a Technocrane and a lot of extras. GI: But there was the one [example] with our actress acting like a derby pony right out of the starting gate. DH: Oh, right. We had two or three positions during the shot on the Technocrane. The actress started walking, and we had to pull back with her. It was a tight lens, and I realized on the second take that I was making Greg’s job harder by starting too soon on the pullback. I let her take a step and get moving so Greg could see where she was and then pulled back when she reached the proper distance. GI: At one point, I thought she was going to pass us, or leave her nose print on the front element of our lens. [Smiles.]

Communication is the key? DH: Even when it’s silent, as in our case. Greg’s got a spidersense – he reads the camera and knows where I’m going before I do it. There are times when I realize I’m too tight or wide and start slowly correcting it, and I’ll think to myself, “I hope I’m not screwing Greg by doing this!” But he always sees it and goes with me. GI: That’s because Darryl is logical and can make sense of a camera move, even when the shot is falling apart. Not all dolly grips have that sense and know how to save it. That’s why I say he has such a high cinematic IQ, and why our communication can be silent. It’s all about trust.

“I ’VE ST UCK MY HEAD I N T HE TENT ONCE O R TWI CE TO L ET GR EG KNOW I MAY GET T I GHTE R ON AN ACTOR OR T HE ACTOR I S DOI NG SOMET HI NG DI FFER ENT, AND HI S R ESP ONS E I S AL WAYS, ‘I GO WHER E YOU GO.’” DARRYL HUMBER

Jamie Felz and Local 80 Dolly Grip Eric Zucker first met on a pilot called Under the Bridge, and it was a rocky start. “I found Eric opinionated and headstrong for a dolly grip, which was a bit of a shock,” Felz admits. “But I soon saw how those traits would save us on more than one occasion, and that made me realize how much I needed Eric to be that person.” Once Felz and Zucker figured out each other’s work processes, nothing could stop their onset partnership from success. They now laugh that they are often “the voice of reason” behind someone’s vision, as in the case of the many challenges on their most current project, CBS All Access’ Star Trek: Picard.

ROLL WITH IT

BY PAULINE ROGERS

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You both look at this as a true partnership.

Jamie Felz: There are so many facets to how we work together as a team. We both have some input as the shot is being designed. Eric Zucker: It’s more than changing lenses or cameras. I like to keep an ear on the DP and operator to know our next move, and then that directly affects how Jamie goes about her work. JF: We have to consider more than the set and actors; it’s about how the shot works for the dolly, a remote head, Steadicam, et cetera. I don’t usually have objections to how the shot is executed. I’m sure Eric will laugh at my saying that. [He does.] But I may need to say the dolly should slow down 10 percent for focus, or not move until the actor has landed because it won’t work.

You both have said teamwork is learning together. EZ: We do learn together – about how we want to configure the camera for different modes. If it’s a tough shot, I try to figure out the best way to support Jamie. JF: As a top-level dolly grip, Eric might have crazy ideas about how to rig the camera, and I have to trust him that it will work. If Eric suggests a Mo-Sys head because the way he’s going to configure the dolly will not lend itself to allowing our operator, Kenny Brown [SOC], to operate safely, we let Eric make that call. EZ: I think Jamie and I always try to think two or three shots ahead since we are going to be doing the work to prepare shots. JF:

That’s crucial. Eric also lets me know what we are up against and how he is going to help us make things work. I rely on Eric to find a safe place for me and still see what is going on in the shot. EZ: [Laughs.] Jamie is not shy or timid about making sure there is a safe place for her monitor. No matter what, I know I have to find a way, if needed, for them to hang lights.

Why does Jamie call you her “personal stylist”? JF: Don’t laugh! It’s true. Especially on this series. EZ: We both listen to the DP on the style of the show, and we figure out the best way to create that vision. JF: And I wouldn’t go shopping for a new outfit [set a shot or rig a camera] without discussing it with Eric. EZ: Jamie has had to be inventive on Picard. We’re often working in small spaces, which demands different equipment. JF: Eric works with B-Camera dolly grip Wilson Mylander, who often requires both of us to do some serious pas de deux while executing complex maneuvers.

Picard likes to put cameras in “unique places.” But safety is always the first concern, correct? EZ: We’ve had the camera hanging 30 feet in the air on chain motors. Or me shooting a crane at the lead actor’s face while the director is screaming, “Faster! Faster!”

Sometimes the director doesn’t understand that the camera can only move as fast as the

focus motor can go, and we can only do what is safe. JF: Some of our sets are enormous and have multiple levels – as high as or higher than a two-story building. This creates many safety issues. EZ: I would map out the safest way to get the camera in place and how to move it safely.

JF: Eric may swing a crane close to an actor’s face, and I would tell him, sometimes by focus distance, if he was too close and the shot might then be dangerous. EZ: That’s when Jamie sometimes gives me that “I love you. But I will kill you” look. [Both laugh.]

Are you both always on the prowl for new gear to enhance a shot? JF: The Matrix head and a Scorpio Crane on the spaceship are good examples of that. EZ: We were using a new piece of equipment on the end of the crane called the Slingshot. We started outside of the ship in Matrix mode, went through the inside of the ship, dropped down to the bottom level by moving the camera to underslung, where Jamie is pulling focus without seeing any of the actors. JF: I completely relied on Eric and the actors to be where they needed to be because we were moving the camera in such dynamic ways, people were just coming in and out of the shot, and I wasn’t able to see them. EZ: There were so many elements in that shot – for both of us to deal with – and they all had to be perfect to execute. JF: Timing – and trust. EZ: Exactly.

“ IT’S MO RE T HAN CHANGI NG L ENSES OR C A MERA S . I LI KE TO KEEP AN EAR ON THE D P A ND O PER AT OR T O KNOW OUR NEXT MO VE . . . THAT DI R ECTL Y AFFECTS HOW JA MIE G OES ABOUT HER WOR K.” ERIC ZUCKER

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DGA 1st Assistant Director Vincent Lascoumes says the most important relationship on a film crew is the “trio of director, director of photography, and 1st AD, as that’s where the tone [for the entire length of production] is set.” For this special Interview Issue section, we examine two-thirds of this supremely key workflow, starting with Lascoumes and Local 600 Director of Photography Stephen Windon, ASC, ACS. Their common thread has been Director Justin Lin, although it took a while for the pairing to come about. Lascoumes first worked with Lin on the 2006 Disney feature Annapolis ; Windon’s first assignment for Lin was on Universal’s epic car franchise, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift , for which Lascoumes wasn’t available. For the next film in the franchise, Fast & Furious [4] , Windon wasn’t available. The two finally met in 2011 in an airport, on their way to Rio De Janeiro to scout Lin’s Fast Five , and they quickly hit it off. Having now done three features together – Fast Five , Fast & Furious 6 , and, most recently, F9 , they both agree the journeys have been as fulfilling as the destinations.

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the summertime in the Northern Hemisphere.

VL: And that took planning to do this in a twoweek window. SW: This planning was key to supporting the visual continuity, as well as facilitating an efficient schedule.

“ T H E MO S T IMPO RTA N T REL ATI ONSHI P ON A F I L M C REW, BES ID ES D IR ECTOR /ACTOR , I S T H E TRIO O F D IREC TO R, DP , AND AD, AS TH A T’S WH ERE TH E TONE FOR THE EN TIRE S H O O T IS SET.” VINCENT LASCOUMES

It takes a special team to keep a megaaction franchise like The Fast and the Furious on track. What’s the key? Vincent Lascoumes: The most important relationship on a film crew, besides director/actor, is the trio of director, DP, and AD, as that’s where the tone for the entire shoot is set. If they’re good and the communication flows, you will have a pleasant and successful shoot and the support of the crew. On our projects, Steve and I have been housed near each other and travel together, so we’ve spent a lot of time driving to work and discussing the day’s work ahead. That is invaluable. Of course, on the drive home, we usually fall asleep. [Laughs.] Stephen Windon: Vincent lives, breathes, and immerses himself in his work. He’s a genuine filmmaker. Since we both thrive on the fast-paced energy of these projects, we tend to keep an eye on each other.

That trust rubs off on the crew.

You’ve both done high- and low-budget pictures. Does the relationship change according to the budget? VL: The method is still the same; you just get more time, money, and toys. Unfortunately, lately, the bigger the

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budget, the less prepared the scripts tend to be during pre-production because of release days, actor availability, et cetera. SW: There is no doubt that our day is planned to a time schedule on these big-budget pictures. But we make sure we are on the right page for setting up shots, which can sometimes be quite complex in terms of stunts and practical FX interaction. We can use a dozen or so cameras throughout the day, some that need to be rigged in advance. I love this part, and you need a solid AD to back you.

But are there key elements to success that don’t change? SW: Planning early. VL: Being flexible. SW and VL: Communication, communication, communication. [Both laugh.]

SW: Matching light is a perfect example. I would discuss elements with my second unit DP, Igor Meglic, about sun direction while he was shooting in Thailand, and with our art director, I could then orient the set on our backlot in the UK to match the sun’s azimuth as close as possible to the Thailand locations.

VL: Then came discussions on when to shoot in our schedule. SW: The two of us came together to shoot these early in the schedule, i.e., during

What do you recall as being the bigger challenges from The Fast and the Furious films? VL: On Fast 5 we were in Rio for ten days, for location-specific scenes to tie-in our Puerto Rico and Atlanta locations to Brazil. We found this location way up at the top of one of the city’s notoriously steep [and road-gutted] favelas, and Justin wanted to shoot Paul Walker and Vin Diesel, who is not an early bird, at sunrise, so the logistics weren’t easy. SW: When I finally got word that the actors were on the way, we also got word that the camera truck had broken down, and the camera gear would need to be carried up by hand. VL: We were sweating bullets, but camera made it – barely – and we got some of the shots.

It sounds like your first film together was one of the toughest. VL: I remember driving shots with Paul and Jordana Brewster, where they were driving through this tunnel and then arriving at this marketplace next to the main train station. We had to plan for a couple of hundred extras, and some follow vehicles. But we soon got overwhelmed by the sheer size of the local population that came out to watch. SW: It felt like someone had just opened the gates of a football stadium when the fans came rushing in. Security was overwhelmed and unable to stem the wave of Fast fans. We were surrounded, and the camera vehicles and process trailer were, literally, unable to move. VL: It’s hard to plan for gridlock in the middle of Rio. [Both laugh.] SW: I think for both of us, that’s when the international success of this franchise hit home.

But I heard that Fast 6 was even harder?

SW: Well, I do remember the big print on the script from Fast 6 read: “NIGHT AND A CAR BREAKS FRAME AT HIGH SPEED DOWN A RUNWAY AT 85 MPH, AS THE CARGO RAMP OF A MASSIVE TRANSPORT JET LOWERS AND THE VEHICLE ENTERS THE CARGO HOLD.” VL: Oh, I remember that one. Conversations.

Conversations. Practical answers. SW: Our communication was important. Vincent, myself, stunt, and SFX nutting out a methodology and keeping Justin in the loop.

We ended up building a hydraulic cargo door on the back of a giant trailer, and I designed all the lighting to replicate the cargo bay. VL: We arranged a test shoot with an Edge Arm and a massive truck on a 4000-meter airport runway to see what speeds we could achieve. SW: Shooting tests in prep opens discussions, and these conversations are initiated by the DP/AD. Those decisions made together are why we are so successful as a team.

Both ICG Director of Photography Nancy Schreiber, ASC ( Better Things , Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice , The Comeback , The Family , P-Valley ), and DGA Assistant Director Kea Zemans ( The Bridge , Cold Case , Scandal , Station 19 ) are familiar with the challenges of shooting episodic programming and know timing is key. Those challenges include when a script is made available to them, the length of scout, and any last-minute location or other shooting changes. Throw in firefighting, medical emergencies, and more – and the result is a show like Shonda Rhimes’ Station 19 , for Disney-ABC Television.

This was the first on-set pairing for these two strong, creative women. Schreiber and Zemans (who alternate with Daryn Okada, ASC, and Kris Krengel) expertly (and sometimes hilariously) break down the show’s tough but fulfilling workflow.

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How did this relationship start out? Kea Zemans: Strong! One of the first things I noticed about Nancy was her determination to understand the show before she started shooting, as it was season three. Even before prep, she was on the set observing how the crew worked together and the pace of things.

Nancy Schreiber: Watching Kea handle the inevitable script changes, actor availability….

KZ: [Interjects] Made a little more complicated when we had crossovers with Grey’s Anatomy…

NS: Right. And as the season progressed, my appreciation and sympathy for Kea’s everevolving schedule was off the charts, as she was not only dealing with crossovers but the inevitable rewrites up to the last minute. A lot of our planning together was how we could just get the shots in during daylight hours, let alone [discussing] the best time to shoot scenes.

KZ: And, I should emphasize, Nancy always understood when the schedule didn’t always allow for ideal light. NS: Even though I pushed hard to make it the best I could.

One location appeared simple on screen, yet was anything but. NS: Yes, that was the second Griffith Park scene we did together. Of course, it had to be in October, when there’s not much daylight. KZ: Logistics were a big deal on that one. I knew Nancy had to have as much time as she could get, but I was faced with about a 40-minute drive from the studio, no place for anyone to park, and limited time with the leads. NS: Kea’s pre-planning made it a lot easier. She knew I had to have three cameras going, and I was fighting the short day, with the sun ever dropping. KZ: My fight was more about logistics – getting Nancy her equipment but also a place to put the camera so she could get an exciting shot without any danger, as we could only get ITC [intermittent traffic control].

NS: We worked together harmoniously.

This wasn’t the only Griffith Park logistical issue you both encountered, correct? NS: On Episode 313, we had a visually challenging dream sequence. KZ: That one was fun because most of the series had been fairly straightforward, if still logistically challenging.

NS: We used Lensbabies and unusual and interesting lenses and filters. KZ: It was a completely different area of Griffith Park, so the logistics were different. And we had another big scene that night, as well.

Company moves are challenging, but you two seem to handle them easily. KZ: On that day, we had many pages to cover at another location before we got to the park. NS: So when we first saw how the day would best be laid out, it did catch us a bit short. KZ: We did talk about, maybe, doing some of the story points on stage to save time. NS: But we both wanted to shoot on location, as did [Director] Stacey K. Black. KZ: So it became a big planning thing.

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“AS THE SEASON P R OGR ESSED, MY AP P R ECI AT I ON AND SYMP AT HY FOR KEA ’ S EVER -EVOL VI NG SCHEDUL E WAS OFF THE CHAR T S, AS SHE WAS NOT ONL Y DEAL I NG WI TH CR OSSOVER S, BUT T HE I NEVI TAB LE R EWR I T ES UP TO T HE L AST MI NUTE.” NANCY SCHREIBER, ASC

I knew Nancy would do her best to stick to the number of hours I had budgeted. NS: [Laughs.]

I tried, and succeeded, in large part due to our amazing crew. Kea could get me to Griffith Park for the right time of day before the sun went down behind the mountain. Of course, we could not get there too early since we had night work – and it wasn’t a Friday night. KZ: It was about call time and preparation. It could have fallen apart that day if we took too long. NS: It all worked out beautifully.

It probably helps that you both can laugh at the sillier things that catch you unaware.

KZ & NS: [Both laugh.] The bear sequence!

KZ: The firefighters are going on a camping trip as a bonding experience with their new captain. NS: It started with serious prep discussions with the producers as to where we could find a bear. KZ: [Sighs.] So many meetings. NS: Remember the big discussion?

Black bear versus brown bear. Production had found an old bear who had been in movies and television. However, he was overweight. They were worried that he couldn’t lose 20 pounds in time. [Laughs.] KZ: We had to be serious.

Conference calls, with the trainer, looking at the footage; finally, we all came to a decision that was best for all parties. NS: We agreed the bear would have to be VFX, and the actors would just have to act. [Laughs.]

Do you ever “do the shot” before you’re on set? NS: We do go a little beyond the call of duty sometimes. For example, with the operating-room mobile unit, the driver is supposed to be driving fast, being unexpectedly held up for drugs, while there are two doctors in the back, one with his hand in the patient’s abdomen. SFX put airbags under the vehicle. KZ: I don’t like to put actors in a position I wouldn’t put myself in; so I tested out the rig ahead of time. I rode in the back of the truck, standing the way they were going to have to for the scene. They couldn’t wear seat belts, as they were operating and didn’t expect the vehicle to move. I wanted to make sure they knew exactly what was going to happen.

NS: That’s dedication. Kea also put on the 80-pound firefighter’s suit to test how the actors would feel when sprayed with foam for [the VFX] flames. KZ: [Laughs.] Pants, boots, jacket, everything. Boy was that heavy.

We went outside, and I had SFX and real actors hose me down with foam to see what the actors were about to face. NS: I laughed so hard and, of course, had to record it on my phone, trying not to shake. It was hard for Kea to keep standing. KZ: [Smiles.] We now have a lot of respect and sympathy every time our actor-firefighters [and real-life heroes as well] have to put on all that gear.

MASTERS OF THE HOUSE

BY PAULINE ROGERS

“Producer Lila Yacoub has an extreme spoton adeptness for building a very good crew,” says cinematographer Bobby Bukowski. The pair worked on the Jon Stewart–directed indie feature Rosewater (ICG Magazine, November 2014, See No Evil ). “So when we started to talk about Irresistible [the story of a Democratic strategist guiding a seasoned politician’s run for mayor of a small town], she suggested [DGA] Assistant Director Jonas Spaccarotelli. At the time, I’d heard from colleagues that Jonas was on Little Women , and he was doing a bang-up job,” Bukowski shares. What that first-time collaboration was like is explored by both men in our Q&A below.

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You clicked together quickly. Why? Bobby Bukowski: We were both speaking the same language. Jonas immediately began making it clear that the telling of a good story would be of paramount importance. Jonas Spaccarotelli: We had similar approaches in the sense that we both saw the benefit of doing most of our work from our primary locations.

It allowed us to know the spaces. With a 90-minute round-trip to each, we had some pretty great conversations along the way. I specifically remember about an hour focused totally on vintage candy during one drive back to Atlanta. [Laughs].

Do tighter budgets always make for a more challenging set? JS: More or less.

I was always aware of the fact that Bobby’s gear size and resources were limited [on Irresistible]. And with our great cast came many scheduling challenges, and that meant working very closely together. BB: The thing is that Jonas isn’t just a great listener; he also has to keep everything in his head, which is a colossal feat. JS: Communication is everything. We stuck to our overall plan but made sure along the way we were in lockstep with each other, but also moving it down the line to camera, grip, and electric. We also preserved the “open door” approach back and forth, which is always key.

What were some of the surprises in this new relationship? BB: I remember early on having a discussion with Jonas about where he would be during shooting. JS: I’m a believer that the AD should always be right next to the camera. Bobby operated so naturally, that put us right next to each other. BB: At first, I was thrown because many AD’s choose to be at the monitor, beside the director. My ego raised its ugly head, and I feared him breathing down my neck. But that quickly went away. [Laughs.]

Small budget, distant locations, a story that often had to be told linearly. How did you handle it all? BB: Scheduling.

JS: Scheduling. BB: Scheduling! [Both laugh.] JS: I’m a big believer that the creative should lead the schedule whenever possible. We should exhaust all options before saying, “We can’t do this.” With the distance to Rockmart [their set was approximately 90 minutes outside Atlanta] and our overall crew size, we always needed a good plan. BB: We are both huge advocates for consolidating locations close to one another. Miraculously, we were able to own a square block in the old section of the town. JS: Because it was a small town, we were able to own the space for the majority of our time there and kind of

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move through it like a backlot. BB: The way Jonas set it up, it also allowed me to send members of my crew, literally across the street, to pre-light and rig.

“THE A.D. NEEDS H O NEST AND P R ECI SE ES T I MAT ES FR OM THE C I NEMATOGR AP HER .

ONE OF THE BEST THI NGS I GI VE T O AN A D I S T HE ASSUR ANCE THAT WE AR E AL L I N IT TOGETHER AND TH AT NO CHAL L ENGE I S INSUR MOUNTABL E.” BOBBY BUKOWSKI

But even with good scheduling coordination, there must be other challenges to take into consideration.

JS: One of the biggest for us was that the little town grows in population as the politicians and the news machine come into their town. BB: And we needed to shoot this in story order. JS: Which meant Bobby and I had to work carefully together to be very specific with our shot selections – when we did shoot out of order for numerous reasons. BB: Jonas also had to build into the schedule time for the art department to advance the development of the town. It was a complicated puzzle he had to solve, while juggling actor availability, weather, and the time of day I requested to shoot.

JS: But it should be noted here, Bobby was always able to find something interesting, something we hadn’t seen before. BB: Working together, we often went into a day knowing that certain angles on the street or views out certain windows would be offlimits to us. We looked into each other’s eyes and agreed that we would stick to the plan.

Can this type of synchronization broaden your palette in unexpected ways? BB: Definitely. One day on one of our location scouts for the town set, Jonas and I decided to venture out of the center of town and see what was around us. We happily discovered a treasure trove of usable farmsteads. JS: It was just a few extra minutes outside our zone, which is never great because it can be expensive.

We went through the plan to ensure we could get through our days early enough to help pay for the extra expense. It shows the importance of trying to adjust your plan versus compromising creativity.

What’s your biggest takeaway from a good DP/AD partnership? BB: There is no way for a director to feel as unencumbered and creative as possible on a shooting day without a strong collaboration between the 1st AD and cinematographer. The AD needs honest and precise estimates from the cinematographer.

One of the best things I give to an AD is the assurance that we are all in it together and that no challenge is insurmountable JS: When a cinematographer and AD are in sync, we can help protect the environment for the director and cast. Keeping the noise away from the director is important. If the AD and cinematographer are in a healthy flow, it truly sets the stage for a great project without limits – only challenges along the way.

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Safety at Sony Studios is a “one-stop shop,� with production safety part of the S3 department, which handles security, safety and sustainability. There are nine members of the team (located in Culver City, New York City, London, Vancouver and Miami) who support U.S. and international production. These members are drawn from Fire and Law and physical production, and even backlot operations, and all are cross-trained to maintain the highest standards in all areas of safety. These areas include not just the traditional but also the unusual. Just ask Javier Huizar, who has spent the last 11 of his 17 years at Sony in production safety, about his most recent assignments: Venom 2 , For All Mankind , and Coyote (based in Baja, Mexico).

TO PROTECT AND SERVE

BY PAULINE ROGERS

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“ IT IS BEC OMI NG COMMON [FOR STUDI O S A FETY ] TO BE ASKED TO ATT END DI R ECTOR S’ S C O UTS . WH Y LET THE CR EAT I VE FAL L I N L OVE WITH A LO C A TION T HAT I S UNSAFE OR WI L L BE PRO H IBITIVEL Y EXP ENSI VE T O MAKE SAFE? ” JAVIER HUIZAR

What is the process once you are assigned a show? Our initial outreach is with the line producer and UPM. We try to get a general idea of what’s planned for the project, meaning walk and talk, heavy action, special effects or unusual locations, and if any minors are expected to be involved. This allows me to obtain as much information regarding the project as possible next to reading the script, which at times is also available. Then I begin the process of evaluating the project and [have] an opportunity to begin any mitigation processes, for example, training, environmental, or the need to bring in a structural engineer. Also, one of the main items we provide to the production is the Injury and Illness Prevention Program and required health and safety and company-policies information.

had to be engineered to sustain 60-milesper-hour winds. We also had to create an Emergency Action Plan with Production while shooting on the roof. Another project involved burning down a barn, and we shot the interiors on stage involving fire, so approximately 80 crew members were respiratory-fit-tested for full face masks.

What should people understand about the role of the safety coordinator? How much we get involved with every department. There aren’t just stunts or special effects; there’s the environment, construction, training. We try our best to be proactive. During pre-production I coordinate meetings with all departments, introduce myself, and [explain] how Safety is a resource to them. We are one of few remaining studios that provide fall-protection equipment, a harness, lanyards winds, and lightning meters.

But, we assume, even with all the planning… My boss, William Smith, has a great story about spending about a million dollars to make a location safe for a onehour TV drama. The original scene had been shot on a ship – but it was literally gone. The alternate location was an abandoned power plant filled with asbestos and lead. For me, it was on Grown Ups 2, filmed in Massachusetts.

The production built a temporary warehouse out of shipping containers stacked three high and installed a specialized outdoor canopy. The whole plan had to be reviewed and approved by structural engineering in addition to city officials. It had to be large enough to hold a complete house inside, with a backyard pool.

We coordinated with Production to install a lightning-protection system for the structure because of the frequency of lightning strikes on the East Coast. The canopy became our safe assembly area.

And for the more challenging safety concerns? [Laughs.] Like helicopters, actors asking to do their own stunts, bodies of water, car crashes, explosions, and shooting in 35-degree weather? One project was shot in Las Vegas, and one of the sets was required to be on the rooftop of the Wynn Hotel, so everything

What gets your heart racing on a project?

My colleagues will agree with me – whenever a stunt sequence involves the main actor. Or when a large stunt and special-effects scene is planned; of course, that involves our risk management department and insurance broker.

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Why is attending location scouts so important? My boss often says that it’s worth our weight in gold. He wants us to review every location of significance. While the crew looks at shot angles and art direction, we look for safety concerns. Once found, we work with production management or various departments to make it safe. It is so valuable that it is becoming common to be asked to attend directors’ scouts.

Why let the creative fall in love with a location that is unsafe or will be prohibitively expensive to make safe?

What are some important things a production needs to know about safety in advance? Know the health and safety laws wherever you go. Laws vary wildly not only from state to state but also country to country.

Make sure everyone complies with AMPTP Safety Bulletins, which change. Sony has a seat at the table drafting these bulletins. Vetting stunts and special effects is unique. We are not stunt or special-effects professionals, but these processes carry a certain level of risk, and we try to work proactively with stunts and SFX coordinators to make everyone safe, minimize liability, and be an extra set of eyes.

What can people do when a studio safety person isn’t involved? I highly recommend developing a relationship with production supervision, so any questions or concerns can be addressed together. Also, try to reach out to your Local IATSE field representative or business agent. In addition, I find the Local 600 app an excellent resource for safety bulletins, studio safety numbers, IATSE, and ICG Safety Hotline numbers.

TO PROTECT AND SERVE / BY PAULINE ROGERS

“The demand for content, and for increased safety on the set, has never been higher,” says Wiliam Smith, Executive Director Production Safety and Security at Sony Pictures Entertainment. “Yet there are only so many qualified production safety people to go around. As such, not only the major studios, but also mid-level and independent producers are turning to production safety consultants to help fill the staffing void.” Enter a new breed of safety personnel – like 20-year Sony veteran Eric Busch, who comes out of the same rigorous safety-protocol system as our other safety expert profiled this issue, Javier Huizar.

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You were at Sony for 20 years. How has safety evolved? When I started at Sony, safety was the responsibility of each producer, so there was a lot of duplicative training being conducted. The creation of Safety Pass and the expansion of the safety bulletins were evidence of an increase of safety awareness and thus led to the recognition that more safety representatives were needed. This began a slow growth in safety staff with major producers.

Now, with the addition of production for streaming services, the demand is high for production safety personnel. Back in the day, we spent 30 percent of our time training people on the same fall protection, forklift, and other typical safety classes. Industry-wide Safety Pass training freed up time that could be spent on proactive measures. But the industry started to enter into a growth phase, especially throughout the U.S. and internationally. This created an additional need to hire safety professionals in various hubs of production, yet we still could not meet the demand our improved programs and training required.

need to bring on a full-time employee yet can ramp-up to have multiple consultants when needed.

How are independent consultants like yourself changing things? I can only speak for my company, Vigilant EHS (Environment, Health, and Safety). It’s about bringing value to our clients by protecting their most valuable resource – people. Our trained safety personnel can support smaller and mediumsized productions that don’t currently have dedicated production-safety representatives.

Our company, which is not quite a year old, is already supporting projects like Macbeth, Corazon, Swimming with Sharks, and Zeus Season 2. These companies appreciate the flexibility of a safety consultant who can deliver the necessary amount of support to strengthen the development and implementation of their safety program. Safety representatives are tasked to be advocates and resources for the cast and crew – partnering with, encouraging, and protecting them. They straddle the space between crew and management, which ends up also protecting the producers.

What are some of the interesting nonstunt situations you have faced? Last year we had to get 75 crew members to the top of a glacier in snowy and windy conditions. This requires a long lead time for preparation, provisioning and local expertise. Crevasses are dangerous, and a wandering crew member can quickly become a serious safety issue, let alone addressing potential exposure issues with subfreezing weather. We provided warming tents and went through a ton of hand warmers, foot warmers, new clothes, and hot chocolate!

Do independent consultants work differently than studio consultants? We can shift resources across producers to meet their needs. We also can identify, train, and on-board new talent more rapidly. This helps meet demand flexibly, so the producer doesn’t

People often think of safety for large stunts. But there are other considerations.

[Laughs.] Just in the past year, we’ve had some interesting and slightly bizarre assignments.

On one project, the action was for two middle school students to scuffle at lunch. This has implications concerning the requirements for using minor actors. We needed to find a way to get the shot of throwing a punch and falling to the ground in a safe, non-contact manner.

Sometimes we can walk into situations that aren’t necessarily on the expected call sheet.

This industry’s workplace is dynamic, so having a resource on set can be helpful. For instance, when Camera realizes the need to get an operator onto an aircraft’s hydraulic gimbal with the actors, we’re there to strategize a safe way to protect the camera operator and still get the shot. Although, sometimes there just isn’t a way to make it safe.

And as for the stunt part of the trade? On The Tomorrow War, we had 16 stunt actors falling into an elevated pool nearly simultaneously with an underwater operator catching the action. There was a long list of steps to ensure it worked properly, including jump-platform stability, distance from the edge of the pool, proximity to each other, timing, distance from camera, water safety, water quality, pyrotechnics placement, electrical safety, onthe-set edge and slip safety, and more. The crew was fantastic, making adjustments to many of these elements so we could get the shots.

Camera operators used to be up for (and asked to do) almost anything. Some still

are, but Production and Legal won’t accept that anymore. They need to be protected. It might be something as simple as free driving on a road we own, or as complex as multiple helicopters in the air, several people fast-roping down with camera operators and other crew on the ground. This requires excellent communication between pilots, ground coordinators, director, camera, actors – essentially every single person on set. Then providing the correct personal protective equipment (PPE) to shield them from flying debris; minimizing crew; and ensuring they are in a safe location.

What about those shows you wouldn’t think need a consultant? The Morning Show is a great example of how one may think a safety representative is unnecessary, yet shooting in a natural setting, we must ensure flora, fauna, and ponds are evaluated, safety concerns conveyed, and crew protected. We help address street scenes that need careful coordination due to the number of picture cars, background, and crew working near active streets. Or we will help address lead paint, asbestos, and mold issues when shooting in older buildings.

You recently launched another aspect to your business. The industry is stressed to the limit with qualified safety people. But we need to make sure the next generation is protecting and protected in the proper and safest way.

Instead of pulling consultants from existing safety departments, we have chosen to train people who want to do this from the ground up. We are growing the size of the labor pool and bringing more talent to help provide safety on set.

Tell us about that training. Trainees come from various backgrounds – production, safety, and life safety – which is the foundation on which we build. We ensure each consultant goes through a rigorous training regimen before conducting on-the-job training, which includes safety processes, strategy, programs and regulation, fall-protection, fire safety, asbestos, and hazardous materials. A consultant needs to be able to assess risk and apply sound judgment to provide value to the production cast and crew. Ultimately it’s a privilege to help people return home safe after a day on the set, and we want to make sure everyone is fully equipped to make that happen.

“ IT’S A PRIVILEG E TO HEL P P EOP L E R ET UR N HOME SAFE A FTER A D A Y O N TH E SET , AND WE WANT T O MAKE SUR E EVERY O N E IS FULLY EQUI P P ED T O MAKE T HAT HAP P EN.” ERIC BUSCH

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FINISHING TIME / BY PAULINE ROGERS

As digital technology rapidly evolves (having replaced the long-held photochemical colortiming process), the partnership before, during and in the final phases of postproduction between the director of photography and colorist has become supremely important – not just for preserving creative intent on set, but for subsequent versioning in different playback platforms and long-term archival.

For this section, we talked to two creative pairings, starting with Dion Beebe, ASC, ACS, and Marcy Robinson (with Goldcrest Post).

As Beebe recalls about the new challenges confronting filmmakers: “I remember Ang Lee standing before our assembled team on the eve of Gemini Man , an epic journey to be shot at 120 frames per second, in 3D and finished to 4K resolution, saying, ‘We are not good enough for this format. This is just a simple fact.’” Undeterred, Beebe and Robinson forged a new path to bring Gemini Man to life. They were challenged by an image count of some 1.8 million frames, without being in the same room through much of the process.

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ICG: You both call Gemini Man “a lesson in filmmaking, every day.” Why? Dion Beebe: During shooting, we faced daily challenges.

This did not change as we finally headed into the DI suite. We had a custom-built room that could have been mistaken for a cloud storage facility. It was a lot of cutting-edge technology that was constantly pushed to the limit to deliver the results Ang wanted. It was a grind I understood, having pushed through months of it during production, and something Marcy previously had to navigate on Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk. Marcy Robinson: The technical glitches and hurdles of the combination of high frame rate and 3D made the whole process at times ridiculously cumbersome and therefore very different than how a colorist and DP would normally be working.

Although rarely together in the same room, you built a strong relationship. DB: I traveled to New York three times over 12 weeks so we could work together, usually for a week at a time. MR: The week we spent early on in the process of preliminary work together to set looks before the DI’s official start was helpful, albeit slow-going. But soon after that, a decision was made to change our primary colorspace and workflow, which made much of that work obsolete. DB: But any time spent in the room with Marcy was useful. Looking at the movie and talking about mood and tone is an essential part of the process. MR: Dion did come back during the official DI. But we blew a couple of days with power outages and other technical problems. [Laughs.] So, we were able to work together for about half the time we had expected. DB: It often did feel like one step forward and two steps back. MR: But we did get a few naps in. [Smiles.]

Was the different color space the biggest challenge? DB: Actually, one of the key differences was not regarding color but rather the brightness of the stereo laser projectors and, of course, the higher frame rate. I

remember how bummed we were to have to make that compromise. Still, the reality was that our DI suite and projection was technically way ahead of every other commercial theater.

MR: We essentially switched to grading in something much closer to HDR for our primary theatrical grade.

Tell us more about the day-to-day challenges. MR: We’d have to cache/render after every change, so we couldn’t play back the work while working on it. We’d have to wait until hours later or the next day, and then by making any single, minor change, we’d have to repeat that process again and again. It was often difficult to get any real flow going, or even much work done, when we couldn’t simply look at a playback. It was the equivalent of working on stills. DB: Focusing on key frames within a scene became the best way forward. This sounds simple, but it’s a tough discipline as shots all relate to one another, and the color in one frame often informs the color in the next frame. One of our toughest sequences had to be the confrontation between Henry and Junior in the catacombs. The scene played out in near-total darkness with key light being motivated at different times by flashlight and then a handheld flare. They travel through a network of tunnels and caves, eventually ending underwater in a vaulted cistern. What we found was that when the shadows went too dark, you lost any sense of the 3D. Establishing a black level that felt ambient, but still had depth and detail, was very challenging. Creating an environment that has no light is hard in any format – at 120 frames per second, and in 3D, it was enormously demanding.

And you had eight separate versions to grade? DB: Well, our primary focus was what Ang called the “whole shebang”: 120 frames per second, 3D and 4K. Most of our time was spent working on delivering this.

Most theaters are not equipped to run 120

frames per second and tend to max out at 60 frames per second/2K. So, our next priority was 60 frames per second/3D/2K. With what little time I had left in New York, we also took a look at 24 frames per second/2D/2K, which is the current standard for 2D delivery in most theaters. Beyond that, I had to leave Marcy to deal with the multiple other versions required.

MR: The eight versions of the film included 2D, 3D, different brightness versions of each, Dolby Cinema, and home-video passes, not to mention all the frame rate conversions after our work was finished. We’d forever be trying to get back to “the whole shebang,” but it’d be after what felt like someone had come into our room, turned the lights out, and given us the finger – when projector brightness went from 28 foot-lamberts to like four.

What were the biggest takeaways from this partnership? DB: Undertaking such technically demanding work means being completely reliant on the team around you.

The technical hurdles were not a surprise but rather an expectation. What I love about it is the ability to come together and solve the problems. Marcy stood her ground and worked through the problems. We had an amazing support team, and in the end, it was a bold undertaking that pushed the conversation forward as to where we see the theater experience going. This project was not a small step into new technology but a giant leap, and there’s still much to learn. MR: It was about the team, which was so outstanding. I was perpetually in awe of them. Behind all the technology was tons of grit, care, brains, and humanity. And Ang’s overriding brilliance and passion was leading every scenario. He was with us the whole time in the DI, either physically or otherwise, and we were always working to carry his vision forward. Ang’s integrity, remarkable clarity, steadiness and consistency were always present, and our amazing team was a beautiful extension of his character.

“ WH A T WE FOUND WAS T HAT WHEN T HE S H A D O WS WENT TOO DAR K, YOU L OST ANY S ENS E O F TH E 3D. ESTABL I SHI NG A BL ACK LEVEL TH A T FEL T AMBI ENT , BUT ST I L L HAD D EPTH A ND D ET AI L , WAS VER Y CHAL L ENGI NG.” DION BEBEE, ASC, ACS

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FINISHING TIME

BY PAULINE ROGERS

Colorist Pankaj Bajpai, with Technicolor LA, is no stranger to the challenges of finishing high-end episodic work.

He’s helmed everything from Netflix’s Emmy-winning drama House of Cards to HBO’s True Detective to AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead . For the past three years, he’s joined forces with Local Director of Photography James Muro on what they both feel is one of the most challenging and unique TV projects to date – CBS’s SEAL Team , which completed its third season this past Spring.

THE IN TERVIEW I S S UE

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manner. Of course, for the speed at which Jimmy has to shoot, especially outdoor scenes in daylight, I have to make every tool available for him when I get the images. Oftentimes the fun of it lies in the challenge.

“ J I M M Y A N D I C A ME UP WIT H T HE I DEA OF L U T ’ S T H A T A RE TH E EQUIVA LENT OF FI L TER S. T H E Y C A N BE US ED D IG ITA LL Y I N CAMER A T O H EL P ES TA BLIS H TH E D IS T I NCTI VE L OOK O F S C EN E S WITH O UT BA KIN G THEM I NTO T HE O RIG INA L C A MERA FI L ES.” PANKAJ BAJPAI

ICG: What makes this show so challenging?

James Muro: It’s high-energy drama, with stories taking place all over the world. That means different looks, but with the need to finish out so everything meshes. Pankaj Bajpai: It constantly amazes me how much Jimmy gets done in the short time frame of shooting an episodic show. There are huge scenes involving pyro, tanks, artillery, and so much action, and his team still magically makes its days. As a colorist, I believe it’s both my challenge and a privilege to help unify it all in the best possible way and remain faithful to the original creative intent. The production value on screen is enormous. JM: We are forced to cram a lot in; if we didn’t, we would be doing a disservice to the veterans. Everything we do is meant to be inside the lives of the folks who serve in the military.

One challenge is the mixing of cameras

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and codecs. JM: Our main camera is the RED GEMINI. Still, we often have Sony A7’s, MOHOC (military cameras hacked to do 24p), GoPros, even DJI Osmo Pocket (custom mounted to the SEALs’ M-14 rifles). That’s a lot for Pankaj to embrace in the final color grade. PB: I like that we can work natively with RED R3D files, taking full advantage of GEMINI’s dynamic range. It’s incredibly important to have that flexibility when Jimmy is shooting the amount he does, in eight days, and it needs to come together in a seamless way. JM: Still, so many different cameras must be a challenge in post.

PB: Honestly, it doesn’t faze me. Over time we have developed an approach for each camera, which allows me to convert the images into a common color working space. After that, I have a classic method of using printer lights as if grading for a film print and then finessing further using advanced digital techniques to bring everything together in an organic

And you’ve developed a film language that you can apply to different episodes. JM: We run with three distinct LUT’s – cool blueish, desert warm, and a base normal. We’ve got to tell viewers we’re in different parts of the world, as well as North America. For example, Estonia, the name for blue, came from an episode we went very blue on for the Eastern Bloc in season one. PB: Jimmy and I came up with the idea of LUT’s that are the equivalent of filters. They can be used digitally in camera to help establish the distinctive look of scenes without baking them into the original camera files. Since these LUT’s are digital files, we are able to carry them accurately as metadata throughout the dailies and visual-effects processes. When grading, I am always sourcing his raw originals and have the ability to separately apply or blend those LUT’s with other grading tools.

Season 3 seemed to raise the stakes for both of you. JM: We have gone on some very distant and challenging locations. We did a European trip to start season three, and there was not a lot to hide, as the environment is real.

The headroom gets higher, shots get wider, and the scope gets more expansive. When I handed it off, Pankaj did a great job creating that foreign environment. PB: We spent some time together before Jimmy left. Our conversations were... brief. I love it that he lives in a creative world, but sometimes, when he communicates in these expressions, it takes getting used to.

[Laughs.] JM: [Laughs.] Like, “If the fur ain’t flying…you ain’t doing nothing.” PB: A few days later, when we got together, I had come up with five crayons that I thought would work. JM: Right. We weren’t working with “in camera” LUT’s then. Pankaj helped me get the intent baked-in sooner.

The intensity seen in domestic locations was also elevated, like for one memorable battle scene. JM: That was scripted and meant to be shot at night. We loved the mood as we set it up. We went with our cool LUT, my choice for mood, highest contrast setting. Most of the stuff at this military base was the warm desert look.

Pankaj had a chance to change this up back to the desert look. It is my understanding that when the showrunner saw the final color pass, he had enjoyed the look from dailies enough that we reversed it back, correct? PB: This is exactly the kind of interactive flexibility that allows Jimmy and me to try other ideas. That, to me, is the essence of our creative collaboration.

To start from a solid, well-thought place, and then to go outside of it boldly for creative fun, even if we end up exactly where we started.

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PRODUCTION CREDITS COMPILED BY TERESA MUĂ‘OZ 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 that the deadline for the Production Credits is on the first of the preceding cover month (excluding weekends & holidays).

Submit your jobs online by visiting: www.icg600.com/MY600/Report-Your-Job Any questions regarding the Production Credits should be addressed to Teresa MuĂąoz at teresa@icgmagazine.com 130

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First Man / Photo by Daniel McFadden

Still Photographers, Publicists, Additional Units, etc.). Please note

20TH CENTURY FOX “911” SEASON 3

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ABC STUDIOS

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“NEXT” SEASON 1

“JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE!” SEASON 18

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LIGHTING DIRECTOR: CHRISTIAN HIBBARD OPERATORS: GREG GROUWINKEL, PARKER BARTLETT, GARRETT HURT, MARK GONZALES STEADICAM OPERATOR: KRIS WILSON JIB OPERATORS: MARC HUNTER, RANDY GOMEZ, JR., NICK GOMEZ CAMERA UTILITIES: CHARLES FERNANDEZ, SCOTT SPIEGEL, TRAVIS WILSON, DAVID FERNANDEZ, ADAM BARKER VIDEO CONTROLLER: GUY JONES STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: KAREN NEAL, MICHAEL DESMOND 2ND UNIT DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: BERND REINBARDT, STEVE GARRETT

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“STUMPTOWN” SEASON 1 DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: CLARK MATHIS, MAGNI AGUSTSSON OPERATORS: BUD KREMP, PHIL MASTRELLA

ASSISTANTS: JUSTIN WATSON, SHANE CARLSON, GAYLE HILARY, JESSYCA MARILYN CARACCI LOADER: DYLAN NEAL CAMERA UTILITY: CHRIS SHADLEY STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: CAROL KAELSON

ADOBE PICTURES, INC.

“PROJECT ICE CREAM AKA MATRIX 4” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JOHN TOLL, ASC AERIAL DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DYLAN GOSS OPERATORS: DANIELE MASSACCESI, MICK FROEHLICH, GEORGE BILLINGER ASSISTANTS: CHAD RIVETTI, MATT GAUMER, PATRICK MCARDLE, HENRY NGUYEN, TIM GUFFIN, SHANNON BRINGHAM, SYDNEY COX DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: ETHAN PHILLIPS LOADER: NATHAN MIELKE DIGITAL UTILITIES: AUSTIN PEDRONI, ROBBIE JULIAN PURSUIT HEAD TECH: PETER TOMMASI STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: MURRAY CLOSE PUBLICIST: FRANCES FIORE

AFN PRODUCTIONS-TELEPICTURES “THE REAL” SEASON 6

LIGHTING DIRECTOR: EARL WOODY, LD OPERATORS: KEVIN MICHEL, NATE PAYTON, STEVE RUSSELL, CHRIS WILLIAMS STEADICAM OPERATOR: WILL DEMERITT CAMERA UTILITIES: HENRY VEREEN, SALVATORE BELLISSIMO, ANDRES VELASQUEZ, JR. JIB ARM OPERATOR: JIM CIRRITO VIDEO CONTROLLER: JEFF MESSENGER

A VERY GOOD PRODUCTION, INC. & WAD PRODUCTIONS

“THE ELLEN DEGENERES SHOW” SEASON 17 LIGHTING DIRECTOR: TOM BECK PED OPERATORS: DAVID WEEKS, PAUL WILEMAN, TIM O’NEILL HANDHELD OPERATOR: CHIP FRASER JIB OPERATOR: DAVID RHEA STEADICAM OPERATOR: DONOVAN GILBUENA VIDEO CONTROLLER: JAMES MORAN HEAD UTILITY: CRAIG “ZZO” MARAZZO UTILITIES: ARLO GILBUENA, WALLY LANCASTER, DIEGO AVALOS

BEACHWOOD SERVICES

“DAYS OF OUR LIVES” SEASON 54 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: VINCE STEIB OPERATORS: MARK WARSHAW, VICKIE WALKER, MICHAEL J. DENTON, STEVE CLARK CAMERA UTILITIES: STEVE BAGDADI, GARY CYPHER VIDEO CONTROLLER: ALEXIS DELLAR HANSON

“THE GOLDBERGS” SEASON 7 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JASON BLOUNT OPERATORS: SCOTT BROWNER, NATE HAVENS ASSISTANTS: TRACY DAVEY, GARY WEBSTER, JENNIFER BELL PRICE, MICHELLE BAKER DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: KEVIN MILLS LOADER: DILSHAN HERATH STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: LISA ROSE

BIG INDIE BELLEVILLE, INC. “MASTER”

OPERATOR: DEVON CATUCCI ASSISTANTS: BENYOMIN SPANER, BRIANNA MORRISON LOADER: KATHERINE RIVERA STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: EMILY ARAGONES, JOJO WHILDEN

JUNE/JULY 2020 PRODUCTION CREDITS

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BOARDWALK PICTURES

“LAST CHANCE U-BASKETBALL” SEASON 1 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: TERRY ZUMALT OPERATORS: DEVON HOFF-WEEKES, DAVID NEWTON ASSISTANTS: DEVIN KEEBLER, ETHAN SERLING DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JOSH GREYTAK

CBS

“BULL” SEASON 4 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DERICK UNDERSCHULTZ OPERATORS: BARNABY SHAPIRO, MALCOLM PURNELL ASSISTANTS: ROMAN LUKIW, SOREN NASH, MICHAEL LOBB, TREVOR WOLFSON DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: THOMAS WONG LOADERS: QUINN MURPHY, NIALANEY RODRIGUEZ

“ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT” SEASON 39

LIGHTING DESIGNER: DARREN LANGER DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: KURT BRAUN OPERATORS: JAMES B. PATRICK, ALLEN VOSS, ED SARTORI, HENRY ZINMAN, BOB CAMPI, RODNEY MCMAHON, ANTHONY SALERNO JIB OPERATOR: JAIMIE CANTRELL CAMERA UTILITY: TERRY AHERN VIDEO CONTROLLERS: MIKE DOYLE, PETER STENDAL

“NCIS” SEASON 17 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: WILLIAM WEBB, ASC OPERATORS: GREGORY PAUL COLLIER, CHAD ERICKSON, DOUG FROEBE (VIDEO) ASSISTANTS: JAMES TROOST, HELEN TADESSE, NATHAN LOPEZ, YUSEF EDMONDS LOADER: ANNA FERRARIE STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: MIKE KUBEISY

“NCIS: LOS ANGELES” SEASON 11 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: VICTOR HAMMER OPERATORS: TERENCE NIGHTINGALL, TIM BEAVERS ASSISTANTS: KEITH BANKS, RICHIE HUGHES, PETER CARONIA, JACQUELINE NIVENS STEADICAM OPERATORS: TERENCE NIGHTINGALL, TIM BEAVERS STEADICAM ASSISTANTS: KEITH BANKS, RICHIE HUGHES DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JOHN MILLS DIGITAL UTILITY: CAROLINE MILLS STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: RON JAFFE PUBLICIST: KATHLEEN TANJI

“SEAL TEAM” SEASON 3 DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: J. MICHAEL MURO, ALAN JACOBY OPERATORS: DOMINIC BARTOLONE, MATT VALENTINE ASSISTANTS: TODD AVERY, ANDREW DEGNAN, ARTURO ROJAS, RYAN JACKSON STEADICAM OPERATOR: DOMINIC BARTOLONE STEADICAM ASSISTANT: TODD AVERY DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: RAUL RIVEROS LOADER: NOAH MURO STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: CAROL KAELSON, RON JAFFE

“THE GOOD FIGHT” SEASON 4 DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: FRED MURPHY, ASC, PETR HLINOMAZ, TIM GUINNESS OPERATORS: ALEC JARNAGIN, PETER NOLAN ASSISTANTS: RENE CROUT, DANIEL FIORITO, ELIZABETH HEDGES, JULIA LEACH, EMILY DEBLASI STEADICAM OPERATOR: ALEC JARNAGIN LOADERS: SANCHEEV RAVICHANDRAN, BRIAN CARDENAS

“THE TALK” SEASON 10 LIGHTING DIRECTOR: MARISA DAVIS

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JUNE/JULY 2020 PRODUCTION CREDITS

PED OPERATORS: ART TAYLOR, MARK GONZALES, ED STAEBLER HANDHELD OPERATORS: RON BARNES, KEVIN MICHEL, JEFF JOHNSON JIB OPERATOR: RANDY GOMEZ HEAD UTILITY: CHARLES FERNANDEZ UTILITIES: MIKE BUSHNER, DOUG BAIN, DEAN FRIZZEL, BILL GREINER, JON ZUCCARO VIDEO CONTROLLER: RICHARD STROCK STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: RON JAFFE

CETERI, LLC

“UNTITLED KINBERG WEIL SERIES AKA RAY JAMES” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: TIMOTHY IVES OPERATORS: MARK SCHMIDT, WYLDA BAYRON ASSISTANTS: ADRIANA BRUNETTO-LIPMAN, ROSSANA RIZZO, AMBER ROSALES, MIKE SWEARINGEN DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: J. ERIC CAMP LOADER: BRITTANY JELINSKI STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: MACALL POLAY

CINE CONDADO ENTERTAINMENT, LLC “EL PROFESOR AKA SIMONE”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: SONNEL VELAZQUEZ OPERATOR: EDUARDO MARIOTA ASSISTANTS: CARLOS GARCIA, LIZZ DIAZ, ERNESTO GOMEZ LOADER: NESTOR CESTERO STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: LAURA MAGRUDER

CMS PRODUCTIONS, INC. “WEREWOLVES WITHIN”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MATTHEW WISE OPERATOR: JASON THOMPSON ASSISTANTS: JUSTIN WHITACRE, JOSHUA WATERMAN STEADICAM OPERATOR: PETE KEELING DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: BRANDON KELLEY STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: SABRINA LANTOS

CRANETOWN MEDIA, LLC “LEGENDARY” SEASON 1

OPERATORS: CHRISTOPHER PIAZZA, MARC BLOOMGARDEN, MICHAEL CIMINO, CLINTON CHILDERS, MARTIN HOFFMAN, MATTHEW MURO, NATHAN LYNCH, JASON MASON, ROBERT DAVIDSON, ROBERT AUMER ASSISTANTS: ZACH SOLOMON, EDWIN SHIMKO, MARK WESTON, ERIC LICHTENSTEIN, OMAR GUINIER, JOHN HENEGHAN CAMERA UTILITIES: JAMES GOLDSMITH, KEVIN WHITE, JONATHAN SCHAMANN, EDWARD LAVIN, RYAN GOLDSMITH, SEAN BOWLES, SR., PETER GEOGHEGAN

DISNEY/FOX 21

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EYE PRODUCTIONS, INC.

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GEOFFREY FROST ASSISTANTS: GRAHAM BURT, JACOB STAHLMAN, MARTIN PETERSON, KENNETH MARTELL DIGITAL IMAGING TECHS: RYAN HEIDE, STEVE CALALANG LOADERS: MICHAEL FULLER, JOHN KEELER STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: CRAIG BLANKENHORN, PATRICK HARBRON

“DYNASTY” SEASON 3 DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: STAR BARRY, ROGER CHINGIRIAN OPERATORS: BRETT MAYFIELD, BROWN COOPER ASSISTANTS: COLIN DURAN, RYAN ABRAMS, ALEXA ROMERO STEADICAM OPERATOR: BRETT MAYFIELD STEADICAM ASSISTANT: COLIN DURAN DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: ERIC HENSON DIGITAL UTILITY: JIMARI JONES

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“SWAGGER” SEASON 1 DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: RODNEY TAYLOR, ASC CLIFFORD CHARLES OPERATORS: KERWIN DEVONISH, GARY HATFIELD ASSISTANTS: CHRISTOPHER GLEATON, NICHOLAS HAHN, ZAKIYA LUCAS-MURRAY, DERRICK DAWKINS LOADERS: BRITTANY WILSON, XAVIER VENOSTA STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: PATRICK HARBRON, FRANK MCPARTLAND, ANTONY PLATT

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FOX21

“THE CHI” SEASON 3 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JESSE M. FELDMAN OPERATORS: DAVE SAMMONS, JORDAN KESLOW ASSISTANTS: KATHRYN MOSS, RACHEL DONOFRIE, BRIAN KILBORN, J’MME IHMAD LOVE STEADICAM OPERATOR: JORDAN KESLOW LOADER: JJ LITTLEFELD DIGITAL UTILITIES: RODERICK REED, RICHIE COLMAN STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: ELIZABETH MORRIS, PARRISH LEWIS

FUQUA FILMS

“THE RESIDENT” SEASON 3 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: BART TAU OPERATORS: MATT DOLL, ANDY FISHER, CHRISTIAN SATRAZEMIS ASSISTANTS: JUSTIN DEGUIRE, TAYLOR CASE, APRIL RUANE CROWLEY, MIKE FISHER, JENNIFER RANKINE, GRACE PRELLER CHAMBERS

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GHOST PRODUCTIONS, INC. “GHOST” SEASON 1

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GIMME DAT MONEY, LLC

GWAVE PRODUCTIONS, LLC

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: BRIAN CONNOLLY OPERATORS: DANIEL CARP, MANNY GUTIERREZ, SR., MARK SPARROUGH, ERIK LUNDELL ASSISTANT: MATT ALBANO CAMERA UTILITIES: JONATHAN SCHAMANN, CHARLES KEMPF STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: GREG ENDRIES

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“DESUS & MERO” SEASON 2

“SULPHUR SPRINGS” SEASON 1

HORIZON SCRIPTED TELEVISION, INC. GLITTER PRODUCTIONS, LLC “G.L.O.W.” SEASON 4

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JEFF WALDRON OPERATORS: ROSS COSCIA, SARAH LEVY ASSISTANTS: MELISSA FISHER, SARA INGRAM, JOHN RONEY, LAURA DIFIGLIO DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: PETER BRUNET DIGITAL UTILITY: BROOKE ZBYTNIEWSKI STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: ALI GOLDSTEIN

GRACE AND FRANKIE PRODUCTIONS, LLC “GRACE AND FRANKIE” SEASON 7

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: GALE TATTERSALL OPERATORS: CRAIG COCKERILL, TONY GUTIERREZ ASSISTANTS: DAN SCHROER, NAOMI VILLANUEVA, DAN URBAIN, RENEE TREYBALL STEADICAM OPERATOR: CRAIG COCKERILL STEADICAM ASSISTANT: DAN SCHROER LOADER: NICOLA CARUSO STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: SAEED ADYANI

“ANIMAL KINGDOM” SEASON 5

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: LOREN YACONELLI OPERATORS: SCOTT DROPKIN, BROOKS ROBINSON ASSISTANTS: DAVE EGERSTROM, PATRICK BENSIMMON, ERIC GUTHRIE, CRISTY ARBOLEDA STEADICAM OPERATOR: SCOTT DROPKIN STEADICAM ASSISTANT: DAVE EGERSTROM DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JEFFERSON FUGITT DIGITAL UTILITY: GOBE HIRATA STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: EDDY CHEN

“THE FLIGHT ATTENDANT” SEASON 1 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: BRIAN BURGOYNE OPERATORS: ARI ISSLER, ROD CALARCO ASSISTANTS: JEROME WILLIAMS, ALEXANDER WORSTER, CAMERON SIZEMORE, ALEX DUBOIS LOADERS: AMANDA URIBE, JAKOB FRIEMAN

JUNE/JULY 2020 PRODUCTION CREDITS

133

®

20,000W Output

2-15AMP Circuits

mole.com/20k-led

KANAN PRODUCTIONS, INC. “RAISING KANAN”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DAVID FRANCO OPERATORS: FRANCIS SPIELDENNER, KATE LAROSE ASSISTANTS: TONY COAN, MARK FERGUSON, BRENDAN RUSSELL, GREGORY PACE DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: BJORN JACKSON LOADERS: KEITH ANDERSON, JESSICA CELE-NAZARIO STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: NICOLE RIVELLI

MAGIC WAND PRODUCTIONS, INC. “GODMOTHERED AKA FRILLS”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: CHRISTOPHER NORR OPERATORS: ALAN PIERCE, GERARD SAVA ASSISTANTS: ETHAN BORSUK, JAMES SCHLITTENHART, JASON BRIGNOLA, M.D. EGAN DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: NICK PASQUARIELLO LOADER: AUDRY STEVENS DIGITAL UTILITY: ANNE ABBRUZZESE STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: KC BAILEY

MESQUITE PRODUCTIONS

“FOR ALL MANKIND” SEASON 2 DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: STEPHEN MCNUTT, ROSS BERRYMAN OPERATORS: TIM SPENCER, MIKE MCEVEETY ASSISTANTS: STEPHEN PAZANTI, JORGE PALLARES, DARIN KRASK, ARTHUR ZAJAC STEADICAM OPERATOR: TIM SPENCER DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: MIKE DEGRAZZIO DIGITAL UTILITY: ROBERT RUELAS STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: JONNY COURNOYER

NBC

“BROOKLYN NINE-NINE” SEASON 7 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: RICK PAGE OPERATORS: PHIL MASTRELLA, LAUREN GADD, JOEL TALLBUT ASSISTANTS: JAY LEVY, BILL GERARDO, DUSTIN MILLER, WILLIAM SCHMIDT, CHRIS CARLSON LOADER: NICK GILBERT DIGITAL UTILITY: KURT LEVY STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: JOHN P. FLEENOR

134

JUNE/JULY 2020 PRODUCTION CREDITS

“CHICAGO MED” SEASON 5 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: LEX DUPONT, ASC OPERATORS: FAIRES ANDERSON SEKIYA, JOE TOLITANO, BENJAMIN SPEK ASSISTANTS: GEORGE OLSON, KEITH HUEFFMEIER, SAM KNAPP, LAURA DIFIGLIO, PATRICK DOOLEY, JOEY RICHARDSON STEADICAM OPERATOR: FAIRES ANDERSON SEKIYA LOADER: MATTHEW BROWN UTILITY: EMMANUEL BANSA STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: ELIZABETH SISSON

OPERATORS: JULIAN DELACRUZ, SCOTT TINSLEY ASSISTANTS: PEDRO CORCEGA, JAMES MADRID, MATTHEW MONTALTO, ROBERT WRASE LOADERS: JEFFREY MAKARAUSKAS, ANABEL CAICEDO

“SUPERSTORE” SEASON 5 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JAY HUNTER OPERATORS: ADAM TASH, DANNY NICHOLS, MIGUEL PASK ASSISTANTS: JASON ZAKRZEWSKI, BRANDON MARGULIES, ERIC JENKINSON, RYAN SULLIVAN, ESTA GARCIA, RIKKI ALARIAN JONES LOADER: GRACE THOMAS

“CHICAGO PD” SEASON 7 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JAMES ZUCAL OPERATORS: VICTOR MACIAS, DARRYL MILLER, SETH THOMAS ASSISTANTS: JOHN YOUNG, JAMISON ACKER, DON CARLSON, KYLE BELOUSEK, DAVID WIGHTMAN, NICK WILSON STEADICAM OPERATOR: VICTOR MACIAS LOADER: MARION TUCKER DIGITAL UTILITIES: CHRIS POLMANSKI, STEVE CLAY

“UNTITLED TRACY OLIVER PROJECT” SEASON 1

“F.B.I.” SEASON 2

NETFLIX PRODUCTIONS, LLC

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: TARI SEGAL OPERATORS: AFTON GRANT, CHARLES ANDERSON ASSISTANTS: LEE VICKERY, NIKNAZ TAVAKOLIAN, GEORGE LOOKSHIRE, YURI INOUE STEADICAM OPERATOR: AFTON GRANT LOADERS: CONNOR LYNCH, NKEM UMENYI STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: MICHAEL PARMELEE, ELIZABETH FISHER, MARK SCHAFER

“GOOD GIRLS” SEASON 3 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JASON OLDAK OPERATORS: GARY CAMP, BRIAN OUTLAND, NICOLE LOBELL ASSISTANTS: JOHN RUIZ, JASON KNOLL, PATRICK BLANCHET, ROBYN BUCHANAN, EM GONZALES, CARTER SMITH STEADICAM OPERATOR: GARY CAMP STEADICAM ASSISTANT: JOHN RUIZ LOADER: MATT SCHOUTEN DIGITAL UTILITY: JONNIE MENTZER

“NEW AMSTERDAM” SEASON 2 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ANDREW VOEGELI

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MATT EDWARDS OPERATORS: MATT FLEISCHMANN, CAITLIN MACHAK ASSISTANTS: BLAKE ALCANTARA, VANESSA MORRISON, JORGE DEL TORO, DERRICK DAWKINS DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: GUILLERMO TUNON LOADERS: CHRISTINASE CARMODY, DAVID DIAZ STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: SARAH SHATZ

“THE BABYSITTER 2”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: SCOTT HENRICKSEN OPERATOR: CHRIS MOSELEY ASSISTANTS: DENNIS LYNCH, JAY HARDIE DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: LANCE HASHIDA LOADER: CHRIS HOSEY 2ND UNIT DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JOHN PINGRY ASSISTANTS: SCOTT KASSENOFF, MIKE GRATZMILLER UNDERWATER UNIT DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DAVID WILLIAM MCDONALD ASSISTANT: COREY BRINGAS

“BECOMING HALSTON” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: WILL REXER, II OPERATORS: OLIVER CARY, GREGOR TAVENNER ASSISTANTS: JOHN OLIVERI, CORY STAMBLER, MARC LOFORTE, ALEC NICKEL DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: ANTHONY HECHANOVA LOADERS: AMBER MATHES, NAIMA NOGUERA STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: JOJO WHILDEN, EMILY ARAGONES

New wireless FIZ system

USD 7 995 Introduction package with one motor Lens mapping Manual override Lens saver 1600ft Range 1.5 lb with battery

US distributor: www.bolddistribution.us HedenGroupAB “THE CREW” SEASON 1 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: BILL BERNER OPERATORS: ALAIN ONESTO, MARK RENAUDIN, MIGUEL ARMSTRONG, JIMMY O’DONNELL ASSISTANTS: JASON KNOBLOCH, KYLE GORJANC DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: DAVE SATIN LOADER: SHAUN JOYE CAMERA UTILITIES: JAMES ABAMONT, ANTHONY BENEDETTI STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: ERIC LIEBOWITZ

“COUNTRY COMFORT” SEASON 1 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: GEORGE MOORADIAN, ASC OPERATORS: RON HIRSHMAN, RANDY BAER, DAVE DECHANT, ELI FRANKS, MICHELLE CRENSHAW, HELENA JACKSON JIB OPERATOR: MICHAEL JAROCKI ASSISTANT: CONNOR HECK DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: ELENA GOMEZ CAMERA UTILITY: KATE STEINHEBEL DIGITAL UTILITY: ERINN BELL TECHNOJIB OPERATOR: ELI FRANKS VIDEO CONTROLLER: RICK DUNGAN

NKZ PRODUCTIONS, INC.

“THE BACHELOR” SEASON 24 DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DENNIS WEILER, CHAD GRIEPENTROG, ANDRE MARTINEZ OPERATORS: DOUG HENNING, MARK JUNGJOHANN, IVAN DURAN, MARTIN MOURINO, TIM STAHL, ANDREW RAKOW, EZRA EPWELL, NICK TULLY, ERICA SHUSHA, JEREMY GUY, SUZIE WEIS

hedengroup ASSISTANTS: YOGI NEELY, TYLER DETARSIO, DAVE OSTERBERG, THOR FRIDLEIFSSON, NICK MILLER, JAY STRAMM, JEN CHMIELEWSKI, TAYLOR GILMARTIN CAMERA UTILITIES: APPLE SCHLOSSER, MICHAEL WILLIAMSON JIB OPERATOR: RANDY GOMEZ, JR. VIDEO CONTROLLERS: RICHARD STROCK, MARC SURETTE

OUTLAW JB, LLC

“THE OUTLAW JOHNNY BLACK” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: KEITH L. SMITH OPERATORS: CHRIS WALLING, SAM LAW ASSISTANTS: STEPHEN BRANAGAN, ISAAC DOWELL, JONATHAN MEDINA STEADICAM OPERATOR: SAM LAW

OLIVE AVENUE PRODUCTIONS, LLC “DOOM PATROL” SEASON 2

DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: SCOTT WINING, SCOTT PECK OPERATORS: TIM FABRIZIO, RYAN WEISEN ASSISTANTS: JOSH HANCHER, CRISTIAN TROVA, KYLER DENNIS, MIKE FISHER STEADICAM OPERATOR: TIM FABRIZIO STEADICAM ASSISTANT: JOSH HANCHER DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JOE ELROM LOADER: NICK YOUNG DIGITAL UTILITY: ALESSANDRA MACI

www.heden.se PACIFIC 2.1 ENTERTAINMENT GROUP, INC. “POSE” SEASON 3

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ANDREI BOWDEN SCHWARTZ OPERATORS: AIKEN WEISS, AILEEN TAYLOR ASSISTANTS: DAMON LEMAY, BAYLEY SWEITZER, KRISTINA LALLY, RACHEL FEDORKOVA LOADERS: RAUL MARTINEZ, STARLENE SOLER

“THE POLITICIAN” SEASON 2 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: TIMOTHY NORMAN OPERATORS: MATTHEW PEBLER, JENNIE JEDDRY ASSISTANTS: MICHAEL BURKE, ANDREW JUHL, VINCENT TUTHS, ADAM DEREZENDES DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: LUKE TAYLOR LOADERS: MICHAEL POMORSKI, SYDNEY BALLESTEROS STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: JOHN LOPEZ, GIOVANNI RUFINO, NICOLE RIVELLI, DAVID LEE

PARAMOUNT

“BOOMERANG” SEASON 2 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DAVID MORRISON OPERATORS: BRANDON THOMPSON, SIDARTH KANTAMNENI ASSISTANTS: AUSTIN LEWIS, ALEX HOOPER, OREN MALIK STEADICAM OPERATOR: BRANDON THOMPSON STEADICAM ASSISTANT: AUSTIN LEWIS DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JAZZ PIERCE DIGITAL UTILITY: TRENT WALKER STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: CURTIS BAKER

JUNE/JULY 2020 PRODUCTION CREDITS

135

“MADE FOR LOVE” SEASON 1 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: NATE GOODMAN OPERATORS: PETER MERCURIO, RON BALDWIN ASSISTANTS: MATTHEW KING, JOJO SUTERA, HEATHER LEA-LEROY, NINA PORTILLO DIGITAL IMGAGING TECH: MICHAEL BORENSTEIN STILL PHOTOGRAPER: JOHN JOHNSON

“STATION ELEVEN” SEASON 1 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: CHRISTIAN SPRENGER OPERATORS: BRIAN FREESH, BLAINE BAKER ASSISTANTS: LIAM SINNOTT, RON RUANPHAE, JASON BONNER, ELAISA VARGAS DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: CHRIS HOYLE DIGITAL UTILITY: LITONG ZHEN STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: PARRISH LEWIS

POPCOM, LLC/MTV STUDIOS “THREE MONTHS”

OPERATOR: BRUCE CHEUNG ASSISTANTS: JESSICA HERSHATTER, IAN CAMPBELL, KEVIN WILSON, ZAK NORTON DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JONNY REVOLT STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: RICHARD BAKER PUBLICIST: DEBORAH SIMMRIN

PROJECT NEXT

“TACOMA FD” SEASON 2 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: GRANT SMITH OPERATORS: RYAN HOGUE, AUSTIN TAYLOR ASSISTANTS: RYAN GUZDZIAL, KEVIN ANDERSON, JESS FAIRLESS, ANDREA GILL DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: BEN CRUMP DIGITAL UTILITY: JESSICA PINNS

RANDOM PRODUCTIONS, LLC “MARE OF EASTTOWN”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: BEN RICHARDSON OPERATORS: STEVEN FINESTONE, KYLE WULLSCHLEGER ASSISTANTS: KALI RILEY, ZACH RUBIN, ANDY HENSLER, ELVER HERNANDEZ LOADER: MATTHEW EWING STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: MICHELE K. SHORT

REDHAWK PRODUCTIONS, IV, LLC “FARGO” SEASON 4

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DANA GONZALES, ASC OPERATORS: MITCH DUBIN, SOC, JOHN CONNOR ASSISTANTS: CHRIS WITTENBORN, HUNTER WHALEN, ERIC ARNDT, SHANNON DEWOLFE, ERIC HINGST DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: RYAN MCGREGOR LOADER: CHRIS SUMMERS DIGITAL UTILITY: EVA JUNE STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: ELIZABETH MORRIS

ROCART, INC.

“ALL THAT” SEASON 11 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MICHAEL FRANKS OPERATORS: VANCE BRANDON, JIM ORR, ROBERT MCCALL TECHNOJIB OPERATOR: ELI FRANKS ASSISTANT: MONICA SCHAD DIGIAL IMAGING TECH: DEREK LANTZ UTILITIES: JOSE GOMEZ, TAYLOR FICKLE TECHNOJIB TECH: COREY GIBBONS VIDEO CONTROLLERS: KEITH ANDERSON, BARRY LONG

“SIDE HUSTLE” SEASON 1 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MICHAEL FRANKS

136

JUNE/JULY 2020 PRODUCTION CREDITS

OPERATORS: KRIS CONDE, JOHN DECHENE, GEORGE LA FOUNTAINE, CHRIS WILCOX TECHNOJIB OPERATOR: ELI FRANKS TECHNOJIB TECH: COREY GIBBONS ASSISTANT: MEGGINS MOORE UTILITIES: JOSE GOMEZ, ERINN BELL DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: DEREK LANTZ VIDEO CONTROLLER: BARRY LONG

SAN VICENTE PRODUCTIONS, INC.

“WHEEL OF FORTUNE” SEASON 37 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JEFF ENGEL OPERATORS: DIANE L. FARRELL, SOC, JEFF SCHUSTER, RAY GONZALES, STEVE SIMMONS, L. DAVID IRETE, MIKE CORWIN CAMERA UTILITY: RAY THOMPSON HEAD UTILITY: TINO MARQUEZ VIDEO CONTROLLER: GARY TAILLON JIB ARM OPERATOR: RANDY GOMEZ, SR. STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: CAROL KAELSON

“THE BLACKLIST” SEASON 7

DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MICHAEL CARACCIOLO, SAADE MUSTAFA OPERATORS: DEREK WALKER, DEVIN LADD, PETER RAMOS ASSISTANTS: DANIEL CASEY, GARETH MANWARING, MIKE GUASPARI, JAMES GOURLEY, EDWIN HERRERA, EDGAR VELEZ LOADERS: JAMES PARSONS, CHARLES GRUNDER JR., ALYSSA LONGCHAMP STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: JOJO WHILDEN, WILL HART, DAVID GIESBRECHT

SCREEN GEMS PRODUCTIONS, INC. “SHRINE”

OPERATOR: SCOTT LEBEDA ASSISTANTS: DANIEL MASON, NOLAN RUDMAN-BALL, BRIANNA MORRISON, THOMAS BELLOTTI LOADER: JOSHUA WEILBRENNER STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: DANA STARBARD

SHOWTIME PICTURES

“BILLIONS” SEASON 5 DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: GIORGIO SCALI, ASC, J.B. SMITH OPERATORS: JONATHAN BECK, ERIN HENNING ASSISTANTS: CAI HALL, LEONARDO GOMEZ, II, PATRICK BRACEY, SEAN MCNAMARA LOADERS: DONALD GAMBLE, ARIEL WATSON STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: JEFF NEUMAN

“CITY ON A HILL” SEASON 2 DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JOSEPH COLLINS, MAURICIO RUBINSTEIN OPERATORS: EDGAR COLON, LAURA HUDOCK ASSISTANTS: ERIC ROBINSON, JOHN REEVES, MARC CHARBONNEAU, SARAH SCRIVENER DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JEFFREY HAGERMAN LOADERS: BRITTANY JELINSKI, MAX COLLINS STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: FRANCISCO ROMAN SANCHEZ

SONY

“JEOPARDY!” SEASON 36 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JEFF ENGEL 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 VIDEO CONTROLLER: GARY TAILLON STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: CAROL KAELSON

“ONE DAY AT A TIME” SEASON 4 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: WAYNE KENNAN OPERATORS: RON HIRSHMAN, DAVID DOUGHERTY, ED FINE, DAVID DECHANT ASSISTANTS: JEFF JOHNSON, VERONICA DAVIDSON CAMERA UTILITIES: DOUG MINGES, BRAD TRAVER DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: CHRIS RUBIN VIDEO CONTROLLER: KEITH ANDERSON

STALWART FILMS

“FEAR THE WALKING DEAD” SEASON 6 DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ADAM SUSCHITZKY, BSC, JALALUDIN TRAUTMANN, BVK OPERATORS: JUAN RAMOS, KRIS HARDY ASSISTANTS: MARK BOYLE, THEDA CUNNINGHAM, SAM PEARCY, DON HOWE STEADICAM OPERATOR: JUAN RAMOS DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JAMIE METZGER LOADER: BRENDA SZWEJBKA DIGITAL UTILITIES: LOUIS WATT, JASON HEAD STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: RYAN GREEN PUBLICIST: SHARA STORCH

THIMBLE PEA PICTURES, LLC

“UNTITLED ANNA DELVEY ART PROJECT” SEASON 1 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MARYSE ALBERTI OPERATORS: GEORGE BIANCHINI, JOHN PIROZZI ASSISTANTS: JAMIESON FITZPATRICK, KEITT, CORNELIA KLAPPER, EVE STRICKMAN DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: DOUGLAS HORTON LOADER: JONATHAN PERALTA STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: NICOLE RIVELLI, LIZ FISHER, CHRIS SAUNDERS

TOT PRODUCTIONS, LLC

“THE OTHER TWO” SEASON 2 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ZACK SCHAMBERG OPERATORS: SEBASTIAN SLAYTER, PATRICK MORGAN ASSISTANTS: STEPHEN KOZLOWSKI, CASEY JOHNSON, SOMER MOJICA, SARA BOARDMAN, TONI SHEPPARD STEADICAM OPERATOR: PATRICK MORGAN LOADER: MADDIE KING

TRISTAR PRODUCTIONS, INC. “HAPPIEST SEASON”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JOHN GULESERIAN OPERATORS: MICHAEL CRAVEN, RICK SCHUTTE ASSISTANTS: DEB PETERSON, AMANDA ROTZLER, BRIAN BRESNEHAN, DANIEL SOTAK, JR. DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: CURTIS ABBOTT LOADER: GABRIEL MARCHETTI STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: ELIZABETH TERRELL PUBLICIST: RACHAEL ROTH

UNCLE GEORGE PRODUCTIONS, LLC “SERVANT” SEASON 2

DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ISAAC BAUMAN, MARSHALL ADAMS OPERATOR: NATHAN LEVINE-HEANEY ASSISTANTS: NICHOLAS HUYNH, ANTON MIASNIKOV, JAMES MCCANN, LEON SANGINITI, JR. LOADER: SEAN GALCZYK

DIGITAL UTILITY: WALKER MARKEY STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: JESSICA KOURKOUNIS

UNIVERSAL

“LAW & ORDER: SVU” SEASON 21 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MICHAEL GREEN OPERATORS: JONATHAN HERRON, MICHAEL LATINO ASSISTANTS: CHRISTOPHER DEL SORDO, MATTHEW BALZARINI, JUSTIN ZVERIN, EMILY DUMBRILL LOADERS: JASON RASWANT, JASON GAINES STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: MICHAEL PARMELEE

WARNER BROS

“ALL RISE” SEASON 1 DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DAVID HARP, CYBEL MARTIN OPERATORS: TIM ROARKE, STEPHEN CLANCY, SHANELE ALVAREZ ASSISTANTS: MATT GUIZA, KRISTI ARNDS, RANDY SHANOFSKY, ADAM TSANG, ANTHONY HART, BENNY BAILEY STEADICAM OPERATOR: STEPHEN CLANCY STEADICAM ASSISTANT: KRISTI ARNDS DIGITAL UTILITY: MORGAN JENKINS LOADER: JOHANNA SALO TECHNOCRANE OPERATORS: NAZARIY HATAK, BRIAN LOVE REMOTE HEAD TECH/OPERATOR: JAY SHEVECK

“BOB HEARTS ABISHOLA” SEASON 1 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: PATTI LEE, ASC OPERATORS: MARK DAVISON, CHRIS HINOJOSA,

JON PURDY, MICHELLE CRENSHAW ASSISTANTS: JEFF JOHNSON, VITO DE PALMA, MARIANNE FRANCO, ADAN TORRES, LISA ANDERSON, ALICIA BRAUNS, LANCE MITCHELL, JORDAN HRISTOV VIDEO CONTROLLER: JOHN O’BRIEN DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: T. BRETT FEENEY STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: MICHAEL YARISH PUBLICISTS: KATHLEEN TANJI, MARC KLEIN

ASSISTANTS: MATTHEW DEL RUTH, GRANT YELLEN, BRAD GILSON, JR., JAMES COBB STEADICAM OPERATOR: AARON SCHUH STEADICAM ASSISTANT: GRANT YELLEN DIGITAL LOADER: BAILEY SOFTNESS DIGITAL UTILITY: IAN DOOLEY STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: ROBERT VOETS, MICHAEL DESMOND, DARREN MICHAELS, NICOLE WILDER

“MOM” SEASON 7 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: STEVEN V. SILVER, ASC OPERATORS: CARY MCCRYSTAL, JAMIE HITCHCOCK, SOC, DAMIAN DELLA SANTINA, CANDY EDWARDS ASSISTANTS: MEGGINS MOORE, NIGEL STEWART, SEAN ASKINS, MARK JOHNSON, WHITNEY JONES CAMERA UTILITIES: ALICIA BRAUNS, COLIN BROWN, JEANNETTE HJORTH VIDEO CONTROLLER: KEVIN FAUST DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: BENJAMIN STEEPLES STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: ROBERT VOETS PUBLICIST: MARC KLEIN

WOODBRIDGE PRODUCTIONS “S.W.A.T.” SEASON 3

DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: FRANCIS KENNY, ASC, CRAIG FIKSE OPERATORS: TIM DOLAN, BRIAN PITTS, MICHAEL OTIS ROPERT ASSISTANTS: RYAN PARKS, LOGAN TURNER, THANE CHARACKY, RILEY PADELFORD, JUSTNI QUACH, MIKE FAUNTLEROY CAMERA UTILITY: CARL LAMMI LOADER: TREVOR BEELER

“THE LOST BOYS” PILOT DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: HILLARY SPERA OPERATOR: BO WEBB ASSISTANTS: PATRICK BOROWIAK, DEREK SMITH, ROY KNAUF, DARWIN BRANDIS DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: ANDY BADER DIGITAL UTILITY: JILL AUTRY STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: FRED NORRIS

“YOUNG SHELDON” SEASON 3 DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: BUZZ FEITSHANS, IV OPERATORS: NEIL TOUSSAINT, SOC, AARON SCHUH

JUNE/JULY 2020 PRODUCTION CREDITS

137

COMMERCIALS ARTS & SCIENCES

“BUSH’S BAKED BEANS” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: COREY WALTER DIGITAL IMAGING TECHS: ERICA MCKEE, DANIEL SATINOFF, SHAWN AGUILAR, TAMAS HARANGI, JACOB LAGUARDIA REMOTE DATA CAPTURE SPECIALIST: DAN SKINNER

“PROJECT BON BON” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: SAM LEVY ASSISTANTS: ROBERT RAGOZZINE, KYLE REPKA, DAN KECK DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: LOIC DE LAME

BISCUIT

“LUMIFY” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: TRISTAN SHERIDAN ASSISTANTS: JOHN CLEMENS, SCOTT MILLER DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: KAZIM KARAISMAILOGLU

“VOGUE X BURBERRY” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ARIL WRETBLAD ASSISTANTS: STEVEN TONG, PETER WESTERVELT STEADICAM OPERATOR: YOUSHENG TANG DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: PAUL SCHILENS

HUNGRY MAN “COORS”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: CHRISTOPHE LANZENBERG ASSISTANTS: ETHAN MCDONALD, JASON ALEGRE STEADICAM OPERATOR: MANOLO ROJAS DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: AARON PICOT

“JERSEY MIKE’S SUBS” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ADAM BRICKER ASSISTANTS: NINA CHIEN, DANTE CORROCHER DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JEFF FLOHR

“PROJECT TINA” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: BRYAN NEWMAN OPERATOR: MEGAN MASUR ASSISTANTS: JOHN CLEMENS, SCOTT MILLER DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: KAZIM KARAISMAILOGLU

“VOLKSWAGEN DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: PHILIPPE LE SOURD ASSISTANTS: RICK GIOIA, WALTER RODRIGUEZ, JORDAN LEVIE STEADICAM OPERATOR: YOUSHENG TANG DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JEFF FLOHR

CMS

ICONOCLAST

“WALLABEE” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DREW DAWSON ASSISTANTS: MATT SANDERSON, EZRA BASSIN HILL, COLE ELLET, COREY BRINGAS, JONATHAN DEC, MASON HARRELSON LOADERS: RENEE TREYBALL, RACHEL WIEDERHOEFT

“BANK OF AMERICA” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: PATRICK RUTH ASSISTANTS: MARY ANNE JANKE, MICHAEL RODRIGUEZ TORRENT DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: DAVID KUDROWITZ

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COMMITTEE

“KETTLE SOLUTIONS” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MALIK SAYEED OPERATORS: HASSAN ABDUL-WAHID ASSISTANTS: LEO ABRAHAM, IAN CONGDON, DANIEL ASMELAS, NOAH GLAZER DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: WILSON CHUNG

DIVISION7

“BK BREAKFAST” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ROBERT CHAPPELL OPERATOR: DAVID WATERSTON ASSISTANTS: NINA CHIEN, WALTER RODRIGUEZ, MITCH MALPICA DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: THOMAS WONG LOADER: JERON BLACK

“STELLA ARTOIS” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ROBERT CHAPPELL OPERATOR: DAVID WATERSTON ASSISTANTS: PETER MORELLO, RICK GIOIA, JEFF TAYLOR, SCOTT MILLER, JONATHAN SCHAEFER DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: THOMAS WONG

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IMPERIAL WOODPECKER

ASSISTANTS: YUSUKE SATO, YVES WILSON DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: MARIUSZ CICHON

PULSE FILMS “REVEAL”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: IGOR MEGLIC ASSISTANTS: ROB SAGASER, ALBERT FRIGONE, NOAH GLAZER, BRAM WEINKSELBAUM DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: KYLE HOEKSTRA

RADICAL MEDIA, LLC “AMERICAN UTOPIA”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ELLEN KURAS, ASC OPERATORS: DECLAN QUINN, PETER AGLIATA, CHARLIE LIBIN, KERWIN DEVONISH ASSISTANTS: RICK GIOIA, DAN CASEY, WALTER RODRIGUEZ, ADAM MILLER, JORDAN LEVIE, JEFF TAYLOR, NATE MCGARIGAL, MATT CIANFRANI STEADICAM OPERATOR: YOUSHENG TANG STEADICAM ASSISTANT: FILIPP PENSON CAMERA UTILITIES: JOE MANCUSI, ERIK CIMINELLI, ANTHONY BENEDETTI, CHRIS CONOD STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: DAVID LEE

RESET

“MONTEFIORE” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ADAM ARKAPAW ASSISTANTS: JOHN CLEMENS, SCOTT MILLER DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JEFF FLOHR LIBRA HEAD TECH: DAN SHEATS STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: GREG MCMAHON

“AT&T”

SANCTUARY

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ADAM RICHARDS OPERATOR: CHARLES LIBIN ASSISTANTS: WALTER RODRIGUEZ, BRETT WALTERS, KYLE REPKA, DANIEL KECK DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JEFF FLOHR

“SILK”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JEFF KIM ASSISTANTS: PETER MORELLO, JONATHAN SCHAEFER STEADICAM OPERATOR: YOUSHENG TANG DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JOE BELACK

MOCEAN PICTURES, LLC

SIBLING RIVALRY

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: CHUCK OZEAS ASSISTANTS: AL RODGERS, SAM ELLIOT STEADICAM OPERATOR: TOM WILLS DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: MARIUSZ CICHON

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MARTIN AHLGREN ASSISTANTS: RICK GIOIA, ELIZABETH CAVANAGH DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: DAVID BERMAN PHANTOM OPERATOR: STEVE ROMANO

O POSITIVE, LLC

SKUNK PARTNERS, LLC

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: BERENICE EVENO OPERATORS: DIANA MATOS, JAY FEATHER ASSISTANTS: CHEVY ANDERSON, VANESSA MORRISON, ADAM MILLER, DANIEL CARDENAS, JAN BURGESS DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: PAUL SCHILENS

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: SEBASTIAN PFAFFENBICHLER ASSISTANTS: DAVID PARSON, PETER PARSON DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: STEVE HARNELL

“FFP”

“QUALTRICS”

“TWISTED TEA” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: SEBASTIAN PFAFFENBICHLER OPERATOR: JOSH MEDAK ASSISTANTS: BRADLEY ROCHLITZER, DOUG PRICE, NOAH THOMSON, MARK CONNELLY DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: STEVE HARNELL UTILITY: RYAN MURRAY

PARK PICTURES “ADIDAS”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: IGOR MARTINOVIC

“EVIAN”

“PRUDENTIAL”

SMUGGLER

“SPECTRUM ENTERPRISE” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: TAMI REIKER, ASC ASSISTANTS: DANIEL HANYCH, JASON ADLER DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: SCOTT BECKLEY

STATION

“AMERICAN EXPRESS” DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JEFF VENDITTI ASSISTANTS: TIM CLARKE, AARON TICHENOR DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: STEVE HARNELL

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STOP MOTION

Merrick Morton, SMPSP UNIT STILL PHOTOGRAPHER PERRY MASON

This image is from our first two days of shooting the WWI scene from HBO’s limited series Perry Mason. These sets were, physically, the most challenging of the entire show. Working for Director Tim Van Patten and Director of Photography David Franco – filmmakers who actually embrace the still photographer’s presence on set, instead of only using frame grabs – made this entire experience quite enjoyable.

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THE IN TERVIEW I S S UE

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