The Hollywood Reporter (Weekly) - The Hollywood Reporter Awards Special
Large Scope in Intimate Moments
Cinematographers on Fargo, Mare of Easttown, Small Axe and The Underground Railroad describe the techniques behind their Emmynominated work, from re-creating the antebellum South to London’s Notting Hill circa 1971 .
Cinematographers on Fargo, Mare of Easttown, Small Axe and The Underground Railroad describe the techniques behind their Emmy-nominated work, including capturing character moments within re-created settings from the antebellum South to London’s Notting Hill circa 1971
his year’s Emmy contenders in the competitive category of outstanding cinematography for a limited or anthology series or movie showcase a range of looks, from the period stories in Fargo, The Queen’s Gambit, Small Axe and The Underground Railroad to the contemporary setting of Mare of Easttown.
The HBO limited series Mare of Easttown, created by Brad Ingelsby, stars Kate Winslet as a detective investigating a murder in a close-knit Pennsylvania town. “Inspired by the writing itself and the fabulous casting, I hoped to create a visual portrait of Easttown and its inhabitants to complement the story arc,” says Ben Richardson, a 2013 Independent Spirit Award winner for Beasts of the Southern Wild who is Emmy-nominated for the “Illusions” episode, directed by Craig Zobel.
“My other recent projects had been set against huge natural backdrops, and I was initially concerned about a possible lack of scope in the show,” Richardson continues. “Kate’s creation of Mare, from the layered costuming to her unkempt hair and lack of makeup, suggested to me the kind of observational, environmental portraiture I love in stills photography.
“Anchoring the cinematography around the faces of our characters and the beautifully detailed sets and locations allowed Craig and
I to discover that scope in a more intimate way, to allow the audience into the nuances of the lives of Brad’s characters. I also drew from the low sun and overcast Pennsylvania days to design a soft, but not glamorous, lighting approach, which supported this goal.”
A favorite to shoot was the sequence during which Mare, in danger, searches for escape as she hides in an attic. Richardson gave this sequence “no obvious sources of light save the sunlight filtering through the cracks.” He explains, “I felt that this sense of the bright
day being so close, but out of reach, would heighten Mare’s desperate search through the maze of a house for a way out.” He lensed the series with ARRI Alexa Mini cameras, using Leitz Summilux-C lenses.
Each season of FX’s Fargo contains a different story set in a different period, meaning that each one is given a fresh look. “Season four is set in 1950 Kansas City and portrays the struggles of Black Americans and immigrants trying to make it in America, set in the world of two crime families,” relates cinematographer Dana Gonzales, a 2016
Emmy winner for the series, saying that he and series creator Noah Hawley considered lensing the full season in black-and-white before landing on the look of 1950s Kodachrome film, “with its realistic skin tone and deep saturated primary colors.” Gonzales lensed the season with ARRI’s Alexa LF (large format) Mini and Zeiss Radiance lenses with several layers of filtration.
Gonzales’ Emmy-nominated episode “East/West,” however, did take the black-and-white route, drawing inspiration from photographs of Robert Frank and his 1958 book, The Americans. The work of photographer Saul Leiter was also a reference throughout the season.
“East/West” includes a thrilling tornado and shootout sequence, but Gonzales admits he’s particularly fond of the ending, when the episode transitions from black-and-white to color. “It’s breathtaking, even for me,” he says. “Something about the color at the end, the last few frames are sublime.”
Reteaming with Barry Jenkins to make The Underground Railroad — Amazon’s original series based on Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prizewinning novel about an enslaved woman who flees a Georgia plantation — Oscar-nominated DP James Laxton (Moonlight) presented what he describes as two simultaneous ideas. “One to tell a story with a very large scope and with some kind of
mythology peppered in there; at the same time, wanting every image to feel as true as possible. The lighting needed to feel very realistic, even if that meant the characters were walking in pure darkness with a small candle. Everything needed to feel very tangible and interactive. But we wanted at the same time to make sure this story felt as large and as important as the history of our country in many ways is.” Like Gonzales, Laxton and Jenkins referenced still photography, including the work of Gordon Parks.
As to his approach to the magic realism elements in the drama, Laxton explains, “I wanted the light to always feel motivated and tangible and something that reflected reality. For example, fire: If it was next to a character, I wanted to feel the effects of that fire on someone’s face.” Laxton says he wanted the lighting to be grounded in reality, which would allow the camera “to have this sort of ethereal, freeing kind
of linguistic motivation that I would suggest moved further into the realm of mythology and scope.” Adds Laxton: “The lighting of the film provided the foundation of truth, and the camera dictated this sort of otherworldly scope that we wanted to touch on, as well.”
Lensed with the Alexa LF, the series was photographed with Panavision’s Primo 70s and Panavision T-series lenses.
Cinematographer Shabier Kirchner’s work on Steve McQueen’s Small Axe anthology series caught plenty of attention when it was awarded best cinematography by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association in December and the New York Film Critics Circle in January. Released on Amazon Prime, Small Axe is a set of five original films, each with its own unique look and separate cast, telling different stories about London’s West Indian community from the late 1960s through the mid-’80s.
The longest film in the series, Mangrove — a true story centering on the Mangrove Caribbean restaurant in Notting Hill and the 1971 trial of the so-called Mangrove Nine, individuals accused of starting a riot during a protest — moves from street demonstrations to courtroom drama. “We wanted it to feel specific to the era,” Kirchner explains of the nominated work, saying that he used 2-perf 35mm film to give the story a textured, Kodachrome feeling “not quite as heavy as 16mm but something that maintained the patina of the era.”
For the trial scenes (shot in an actual courtroom in London’s
King’s Cross), Kirchner employed long takes dictated by the performances of the film’s protagonists as they rose to defend themselves. “Steve is very much about responding to the actors — setting up an environment and then letting the actors find where they need to be, and the camera will be in conversation with that,” he says.
The Queen’s Gambit, the Netflix period drama that stars Anya Taylor-Joy and is set in the world of competitive chess, was lensed by nominee Steven Meizler, who also was Emmynominated in 2018 for Godless, another Netflix limited series on which he worked with The Queen’s Gambit creator-director Scott Frank. Meizler (who was unavailable for an interview at press time) won an American Society of Cinematographers Award in April for his lensing of The Queen’s Gambit.