ICG Magazine - December 2024 - Generation NEXT

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ONE-OF-A-KIND CINEMATIC FEAT. A THRILLING REMINDER OF THE LIMITLESS POTENTIAL OF THIS MEDIUM.”

COLLIDER

DECEMBER 2024

DEPARTMENTS

first look ................ 16 replay ................ 20 exposure ................ 28 production credits .............. 92 stop motion .............. 98

FEATURE 02 CALL OF THE WILD

50

SPECIAL 01 GEN NEXT

76

FEATURE 03 LABYRINTH OF PASSION

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PRESIDENT’S LETTER

LOOKING AHEAD

This industry has gone through so many peaks and valleys in the last several years. We logged the most production hours we’ve ever seen in our history – in 2021 and 2022 – which then spilled into two strikes – in 2023 – and a work slowdown throughout 2024 that we are only now seeing signs of easing as we move into 2025. Through it all, I’m encouraged by the consistent support Local 600 has provided to its members (both financially and for mental health). Most recently, that support came in the form of ICG’s National Executive Board (NEB) approving up to $1 million in hardship fund grants to assist members affected by the industry slowdown. The grants, approved at the NEB October 2024 board meeting, will cover up to $1,000 per member, with applications administered through the Entertainment Community Fund.

Like many, I’m happy to leave 2024 behind. While the results of our nation’s elections may bring even more challenges for working families, I see that as simply another reason to keep our union strong and united moving forward – which we will do. I’m looking forward to a year that brings many more opportunities for the work of ICG members – and our entire industry – to shine before the public.

I want to wish everyone a joyful and safe holiday season.

Here’s to a productive and busy 2025.

Baird B Steptoe

Photo by Scott Everett White

National President International Cinematographers Guild IATSE Local 600

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Valentina Valentini

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Copyright 2024, 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

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MARY PARENT, p.g.a.

CALE BOYTER, p.g.a.

TANYA LAPOINTE, p.g.a.

DENIS VILLENEUVE, p.g.a.

DENIS VILLENEUVE

GREIG FRASER, ASC, ACS

WIDE ANGLE

We made it! Another year in the books for this magazine, and the incredible alliance of film craftspeople it represents.

Individuals who have had to weather more speed bumps and obstacles (seen and unseen) than many outside this industry may comprehend, yet still come out the other side better, stronger and more unified than ever. No one needs a reminder of the challenges production workers have faced since early 2020, many of which don’t even include the rapid and fluid technological change that’s impacted almost every set in North America and beyond.

But at the risk of sounding old-school, I feel ICG readers can never get enough reminders about the brother- and sisterhood that’s at the core of this alliance and how putting people first is labor’s ultimate superpower. The evidence is scattered throughout the pages of this December Generation NEXT issue, beginning with its namesake section (page 76).

This year’s class presents a unique perspective on the benefits of being an American union member, as all seven filmmakers profiled were born outside the U.S. Whether it be an ocean away (Ryley Brown from Kyabram, Australia), or a century-old, shared border (Nico Aguilar, AMC from Mexico City, Mexico), the common thread laced throughout their stories is a sense of gratitude for being part of an organization whose core value is to better the lives of its members. Sixyear ICG member Aguilar, who recently returned to Mexico to work on Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC’s directorial debut, Pedro Páramo, told ICG writer Margot Lester that the best thing about being in Local 600 is “knowing you belong to a community of people who share in the joy of making movies but also see it as a responsibility and a craft. That passion and seriousness are contagious and motivational.”

Also infectious is the feeling Bongani Mlambo said he’s experienced since joining the ICG in 2017. Mlambo, whose main impressions of his adopted country were formed by watching American movies and TV in his hometown of Harare, Zimbabwe, said: “There’s a sense of camaraderie with [all the IATSE crafts] locals that make you feel like you’re part of something bigger.” A frequent volunteer at the SOC, who is

consistently involved in Union activities, Mlambo says a recent visit back home made clear the unique position he’s now in to help Zimbabwe filmmakers by “bridging my African roots with my union experience in Hollywood.”

Likewise for Bogotá, Colombia native Jose Sarmiento, whose six years in the ICG have been as much about giving back as they have been moving forward. Nineteen-year Guild member Michael Panczenko Jr., who gave Sarmiento his first union job and has remained a close friend, says the 1st AC is “a big union proponent who cares about the membership, cares about collective bargaining, and makes a point of fostering the careers of newer camera people, not only teaching them on-set skills but helping them get into Local 600 because he knows it’s an invaluable step in our careers.”

Regarding human values, the edgily titled Searchlight feature Nightbitch (page 50) clearly wanted to put its crew first. As A-Camera/ Steadicam Operator Benjamin Verhulst shared about Director of Photography Brandon Trost and Writer/Director Marielle Heller (Exposure, page 28), “Brandon is one of the best bosses I’ve ever had. He’s kind, handles adversity easily and with a smile, and he’s got a strong vision that he trusts his crew to deliver for him.”

Verhulst goes on to note that “Marielle, Brandon, and our first assistant director, Jonas Spaccarotelli, were so family-oriented – we worked reasonable hours, scheduled night work in a humane way, and even got out early on Halloween so everyone could trick-or-treat with their kids. It was one of those jobs that make you question why the rest of the industry doesn’t have the same blueprint.”

Putting people first may seem like an obvious template for success, but, as the many voices throughout this December issue remind us, that’s what unions do best. Or to paraphrase what one of our Generation NEXT subjects observed: the immigrants’ song is often sweet because they’ve seen what workplaces without representation can be like – their gratitude for this Guild is deep and lasting.

David Geffner Executive Editor Email: david@icgmagazine.com

Call of the Wild, STOP MOTION

“‘What a godsend!’ I remember thinking, when I was offered to shoot stills for Nightbitch as I knew before reading the novel or the script that I was in for a magical experience. One of my favorite aspects of being a Unit Stills Photographer is the chance to work with legends whose talent feels benevolent. And I dare say working with Amy Adams felt symbiotic. Her rare talent helped me to think outside of the box, resulting in work that feels uniquely collaborative.”

Call of the Wild, Labyrinth of Passion “Nightbitch might seem like a descent into madness, but it’s really about the beauty and strength in Mother’s (Amy Adams’) struggle that makes for such an intriguing dive into Motherhood, with a capital M. Talking to Marielle Heller about her adaptation of the uber-popular book provided context about why she wanted to tell this story for the big screen and how her long-term collaborative relationship with DP Brandon Trost solidified that effort.”

Cover Photo by Macall Polay / MAX

Photo by Sara Terry

VALENTINA VALENTINI

ANNE MARIE FOX

KILANI VILLIAROS

BY DAVID GEFFNER

Growing up on the island of O’ahu, in the quiet suburb of Mililani (where the famed beaches of the North Shore were just a half-hour away), Kilani Villiaros says she didn’t realize how unique her island lifestyle was until she went away to college on the mainland. “I studied at The Academy of Art University, in San Francisco,” she shares, “and it was startling to me how many people didn’t realize Hawaii was a civilized place. All they knew was postcard hula girls. I was even asked a few times if I traveled by canoe everywhere!”

Villiaros, whose most recent job was shooting B-Camera on the new FOX series Rescue: HI-Surf [ICG Magazine October 2024], went to California as an illustration major and, as she tells it, “had a change of heart once I met some filmmakers and started working with them. The way I see it is that I wanted to turn

my drawings into reality. I loved photography class in high school, and I used to take photos everywhere I went, so I guess I always felt an affinity for cameras.”

That connection, particularly for a region where the union crew base is small and highly selective, proved invaluable. After graduating from college, Villiaros says she was fortunate to be offered “a position in the best camera department on the island,” run by Local 600 veterans Tony Nagy and Rylan Akama. Before landing that spot, Villiaros was freelancing for commercial work and indie short films. “I was even working for free if it meant making a connection,” she adds. The willingness to do any job in the camera department, all for the sake of furthering her filmmaking education, became Villiaros’ superpower.

“I’ve worked as a digital utility, loader, 2nd

AC and 1st AC,” she continues, “and became known as a ‘swing,’ someone who could cover various positions if needed. Eventually, I got my days in as an operator and was hooked. I kept day-playing and learning how to perfect my craft. Especially on NCIS: Hawaii, I learned to operate with wheels, as well as collaborate with my dolly grip on complicated dolly moves throughout a long scene.”

Rescue: HI-Surf was Villiaros’ first job as a full-time operator, and the fit – in both the subject and the creative team leading her –could not have been better. “When I first heard about [Executive Producer/Director] John Wells coming to Hawaii, I was stoked,” she beams. “Like so many people, I watched shows like Shameless, Maid and Animal Kingdom, and loved them. In my eyes, [Wells] brings a special type of magic to episodic production.” And the

PHOTO BY ZACK DOUGAN / FOX TV

ANGELINA JOLIE

“SUMPTUOUS VISUALS FROM THE GREAT ED LACHMAN, using a textured mix of 35mm, 16mm and Super 8mm, along with vintage lenses. Beautifully crafted.”

magic got intensely real when Villiaros found out the land portion of the series would be all handheld on the beach. “I thought: ‘Wow. How difficult is this going to be?’ I love the look of handheld, so I was totally down to do it. But I knew I would have to start running on the beach and getting myself physically conditioned, which I did.”

Villiaros was also excited to be working with Local 600 members like Producing Director Loren Yaconelli and Director of Photography Anka Malatynska, both of whom had, like Villiaros, been young women in a male-dominated classification working up the ladder. “Loren is such a bad-ass director/DP/ producer extraordinaire,” Villiaros describes, “and someone I look up to. Anka is a force. I operated for her on NCIS , and we worked together on a guerilla unit of I Know What You Did Last Summer, shooting vistas and B-roll all over the island. Strangely enough, I did a lot of guerilla units on Rescue: HI-Surf, which took me back to those days shooting out of a van with Anka. She’s inspired me to further perfect my craft. “

That “guerilla unit,” as Villiaros calls it, was, according to both Yaconelli and Malatynska, essential to portraying the lives of the real North Shore lifeguards on which the series is based. Whether it was chickens running around a neighborhood, local plants against the mountains or people buying coffee at a local shop, the B-Roll Villiaros was tasked with capturing was key to providing viewers with a glimpse into the daily lives of North Shore residents. “Sniffing out B-roll was a game we played every day,” Villiaros recalls. “B-roll units

were sometimes scheduled on the call sheet, but a lot of the time it was spur of the moment, and we always had to keep an eye out for anything cool that could be in the show.

“I loved the creative freedom B-roll brings,” she adds. “But it can be challenging in that we would have to run after people to obtain their consent. Our dedicated PA’s would have those who were willing to be in the show sign release forms and then, of course, we’d have only so much time to shoot these volunteers. Our whole team – Dolly Grip Xavier Figueroa, 1st AC Brandon Ho and 2nd AC Geoff Lau –were rock stars running with me everywhere all the time.”

Villiaros, who worked closely with A-Camera Operator Ruben Carrillo (who also worked all handheld), says the documentary style of the show was a major challenge that also encouraged interesting dynamics. Scenes that did not have any rehearsal or blocking (which Wells preferred to maintain a gritty spontaneity) meant both operators were “running blind,” albeit together. “Ruben and I had to be in constant communication,” Villiaros explains, “assuming we had that time. Either way, I would always keep an eye out for Ruben, because he was often on the widest lens – an 18 or 24 millimeter – and was often moving. We both had to find ways to make our shots dynamic without a dolly or Steadicam. Ruben had more range of movement on the wide lens, and I was framing tighter on the B-Camera shots to capture reactions and details.”

Being a union operator in Hawaii is unlike any other region (save, perhaps, for Puerto Rico) because the elements – wind, sand,

rain, mud and waves – are often a big part of any island-based project. Villiaros says the challenges of operating a handheld camera every day for seven months in the (thick, deep) sand of the North Shore “is exactly what you’d imagine,” she smiles. “However, I kept reminding myself that being twisted in a funny position on the dolly is a different kind of a challenge, so there’s always something, right? And I do love the intimate connection to your subject that comes with hand-held operating.”

The island native is also unique in that she says “wearing shoes [while operating] on the beach in Hawaii is not common, especially for a local. But we worked at the lifeguard tower a lot, and for those dialogue-heavy scenes, I would be operating from a ladder or stacked boxes for long periods – wearing shoes definitely made sense for that. We also worked a lot near Camp Erdman [a YMCA beachfront sanctuary near Ka’ena Point], where there are all sorts of things in the sand – burnt pallets with nails or glass. So, I wanted to keep my feet protected while running with the actors and holding a camera.”

As if shooting in Hawaii’s natural terrain was not challenging enough, the process Wells created on Villiaros’ first major operating job took it to another level. “Anka didn’t send me any references before our shoot, so figuring out what she wanted took time,” Villiaros concludes. “I now know this was all part of this spontaneous, documentary-style [Wells] wanted. Communication is the biggest part of being on any set and being on this show. I learned to pay attention to small changes and how to set myself up for success.”

PHOTO COURTESY OF KILANI VILLIAROS

ALICE BROOKS ASC

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

NICKEL BOYS

BY DAVID GEFFNER

PHOTOS COURTESY OF ORION PICTURES

Amazon MGM Studios’ historical drama

Nickel Boys, based on the 2019 Pulitzer Prizewinning novel by Colson Whitehead, has been riding a wave of Oscar-worthy acclaim since it premiered in August at the Telluride Film Festival. The movie was co-written and directed by RaMell Ross (best known for the 2018 documentary feature Hale County This Morning, This Evening) and shot by ICG Director of Photography Jomo Fray, whose work on Writer/Director Raven Jackson’s artful Sundance 2023 drama All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt [ICG Magazine December 2023] was all 35mm film capture.

Set in the Jim Crow South (1962) at Nickel Academy, a segregated reform school in Tallahassee, FL, the story revolves around Elwood Curtis (Ethan Herisse), a Black youth falsely accused of helping to steal a car. While at Nickel, Elwood forms a close bond with

Turner (Brandon Wilson), with the boys soon submerged into the physical and mental abuse the school’s morally bereft administrators regularly practice. Shot in and around New Orleans, Nickel Boys uses a first-person POV camera (alternating between Elwood and Turner from scene to scene) that is conceived as all oners, making the camera choreography, as Ross shares, “quite difficult” to execute.

We talked to Fray, First AD James Roque, Production Designer Nora Mendis, Camera Operator Sam Ellison, Key Grip Gary Kelso and Chief Lighting Technician Bob Bates about a major scene (transposed faithfully from the book) set at an annual boxing match between the best Black student, Griff (Luke Tennie) and the best white student, Big Chet. Before the match, Turner overhears Superintendent Spencer (Hamish Linklater) telling Griff to pretend to be knocked out in the third round

and to lose on purpose. When Griff doesn’t go down (and wins the fight), he’s later taken “out back” and beaten to death. The students convince themselves that Griff won on purpose and that he escaped. But his body is one of those dug up in the unmarked cemetery 50 years later.

As Roque recounts: “The sequence was written as a night exterior, to be shot at our primary location in Hammond. But I got a note from extras casting saying they would have a hard time getting a crowd out to Hammond – to test them, to stay in hotels, to work overnight. It made no sense to risk not having the right people, or enough people, for this huge, important scene. That started the ball rolling of shooting it in New Orleans, where you don’t have to talk about hotels and where the extras could still work their day jobs. I began to think: ‘Could we do this in one day if I find

some alternatives to how it’s scheduled?’ I said to Nora: ‘I think we should think, conceptually, of how we could do the scene that’s not in Hammond, Thibodaux or Ponchatoula, and that got everything started.”

Mendis adds, “The location we used ended up being a pretty full build. Period bleachers, filling all those shelves, and then the boxing ring itself. The biggest creative decision was what the surface of the boxing ring should be. We landed on this raw-wood look because we wanted to communicate that the school didn’t care enough about what would happen to the kids if they fell during the match. There wasn’t money put into the ring to protect the students, so we made a choice to have it look really rough. As for the bleachers, they were a huge undertaking for the amount of people that were coming, because they had to look period, but not too old. I have to give a big shout-out to my

Scenic team, and Mike Dinwiddie. Everything was a new build, but you’d never know it.”

Fray says he was initially “disappointed” that they were going from a night exterior, “where I wanted to pull in period-specific generators and big work lights, almost as if the community comes around and builds this arena for this spectacle to happen,” he describes.

“But the first time I came into the space that Nora and her team built, I did a complete 180. All the things they had put into the shelves and the bags made it feel like Nickel Academy. Given the point-of-view camera, the production design, costume and makeup become even more important to tell the story because we don’t have an establishing shot where the audience can come to terms with the space and then move forward. There were multiple times James, RaMell and I sat down for hours going through the shots because in this

scene we technically break the point-of-view rules we had already set up. So, we needed a certain level of audience investment going in, because we’re jumping between Turner and Elwood’s perspective, who are seeing specific things across the room, as well as seeing the money [bet by school administrators and White visitors] being passed around.”

Fray goes on to note that he and Ross wanted to “reinterpret traditional film language into our point-of-view language. But RaMell was consistent that he didn’t want to see any of the boxing. For him, the scene was about the social dynamics that are happening on the outskirts of what you think is the main event,” Fray continues. “Even the one shot where we see Griff laying into Big Chet happened by accident trying to shoot something else!

“A

VISUAL SPECTACLE ”

SOPHIE MONKS KAUFMAN /

“I’m also deeply thankful for Nora bringing someone in to tell us that the poles [in the middle of the space] weren’t of structural importance,” Fray adds. “Clearing those out allowed us to see into every corner, which Nora and her team had made camera-ready. That was a challenge throughout because the pointof-view language encouraged us to change a decision mid-shot. Sam [Ellison] and I had to take on whose perspective the camera was seeing things from, and we were lucky that Dan Sasaki had detuned a set of hyper-telephoto lenses for the scene, because the VA’s were still prototypes at that time.

Fray says he remembers calling Sasaki and saying: “I need something very long for these perspectives of people passing money across the field. Nora also worked with us to get the ropes in the ring to perfectly sit where they bisected people’s eyes, using the hyper-telephoto lenses. I also feel grateful that James pushed to break the scene rehearsal into two days, so that everyone on the crew, including the camera team, could see each shot in editing order of what we were meant to see, even though the overall feeling was meant to look chaotic, with the action swirling around us.”

Ellison says that “the best and most interesting jobs” are ones that challenge the idea of what the camera operator’s role is in telling the story. “This was an especially

interesting film in that way,” he shares, “as I was probably holding the camera 50 percent of the time, which is already unusual. The first question for every setup was what is the right tool to help us best inhabit the perspectives of these boys? Even if it’s handheld, how does the camera need to react? The boxing match had more setups than any scene in the movie. It was a mix of these ‘thrown gaze’ moments, as we referred to them, and framings that were more familiar to the viewer – direct shot, reverse shots between the two protagonists, where they’re looking at each other. It was a cool scene to operate because it drew from all of these different styles we’d been developing over the course of the film.”

As for the lighting and grip work, Kelso explains that “the first-person perspective was unconventional, so we bought vests and rigged cheese plates to them so that the camera could sit [at eye level]. We had different ones that could mount in the front, the back, and up to the sides. We also used a SnorriCam, which had to be supported, as the [Sony VENICE] was a bit more than what the Snorris were built for. We used a lot of Light Bridge CRLS [Cine Reflect Light System], which are these new reflectors that had a learning curve, and these other mirrors with Plexi of different little sizes that could bend. We built a large lightbox over the boxing set, with tubes on the side that would light the crowd, but not the back of the

building, or the walls. We had a Libra head up in the stands, and we had to build a mount for the over-the-shoulder. Using heads and stuff is easy compared to trying to chest-mount a camera for a first-person perspective.”

Bates says that from a lighting standpoint, “Jomo wanted to be able to see 360 degrees. But we also needed to be period. So Nora and I talked early on about how best to incorporate period lighting into her design. We found some old scoops at a rental house and put in 1000watt bulbs. So, in the wider opening scenes, we could photograph those lights in the frame, as the audience sees that source; and then as we go into our boxing coverage, we skinned those lights. We put a rag over them and made a large softbox, with Gary doing teasers and baffles in between the softbox to make it just a top light over the boxing ring. On the outside of that lightbox we used some Hyperion light socks, rigged outside the lightbox to light the crowd and see a little more depth when needed. It was a 12-by-12 softbox, with each side having two Hyperion tubes, end to end, to light up the audience. Gary and I used the Eflect Reflectors [Dedolight] and mylar to build these little mirror gags to bounce/reflect light. Not just for the boxing scene but in many other scenes as well.”

As for lighting the boxing ring, Bates says, “We incorporated some bare bulbs on the wall and splashes of light where we would scrape

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the walls with these interesting shadows, a silhouette of the people to play against. We wanted to provide some distressed depth to the sheet metal that’s in the background, or any of the iron pieces that were part of the structure of the building itself,” he adds. “The collaboration between Jomo and RaMell was outstanding. I did not know Jomo before he reached out to me, and one of my takeaways was how passionate he was about the film and the story. There’s been a handful of times where I’ve just clicked with a DP during the initial interview, and I know I want to be a part of it because of this person at the helm.”

“Bob, Gary, and I were talking about the lighting for this scene feeling like a huge spectacle,” Fray explains. “The type of things the institution invests in, even though the story we’re interested in is on the fringes. We wanted a cone of light that hit everyone inside of the boxing ring, and all the things we’re watching is where the light kind of starts to roll off and disappears into darkness – it’s in that space between light and dark that a lot of our action was happening.

“One moment in the scene that sticks out,” he continues, “was a panning shot that follows the money being transferred between

the onlookers. With this cacophony of all the background actors, getting that timing right was like threading a needle, and a substantial challenge for Sam. The camera could never be in front of the action. It had to recognize and be in awe of the action as it’s happening, which is difficult because it means the operator can never fully compose. Sam can never move the camera, knowing where the camera’s gonna go. Every single take has to feel like: ‘Wait, what’s happening over there? Oh, oh, is that guy in? Oh, this guy too. Wait, what round is it?’”

The Local 600 camera team employed a fluid head for that panning shot “because we wanted the shot to feel reactive,” Fray continues. “But that also means it’s harder to control the motion across space, as we’re on a hyper-telephoto lens, and the smallest pan feels like forever. Sam had to speed ramp through so the audience wouldn’t get bored just seeing people’s faces before we had to kind of pan and see the round. I also have to give huge credit to our first AC, Kali Riley, as the focus also needed to move in a way that didn’t premeditate where it was going to land. She had to lock on to something in the space that still felt evocative and inside that moment.”

To that end, Fray says Mendis would

LOCAL 600 CREW

Director of Photography

Jomo Fray

A-Camera Operator

Sam Ellison, SOC

A-Camera 1st AC

Kali Riley

A-Camera 2nd AC

Trenton Mynatt

B-Camera 1st AC

Dan McKee

B-Camera 2nd AC

Christa Beth Watkins

Loaders

Danika Andrade

DIT

Paul Rahfield

start the day with Ross finding “ten things in the room that are beautiful, specific and evocative for the scene, like anchor points,” he describes. “But Kali never knew what those things necessarily were or what order they would come in. So she had to be locked in, technically, as I never gave marks for the focus. But I also wanted her to be led by what she felt was cinematic in the image. Add to that, the varifocal lenses are not on a linear plane of focus. My nose could be in focus, my ears could be out of focus, and my shoulders could be in focus again. Focusing these lenses was fundamentally different because there are multiple planes of focus in a given shot.

“That’s the funny thing about this movie,” Fray concludes. “Everything was meant to feel simple to the viewer, like we just rolled the camera when there was beautiful light. Or this moment of the character bumping into someone was incidental, as if we rolled the camera for 100 hours and just happened to find these specific moments, which are all scripted! The camera language looks simple, the lighting looks simple, the production design looks organic and aged appropriately, but it took some of the best people in the world to make it seem that way.”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY BRANDON TROST WITH WRITER/DIRECTOR MARIELLE HELLER

MARIELLE HELLER

DIRECTOR | NIGHTBITCH

BY VALENTINA VALENTINI PHOTOS BY ANNE MARIE FOX / SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES

A self-anointed “hambone,” Marielle Heller has always loved being in the spotlight. She was in every school play and even branched out into community theater for more time on the boards. Growing up in Alameda, CA, she took singing and dancing lessons and was constantly performing or creating in her home. After high school, Heller studied theater at UCLA, and then at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London. She was cast in off-Broadway and regional theater, and, in theory, was living her childhood dream.

But deep down, as she shares in this month’s Exposure conversation, Heller felt creatively stifled. “It didn’t take long for me to realize that life as an actor meant I was always waiting for someone else to tell me what could be artistically creative,” she describes. So, still in her early 20s, Heller took matters into her own hands – literally – and started writing a play called Diary of a Teenage Girl , adapted from Phoebe Gloeckner’s novel, which she later turned into a screenplay. But then the same feeling of frustration descended when she went to look for a director: “Why am I going to have someone else direct my movie?” she thought. “This is my movie.”

Diary of a Teenage Girl , Heller’s feature debut as a writer/director, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2015. And though acting has receded deep into the background (she did have a standout supporting role in Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit ), for the last 11 years, Heller has forged a career behind the camera as a director willing to tackle any type of story, from Can You Ever Forgive Me? to A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, What the Constitution Means to Me and now, her newest film, Nightbitch, shot by longtime Local 600 director of photography (and fellow director) Brandon Trost. Adapted from Rachel Yoder’s novel, the movie stars Amy Adams as an unfulfilled stay-at-home mother who occasionally transforms into a dog.

ICG Magazine: You’ve worked with ICG Director of Photography Brandon Trost on five films, including your first feature. Why is that relationship so productive? Marielle Heller: Brandon was a big part of that first experience as I stepped into my own creative power. I didn’t go to film school, but I was a part of the Sundance Directors Lab. And making my first feature was trial by fire. I was learning as I went. But what I did know very deeply was the truth and integrity of the story and the characters; I just didn’t know what you did in prep, how to write a shot list, how to set up a day. And Brandon was so seasoned. Even though we were both young, he had been working on sets forever. My husband, Jorma Taccome, had worked with Brandon as well, and both were such a guiding force. I could go to them with any stupid question, and they would help me figure it out.

So there was a bit of a mentoring aspect involved? Well, I adore Brandon and will always work with him when schedules align. I am lucky that I have other DP’s whom I adore and work with repeatedly as well, like Jody Lee Lipes who did A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood We are friends, too, just like Brandon and I are friends. Our kids play together; we went through the Sundance Labs together; and we have worked together on several commercials. Jody and Brandon both hold a special place in my heart as the two DP’s I want to work with all the time. It’s ironic, though, because I can’t do as many projects a year as they both can, so they work with lots of other directors, but I only work with them.

Your mother is a painter. Did she influence your creative evolution? When I was a child, my mother did a lot of pottery and was an art teacher. I do think having artistic parents made it so that I never felt that choosing a career in the arts was a “joke job.” I grew up in a household where everybody was doing projects. My sister was drawing ’zines and she and my brother had a band. I was making things in my room and doing theater. My parents are here with me right now because my husband’s out of town making a movie: my mom’s painting, my dad’s sewing, and I’m writing. That’s the type of family that I grew up in, just always creating things, and everything could potentially be turned into a project.

Does the foundation of being an actor give you an advantage as a director? One hundred percent. It is part of my superpower that I understand what I’m asking of actors because I understand the craft and technical aspects of acting. I trained for many years as an actor, so I have a lot of love for the process of creating a character and breaking down a script. I’m also able to hear how lines need to come out to make them have the most impact. What I did feel self-conscious about in the beginning of becoming a director was my lack of knowledge on the technical side – cameras and lenses – or how to shoot a movie. But I could always lean into that skill of knowing how to communicate with actors.

You’ve been a multi-hyphenate – actorwriter-director – for a little over a decade. Has that been by design? It has, but I don’t consider myself an actor anymore. The Queen’s Gambit was a random one-off, and I’ve let acting go. When I started directing and writing, I felt like I was more a part of all the creative decisions, like my [artistic] impulses were being exercised more completely. As wonderful as acting is as a creative art form, the life of an actor is a lot of auditioning, and maybe auditioning for projects you don’t love or are not part of getting what you want out into the world. I have felt more creatively fulfilled as a writer/director than I ever did as a working actor.

Your first feature you adapted from a book, and your latest feature you adapted from a book. Coincidence or…? I feel the two pieces are connected – both in the way that they feel like coming-of-age stories and how they’re very subjective. They’re both about a

part of a woman’s life and journey that society doesn’t want to talk about. There is something about teenage girls’ sexuality that truly scares people, and I realized that when making [Diary of a Teenage Girl]. Similarly, women’s aging, the experience of motherhood and changing bodies, and us as anything but sex objects are oddly taboo. I’m already seeing that with how some people are reacting to Nightbitch They don’t want it to be a deep exploration of a woman’s changing relationship with her body or her sense of self. That’s not as fun as other ideas of what people think the movie is going to be. So, I do find similarities between the two films. I suppose I’m guided by these deep voices inside about choosing women’s stories and what needs to be said out loud.

Was there anything happening in your personal life that coincided with either movie’s theme? I was in my mid-20s when I started working on Diary, and I was probably still recovering from the feelings of being a teenager, but able to reflect on it. And, similarly, with Nightbitch, even though I wrote it when I was postpartum with my second kid, in a lot of ways I was reflecting on six or seven years earlier when I had been a first-time parent and so rocked by that experience. So, yeah, I think both are like me just half a decade or a decade later reflecting on previous experiences in a fairly deep way.

You’ve been a part of Sundance in different capacities, and you’ve done studio films. Having that range of experience, how do you see the industry right now? I think we’re in a weird moment. As difficult as making movies is, I also think that TV is in a difficult moment as well. We’re having a bit of a contraction and a re-correction after the strikes. I’m thrilled by the array of movies that are coming out, and I wish I felt that way about television. Everybody is waiting to see how TV will resettle after the strikes, but I always feel inspired by the filmmakers. I am always amazed and excited when I see new movies like All of Us Strangers or the Japanese movie called Perfect Days People are making beautiful things all over the world and telling different stories that are so meaningful to our greater humanity and trying to connect us, and that makes me feel mostly optimistic. But we couldn’t have foreseen COVID and the strikes, and with so many of my friends out of work, it’s just a very tough moment, even though the strikes were so necessary. I think we’re on the brink of some

“I have a lot of love for the process of creating a character and breaking down a script.”

big changes; and hopefully, that leads to more diverse voices.

You’ve been vocal about sustainable working hours on sets. Have you seen a change over the years? I have. When I first started, there was a feeling from every department that overtime was good, that this sort of brutal self-mutilation that went on where if you weren’t destroying your body and your family life then you weren’t doing a good job. There’s been more of a shift toward safety; that driving home after an 18-hour day is not safe for our crew members, that long working hours don’t necessarily mean better work in the same way that being an asshole doesn’t make for better work, or being really stressed doesn’t make for better work. There’s this settling that I feel, at least with the people that I choose to work with, where we’re all going, “How can we be more efficient, be the people and leaders that we want to be by making choices that feel ethically aligned with ourselves? How do we sustain ourselves long-term in the industry, and keep our families together? How do we make sure that we are tending to ourselves as human beings and are still able to work really hard?”

And when you walk onto a set now, in whatever capacity that is, do you feel like this mentality is a given or that a conversation still needs to happen? It’s still a conversation, and not everybody immediately agrees on how that needs to happen. But I feel like as soon as I describe things to people from a safety concern and that those of us with kids can get home to see them at the end of the day, everyone kind of goes, “Oh, right. That’s nice.” Because these are not things that people would have admitted were values they were necessarily interested in 10 years ago. As a director, I know I can have a lot of influence on my crew and the people who are working with me, and yet I still get side eyes from plenty of people when I tell them that I leave prep every day at 5 p.m. There’s still that feeling in our industry that if you’re not killing yourself, you’re not doing it right. Why?

What was the Nightbitch set and working hours like? We had a beautiful working experience in Los Angeles where we had very little overtime and a mainly local crew. We could not do what I wanted to do, which was 10-hour French days where you do a continuous day and don’t break for lunch. Some of the rules

with the new [Hollywood Basic] contract make that more difficult to accomplish. But I know those rules are there to protect against the 18-hour days and the Fraturdays and the no weekends, and are so necessary. What I would love to see is some kind of path toward a 10hour continuous-day contract. I’ve talked to people in every department, and everyone loves the idea of making it home to see their families. On the other hand, not breaking at all or doing rolling lunches would be the hardest on the camera department, because everyone else gets more downtime while they’re probably off pre-lighting another scene. Actors love not breaking for lunch because they don’t lose any momentum – and then have to get their makeup put back on, and then return and try to get the energy back. On A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, we did 10-hour days with a rolling lunch. Everybody had a moment where they got to eat, but we were never breaking everybody at the same time for an hour, which really becomes an hour and a half, and I felt like we were more efficient. There’s been so much good progress with all of our new contracts, but I wish there was a version where we could get into these 10-hour days like they do almost everywhere else in Europe.

OF

HBO’S THE PENGUIN CONTINUES THE LEGACY OF MATT REEVES’ THE BATMAN, WITH LOCATION WORK SHIFTED FROM LONDON TO NEW YORK CITY AND OTHER VISUAL SURPRISES.

BY KEVIN H. MARTIN

PHOTOS BY MACALL POLAY / MAX

BIRDS FEATHER A

Several species of penguin, overcome by environmental upset, are flirting with extinction. In HBO’s limited series The Penguin, a direct continuation of Matt Reeves’ 2022 feature The Batman, Oz Cobb [Colin Farrell], aka The Penguin, is similarly trapped between rival crime syndicates while also falling prey to an impulsivity that threatens his precarious standing. In a sadsack spin on the lead character from Yojimbo, Oz attempts to play the two sides against each other, making a daring bid to ascend to the top of Gotham’s underworld.

Past incarnations of the DC Comics character, which include Burgess Meredith’s iconic turn from the 1960s TV series, usually depicted him as to the manor born. Still, the Penguin from Reeves’ film hails from the wrong side of the tracks, and this rethink drove much of the conceptualizing for the series. According to showrunner/executive producer Lauren LeFranc, another influence arose from the location where the series would lens.

“Matt shot the feature primarily in London,” she observes, “and we wanted to embrace the landscape of New York City. So, after I wrote the pilot, that decision was made. Our show takes place a week after the flood that ends The Batman, so there’s trash and muck in the streets. There are so many natural textures in New York; we want you to feel the city but didn’t want you to think ‘big VFX,’ even though there are some considerable VFX at play to transform the New York skyline into Gotham.”

Production Designer Kalina Ivanov was thrilled by the prospect of using New York architecture as the bones upon which Gotham would be built. “I wanted a very post-Katrina kind of disaster feel, where you could smell the mold,” she relates. “I also pitched that we stay out of Manhattan, with its familiar grid, and find a more interesting street geometry, like that in Queens, the Bronx and Yonkers.”

When approached about taking the reins for the first three episodes, director/executive producer Craig Zobel recounts his initial conversation with Reeves and LeFranc, which reflected an intention to stay as close to The Batman as possible. “But since the story is so different, and the settings aren’t so limited – the feature only had a couple of daytime scenes,” Zobel describes. “We realized our different scenarios required a look that would be analogous to our story but still fall within the Venn diagram of Matt’s Gotham.”

Zobel had worked with Darran Tiernan, ISC, on projects ranging from episodics like American Gods and Westworld to The Hunt feature. Both men like to derive inspiration from still photography. “Looking at images in books can sometimes give you a different read than seeing images in films,” remarks Zobel. “We scrambled to find the right basis, and Darran came up with Gordon Parks’ The Atmosphere of Crime , which nailed the look.” Tiernan says he watched The Batman as many as twenty times and spoke to the film’s director of photography, Oscarwinner Grieg Fraser, ASC, ACS. “I wanted to keep the heart and soul of Greig’s approach, but at the same time, tell our very different story of the Penguin in Gotham,” Tiernan explains. “Our show is about a gangster, not a superhero. We’re seeing parts of Gotham that were not in the feature, and not through the eyes of a detective.”

The series was originally set to be shot by Tiernan and Jonathan Freeman, ASC, but logistics arising from the strikes changed that plan. “I just had so much to do on my episodes after the strike ended that it just couldn’t work, and I think Jonathan was in the same position,” Tiernan continues. “Fortunately, David Franco, who was a great collaborator with me on Perry Mason and is based in New York, had just come off Tim Van Patten’s beautiful Franklin miniseries, so he was a perfect addition.” Cinematographer Zoë White, ACS, another Westworld alum, rounded out the team.

While LeFranc likened the emerging look for the series to ‘daytime noir,’ Executive Producer Reeves suggested The French Connection as a likely touchstone. Zobel agreed with the notion but felt some of that film’s zoom lens use wouldn’t read for this project. In making a study of other 1970s crime films, he found The Killing of a Chinese Bookie also had an interesting use of a loose handheld camera.

“Cassavetes would work off a dolly and sometimes do a single move and pan that told the whole story,” Zobel continues. “Oz is a panicky, paranoid character, so the camerawork needed to speak to that aspect, but it couldn’t be just handheld alone. We realized Batman was always looking down at Gotham, while Oz is positioned down below, trying to claw his way up. So, our mantra ‘What is it like deep down within Gotham?’ emerged.”

The series begins with tableaus reflecting the style of the Reeves film, but as the action gets closer to terra firma , the camera takes on a different tone. “We deconstructed The Batman’ s look, then put it back together again for the series,” describes Tiernan. “Our subjective, handheld approach offers a different energy. When we’re in a pure drama scene, we go handheld 95 percent of the time. Once Oz sees some kids trying to steal his wheels, that’s when our handheld look emerges. And whenever we flashback, we

echo The Batman’s more formal look, using specific lenses and exquisite composition. It made for a strong contrast between the past and the present chaos of Penguin’s life.”

Part of the discussion over how much to keep from The Batman revolved around the level of darkness. “Cinema fans love the deep, rich, dark scenes,” acknowledges Zobel, “but we were unsure of trying to duplicate that for TV. Darran and I hit on the idea that for Oz, and sometimes for Victor, whenever they’re in dark or chiaroscuro lighting, we add an eyelight. It wouldn’t be enough to illuminate their features, but it would provide a glint. Seeing two eyes on Oz Cobb helped create a feeling of connection with this penguin person.”

“Colin [Farrell] has very dark eyes,” Tiernan adds. “We tested them under many lights until finding one that was just perfect for this eyelight. It makes him look a little bit more dangerous, which was important because we had to keep that aspect even while the character was somewhat loveable too.”

Farrell’s deep dive into the Penguin extended to the character’s digs.

“Colin loved my idea of his bedroom being this jeweler’s vault,” notes Ivanov. “He also responded to the idea of Penguin liking shiny things and that he would compartmentalize everything. He hides things in his soul – and in all these drawers. Colin even gave us references for what he thought would be the kinds of bad art Penguin

hung on his walls. That intrigued me, because it was not dogs smoking cigars or a velvet Elvis, it was abstracts. He sent the actress playing his mother [Deirdre O’Connell] to see me and she came up with the idea of the matador art in her apartment. I think that level of reality can make the characters more frightening because they’re more relatable, like someone you might know.”

The Penguin’s appearance was a topic of discussion, not just for visuals but also for production logistics, as Colin Farrell’s makeup took three hours per day. “He had to have a kind of igloo near the set,” Tiernan reveals, “so that he could cool down between takes. That fat suit he wore had him sweating like mad. There are something like eighteen moving parts with the appliances on the face alone. Mike Marino’s makeup effects work is unbelievable.” Jonathan Freeman, ASC, was equally stunned by the transformation, spearheaded by Prosthetic Renaissance’s Marino, who also handled Farrell’s character on the feature. The makeup wizard took advantage of the versatility afforded by platinum silicone, a material that can be varied in thickness to achieve a fully lifelike countenance.

“The flexibility of movement for performance was incredibly natural,” Freeman declares. “And even after 10 hours in harsh sun, you could still shoot an extreme close-up and not see a flaw. Colin was a trooper throughout – long hours

in New York City heat wearing pounds of prosthetics, and nailing every performance. He was inspirational.”

New York itself also proved to be an inspiration. “Getting to shoot there made such a huge difference for us,” Tiernan affirms, “because at your fingertips you have so much reality to bring to Gotham. Areas of Queens worked as our red-light district. Kalina had a lot of interaction with the feature’s production designer, and did an amazing job of texturizing the locations and transforming them, especially the poorer post-flood areas.”

“Since the red-light districts with blocks of porn shops on 42nd Street in the seventies don’t exist anymore,” Ivanov recalls, “we needed to find locations that could be transformed into a seedy environment. I found a block in Queens beneath an elevated train – we were always looking to shoot beneath those structures – and began turning pizzerias into massage parlors. Then we brought a ton of debris in and painted on the flood lines. We took over five corners in Yonkers to represent a Level 5 flooding area, dumping mud all over and bringing in a damaged façade to represent a house destroyed by flood.”

Capturing the many textures of Gotham was a key element throughout.

“A-Camera Operator Sam Ellison and

B-Camera Operator Eli Aronoff were terrific,” Tiernan shares. “Sam worked off the tone, capturing the feel of what was needed. It was fantastic to see him with the actors, who were at ease with him. Then, when he or Craig wanted to experiment with moving differently, they’d be game for that, too. I often work with A and B, leapfrogging; though on this show with all the handheld, we could do a lot of cross-coverage that the lighting supported. Eli handled Steadicam when it was needed.”

Freeman gave considerable freedom to the operators. “Subjective lensing can feel more internal,” the DP states, “so I often would encourage these phenomenal operators and storytellers to find angles that were true to the state of mind of our characters while shooting regular coverage, then use them as gateway moments into the character’s psyche.”

Part of that process involved angles showing things from Oz’s perspective.

“In terms of camera height, that was certainly a theme,” confirms Ellison. “Where the default position for an actor’s close-up might ordinarily be eye level, we were almost always several inches below Colin’s eyes. So, without having to consult with our DP’s, for handheld scenes I would generally begin with the lens at hip height. It was such a consistent mode that it ended up feeling second nature to me.”

Camera and lens choices were carried

over from the feature, with the ALEXA LF and LF Mini. “Greg used ALFA anamorphic lenses from ARRI – the prototypes – and we had access to those as well as the final versions, which are a little tidier,” reports Tiernan. “Craig and I agreed about limiting the range, so we generally stuck with three focal lengths; I think he likes the way they cut together. It’s not good to be forcing a lens size on a scene because of where you have to put the camera, as you might not get the key emotion across. We did also use ARRI’s Heroes lenses, which allow you to dial-in the bokeh. The Heroes were subtly different from the Alphas; I used a 58 millimeter on Victor [Rhenzy Feliz], the sidekick who spends a lot of time in utter fear of dying.” Freeman was already acquainted with ALFA glass, having been introduced to it at ARRI London by Simon Surtees in 2021. “I was looking for some unique glass, and Simon suggested I test early V2 ALFA versions of the original prototypes Greig shot on The Batman ,” Freeman recalls. “They were beautiful, but I remember

earlier versions that had been rarely used in the film due to the fact they were too funky for some angles. They had the beautiful attributes of the productionized ALFA’s, but the vignetting of chromatic aberrations was stronger and wider on some lenses. For the fourth episode, I wanted to push the optics without going too heavy-handed – when Sofia [Cristin Milioti] undergoes a cathartic metamorphosis in Arkham during some more intensive experiences: they fit perfectly for those moments when Sofia was on the edge.”

Ellison noticed an emerging sense of spectacle developing during production. “As the show goes on, the scale tends to become grander. Our mandate was to stay true to the style that Darran and Craig established, while at the same time growing into a “bigger” feeling that matched Oz’s ambition. We ended up shooting massive scenes in an abandoned subway station and across ruined city blocks; and as the narrative built,

we stayed true to the framing and rough handheld style introduced in episode one.”

One of those more elaborate locales was a lair where drugs were being manufactured. “Jonathan and I had worked together before,” David Franco describes. “When we realized we’d be sharing sets, it made sense to put our heads together to maintain continuity. For his shows, this huge lair is under construction with only limited lighting; it then becomes fully operational during my episodes. So Jonathan, in addition to lighting his episode, also had the rigging constructed that would support all of my lighting. I did have Dinos and tungsten lighting for some of the big illumination coming in through windows – I love the old tungsten – but it was mostly LED lighting. The luxury of being able to adjust on-the-fly and switch color temperature is hard to escape from. The practicals in the scene had to represent several work lights, plus [plant] grow lights, so integrating all of these sources was a challenge across the volume of space involved.”

Franco recalls only once running just

a single camera for a wide setup where no B-camera could be hidden, but he would also embellish the typical two-camera coverage for certain scenes. “We had times when there would just be A-cam for a big wide shot where a second camera couldn’t get hidden,” he shares. “But then for a big seven- or eight-page scene of a meeting of hoods, I ran four or five cameras just to get coverage on all the characters. My experience is that it is easy to find an angle that works for the lighting, especially given the options with DI, but the problem is to not compromise on the framing. That’s the principal challenge with all TV work –finding the view that means something.”

Ellison says his challenges were mostly related to framing and composition relative to comps and CG work added later in post. “In general, I used the real world for my framing,” he shares, “knowing that individual buildings in the skyline would be swapped out. We did have a lot of practical locations on this film, which were then amplified or distorted slightly

to fit them into the geography of Gotham. For the rooftop work that begins episode 3, especially in the close-ups, we leaned into the real lights of downtown New York – the way our lenses rendered those shapes is beautiful.”

The Falcone country home mansion was an Italian villa on Long Island found by Ivanov, who amplified the striking exterior by bringing in intimidating pre-Renaissance frescoes that evoked power and spoke volumes about the owners. “I tend to light from outside through windows, if possible, then add as needed to carry that light through the room,” reveals Tiernan, who says the interiors were a mix of stage and location. “It’s always my preference on stage to use one big source and then extend it when you need to see a key detail or a face. On this show, we had to maintain a certain level of darkness throughout as a callback to The Batman. So, this was the first time I ever used so many practical source lights on an interior. In the Falcone mansion, they are so wealthy, they can afford to leave their lights on.”

Tiernan says they would block scenes per Zobel’s vision, and if the actors felt the need to be somewhere else, the crew would adjust via the lighting plan from out the windows. “On location,” Tiernan describes, “we’d use ARRIMAX 18Ks, while onstage there was the Cineo R15, which is LED but works like a 10K head, with a high [97] CRI, and it lets you go from tungsten to daylight [2500 to 10,000K] and packs a beautiful punch. We used a lot of LitePanels and smaller LED units –including Astera tubes and Gravity’s Titans – throughout, with ARRI SkyPanels for fill and backdrops.”

The Penguin was able to showcase its high production value via a conscious decision to avoid overcutting in post. “I talked with our editors,” reports LeFranc, “and urged them to stay on the characters. That was a targeted creative choice. We deliberately wrote some long scenes that let things breathe, so Editorial could support that. Then, in moments when things get chaotic and it

ABOVE: A-CAMERA OPERATOR SAM ELLISON, SOC WITH CODIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY DARRAN TIERNAN, ISC

CO-DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY JONATHAN FREEMAN, ASC (BACK LEFT) WITH DIRECTOR HELEN SHAVER (AT CAMERA)

DIRECTOR KEVIN BRAY (L) WITH CO-DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY DAVID FRANCO

suited us to do so, we embraced more cuts. But oftentimes there’s a tension that can build when staying on a character longer, perhaps allowing some other emotion a chance to deepen.”

When Zoë White came on to prep for shooting the season finale, she found the crew to be fonts of information. “Operators Sam and Eli, Gaffer Sean Sheridan, Key Grip Chris Skutch, and DIT Anthony Hechanova were all great guides who had lived and breathed the show for many months,” White reveals. “I saw an assembly of the first episodes with Darran’s lighting, which was beautiful and moody, and that was my starting point. We have such strong characters with very flawed human qualities, and that guided the lensing and movement of the camera, to be close and connected.”

White did vary the Oz eye-light look established from the start of the series.

“I would find out how lighting worked for Oz in a scene, and then see if we should add a dedicated eye-light,” she continues. “Sometimes a strong kick or backlight would catch his eye in a more accidental way, or a soft glowing key would animate him in a more subtle manner. Catching

that sparkle in Oz’s eyes reminds us of his inner life, but it also connects us to Colin Farrell, the actor.” White says she was undaunted by the idea of diving in at the deep end of Gotham. “I certainly feel an affinity for shooting in worlds of elevated reality, having shot two seasons on The Handmaid’s Tale and working on Westworld . There’s a balance of using atmosphere and heightened textures, but also finding ways to make sure it’s grounded.”

“For The Penguin, ” she adds, “it was important to capture the scope of all the industrial decay and destruction; we wanted to feel that in wide shots and make sure the camera was immersed within it. Having layers of smoke and wetness helped enhance the seasonal flavors, but most days were too cold to have a wet-down, so we had fluffy, fake snow pieces to add onto surfaces. They would often look too pristine, so the SFX crew would come in and torch them to create a Gotham-appropriate dirty finish.”

In-camera trickery was a key ingredient throughout.

“Although there was plenty of work to be done in post, we made a team effort to create layers of physical effects in camera

that would help sell the reality,” White recalls. “Jennifer Getzinger, our director for the finale, is a fan of physical effects, so for any bullet hits or explosive elements, we would do multiple takes, some clean and some with squibs and dust hits, to create a variety of options for post. VFX supervisor Johnny Han also offered flashing light gags to sync with gun triggers. The VFX team was great, anticipating integration of elements and super-collaborative in working out how we could shoot efficiently, but with a ‘try for in-camera’ attitude.”

One simple yet effective solution came when, in an Oz POV, Penguin opened his eyes. “Supervising Art Director Deborah Wheatley came up with the clever idea of using an old-fashioned metal ashtray that opened and closed just like an eye,” White adds. “We simply held it in front of the lens and gently operated the mechanism … it worked great.”

VFX also worked invisibly to extend scenes. “When we’re down in a subway station, our live-action was limited to one side of the tracks,” Tiernan recalls. “The

other side was entirely CG, but it integrates so well, you’d never look twice. Then there’s some showier stuff because Gotham has a kind of Gothic architecture that fits atop the real New York.”

Han says the initial dictate was to emulate the look achieved in the feature film. “So reconciling that – since they shot mostly in Liverpool, Chicago, and on a backlot in London – along with figuring out what Gotham looks like in daylight, were concerns from the start,” he reports. “We tried not to deliver romantic skyline imagery, which is challenging when you’ve got sunsets and silhouetted buildings,” Han laughs. “I used the Woolworth building in New York and the Tribune Tower in Chicago as a point of reference when discussing the look of neo-Gothic skyscrapers with VFX vendors and artists. It came down to artdirecting each building for any given shot to achieve our nuanced reality.”

Toward this end, Han sought to embrace a production shooting aesthetic. “I’d tell my

artists when they receive the plates: ‘Do you think the operator intended to leave so much empty headroom of sky? Or is he imagining and composing for a large building, like Wayne Tower is looming above?’ Every plate had to be reverse engineered to calculate the DP and camera operator’s intent. One rule to rely on is that every image should have a major element that is complemented by minor aspects.” Han would propose matte shot ideas to Ivanov, who used Microsoft Surface Studio to draw directly over plate imagery. “We clung to these sketches for months, so even after she went to another show,” he adds, “I had concepts for the skylines that included her input and approval.”

Han says much was learned from how The Batman VFX Supervisor, Dan Lemmon, tackled issues. “This included spidery caustic light patterns that seem to appear on the lens during their car chase,” Han shares. “They had smeared silicone gel onto a plate of glass placed in front of the lens, then shone

a flashlight through it to get the broken patterns of light. We created a few patterns of our own with the gel on glass and lit them using lasers, flashlights, both tungsten, and LED’s, and then shot them on our ALEXA LFs with the Alfa lenses. We made up a whole reel of ‘wet’ flares, then told our vendors, ‘This is your reel to pull from, just let us know what you want.’ Everybody sourced from this same library, which ensured various houses would deliver shots that looked consistent.”

One of Tiernan’s strongest memories of the series came early on, during camera testing. “I was walking behind Colin and realized that his outline was that of a penguin! And then I watched him some more and was just amazed by how he actually walked like a penguin. I salute [Farrell] for putting on that suit so many times, and it must have felt like much longer than it did for the rest of us. I’m from Dublin, so working with another Dubliner was such a treat! I’m working with Brendan Gleeson now, so that makes two in a row.”

"WE DECONSTRUCTED THE BATMAN’S LOOK, THEN PUT IT BACK TOGETHER AGAIN FOR THE SERIES,” DESCRIBES TIERNAN. “OUR SUBJECTIVE, HANDHELD APPROACH OFFERS A DIFFERENT ENERGY. WHEN WE’RE IN A PURE DRAMA SCENE, WE GO HANDHELD 95 PERCENT OF THE TIME." ABOVE: A-CAMERA OPERATOR SAM ELLISON, SOC.

LOCAL 600 CREW

Directors

CALL OF

THE SURREAL, GENRE-BENDING JOURNEY INTO FEMININE IDENTITY THAT IS NIGHTBITCH IS DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY BRANDON TROST’S FOURTH MOVIE WITH WRITER/DIRECTOR MARIELLE HELLER.

THE WILD

BY VALENTINA VALENTINI

PHOTOS BY ANNE MARIE FOX / SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES

Nightbitch is a film that depicts both the loss and rediscovery of self through motherhood. The loss of self, which a child-bearing mother experiences when her offspring enters this world, hasn’t been well-documented in mainstream media. Still, the struggle is a hot topic amongst mothers whose voices have grown collectively over the last half-century.

When Rachel Yoder’s novel Nightbitch came out in 2021, those voices grew to a fever pitch. Marielle Heller – who was handpicked by producer and star Amy Adams and Annapurna Pictures to adapt the novel and direct the film – had already read the book just after she’d had her second baby and was experiencing her own identity metamorphosis. Diving into Yoder’s magicalrealism take on motherhood, where the Mother (Adams) turns into a dog at night, Heller instantly felt seen, like someone was reflecting her own life to her. She says working on the adaptation was as much catharsis as it was a job.

“In a lot of ways, this film reminded me of Diary of a Teenage Girl , which was the first movie I made with [Local 600 Director of Photography] Brandon Trost,” Heller shares. “Both films are subjective. I wanted Nightbitch to be completely in her head; I intended to plop you as an audience member into the perspective of one person for almost the entire time, except for one scene with a moment from the Father’s

(Scoot McNairy’s) point of view.”

Heller’s visual plan meant the cinematography needed to make the viewer feel what Mother is feeling at any given moment. When Mother feels like she can’t tell one day from another, Heller writes a montage sequence during which Mother plops food into a pan, fries it, stares into space and repeats. She’s in different outfits and her disheveled hair may change, but her stare stays the same, and it’s a feeling of a continuous day that the viewer can’t keep track of. “I never wanted to pull back and have it be like a documentary, with an objective point of view,” Heller adds. “It was always about being subjective in the visual style.”

Trost met Heller in 2010 when he was shooting MacGruber for Jorma Taccone [Heller’s husband], and Heller was acting in the film. The three became fast friends, and when it was time to crew up for Diary of a Teenage Girl (2015), Heller knew who her DP would be. The pair went on to make Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2019), What The Constitution Means To Me (2020), and the festival hit Nightbitch

What Trost loved about Heller’s script was the crossing of multiple genres – family drama, comedy, dark comedy, horror, body horror, magical realism – but always with a wink to the tone rather than a deep dive into any one category. Trost says he wanted to find ways to bring all the various genres into the visual storytelling without being overly stylized. Though, he stresses, they weren’t afraid of stylization, just in a more subtle way.

“I wanted the look to assist the feeling,” says Trost who grew up on film sets –his father, Ron Trost, a special-effects coordinator; his grandfather an assistant director; and his great-grandfather a stuntman. “I wanted to spell-out the feeling of motherhood as it’s presented in this movie, which is a stay-at-home mom with a three-year-old son who loses her sense of self because she is living only for this child,” he describes. “She gets lost in the repetition of cooking, feeding, cleaning, bathing and putting her child to bed. It’s something I’ve experienced, as have Mari and Amy, too. We were keen to show how unglamorous that work is. In my past films with Mari, we tended to induce a bit of a cinematic veil across the lens to filter out the sharp effects of reality. For Nightbitch, we went the opposite direction, opting for more sharpness within the lenses to lean into a more gritty reality. Not that the movie is gritty, but I’m talking in more subtle terms with optics and how we shot Amy.”

The production was completed in 36 days in Los Angeles in 2022, and producers opted to hold its premiere until the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival due to the double strikes in 2023. Trost shot on the ALEXA Mini LF with Panavision’s expanded T Series anamorphics, glass that A-Camera 1st AC Kingslea Bueltel loved for its clarity, contrast and resolution. “The almost imperceptible breathing during focus pulls, the lack of noticeable aberration, and the minimal flares make them such a beautiful option when you want anamorphic lenses that have anamorphic traits like a wide field of view and shallower apparent depth, but without calling attention to themselves,” elaborates Bueltel, who works out of New Mexico and

ABOVE: ON SHOOTING WITH PANAVISION’S EXPANDED T SERIES ANAMORPHICS, 1ST AC KINGSLEA BUELTEL SAYS, “THE ALMOST IMPERCEPTIBLE BREATHING DURING FOCUS PULLS, THE LACK OF NOTICEABLE ABERRATION, AND THE MINIMAL FLARES MAKE THEM SUCH A BEAUTIFUL OPTION WHEN YOU WANT ANAMORPHIC LENSES THAT HAVE ANAMORPHIC TRAITS LIKE A WIDE FIELD OF VIEW AND SHALLOWER APPARENT DEPTH, BUT WITHOUT CALLING ATTENTION TO THEMSELVES.”

jumped at the chance to work with Trost again after a previous project stalled out.

“I think that’s why Brandon chose them for the bulk of the story taking place in the everyday life of Mother,” she continues. “They feel observational and closely approximate how a person’s eyes view the world. They were excellent tools to ground Mother in her real life, especially when juxtaposed with the more stylized visuals of the hyperreal transformation scenes and the moments of exploration into the raw, feral power bound in her femininity that Mother discovers along the way.”

Trost wanted a cinematic (aka anamorphic) look right out of the gate, and he gets that from the opening frames of rows of tin cans in a grocery store panning along as Mother pushes her Son (played by twins Arleigh Patrick Snowden and Emmett James Snowden) in a cart. Because much of the story takes place inside a house, Trost pushed for cinematic flares to counteract the domesticity, somewhat reminiscent of a throwback John Carpenter horror movie.

Shooting at 3200 ISO to stress the image and take a little bit of the electricity out of the digital camera, Trost did employ a softer vignette to frame the movie but kept it ultra-sharp in the center. And while the T Series will naturally fall off from the side, he explains, specifically on the LF, because it’s a large-format sensor when those lenses are expanded, it forces them to use a portion of the lens that wasn’t designed to be used. Hence, the imperfect etching.

Trost hired Benjamin Verhulst as his A-Camera/Steadicam operator, who came highly recommended from Bueltel and recently worked on Amazon’s New Mexicoshot series, Outer Range . “Brandon is one of the best bosses I’ve ever had,” Verhulst

beams. “He’s kind, handles adversity easily and with a smile, and he’s got a strong vision that he trusts his crew to deliver for him. Marielle, Brandon and our first assistant director, Jonas Spaccarotelli, were so familyoriented – we worked reasonable hours, scheduled night work in a humane way, and even got out early on Halloween so everyone could trick-or-treat with their kids. It was one of those jobs that make you question why the rest of the industry doesn’t follow that blueprint.”

Interestingly, while Verhulst normally has conversations with the DP ahead of shooting, he says that Trost and Heller wanted to keep it instinctual but purposeful. “Amy’s performances informed a lot of the camerawork” he continues. “We got to experiment with these slow, specific push-ins – the kind of specificity where we’re coming up with crazy grip builds just to get the camera an inch lower. I also remember doing a lot of the slowest zooms you’ve ever seen on screen, where you go through five microforces to find one that works just right, and even then, you have to make sure you have the right amount of coffee in your system so you can keep that super light thumb pressure for minutes on end,” he smiles.

For those slow zooms, Trost went for a lens he hadn’t even known existed: a Panavision Primo anamorphic macro zoom, 14.5 to 50 mm, which he calls “a true anamorphic lens.” It was used throughout the film, but the montage of Mother’s morning routine at the beginning is the best example. “It’s a shot that is pushing forward and is zooming at the same time,” Trost describes, “and you think it’s going to stop, but it doesn’t. It just keeps moving in and gets right into Amy’s eyes, where you can see the pores of her skin. We wanted to go beyond that traditional,

OPPOSITE PAGE: DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY BRANDON TROST (LOWER IMAGE)) SAYS THAT IN HIS PAST FILMS WITH DIRECTOR HELLER (UPPER IMAGE), “WE TENDED TO INDUCE A BIT OF A CINEMATIC VEIL ACROSS THE LENS TO FILTER OUT THE SHARP EFFECTS OF REALITY. FOR NIGHTBITCH , WE WENT THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION, OPTING FOR MORE SHARPNESS WITHIN THE LENSES TO LEAN INTO A MORE GRITTY REALITY.”

comfortable close-up and see every part of her face and clearly into her eyes. It was a technique we wanted to announce in a loud way, and that specific lens let us do it.”

Bueltel says she’d never seen anything like the lens. “It was a pretty lens in terms of falloff and contrast. The shot was in the family kitchen, starting with Amy leaning against a counter and the camera on dolly and track about six feet away. We did a push-in/zoom-in landing at minimum focus with her eye in extreme close-up. Such a cool shot to help create.”

They also utilized a micro zoom, a Panavision lens that functioned similarly to a probe lens but was variable. They used it for extreme macro work like individual hairs, skin texture, teeth, shots of Mother finding subtle changes to her body that signal a drastic transformation into something not fully human. And according to Heller, Adams was game for all of it. (She even grew out a hair in a mole on the underside of her chin for a micro zoom moment.)

Heller says she wanted the approach to strip away all vanity when it came to women’s bodies and aging. “People who have worked with me know I hate makeup and wigs,” she shares. “What I love about film is that you get to go much closer than you do in theater, where I began my career, and see something truly vulnerable in your characters. This

movie is a metaphor not just about becoming a mother, but also about this transformation that happens as we age. It’s something as a society we’re uncomfortable with, being honest about women’s bodies and aging. In many ways, I thought about Nightbitch as an antidote to our youth-obsessed culture. So, it was incredibly important that the lenses we picked were able to investigate Amy’s face and body with this extreme closeness.”

Towards the end of the schedule, there was a home-birthing scene with the rare handheld shot. The scene called for Verhulst to rush in with the camera at the moment Mother gives birth in the living room – an emotionally taxing scene for Adams and a big reset if they had to go again, with the possibility of a lot of coverage to cover their bases for the edit. But they did one take, and everyone was in sync, especially Adams, Bueltel and Verhulst. After two minutes of conversation, they moved on to the next scene. “How often do you get that amount of trust and professionalism on a studio feature nowadays?” Verhulst wonders.

“This movie deals with topics that are rarely addressed in cinema,” he continues. “It felt important to give Amy’s character the best canvas we could to tell the story, and that can be difficult in a story that’s short on dialogue and focused on a character’s internal life. I never made overly dramatic

camera moves. Instead, I let the story come through on its own with a million subtle little choices that influence the viewer. Whether to make a tiny tilt with her gaze to emphasize her look or to center-punch her eyes to keep the viewer’s intensity, all these decisions affect the psychology of the moment. This movie is all about the audience understanding what’s happening in Mother’s head, so it felt incredible to watch an important close-up that holds so much more power because of the barely perceptible tweaks you’ve made.”

The story travels to the past as well, with flashbacks of Mother with her mother (Kerry O’Malley). For these scenes, Trost wanted a focused storybook frame and used Panavision’s Petzval lenses ( 58 mm and 85 mm). He had used them in a previous film, and it’s their vintage, painterly quality that drew him back. “There’s an ingrained feeling to them that makes the image feel distant, so they made perfect sense for the flashbacks,” Trost explains.

Exterior flashback scenes were filmed in a lush, green section of Disney Ranch. Bueltel says the Petzvals grabbed onto the texture of the foliage and rendered it in a way that looked like actual brush strokes. “Painterly is the perfect way to describe those lenses,” she

says. “At the time, I remember immediately thinking of Christina’s World by Andrew Wyeth – Kerry was lying on this thick carpet of long-bladed grass, and it recalled that painting to me exactly. There were stunningly beautiful compositions where the actors resolved nicely in the center of the frame but were surrounded by these swirling, dreamlike vignettes.”

The team also used screw-on portrait adapters (SOPA’s) built by Panavision’s Dan Sasaki that could attach to the front of the T Series lenses. The SOPA’s gave their hero lenses interesting characteristics and distortions similar to the Petzvals that Bueltel could use while staying anamorphic and having a larger selection of focal lengths. They were used for some POV’s and scenes with animals. As Bueltel describes: “It was a smart, elegant way to create a visual bridge between the flashback world revealed to Mother in her search for the origins of this ancient and divine aspect of womanhood and the ways it begins to manifest itself in her present circumstance.”

During testing, Trost and Bueltel had one SOPA that hadn’t been labeled yet and was housed in a way where they could get it on the lens both in its intended orientation and backward. Because the curvature of the SOPA glass was so slight, they couldn’t tell which direction it was meant to go on, so they put it up facing both ways to see which looked best.

“We quickly figured out which way gave us the portrait effect, but when added in front of the anamorphic primes, the reverse direction offered a distorted look that was really cool,” Bueltel recounts. “The best I could describe it would be almost like a mild tunnel-vision effect. Brandon liked it and thought we might use it, so we labeled it for reference and kept it with that ability to screw-on either direction. We ended up doing some ground-skimming shots with the backward SOPA for the Dog’s POV. Definitely a happy accident!”

Harbor Post colorist Andrea Chlebak and Trost enjoyed a unique collaboration for Nightbitch . Chlebak had colored Trost’s directing debut, An American Pickle (2020) [ICG Magazine September 2020], and when he reached out to her about “the perfect movie for us to work on together that is like

neo-horror, but also kind of dramatic and funny,” Chlebak almost instinctively knew what he was talking about. Six months earlier, her best friend had sent her the novel out of the blue and told her to read it and that, as a mom, she would totally get it.

“Brandon and I talked about my experience of reading the book,” recalls Chlebak, whose credits include Mandy , Elysium, and Immaculate. “He hadn’t read the book and was sticking close to Mari’s script for his ideas. They’d been working together for a couple of weeks at this point. And then he said to me, ‘You’ve read the book; why don’t you make a lookbook for us based on what the novel conjures for you visually?’ It was incredible to have a DP invite me to participate in the look establishment of a film before I’d even read the script.”

Chlebak used ShotDeck to create a mood board, and when it was done, because there was so much crossover in what both parties had come up with for the visuals, Heller and Trost took it and melded it with their own. “We wanted these rich blacks,” Chlebak recounts. “Like a Caravaggio painting. In the story, Mother is – or was – a painter and visual artist, so I always felt that the film needed to reference that in the look some way. We had these specific reds and deep jewel tones and a black where you can’t see anything in it. Brandon wanted it contrasty.”

Trost and Heller also looked at the photography of Gregory Crewdson for inspiration, particularly for the night exteriors, and Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017) became a reference for the daytime look. Chlebak developed a range of LUT’s for Trost, starting with the concept of separate nighttime and daytime LUT’s for the film because she wanted something tuned in to the transformational shots of Adams. But what they found was that the look she’d created for the daytime actually worked for the nighttime, so she ended up creating a range of LUT’s that were the center point of what they had established with the reds, gold tones, and very deep blacks that made up their hero, mid-range look.

“I made a softer, lighter version of that LUT with a little less contrast – you could call it ‘Nightbitch Lite,’” Chlebak describes. “And then I made one that was more

saturated, a little deeper, for the nighttime transformation scenes. I think for about 85 percent of the film, Brandon used the midrange LUT. For the flashbacks, there was a separate LUT that was sort of a cross-process, desaturated Ektachrome. Our reference for that was Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life.”

Without the budget for LiveGrain, Chlebak created her own pro custom profile in BaseLight to mimic grain for the whole film. She blended Super 16 and 35 mm film scans throughout for a clean grain, with some texture. In the final grade, she blended them in and out depending on the sequence.

Nightbitch didn’t have the budget for heavy VFX or CGI when it came to the Mother’s transformation into the Dog, but Trost never wanted to go there anyway. “I knew the more practical we could make everything, those horror fans would give us credit for not abusing the VFX aspect. We very much wanted to use a real dog and not have a CG animal.”

Heller found Juno, a rescued red Husky at a shelter in California, and got her trained in five months. Trost says they rehearsed the Mother-to-Dog transformation sequence mostly during prep due to its pivotal place in the story. They worked with a stunt person (before rehearsing with Adams) to nail down the physicality of a dog digging and sniffing in a yard. Adams came in and replicated those efforts; during filming they incorporated small prosthetics on her arms and a nose piece to change the shape of her face, and fur and hair to mesh Adams’ red hair with Juno’s red fur. The transformation plays out in quick, close-up flashes. Only a few VFX stitches were needed to see the hair start to emerge and the body shape change beneath the new skin and fur, but Trost shot those moments close up so that it was as suggestive as possible. Even the shots of Dog running through the city streets were shot practically.

“That was a meticulously set up situation where we had dog trainers at different corners of a street in Downtown L.A., which was tightly locked down,” Trost concludes. “We had three shots to get it done, and it took most of the night. The practicality of those scenes stands out for me, and were rewarding to watch and feel.”

LOCAL 600 CREW

Director of Photography

Brandon Trost

A-Camera Operator/Steadicam

Ben Verhulst

A-Camera 1st AC

Kingslea Bueltel

Additional 1st AC

Jared Jordan

A-Camera 2nd AC

Neo Arboleda

B-Camera Operator/2nd Unit DP

Amanda Treyz

B-Camera 1st AC

Jon Lindsay

B-Camera 2nd AC

Tim Bauer DIT

Tim Nagasawa

Still Photographer

Anne Marie Fox

A-CAMERA OPERATOR BENJAMIN VERHULST (UPPER RIGHT) SAYS THAT BECAUSE THE FILM IS FOCUSED ON A CHARACTER’S INTERNAL LIFE, HE NEVER MADE OVERLY DRAMATIC CAMERA MOVES. “INSTEAD, I LET THE STORY COME THROUGH ON ITS OWN WITH A MILLION SUBTLE LITTLE CHOICES THAT INFLUENCE THE VIEWER. WHETHER TO MAKE A TINY TILT WITH HER GAZE TO EMPHASIZE HER LOOK OR TO CENTER-PUNCH HER EYES TO KEEP THE VIEWER’S INTENSITY, ALL THESE DECISIONS AFFECT THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MOMENT.”

LABYRINTH OF

DIRECTOR EDU GRAU, ASC, AEC, LEAPS INTO THE SINGULAR WORLD OF PEDRO ALMODÓVAR FOR THE SPANISH AUTEUR’S ENGLISH-LANGUAGE DEBUT, THE ROOM NEXT DOOR.

BY VALENTINA VALENTINI

PHOTOS COURTESY OF SONY PICTURES CLASSICS

PASSION

The singular style of two-time Oscar-winning Writer/Director/ Producer Pedro Almodóvar will be apparent to even the casual moviegoer. The Spanish auteur has spent the last 40 years developing an oeuvre that is immediately recognizable because of its bright colors, manipulated design and melodramatic storylines, which often lean into matters of women’s identity, human desire and LGBTQ pathos. Almodóvar’s films are also marked by frequent collaborations with Antonio Banderas and Penelope Cruz. And while his Oscars have come mid-career – All About My Mother (1999) and Talk to Her (2002) – it was most certainly the wild (and wildly visual) comedy Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988) that was Almodóvar’s coming-out party to world cinema.

Growing up in Barcelona, Local 600 Director of Photography Edu Grau, ASC, AEC followed all of Almodóvar’s films. “He was a legend in Spain,” recalls Grau, who is based in Los Angeles, with recent film credits that include A Single Man (featuring the Oscarnominated direction of Fashion Designer Tom Ford), the Sundance hit Passing , and Suffragette. Grau says his and Almodóvar’s paths crossed about five years ago when the director caught a screening of the Grau-shot Spanish feature Quién te Cantará . He told Grau he loved what he did with the film; and so, when it was time to crew up for his firstever English-language film, The Room Next Door, Grau was Almodóvar’s first call.

Known for working most often with Spanish Cinematographer José Luis Alcaine, Grau thinks Almodóvar wanted to branch out for his first American film. “He cannot escape from his own shadow, his own world, and we don’t want him to!” laughs Grau. “But he also wanted to try new paths and see how much he could grow in a different direction while still being Almodóvar. He has a very peculiar way of looking at the world, and that’s what we want most – to see the world through his eyes.”

In The Room Next Door , Tilda Swinton plays Martha, a dying war journalist, and Julianne Moore plays Ingrid, an author. They were friends and colleagues in their youth but lost contact over the years. Now, as Martha considers euthanasia, none of her close friends or her estranged daughter want any part of it; so she enlists the company of Ingrid, who recently published a book about her debilitating fear of death. It is as sweet a story as it is sad, and as funny as it is serious. Visually, it is a stunning confluence of sharp primary colors and wistful flora and fauna (both real and manufactured). Also, it is the first film in some time that Almodóvar has done in anamorphic, largely due to Grau’s advocacy for the wide-screen format.

Grau says that part of his preparation for The Room Next Door was to go back and watch all 22 of Almodóvar’s feature films. (His debut feature was Pepi, Luci, Bom, and Other Girls on the Heap in 1980.) In doing so, Grau discovered three distinct periods in the director’s work. He noticed that from the 1990s through the aughts, Almodóvar shot on 35 mm with anamorphic lenses at 2.35:1. He did it first with Live Flesh (1997) through Broken Embraces (2009); and then, with The Skin I Live In (2011), he switched to 1.85:1, and that was his last movie on film.

“I went through extensive testing to decide the format and the aspect ratio for this project,” reports Grau. “I tried to bring him back to the 2.35:1 because a two-shot in

that aspect ratio feels like you can fit both Ingrid and Martha together and see the central parts of the characters more than their clothes or just too much top or bottom. But it took a bit of time and testing, and he almost said no, and then came back and agreed with my choice to use Panavision’s C Series Anamorphics with the ALEXA 35.” Almodóvar’s longtime camera operator, Joaquín Manchado, who operated on both the Spain and U.S. portions of the film, reiterates the director’s hesitance to return to 2.35:1. “[ The Room Next Door ] is a film with a high percentage of interior sets, which is less comfortable for this format, but Edu and I, with the help of other heads of departments, ended up convincing Pedro [and the producers],” says Manchado, who only operates for Almodóvar and is a cinematographer in all other endeavors. “I don’t think that one format or another changes the trajectory of any project, as it’s a question of preferences. And for me, the format is not relevant – to operate one needs to always apply good taste to compose and

move the camera without prominence.”

While Grau felt it pertinent to use anamorphic at 2.4:1 because of its aesthetic beauty, composition and framing, he also wanted it because it felt more American. Although the movie was filmed in and around Madrid for two months – doubling for New York City and upstate New York – and then New York City for two weeks, the goal was never to have it look like a Spanish film.

ICG 1st AC Bayley Sweitzer, who was Grau’s first AC on Passing, describes the C Series as the “comfort food of lenses – you don’t have to be a chef to know that they just feel good,” he says. “So many classics have been shot on the C’s. Call me basic, but they’re my favorite lenses. The only downside, of course, is their far minimum focus, so we ended up using a lot of diopters. There’s also not that many left in the world – I think maybe about 15 full sets, including the set [Madrid unit 1st AC] Marc Piera’s team shipped us from Panavision Paris and EPC [Equipos Profesionales de Cámara].”

Before he took over AC duties for the New York unit, Sweitzer talked to Piera to learn everything he could about the on-set approach in Madrid, with the goal being to marry each city’s footage without any hiccups. “That was the name of the game and the main challenge,” Sweitzer adds. “We tried to match everything from the image pipeline to the camera build. The Almodóvar film family is tight, and Joaquín has done dozens of movies with Pedro. I deeply wanted to respect that and not rock the boat. Plus, I love to see and learn how other film sets are run.”

Grau wasn’t the only newcomer to Almodóvar’s El Deseo – the production company the director runs with his brother, Augstín, and producer Esther García. It was also Production Designer Inbal Weinberg’s first time working with the team. “As soon as I heard he was looking for a U.S.-based designer, I jumped at the opportunity to interview,” says Weinberg, known for her work on The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

(2017), and The Lost Daughter (2021). “I think my enthusiasm probably won me the job. I even took Spanish lessons before meeting Pedro, since being fluent in Spanish was a requirement for the position.”

Though it was an exciting endeavor for Weinberg to join such an esteemed filmmaker – which she did five months in advance of the production start date – she admits there was a steep learning curve to Almodóvar’s unique process. “Obviously, he has a highly developed visual vocabulary, so I was trying to complement his style,” she continues. “On the other hand, he confessed that this film was outside his comfort zone, heading into places he didn’t know well. So, he trusted me to provide authenticity and feedback when it came to New York interiors, props, references and locations.”

Regarding the use of Almodóvar’s trademark bright, primary colors in The Room Next Door, Weinberg says the Spanish iconoclast thrives in an instinctive inner visual world and doesn’t discuss the reasons behind his color choices. “I believe they are

an intrinsic part of his personality,” she shares. “Though he’s quite committed to his own visual vocabulary, he was open and curious about real New York City interiors and design culture. He loves objects, great design, and craftsmanship, regardless of origin.

“I tried to bring in the realism of New York interiors and daily life but mix it with Pedro’s visual language of bold colors and décor,” Weinberg continues. “We picked locations that included iconic New York views and venues, like Fifth Avenue, the George Washington Bridge and Lincoln Center, and tried to connect them seamlessly with the footage we had shot in Spain. Managing two art departments simultaneously was a complex task, but the shoot itself went smoothly, and I think Pedro was proud to finally shoot in New York, which is a dream for many filmmakers.”

In taking on The Room Next Door, Grau says his goal was always to allow Almodóvar

to be Almodóvar – just in a new environment and language. Hence, there were subtle references in the film to influences like Edward Hopper, Ingmar Bergman, Roman Polanksi and John Huston, but the true north was Almodóvar himself. Grau is well aware of the many legendary DP’s the director has worked with in the last 40 years, and none of those films look like anything else each DP had done before – or since.

“It’s not a good thing or bad thing,” Grau shares. “But I do find it fascinating how clever he’s been with building his own world to suit his own needs. Like building up El Deseo around himself, he’s produced all his movies since 1987 only with them and there is no outside money coming in, so no one else gets to decide what goes in his world or doesn’t. He has built it with people he trusts, with family, and everyone knows Pedro’s needs.”

Grau goes on to note that because Almodóvar is “peculiar in the way decisions are made, the way the schedule is made, his call times are much later than normal.

We only shoot eight or nine hours a day, and everything is done because we find a way to do it in his method,” he continues. “I kept saying to everyone, including myself, ‘Remember that we are here because of his vision, the way he sees the world, so we need to believe in this process.’ I mean, he got to rehearse for four months for a two-hour movie on sets and in real locations with two of the top actresses in the world. I’m not sure there’s another director who can do that.”

Adds 2nd AC Rachel Fedorkova: “The pacing was different than what I’m used to. A lot of time was spent getting the lighting and camera setups to match Pedro’s vision. Once the actors were there, Pedro only needed a few takes before he was happy, and we’d move on. A lot of the crew from Spain also worked on the New York unit, and they were all such wonderful people. Many of them have done multiple other films with Pedro, so there was a real sense of community.”

One of the most intriguing things that both longtime and new collaborators say about Almodóvar is how he communicates

his vision. Grau was meticulous about keeping notes any time he spoke with the director to recall them specifically even when he was in the middle of the shoot. For example: one of Almodóvar’s directives was that he wanted the light to come from “inside the characters,” and “for them to shine from the inside out.”

“It is a very poetic and strange way to describe what he was asking of me in terms of how to light Tilda and Julianne,” Grau smiles. “You cannot put a light bulb inside of them, of course, but it’s his way of saying that this vitality of both characters needed to emanate from inside out, so it was about making them the center of attention in the frame through light, and not always with naturalism. We tried to bring a lot of soft light through – a lot more frontal than I am used to – to make their eyes shine and their skin glow. I was also conscious about enhancing their make-up and costumes while letting the background fade into different levels of gray. It was always about letting their personalities and their aura

shine. At the end of the day, those actresses have a light like no other.”

This form of communication is something colorist Chema Alba has learned to adapt to since she began working with Almodóvar on all of his films since The Skin I Live In (except for Strange Way of Life , which was graded by her partner at Deluxe Spain, David Taranilla). “The truth is that Pedro tries to explain to you both what he likes and what he doesn’t like from a place of emotion,” Alba describes. “He greatly respects the technique that surrounds creativity, and if he has to look for another proposal in the color room, he always does so by describing how he feels, or how the color should surround the actresses. Another person who ‘interprets’ him perfectly is his brother and producer, Agustín; he always knows how Pedro wants the colors to be.”

Alba’s job on The Room Next Door, despite the dramatic subject matter, was to make the film exude optimism. She put a lot of effort

ICG 1ST AC BAYLEY SWEITZER DESCRIBES USING PANAVISION'S C SERIES AS THE “COMFORT FOOD OF LENSES – YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE A CHEF TO KNOW THAT THEY JUST FEEL GOOD,” HE SHARES.

into showcasing the beauty of the actresses, even when illness or fatigue took its toll, saying that Almodóvar wanted to see the beauty of their faces in any condition or any stage of life, or death. “I think that both Edu and I shared a common idea that we had to be faithful to Pedro’s recognizable aesthetic but at the same time it had to be a different light and color to support the idea that it is a very special part of his filmography,” Alba continues. “It is his first American film, his first film shot in English, his first filmed in the U.S. All of that leaves a mark of difference in the whole project, including the color correction.”

Another first in an Almodóvar film was the use of LiveGrain to help invoke a feeling of 35 mm film texture, especially for the 1970s and 1980s flashback scenes. Once the

wide aspect ratio was confirmed, it was a desire of Grau and Almodóvar to shoot on film, but never a possibility: there are no film labs in Spain anymore, and Almodóvar likes to edit the rushes the next day. So the whole film was configured to emulate Kodak 500T with different versions depending on the different temporal uses or locations, like flashbacks, present, et cetera. LiveGrain was not only added in postproduction but also on set and in the dailies with key contributions from DIT’s Ángel Martín (Spain) and Zack Sainz (NY).

Although it’s always a cinematographer’s job to implement the wishes and visions of the director they’re working for, teaming up with someone as particular and famed as Almodóvar was always going to be a challenge for whoever took it on. Ultimately,

Grau felt he learned a tremendous amount from the project.

“It was such a beautiful experience to go deep into this world of someone who has created a style so unique and specific,” Grau concludes. “I enjoyed being a part of that. I also think that I brought something to the table that will look slightly different from his other movies simply because it is a story in America with American actresses.

“As cinematographers, we need to remember that no matter how big the auteur is, there is always a crew making the movie – behind a great director is always a great team. At the end of the day, it is a Pedro Almodóvar movie, and we are acknowledging and honoring that, but we as his crew are growing and adapting with him. Moviemaking is, after all, a team sport.”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY EDU GRAU (ABOVE RIGHT) SAYS DIRECTOR PEDRO ALMODÓVAR (VIEWING EYEPIECE) “CANNOT ESCAPE FROM HIS OWN SHADOW, HIS OWN WORLD, AND WE DON’T WANT HIM TO! HE HAS A VERY PECULIAR WAY OF LOOKING AT THE WORLD, AND THAT’S WHAT WE WANT MOST – TO SEE THE WORLD THROUGH HIS EYES.”

GRAU, WHO WENT THROUGH EXTENSIVE TESTING TO SELECT THE FORMAT AND ASPECT RATIO, SAYS HE TRIED TO BRING ALMODÓVAR BACK TO THE 2.35:1, “BECAUSE A TWO-SHOT IN THAT ASPECT RATIO FEELS LIKE YOU CAN FIT BOTH WOMEN TOGETHER AND SEE THE CENTRAL PARTS OF THE CHARACTERS MORE THAN THEIR CLOTHES OR JUST TOO MUCH TOP OR BOTTOM. HE ALMOST SAID NO, AND THEN CAME BACK AND AGREED WITH MY CHOICE TO USE PANAVISION’S C-SERIES ANAMORPHICS WITH THE ALEXA 35.”

LOCAL 600 CREW

NEXT

BY MARGOT LESTER

PORTRAITS

ELISABETH CAREN

CONNIE CHORNUK

CHRIS FERGUSON

WILLIAM GRAY

XT

Like other large organizations, the biggest asset of IATSE’s North American Labor Alliance is its people and the diversity of experience they bring to work each day. Benefits are crucial, and safety regulations are vital. But at its core, what makes Local 600 so valuable to its members is other members. The range of knowledge and professionalism each member brings makes the work that gets done on sets across this industry that much better and more fulfilling.

For all of the above reasons, we chose to have this year’s Generation NEXT issue focus on Guild members who come from somewhere else entirely – another country, another continent, many other cultures –and what they bring to our U.S.-based trade union. We asked regular ICG contributor Margot Lester to share these compelling stories of how, why and when they came to the U.S., their journeys into the film and television industry, and how being part of Local 600's community is so meaningful.

Let’s meet them.

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY

WESTERN REGION

6 YEARS OF SERVICE

MEXICO CITY, MEXICO

“Half of my family are Americans, so I always had a tie with the U.S. and bounced back and forth,” shares Western Region Director of Photography Nico Aguilar, AMC. “I ultimately came back for college. Since I’ve always felt a deep calling to create images and tell stories, I felt like for what I wanted to do, there wasn’t any better place.”

Aguilar studied art history and filmmaking at Chapman College, in Orange County, CA, and says he had to juggle adult responsibilities with the demands of being a student and managing financial burdens, with the added challenge of losing both his parents as a young child.

“I’m deeply grateful for the people who stepped up,” he adds, citing Bryan Smaller, a fellow film student he met at Chapman, as someone who remains a friend and collaborator. “Nico possesses an admirable propensity to let collaboration around a script serve as his north star,” shares Smaller, senior colorist at Company 3. “He prioritizes genuine collaboration and connection over political maneuvering. Nico has cultivated countless friendships within the industry, demonstrating his ability to earn trust. Relationships thrive on trust, and trust serves as fertile ground for expressive art. Few embody this understanding as profoundly as he does.”

Aguilar’s thesis film earned the ASC Heritage Award and the First Place International Kodak Scholarship Award. His post-graduation debut won the Grand Jury Award at the Slamdance Film Festival, after which he began working on commercial and independent features, before joining

Local 600 as a Director of Photography in 2018. Aguilar recently returned to Mexico to act as co-director of photography on Pedro Paramo , the directing debut of Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC, with whom he worked on Killers of the Flower Moon. “It was actually the first project I had done in Mexico, which was a beautiful way to reconnect with the culture,” the Los Angeles-based Aguilar says. “Mexico is so full of color, texture, history, stories and echoes of previous civilizations – it’s hard not to be inspired when shooting a film there.”

But Aguilar is quick to note that the differences in working conditions, compared to working as a Local 600, are apparent. “In that country, grip and lighting are a single department, with the gaffer leading both,” he continues. “And without a union, the hours are long. The unions in the U.S. offer – and sometimes require – safety training for many crew members, something I haven’t seen in many other countries.”

While safety training and awareness are key benefits, Aguilar says the best thing about being in Local 600 is “knowing you belong to a community of people who share in the joy of making movies but also see it as a responsibility and a craft. That passion and seriousness are contagious and motivational. It’s also great to belong to a union that you know will support and look out for you. My one wish is to make productions more family-friendly, like letting crew members – especially single parents – bring their families to set when possible. This would help create a healthier work/life balance, in my opinion.”

NICO AGUILAR

PORTRAIT BY ELISABETH CAREN

Back in Melbourne, Ryley Brown started as a P.A. in a commercial production company. The release of the Canon 5D MKII “changed the game at that time, because if you knew how to take a photo, all of a sudden you knew how to shoot high-end video on an affordable digital camera,” he recalls. In 2016, Brown and his wife relocated to Southern California. “I had gained representation with UTA [United Talent Agency] around that time, and I wanted to push myself to work with new people on bigger jobs here in the States. Los Angeles has become my home, and thus far I’ve been lucky to sustain a career, without the need to travel back to Australia to find work.”

Accruing union days was an early challenge, owing to the difficulty of finding jobs on signatory productions when not a member. (Brown qualified in 2016.) When he finally did become a Local 600 member, Brown says it “opened up the amount and the caliber of jobs for me in a big way. The best directors and production companies were working in the union system, so I was able to grow my career much faster by being an IATSE member.”

Brown says working in the U.S. “felt like I had arrived in a town where filmmaking was the dominant language. The level of professionalism across the board really stuck out,” he describes. “And, honestly, so did craft services! Outside of the business, everyday life stuff – like healthcare and the tax code – has been bewildering to try to understand at times. Those systems and

others like them are much more complex than where I came from.”

The first big U.S. project Brown shot was a Gatorade spot featuring hand-written letters from Peyton Manning to loved ones, associates, teammates and fans. “It was a fantastic introduction to the world of American football,” the Aussie laughs, “and we got to travel all across the country. I get a kick out of collaborating with people who have a ton more experience in this business than I do, and I’m grateful for their generosity in passing on their knowledge.”

One of those people is Oscar-winner Greig Fraser, ASC, ACS, with whom Brown worked on Zero Dark Thirty , Lion , The Mandalorian and The Batman . Brown is slated to shoot his first feature with Marvel Studios in 2025, and that massive leap doesn’t surprise Fraser in the slightest.

“Ryley came in on Zero Dark Thirty to help with pre-scouting locations, prelighting and acting as another set of eyes for me – and he ended up shooting a lot of sequences,” Fraser recalls, who says after that project, he kept his eye on Brown’s work on documentaries and commercials.

“I really enjoy the way Ryley sees the world, and it’s always fun to see what he comes back with,” Fraser concludes. “He is someone with a creative eye who can dodge and weave all the obstacles that come with shooting. Ryley’s an insanely hard worker and an incredibly passionate person with a strong point of view when it comes to the visuals.”

RYLEY BROWN

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY

WESTERN REGION

8 YEARS OF SERVICE

KYABRAM, AUSTRALIA

PORTRAIT BY ELISABETH CAREN

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY

WESTERN REGION

7 YEARS OF SERVICE

NAPLES, ITALY

Even while she was racking up trophies as a pro roller-skater in her youth, Western Region Director of Photography Valentina Caniglia, CCS, was thinking about how to capture the action. “I bought a Kodak camera with my savings and started as a photographer,” the Italian filmmaker recalls. She moved first to London, then to New York in 1998, motivated by the fact that “I could make new experiences through a new life to then reflect it all to make visual emotions for movies and any projects.”

Caniglia’s first challenge was to adapt to a new culture and life far from family and friends. She started working in the camera department as a trainee and getting to know people. “I built enough connections in the film industry to be working and have them look at my talent and skills,” Caniglia adds. The L.A.-based ICG member has worked on features and TV series in genres as diverse as thriller, drama and documentary. She’s also lensed commercials. “Cinema is a universal language, so I don’t notice so many differences between working in my home country and the United States,” she states. “Both countries are extremely professional, efficient and well organized.”

Joining Local 600 Guild in 2016, Caniglia’s work has earned multiple awards, including Best Cinematography for Soyka (2021 European Cinematography Awards), Madeleine’s Oil (2015 Louisiana International Film Festival) and Adieu, Lacan (2021 Global Film Festival Awards and Cult Critic Awards). Over the years, she has returned to Italy to work, most recently on a feature called Isola

VALENTINA CANIGLIA

with Fanny Ardant and Jhoanna Kulig. “I’m always excited about the first day on set,” she beams. “To see all the preproduction coming together to the screen and the feeling when we all work together to get the best shot.”

Caniglia says she draws inspiration from many sources. “I feel that through a screenplay, book or great poetry I can translate words into images while painting with lighting.” (Soyka also received Best Lighting honors at the European Cinematography Awards.) “I love to get to know various places and cultures. This is why I have always been watching many movies from all around the world to explore different ways of storytelling. Living in and growing up in a city on the sea [Naples], looking at it every day, made my imagination infinite. My imagination goes beyond any expectation, and I let the art of cinematography be free to unravel creative options.”

Fernando Argüelles, ASC, AEC, appreciates Caniglia’s talent and her vivacious personality. “Valentina can create with her soul and never give up,” Argüelles shares. “The most important thing you should know about her is her creativity and ability to make wonderful visuals that adapt to every kind of project, a great sense of work and human ethic, imagination, efficiency, practicality, knowledge of technical aspects, and the manner to overcome every situation. She is just a fantastic artist who understands every aspect of filmmaking, embodies dedication to her artistic journey and approaches her work with inventiveness and innovation.”

PORTRAIT COURTESY OF VALENTINA CANIGLIA

“There wasn’t really a film industry to speak of at the time in Zimbabwe,” recounts Western Region Director of Photography Bongani Mlambo, “so the U.S. seemed like the only place where my newfound dream was possible.” The UNESCO Media Report estimates the Zimbabwe film industry is only large enough to support two professionalsized crews. Or as Mlambo notes: “In L.A., you can throw a stone in any direction and hit someone who owns an ALEXA Mini. In Zimbabwe, it might be just one or two people.”

Film school in the U.S. was Mlambo’s launching point, but adapting to life in the States had its challenges. “I knew a lot about America from TV shows and movies, but let me tell you, that’s only a representation and often filled with stereotypes. The reality was quite different,” he adds. “I experienced what I now understand as microaggressions. There were a lot of stereotypical thoughts about the African continent and its people. This overall sense of being ‘othered’ was sometimes a challenge.”

By contrast, Mlambo – a Local 600 member since 2017 – values the camaraderie of a labor union. “This industry is all about relationships, and being part of the ICG has allowed me to connect with some truly talented and experienced professionals,” he continues. “And it’s not just Local 600 –there’s a sense of camaraderie with other [IATSE crafts] Locals as well. It makes you feel like you’re part of something bigger, part of the larger industry as a whole.”

Vicki Syal, a producer and filmmaker, says Mlambo contributes to the family feel. “Bongani is one of the most generous people I know,” Syal shares, “and I don’t mean financially, but in a much more valuable way, which is the amount of time and care he devotes to people who truly need support. Whether he’s sharing his knowledge, tools or experience, he consistently makes time to uplift others. He is all about creating access.”

To that end, Bongani frequently volunteers at the SOC and is consistently involved in labor activities. “He mentors aspiring filmmakers,

regardless of what department they want to pursue, and he takes the time to break down complex policies so that other people understand them,” Syal continues.

The L.A.-based ICG member has returned to Zimbabwe and South Africa to work (most recently for Burns and Song) and sees change coming. “People back home are just as passionate about telling stories,” he asserts. “They have amazing ideas and are doing everything they can to piece together their projects. Zimbabwe is working on film policy, trying to grow the industry, and engaging some diaspora people to help. It’s exciting to see the progress and to think about the stories that will be told as the industry continues to develop.

Mlambo says his experience on Burns and Song sparked a desire for more work on the continent. “There are so many important stories to be told there, and I feel like I’m in a unique position to help tell them,” he notes, “bridging my African roots with my Hollywood experience. It’s exciting to think about the possibilities.”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY

WESTERN REGION

7 YEARS OF SERVICE

HARARE, ZIMBABWE

BONGANI MLAMBO

PORTRAIT BY ELISABETH CAREN

KELLY PUN

OPERATOR CENTRAL REGION

15 YEARS OF SERVICE

HONG KONG

“I started working on commercials in Hong Kong and China, where there were very long hours and no union. To work 20 to 22 hours per day was normal then,” recalls Atlanta-based Camera Operator Kelly Pun, SOC. Like many people living in Hong Kong in 1997, Pun was unsure what would happen when the former British territory became a special administrative area of China and sought residency elsewhere. “I applied for college in the U.S., and three accepted me so I picked one and went,” she continues. “I spoke more of a British version of English vocabulary, so I had to relearn American expressions and slang. It was fun.”

Pun started her career as a Steadicam operator on 35mm Bollywood films shooting in New York City, calling the period “a great learning experience that made me adaptable and helped me to overcome challenges very fast.” The indie film veteran says she’s “deeply frustrated that many TV shows and feature films came out that flopped and lost money. This affects many below-the-line crews that

don’t have a dog in the fight,” she describes. “I know some crew members quit the industry altogether during and after the WGA and SAG strikes, and many shows have been canceled since then.”

Pun earned her union card in 2014, working as an Alien Revolution operator on the 2nd unit of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. She says the best thing about being in the IATSE “is more robust safety protocols, especially on shooting stunt sequences like car chases, fighting and gun sequences. Also, in America, we have 12 hours on and 12 hours off, so [compared to Hong Kong] there’s time for the crew to rest. We also have safety rides and hotel rooms available after long hours of shooting in distant locations, which makes a big difference.”

Being a Local 600 member also introduced Pun to more experienced operators and DP’s, who have been quick to share techniques and insights – like Laela Kilbourn [ICG Magazine November 2024]. “Kelly and I met in New York City in the mid-2000s, and I later got to know

her via our participation in a group of women cinematographers that a bunch of us formed in around 2008 to support and advance each other in the industry,” Kilbourn remembers. “She became a Steadicam operator when there were almost no women doing it. She was a pioneer, fearless, confident, super smart, and talented, and it was inspiring to see her forging this path on her own with few role models. Kelly has had incredible success, all achieved in her own way.”

Pun’s also making sure other women get opportunities. “In an industry full of selfreferential egos, Kelly is delightfully and unusually open, curious and interested in others,” Kilbourn continues. “She has been supportive of both my work and that of other camerawomen, in an incredibly generous way that has had a real impact on our journeys as women in this industry. It is so important that we lift each other, and share and delight in each other’s successes. Kelly has always done that.”

PORTRAIT BY CHR!S REEL

1ST AC EASTERN REGION

6 YEARS OF SERVICE BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA

JOSE

“I grew up in a single-parent household where TV was often my only companion after school while awaiting my mom to get back from work,” smiles Eastern Region 1st AC Jose Sarmiento. “She would always tell me to stop watching TV and go outside instead. I get to tease her now by telling her she was hindering my education.”

A native of Bogotá, Colombia, his family relocated to the U.S. in 2003 when Sarmiento was 12. “It was daunting moving to a country where I didn’t speak the language. Thankfully I was an extremely fast learner,” he recalls. “My mom had bought me a book of poems and short stories which I would translate every day after school to learn vocabulary and grammar. It was super-tedious, but I owe my ability to pick up the language in a short period of time to those moments of dedication and discipline.” That, plus ESOL classes and watching TV only in English, enabled Sarmiento to transition to native-speaker courses, and later, a class in TV production. “At that moment it clicked for me that I could do this for a living,” he states. “Everything I did that day onwards was with the goal of working in the film and television industry.”

Like many, Sarmiento’s first industry job was as a PA. He started in 2013 on Celebrity Wife Swap, then joined Local 600 in 2017 as a camera assistant on All Square, 2nd’ing for 1st AC Michael Panczenko. “He took me under his wing and showed me the ropes of what it

GRAY

was to work under some of the best crew in the country, many who have now become longtime friends.”

Panczenko is one of those close friends who admires Sarmiento’s loyalty. “Jose stays on me when I disappear socially for a bit and calls me to congratulate me about good things that happen in my life, both professionally and personally,” the LA-based DP/Operator says. “Professionally, it’s his tenacity, hustle, and care for the craft of filmmaking that stand out. Jose’s also a big union proponent. He cares about the membership, and he cares about collective bargaining. He fosters the careers of newer camera people, not only teaching them on-set skills but helping them get into Local 600 because he knows it’s an invaluable step in our careers.”

Sarmiento says becoming an ICG member has led to valuable and memorable experiences, like touring America with Morgan Freeman for The Story of God, Season 2, exploring jungles in South America for National Geographic and shooting a six-camera one-hour special with President Joe Biden. “Whether it’s creating fictional worlds, documenting historical events or bringing viewers to places they’ve never seen before, we get to share part of who we are through our craft,” Sarmiento concludes.

“I can draw a line that separates my career before and after joining the Guild, and it has irrevocably improved since joining.”

SARMIENTO

PORTRAIT BY WILLIAM

BY CONNIE CHORNUK

After watching The Nightmare Before Christmas as a kid in Brazil, Samantha Trad marveled at the craft. “I couldn’t help but ask myself, ‘How do they do that?’” she recollects. “This question changed my life because from that moment on, I knew I wanted to be a filmmaker.”

Trad made her own documentary films in São Paulo – a city rich with architecture, culture and stories – before moving to the U.S. in 2019 to attend a film-technician program in Albuquerque, NM. “Moving away from my family and friends, and putting myself outside of my comfort zone, was very hard, but also very rewarding!” recounts Trad, now based in Nashville, TN.

The transition was a little easier because two of her roommates were also Brazilian. One of them, Cindy Serigatto, introduced her to others in the industry. Trad landed a P.A. job on the second unit of Netflix’s New Mexico-based series Outer Range right after graduation. Then she met 1st AC Ron Peterson, who hired her for the second season of Big Sky, and the pair finished Season 3 of the series in December 2022. Their current show is Amazon’s Scarpetta , which they started in October.

“Sam has a great work ethic, and her passion for filmmaking is undeniable,” Peterson describes. “I asked her what she

TRAD SAMANTHA

wanted to achieve in the camera department, and her response was, ‘I really want to learn how to be a great camera operator!’ Always wanting to learn and knowing that she has to earn it.”

Trad, who joined Local 600 as a digital utility technician in 2021, says she’s had “many angels along the way” who helped her achieve her dream. “Membership in Local 600 has helped me secure more union jobs,” she describes. “It’s allowed me to work on top-tier projects, which has always been my dream. But I think the best thing about being in Local 600 is the comfort of knowing that I’m protected. In addition to the benefits, like good health insurance, I have peace of mind knowing that my hard work and the time I spend away from home are fairly compensated and recognized.

“I’ve come a long way and am very far from the place I called home for the first 26 years of my life,” Trad adds. “Working in the film industry in the United States is one of my greatest accomplishments.” She’s especially proud of her work on Season 5 of Yellowstone Though only a two-month assignment, she calls the experience “incredible to be part of one of the most popular TV shows in the United States at the time. I’m very passionate about my job and my career here, and I walk away from work every day feeling grateful to be a part of this industry.”

DIGITAL UTILITY

CENTRAL REGION

2 YEARS OF SERVICE

SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL

PORTRAIT

PRODUCTION CREDITS

COMPILED

BY

TERESA MUÑOZ

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

Please provide up-to-date and complete crew information (including Still Photographers, Publicists, Additional Units, etc.). Please note 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 Muñoz at teresa@icgmagazine.com

101 STUDIOS

“THE MADISON”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ROB MCLACHLAN, ASC, CSC

OPERATORS: ERIC SCHILLING, SCOTT DROPKIN, ABBY LINNE, BRITT WEST, JED SEUS

ASSISTANTS: DAVID LEB, TIM CLARKE, SAM PEARCY, NATHAH CRUM, AUSTIN GREEN, SOPHIA BASILIADIS, MATTHEW BREWER, DAN MARINO, RYO KINNO, MICHAEL PICCOLA

STEADICAM OPERATOR: ERIC SCHILLING

LOADER: KYLE JACOBS

CAMERA UTILITY: EMMETT CROCKETT

DIGITAL UTILITY: MATEO CABALLERO

4321 PRODUCTIONS

“COUNTDOWN”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: VANESSA JOY SMITH

OPERATORS: MATTHEW PEARCE, GRETCHEN WARTHEN, SOC, TIM DOWLING, SOC

ASSISTANTS: MATTHEW KING, TROY BLISCHOK, TIFFANY AUG, KELSEY CASTELLITTO, MICHAELA ANGELIQUE, KOJI KOJIMA

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: MASON HARRELSON

LOADER: DAVID HURD

DIGITAL UTILITY: DANIEL BOWER

20TH CENTURY FOX FILM CORP

“THE BEAST IN ME”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: LYLE VINCENT

OPERATOR: ERIN HENNING

ASSISTANTS: TONY COAN, CHRISTOPHER WIEZOREK, DEREK DIBONA, SANCHEEV RAVICHANDRAN

STEADICAM OPERATOR: QIANZHI SHEN

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: MICHAEL ROBERT POMORSKI

LOADER: BRETT NORMAN

STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: CHRISTOPHER SAUNDERS

20TH TELEVISION

“9-1-1” SEASON 8

DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ANDREW MITCHELL, PJ RUSS

OPERATORS: BRICE REID, PHIL MILLER, PAULINA GOMEZ

ASSISTANTS: JAMES RYDINGS, KAORU "Q" ISHIZUKA, CARLOS DOERR, BASSEM BALAA, MELVINA RAPOZO, JENNIFER LAI

STEADICAM OPERATOR: BRICE REID

DIGITAL UTILITY: BEAU MORAN

CAMERA UTILITY: JOE PACELLA

“DOCTOR ODYSSEY”

DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: SIMON DENNIS, ASC, BSC, JOHN T. CONNOR

OPERATORS: ERIC SCHILLING, KEITH DUNKERLEY

ASSISTANTS: DAVID LEB, ROB MONROY, NATHAN CRUM, JARED WILSON

STEADICAM OPERATOR: ERIC SCHILLING

STEADICAM ASSISTANT: DAVID LEB

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: SCOTT RESNICK

LOADER: SONIA BARRIENTOS

“MID-CENTURY MODERN”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: GARY BAUM, ASC

OPERATORS: ALEC ELIZONDO, DEBORAH O'BRIEN, LANCE BILLITZER, EDDIE FINE

ASSISTANTS: SEAN ASKINS, BRADLEY TRAVER, SIMON JARVIS, CLINT PALMER, YUKA KADONO

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: EREK LANTZ

CAMERA UTILITIES: DAN LORENZE, RICHIE FINE

VIDEO CONTROLLER: JOHN O'BRIEN

“WILL TRENT” SEASON 3

DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: FERNANDO REYESALLENDES, AMC, TIMOTHY GILLIS

OPERATORS: STEWART SMITH, SOC, CRISTIAN TROVA ASSISTANTS: GERAN COSTDANIELLO, IAN CAMPBELL, ANDY KOPEC, BENJAMIN EADES

STEADICAM OPERATOR: STEWART SMITH, SOC

LOADER: STEVEN DAVID WALTON

DIGITAL UTILITY: NATHANIEL POBLET

STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: ZAC POPIK, DANIEL MCFADDEN, MATT MILLER

BEACHWOOD SERVICES, INC.

“DAYS OF OUR LIVES” SEASON 60

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DAVID MEAGHER

OPERATORS: MARK WARSHAW, MICHAEL J. DENTON, JOHNNY BROMBEREK, JOHN BOYD, STEVE CLARK

CAMERA UTILITY: GARY CYPHER

VIDEO CONTROLLER: ALEXIS DELLAR HANSON

BROWN CREEK MEDIA, LLC

“ROOFMAN”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ANDRIJ PAREKH, ASC

OPERATOR: IAN FORSYTH

ASSISTANTS: TOSHIRO YAMAGUCHI, FRANZISKA LEWIS, ROY KNAUF, MATTHEW MEBANE

LOADER: LORENZO ZANINI

STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: DAVI RUSSO

CARRIER PRODUCTIONS, LLC

“THE DIPLOMAT” SEASON 3

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: GIORGIO SCALI

OPERATORS: JENNIE JEDDRY, JONATHAN BECK, NICOLA BENIZZI

ASSISTANTS: COURTNEY BRIDGERS, MARC LOFORTE, WESLEY HODGES, AMBER MATHES, COREY LICAMELI, PATRICK BRACEY

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: DOUGLAS HORTON

LOADERS: EMILY O'LEARY, NATHAN CARR

CBS STUDIOS

“ELSBETH” SEASON 2

DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JOHN ARONSON, ALEC JARNAGIN

OPERATORS: BARNABY SHAPIRO, KATE LAROSE

ASSISTANTS: SOREN NASH, RENE CROUT, NIALANEY RODRIGUEZ, ALISA COLLEY

LOADERS: PARKER RICE, JANAE HARRISON

STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: MICHAEL PARMELEE, ERIC LIEBOWITZ

“NCIS” SEASON 22

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: WILLIAM WEBB

OPERATORS: GREG COLLIER, CHAD ERICKSON

ASSISTANTS: JAMES TROOST, NATE LOPEZ, HELEN TADESSE, YUSEF EDMONDS, ANNA FERRARIE, DREW HAN CHO

LOADER: MIKE GENTILE

“NCIS: ORIGINS” SEASON 1

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: KEVIN MCKNIGHT

OPERATORS: MICHAEL ALBA, MATT VALENTINE

ASSISTANTS: TAYLOR FENNO, KEVIN MILES, RICH FLOYD, HUNTER JENSEN

LOADER: VICTORIA BETANCOURT

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: BRANNON BROWN

DIGITAL UTILITY: BECKY CINTORA

STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: GREG GAYNE

“CRUTCH” SEASON 1

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: BERNARD BERNER

OPERATORS: ALAIN ONESTO, JIMMY O'DONNELL, MIGUEL ARMSTRONG, MANUEL GUTIERREZ

ASSISTANT: WYATT MAKER

CAMERA UTILITIES: JAMES TOMLINSON, CHARLES KEMPF

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: THOMAS GUADARRAMA

STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: JOJO WHILDEN

CHOICE FILMS, INC.

“THE OUTLAWS”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JOHN INWOOD

OPERATOR: DAVID TAICHER

ASSISTANTS: DOUGLAS FOOTE, DONALD GAMBLE

STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: DAVID SCOTT HOLLOWAY

CMS PRODUCTIONS

“MARTY SUPREME”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DARIUS KHONDJI, AFC, ASC

OPERATORS: COLIN ANDERSON, BRIAN OSMOND

ASSISTANTS: CRAIG PRESSGROVE, ANTHONY DEFRANCESCO, ALEC NICKEL, HOLLY MCCARTHY

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: GABRIEL KOLODNY

LOADERS: BILLY LEE HOLMAN, VICTORIA DUNN

STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: ATSUSHI NISHIJIMA

CRANETOWN MEDIA, LLC

“BLIPPI'S JOB SHOW”

DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: CHRIS COLLINS, NATHAN WILSON

OPERATOR: JONATHAN GOLDFISHER

ASSISTANTS: MELANIE ADAMS, NICOLE KENT, DARRELL NASH, JR., MILANA BURDETTE

LOADER: KALLIE JUNG

STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: JESSICA PEREZ

DELTA FILMS, LLC

“DENIM & DIAMONDS”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: AMY VINCENT, ASC

OPERATORS: DAVID THOMPSON, JULIAN DELACRUZ, HENRY CLINE

ASSISTANTS: OLGA ABRAMSON, TROY SOLA, ALEXANDER WORSTER, EDDIE GOLDBLATT, SARA BOARDMAN, CORNELIA KLAPPER

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: PATRICK CECILIAN

LOADERS: MADELEINE KING, DONALD GRAHAMER

STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: SARAH SHATZ

UNIT PUBLICIST: AMY LEIGH JOHNSON

PRODUCTION CREDITS

DXO PRODUCTIONS, LLC

“DEXTER: ORIGINAL SIN”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ED PEI

OPERATORS: BRIAN BERNSTEIN, JORDAN KESLOW

ASSISTANTS: JAMES SPRATTLEY, JAMES DUNHAM, MARYAN ZUREK, JEREMY HILL

LOADER: ANDREW FLORIO

STEADICAM OPERATOR: JORDAN KESLOW

CAMERA UTILITY: KAREN CLANCY

FALCO PICTURES, LLC

“RIP”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JUAN MIGUEL AZPIROZ

OPERATOR: IAN FOX

ASSISTANTS: ANDREW BRINKMAN, BAYLEY SWEITZER, JOSHUA REYES, RACHEL FEDORKOVA

CAMERA UTILITY: WILLIAM TRICE

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: DANIELE COLOMBERA

LOADER: STEPHANIE GUZMAN

STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: CLAIRE FOLGER

UNIT PUBLICIST: PEGGY MULLOY

FOXBURG PRODUCTIONS, LLC

“THE ROOKIE” SEASON 7

DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: KYLE JEWELL, PAUL THERIAULT

OPERATORS: MIGUEL PASK, MILAN JANICIN, DOUG OH

ASSISTANTS: JIM THIBO, KELLY BERG, JASON GARCIA, RICHARD KENT,

CHRIS MACK, TYLER ERNST

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: RYAN DEGRAZZIO

DIGITAL LOADER: JACOB HELLINGA

UTILITY: SPENCER THIBO

HBO

“THE GILDED AGE” SEASON 3

DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MANUEL BILLETER, CHRIS LA VASSEUR

OPERATORS: OLIVER CARY, PYARE FORTUNATO, SCOTT TINSLEY

ASSISTANTS: JOHN OLIVERI, TROY SOLA, BRENDAN RUSSELL, BRIAN LYNCH, LOTTE SKUTCH

STEADICAM OPERATOR: PYARE FORTUNATO

DIGITAL IMAGING TECHS: MATT SELKIRK, JAKOB FRIEDMAN

LOADER: BRANDON OSBORN

STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: KAROLINA WOJTASIK, JON PACK

HIGH ROLLER PRODUCTIONS, LLC

“POKER FACE” SEASON 2

DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JARON PRESANT, CHRISTINE NG, TARI SEGAL

OPERATORS: REBECCA ARNDT, NADINE MARTINEZ

ASSISTANTS: HAMILTON LONGYEAR, COURTNEY BRIDGERS, KELLON INNOCENT, RODRIGO MILLAN GARCE, AMBER MATHES

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: GEORGE ROBERT MORSE

LOADERS: AARON CHAMPAGNE, KATIE GREAVES

STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: SARAH SHATZ, JON PACK

KANAN PRODUCTIONS, INC.

“POWER BOOK, III: RAISING KANAN” SEASON 5

DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JEFFREY DUTEMPLE, FRANCIS SPIELDENNER

OPERATORS: GREG FINKEL, BRADLEY GRANT

ASSISTANTS: MARK FERGUSON, EMILY DEBLASI, SUREN KARAPETYAN, KEITH ANDERSON

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: HUNTER FAIRSTONE

LOADERS: JOSH MUNSON, KATI PEREZ, CONNOR LYNCH

STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: CARA HOWE

UNIT PUBLICIST: EVELYN SANTANA

NBC UNIVERSAL TELEVISION, LLC

“CHICAGO MED”SEASON 10

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: SHAWN MAURER

OPERATORS: JOE TOLITANO, BILLY NIELSEN

ASSISTANTS: GEORGE OLSON, PATRICK DOOLEY, BRIAN KILBORN, RICHARD COLMAN, MATTHEW WILBAT, JJ LITTLEFIELD

STEADICAM OPERATOR: CHRISTOPHER GLASGOW

LOADER: TREVOR SNYDER

DIGITAL UTILITY: TRENTON LUETTICH

STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: GEORGE BURNS

2ND UNIT

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: WILLIAM NIELSEN

“CHICAGO PD” SEASON 12

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JAMES ZUCAL

OPERATORS: VICTOR MACIAS, JAMISON ACKER, CHRIS HOOD

ASSISTANTS: KYLE BELOUSEK, DON CARLSON, NICK WILSON, MARK MOORE, CHRIS POLMANSKI, STEVE CLAY

STEADICAM OPERATOR: VICTOR MACIAS

STEADICAM ASSISTANT: KYLE BELOUSEK

LOADER: REBECCA JOHNSON

DIGITAL UTILITIES: JACOB OCKER, JACOB CUSHMAN

STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: LORI ALLEN

“FBI” SEASON 7

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: BART TAU

OPERATORS: AFTON GRANT, ANDY FISHER

ASSISTANTS: ADAM GONZALEZ, YURI INOUE, MIKE LOBB, MARVIN LEE

LOADERS: MATTHEW JENSEN, DAVID DIAZ

STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: BENNETT RAGLIN

“FBI MOST WANTED” SEASON 6

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: LUDOVIC LITTEE

OPERATORS: CHRIS MOONE, SCOTT TINSLEY

ASSISTANTS: JOHN FITZPATRICK, DAN PFEIFER, JOHN CONQUY, TYLER MANCUSO

LOADERS: ANTHONY VITALE, HUSSEIN FARRAJ

STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: MARK SCHAFER

“HAPPY'S PLACE” SEASON 1

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: GARY BAUM, ASC

OPERATORS: DAVID DECHANT, DEBORAH O'BRIEN

DAMIAN DELLA SANTINA, EDDIE FINE

ASSISTANTS: BRAD TRAVER, SEAN ASKINS, YUKA KADONO

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: DEREK LANTZ

VIDEO CONTROLLER: JOHN O'BRIEN

CAMERA UTILITIES: RICHIE FINE, DANNY LORENZE

“LAW & ORDER” SEASON 24

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JON DELGADO

OPERATORS: DEKE KEENER, BEAU GRANTLAND

ASSISTANTS: JASON RIHALY, JACOB STAHLMAN, EMILY DUMBRILL, KELSEY MIDDLETON

STEADICAM OPERATOR: RICHARD KEENER

LOADER: LISA CHIN

STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: VIRGINIA SHERWOOD, IAN BRACONE, MICHAEL PARMELEE

“LAW & ORDER: ORGANIZED CRIME” SEASON 5

DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JIM DENAULT, JON BEATTIE

OPERATORS: JOHN PIROZZI, NIKNAZ TAVAKOLIAN

ASSISTANTS: ALEX WATERSTON, LEE VICKERY, DERRICK DAWKINS, PATRICK ARELLANO

LOADERS: WILLIE CHING, BERNARDO RUIZ POZO, VINCE FERRARI

STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: GIOVANNI RUFINO, RALPH BAVARO, VIRGINIA SHERWOOD, DAVID GIESBRECHT

“LAW & ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT” SEASON 26

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: FELIKS PARNELL

OPERATORS: JON HERRON, CHRISTOPHER DEL SORDO

ASSISTANTS: JOSEPH METZGER, CHRISTIAN CARMODY, RYAN HADDON, LIAM GANNON, MARY NEARY

STEADICAM OPERATOR: JONATHAN HERRON

LOADER: JAMES WILLIAMS

STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: PETER KRAMER, VIRGINIA SHERWOOD, EMILY ARAGONES

“TED” SEASON 2

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JEFFREY C. MYGATT

OPERATORS: BILL BRUMMOND, TOBY TUCKER, MICHAEL SHARP

ASSISTANTS: PATRICK BENSIMMON, DALE WHITE, SCOTT BIRNKRANT, FERNANDO ZACARIAS, ERIC GUERIN, JIHANE MRAD

STEADICAM OPERATOR: BILL BRUMMOND

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: HANNAH THOMAS

“THE FOUR SEASONS” SEASON 1

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: TIM ORR

OPERATORS: PHILIP MARTINEZ, ARTHUR AFRICANO

ASSISTANTS: WARIS SUPANPONG, BECKI HELLER, RANDY SCHWARTZ, ELIZABETH CASINELLI

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: PAUL SCHILENS

LOADERS: MARGARET HUGHES, DANIEL SANABRIA

STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: JON PACK

NETFLIX PRODUCTIONS, LLC

“HAPPY GILMORE 2”

DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ZAK MULLIGAN, PATRICK CAPONE

OPERATORS: MICHAEL FUCHS, REBECCA RAJADNYA

ASSISTANTS: TROY DOBBERTIN, ALEC FREUND,

JAMES SCHLITTENHART, FRANCES DE RUBERTIS

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: TOM WONG

LOADERS: JEANNA CANATSEY, JORDAN BAN

STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: SCOTT YAMANO

“THE BOROUGHS”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MATTTHEW JENSEN, ASC

OPERATORS: KENNY NIEMNBERG, KEVIN EMMONS

ASSISTANTS: SEBASTIAN VEGA, TAYLOR HILBURN, KATY

JONES

STEADICAM OPERATOR: KENNY NIERBERG

DIGITAL UTILITY: AUBRI MARTINEZ

LOADER: EMILIO CHERINO

STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: SCOTT GARFIELD

“TIRES” SEASON 2

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: CLAYTON HERETH

ASSISTANTS: MELISSA DABBACK, MONICA MEJIA, CORRINE MCANDREWS, STEPHEN REYES

STEADICAM OPERATOR: MICHAEL THACKRAY

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: RICHARD PAUL MYERS

PARALLAX TV PRODUCTIONS, LLC

“THE PITT” SEASON 1

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JOHANNA COELHO

OPERATORS: RYAN WOOD, AYMAE SULICK

ASSISTANTS: JACOB DEPP, KIRSTEN CELO, PETER DEPHILIPPIS, KELLSIE DOMNITZ

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JEFFERSON FUGITT

DIGITAL UTILITY: TOSHA PALANI

STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: GREG LEWIS

SOLVE EVERYTHING PRODUCTIONS, LLC

“FANTASTIC FOUR AKA BLUE MOON” NY UNIT

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JAMES MCMILLAN

OPERATOR: ANDREW PRIESTLEY

ASSISTANTS: JUSTIN COOLEY, MICHAEL BELARDI, MARINO DELEON, GIANNI CARSON

DIGIAL IMAGING TECH: ROSS CITRIN LOADER: LAURENCE CHADWICK KEAN

SONY PICTURES TELEVISION

“JEOPARDY!” SEASON 39

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: JEFF MESSENGER

VIDEO UTILITIES: MICHAEL CORWIN, JEFF KLIMUCK

STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: TYLER GOLDEN

“WHEEL OF FORTUNE” SEASON 40

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: JEFF ENGEL

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

HEAD UTILITY: TINO MARQUEZ

CAMERA UTILITY: RAY THOMPSON

VIDEO CONTROLLER: JEFF MESSENGER

VIDEO UTILITIES: MICHAEL CORWIN, JEFF KLIMUCK

JIB ARM OPERATOR: STEVE SIMMONS

STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: CAROL KAELSON

STAMFORD MEDIA CENTER AND PRODUCTIONS, LLC

“KARAMO” SEASON 3

OPERATORS: VICTOR MATHEWS, RON THOMPSON, CHARLES BEDI, DOMINICK CIARDIELLO, JON ROSE, ED STAEBLER, THOMAS TUCKER

JIB ARM OPERATOR: ANTHONY LENZO

CAMERA UTILITIES: FRANK CAIOLA, ROBERT FRITCHE

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JOE MANCUSI

“WILKOS” SEASON 18

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

JIB ARM OPERATOR: ANTHONY LENZO

CAMERA UTILITIES: ROBERT BENEDETTI, FRANK CAIOLA, ROBERT FRITCHE

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JOE MANCUSI

STU SEGALL PRODUCTIONS,

INC.

“LONG HAIRED BUSINESSMEN”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ROSS RIEGE

OPERATORS: JAN RUONA, PATRIK THELANDER

ASSISTANTS: BIANCA BAHENA, JEFF LYNN, VANESSA GUFFEY, CHRIS DE LA RIVA

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: RANDALL KAPLAN

LOADER: BRIAN WINIKOFF

TCS LOUISIANA PRODUCTIONS 5, INC.

“DELIVER ME FROM NOWHERE AKA HUSKER”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: MASANOBU TAKAYANAGI

OPERATOR: BJ MCDONNELL

ASSISTANTS: GLENN KAPLAN, ADAM RUSSELL

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: MICHAEL KELLOGG

LOADER: ZAKARIAS BRYLD AIDT

UNIT PUBLICIST: PETER SILBERMANN

UNIVERSAL TELEVISION

“THE EQUALIZER” SEASON 5

DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: TERRENCE L. BURKE, CLIFF CHARLES

OPERATORS: JOE BLODGETT, MALCOLM PURNELL, RICARDO SARMIENTO

ASSISTANTS: STACY MIZE, JELANI WILSON, CHRIS GLEATON, ROB WRASE, ZAKIYA LUCAS-MURRAY, COLIN MORRIS

STEADICAM OPERATOR: JOE BLODGETT

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: TIFFANY ARMOUR-TEJADA

LOADERS: CHRIS BAZATA, ALEX LILJA

STILL PHOTOGRAPHERS: EMILY ARAGONES, MICHAEL GREENBERG

VIBRANT PRODUCTIONS, LLC

“UNTITLED BIGELOW-OPPENHEIM”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: BARRY ACKROYD, BSC

OPERATORS: GREGOR TAVENNER, KATHERINE CASTRO, ALAN PIERCE

ASSISTANTS: NOLAN BALL, CORY STAMBLER, JASON

BRIGNOLA, TIM METIVIER, CHRISTINA CARMODY, JAMES DEAN DRUMMOND, EVE STRICKMAN, ANDY HENSLER

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: KYO MOON

LOADERS: CLARIE SNODE, PAUL SPANG, SAM FORNASIERO

STILL PHOTOGRAPHER: EROS HOAGLAND

WARNER BROS

“ALL AMERICAN” SEASON 7

DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ERIC LAUDADIO, ERIBERTO CORDERO

OPERATORS: BROOKS ROBINSON, NATHAN STERN

ASSISTANTS: BLAKE COLLINS, GREG DELLERSON, KIRSTEN LAUBE, JESSICA PINNS

STEADICAM OPERATOR: NATHAN STERN

STEADICAM ASSISTANT: GREG DELLERSON

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: URBAN OLSSON

“LEANNE” SEASON 1

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: STEVEN V. SILVER, ASC

OPERATORS: EDDIE FINE, DAMIAN DELLA SANTINA, JAMIE HITCHCOCK, JON PURDY

ASSISTANTS: MEGGINS MOORE, SEAN ASKINS, NIGEL STEWART, JEFF JOHNSON, WHITNEY JONES

CAMERA UTILITIES: COLIN BROWN, MATT FISHER

VIDEO CONTROLLER: KEVIN FAUST

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: BENJAMIN STEEPLES

COMMERCIALS

BISCUIT FILMWORKS

“STANLEY”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ERIC SCHMIDT

ASSISTANTS: LILA BYALL, GAVIN GROSSI

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JOHN SPELLMAN

BOB INDUSTRIES

“META X SUPERNATURAL”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: KRIS KACHIKIS

ASSISTANTS: SCOTT KASSENOFF, NICOLA CARUSO

JUMP UP PRODUCTIONS

“BHO”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DAVID WELDON

OPERATORS: DAVID LIEBLING, CHRIS HERR

ASSISTANTS: MICHAEL PANCZENKO, JR. JOSH COFFIN, CHRIS SLOAN, ALEX COYLE

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: IAN SPOHR

CAMERA UTILITY: KURT WALLRATH

OLD HARBOR PRODUCTIONS

“COACH”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: PATRICK KELLY

ASSISTANT: MICHAEL RODRIGUEZ TORRENT

O POSITIVE

“BEST BUY”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: KIRA KELLY, ASC

ASSISTANTS: ETHAN MCDONALD, ALAN CERTEZA

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: DANNY HERNANDEZ

PARK PICTURES

“AT&T”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: RYAN MARIE HELFANT

ASSISTANTS: ERICK AGUILAR, BRYAM AGUILAR, TAMARA ARROBA

PRODUCTION CREDITS

STEADICAM OPERATOR: DEVON CATUCCI

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: DANIEL HERNANDEZ

RADICAL MEDIA, LLC

“WALMART HOLIDAY CORE”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: CRISTINA DUNLAP

OPERATOR: JUN LI

ASSISTANTS: KARLA CHRISTENSEN, LILA BYALL, SCOTT SISON

STEADICAM OPERATOR: JUN LI

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: TED PHUTHANHDANH

TECHNOCRANE OPERATOR: JAMES FAVAZZO

TECHNOCRANE TECH: RANDY JOHNSON

REMOTE HEAD TECH/OPERATOR: SEAN DOMMETT

RIFF RAFF FILMS US

“VERIZON”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: LACHLAN MILNE

ASSISTANTS: LIAM SINNOTT, HANNAH LEVIN

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: CALVIN REIBMAN

SANCTUARY CONTENT

“VALERO”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: CHRIS LEW

ASSISTANT: LIAM SINNOTT

PHANTOM TECH: ROBERT BARR

SCHEME ENGINE

“JORDAN”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: CORY BURMESTER

ASSISTANTS: PATRICK KELLY, ZACK SHULTZ, MARY ANNE JANKE

STEADICAM OPERATOR: ZACHARY STANKE

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: MATTHEW DORRIS

SMUGGLER

“GOOGLE”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ERIC SCHMIDT

OPERATOR: COLLIN DAVIS

ASSISTANTS: LILA BYALL, LAURA GOLDBERG, GAVIN GROSSI

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: TED PHUTHANHDANH

“HOME DEPOT”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ERIC SCHMIDT

OPERATORS: COLLIN DAVIS, JOHN PINGRY

ASSISTANTS: LILA BYALL, CARRIE LAZAR, GAVIN GROSSI, KIRA HERNANDEZ

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: JOHN SPELLMAN

SWEET RICKEY

“DRAFT KINGS”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ERIC SCHMIDT

ASSISTANTS: JILL TUFTS, ALEX STEVENS

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: MATTHEW DORRIS

“DRAFT KINGS”

OPERATORS: CAMERON DUNCAN, ALEXANDER FALK

ASSISTANTS: CARRIE LAZAR, NOAH GLAZER, LILA BYALL, ANDI CORBAXHI, SHARLA CIPICCHIO

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: CASEY SHERRIER

“DRAFT KINGS”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: PATRICK RUTH

ASSISTANTS: MARY ANNE JANKE, MICHAEL RODRIGUEZ TORRENT

LOADER: ANNE ABBRUZZESE

“LIBERTY MUTUAL”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ANDREW LILIEN

OPERATOR: DOUGLAS PHILLIP GORDON

ADVERTISERS INDEX

AMAZON 2&3

AMAZON/MGM STUDIOS 5, 15, 26

ARRI 7

BAND PRO 25

CANON 21

CHAPMAN LEONARD 99

CINEGEAR EXPO 6

NEON 27

NETFLIX 6, 17

PRODUCTONHUB.COM 4

SONY 100

WWW.CONSIDERAMAZON.COM/HOME

AMAZONMGMSTUDIOSGUILDS.COM

WWW.ARRI.COM/SIGNATURE-ZOOMS

WWW.BANDPRO.COM

USA.CANON/COM/PRO

WWW.CHAPMAN-LEONARD.COM

WWW.CINEGEAREXPO.COM

NEONRATED.COM/FILMS/ANORA

WWW.FILM.NETFLIXAWARDS.COM

WWW.PRODUCTIONHUB.COM

WWW.SONYCINE.COM

UNIVERSAL 19 AWARDS.UNIVERSALPICTURES.COM

WARNER BROS 13, 23, 97

WWW.WBAWARDS.COM

ASSISTANTS: MARY ANNE JANKE, CHRISTOPHER HEBERT, MICHAEL RODRIGUEZ TORRENT

TOOL OF NORTH AMERICA

“AFLAC”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ERIC SCHMIDT

ASSISTANTS: CHRIS HOLLOWAY, STEVEN MCCRARY, CHASE SCHULTZ

STEADICAM OPERATOR: BRENNAN MAXWELL

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: GRIFF THOMAS

DRONE OPERATOR: LOUIE NORTHERN

UNDERWONDER

“GASLIGHT”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: NIKITA KUZMENKO

ASSISTANTS: NICHOLAS MARTIN, ELIJAH RAWLINGS

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: FABRICIO DISANTO

RONIN TECH: TRAVIS CLEARY

WORKING STIFF, INC.

“FOXWOODS RESORT CASINO”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: ERNEST LOMELI

OPERATOR: MERRILL BLAKE STEIGERWALD

ASSISTANT: AIDAN GRAY

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: MICHAEL ASHLEY

WORLD WAR SEVEN

“MCCAIN”

OPERATOR: JOSH WILLIAMSON

ASSISTANTS: DENNIS MACDONALD, DAISY SMITH

DIGITAL IMAGING TECH: GIANENNIO SALUCCI

WEST COAST & CANADA

ROMBEAU INC.

Sharon Rombeau

Tel: (818) 762-6020

Fax: (818) 760-0860

Email: sharonrombeau@gmail.com

EAST COAST & EUROPE

ALAN BRADEN INC.

Alan Braden

Tel: (818) 850-9398

Email: alanbradenmedia@gmail.com

METICULOUS COMPOSITIONS AND GORGEOUS LIGHTING

JIM HEMPHILL, INDIEWIRE

ANNE MARIE FOX

The galvanizing spirit of this dogged still image represents a pivotal scene in Nightbitch and is also a visual metaphor for the afflicted character of Mother, viscerally portrayed by a chameleon of an artist, Amy Adams. Anyone who’s been on a set knows what an achievement it is to wrangle an animal; but to wrangle a gang of mixed-breed dogs at the bewitching hour was a truly impressive feat by the film’s trainers, Adriana Echeverria, Rachael Greenstone and Michael W. Miliotti. As integral cast members in this supernatural comedy, the reliability this posse exhibited was remarkable. Their flawless performances on a late-night shoot perpetuate the idiom that dogs are not only a (wo)man’s best friend but a filmmaker’s dream team when essential to a major plot twist.

NIGHTBITCH

VENICE Extension System 2. Greater. Creative. Freedom.

The new VENICE Extension System 2 gives filmmakers greater creative freedom with two cables and the ability to separate the VENICE 2 sensor from the camera body anywhere from 10 to 40 feet away. It’s perfect for tight spaces, handheld setups, or the next time you need to fit six cameras in the cockpit of a fighter jet or race car.

“The Sony Rialto 2 allows for unencumbered visual accessibility. It’s now an essential tool for creative shot designs to make difficult camera positions work. I can now have the visual fidelity of VENICE 2 in a compact and portable system.” — Matt Sakatani Roe

Behind the scenes and screengrabs from “Tonight We Ride,” with Director of Photography Matt Sakatani Roe.