ICG Magazine - June/July 2024 - The Television Issue

ICG MAGAZINE

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JUNE/JULY 2024

DEPARTMENTS

FEATURE 03

FEATURE 02 THE CLEANING LADY YOUNG SHELDON SPECIAL 01 HISTORY OF GAME SHOWS

PRESIDENT’S LETTER

IN THE ROOM

As I write this month’s President’s Letter for the June/July Issue of ICG Magazine, I am deep in negotiations, alongside other ICG members and staff and representatives of IATSE, to bring back a contract that truly serves the needs of individuals and working families in this industry. Many of the gains we are fighting for center on those types of productions that make up this month’s theme – television, in its many forms – with broadcast, streaming and unscripted all at the top of that list. Although the industry has changed a lot since digital production/distribution arrived, I’d like to think I know a thing or two about working in television. Over my long career, I’ve served as a camera technician on episodic dramas, half-hour comedies and even a few unscripted shows. While the bulk of my work has been on the feature side, the union crews I’ve been fortunate enough to work with in television have been among the fastest, safest and most skilled of any I’ve seen in this business. That’s why all the fast-moving changes TV crews have been confronted with in recent years make these current negotiations more important than ever. Please note that every moment we spend in that room is laser-focused on fighting for the union’s most critical interests.

And on that note – back to the table we all go.

One voice, one fight.

Baird B Steptoe

Photo by Scott Everett White

National President International Cinematographers Guild IATSE Local 600

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

Publisher

Teresa Muñoz

Executive Editor

David Geffner

Art Director

Wes Driver

STAFF WRITER

Pauline Rogers

COMMUNICATIONS COORDINATOR

Tyler Bourdeau

COPY EDITORS

Peter Bonilla

Maureen Kingsley

CONTRIBUTORS

Margot Lester

Kevin H. Martin

Jeff Neumann

COMMUNICATIONS COMMITTEE

John Lindley, ASC, Co-Chair

Chris Silano, Co-Chair

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June/July 2024 vol. 95 no. 05

IATSE Local 600

NATIONAL PRESIDENT

Baird B Steptoe

VICE PRESIDENT Chris Silano

1ST NATIONAL VICE PRESIDENT

Deborah Lipman

2ND NATIONAL VICE PRESIDENT

Mark H. Weingartner

NATIONAL SECRETARY-TREASURER

Stephen Wong

NATIONAL ASSISTANT SECRETARY-TREASURER

Jamie Silverstein

NATIONAL SERGEANT-AT-ARMS

Betsy Peoples

NATIONAL EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Alex Tonisson

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

EDITORIAL POLICY: The International Cinematographers Guild neither implicitly nor explicitly endorses opinions or political statements expressed in International Cinematographers Guild Magazine. ICG Magazine considers unsolicited material via email only, provided all submissions are within current Contributor Guideline standards. All published material is subject to editing for length, style and content, with inclusion at the discretion of the Executive Editor and Art Director. Local 600, International Cinematographers Guild, retains all ancillary and expressed rights of content and photos published in ICG Magazine and icgmagazine.com, subject to any negotiated prior arrangement. ICG Magazine regrets that it cannot publish letters to the editor.

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POSTMASTER: Send address changes to ICG 7755 Sunset Boulevard Hollywood, California 90046

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

The International Cinematographers Guild Magazine has been published monthly since 1929. International Cinematographers Guild Magazine is a registered trademark. www.icgmagazine.com www.icg600.com

WIDE ANGLE

Happy summer! Welcome to the second of four ICG Magazine print issues in 2024. This month’s Television theme is malleable, given nearly all media is considered “TV” in the current entertainment landscape. For example: our cover story on Apple TV+’s new limited series, Dark Matter, page 28, lensed entirely in Chicago by ICG Directors of Photography John Lindley, ASC, and Jeffrey Greeley, began its life in 2016 as a novel by author Blake Crouch (Exposure, page 24). Crouch, who had already seen his trilogy novel, Wayward Pines, made into a TV series in 2015, and another novel, Good Behavior, made into a TV series in 2016, began adapting Dark Matter as a feature film for Sony Pictures. A few years in, Crouch realized a two-hour feature would never serve the many characters (and now-popular “multiverse” theme that dominates every VFX-heavy feature – looking at you, Marvel) he had packed into the source material. So, the novelist did what any new filmmaker does these days – he made a streaming series for a technology company more famous for smartphones, laptops, and tens of thousands of digital apps. He made “content” that can be watched on a zillion different screens (but only one subscriber-based platform).

Maybe another June/July story, The Cleaning Lady (page 46), shot by ICG Directors of Photography Alan Caudillo and Vanessa Joy Smith, better fits the TV box, circa 2024. It’s broadcast on a network (FOX) and produced by longtime TV powerhouse Warner Bros. Television. But, hold on now. The Cleaning Lady, based on the Argentinian TV series La Chica que Limpia, also holds the record as the highest-rated dramatic pilot on the streaming channel Hulu! With Season 3 in the books, and a fantastic regional crew in New Mexico bringing The Cleaning Lady to life, this unique drama about a Cambodian doctor (Élodie Yung) living in Las Vegas, who begins working for mobsters to pay for medical care for her young son, straddles a few demarcation points of what television can be these days.

And that brings me to our third feature, which does look back to that familiar TV container this industry has had for some six decades. Young Sheldon (page 60) aired its final episode – of its seven-season run – this past May. The halfhour CBS comedy, which spun off from the equally beloved sitcom The Big Bang Theory, in 2016, centers around a younger version of Jim Parsons’ character from TBBT, Sheldon Cooper (Iain Armitage), growing up as a child prodigy in a fictional East Texas town. Created by comedy kings Chuck Lorre and Steve Molaro, it has the distinction of having had the same Local 600 camera team for all seven seasons (and a team that’s been working together for 15 years). Led by their fearless leader, Director of Photography Buzz Feitshans IV, Young Sheldon is not only what TV used to be, it’s probably what TV should still be, and here’s why:

“Buzz is what we call a ‘3D chess player,’” Feitshans’ longtime A-Camera Operator Neil Toussaint shares in the story. “He’s always calm and approachable, an invested collaborator. He makes himself and his time available, especially for the neophyte directors with questions or thoughts. He’s truly a steady hand on the wheel.”

Toussaint, who describes Young Sheldon as “the best working experience” of his career, goes on to say that Feitshans is “a multitasker who can address many situations, starting with camera placement, lighting, and production-schedule demands, seemingly all at once. His work is professional and efficiently executed to keep the look consistent while staying on or ahead of schedule.” Not to be outdone, Feitshans is quick to heap praise back on his crew, calling Toussaint “the most diplomatic and capable operator” he’s ever worked with, and 1st AC’s Matt Del Ruth and Grant Yellen “focus ninjas,” who, over seven years, “achieved 99 percent focus perfection.”

Such deep mutual respect, borne from Feitshans’ leadership over some 140 episodes, is a big reason why Young Sheldon sails away as the highest-rated sitcom on a broadcast network.

Or to put it into a formula Nielsen ratings tabulators (remember them?) would readily understand when ranking the best “television” shows year after year: Talent + humanity = success.

David Geffner Executive Editor Email: david@icgmagazine.com

Down + Dirty

One of the best things about covering ICG Local 600 members is getting to write about projects like The Cleaning Lady, which tell stories from perspectives that have too long been absent from screens

and small.”

Down + Dirty, Stop Motion

“The definition of a photographer is now debatable. In my conditioned eyes, it’s not simply capturing a moment and freezing it on a memory card for editors to screw with… it’s primordial and why analog is back for good reason. ‘Developer’, ‘fixer’, ‘rinse’, ‘dodge and burn’ are no longer whispers. Nothing in photography is more gratifying than a person’s reaction to your art on a wall. To witness their wide eyes fill with wonder, horror, contentment, literally altering perception. If you’re fortunate, the patron disappears into personal reflection and – that most glorious of honors

leaves with inspiration.”

Cover photo by Sandy Morris / Apple TV+

Photo by Sara Terry

JEFF NEUMANN

–

MARGOT LESTER

FERNANDO REYES, AMC

When people ask me where I am from, I need to pause. I am a Chilean-born Mexican American, and an American-raised New Zealander by heart and citizenship. I think I’m a melting pot of different cultures and identities that have helped me see the world and appreciate the opportunities that are given to me.

I feel a great responsibility with the upcoming filmmakers from Latin America. I have enjoyed the doors that were opened by talented people ike Rodrigo Prieto [ASC, AMC], Julio Macat [ASC], Checco Varese [ASC], Xavier Pérez Grobet [ASC, AMC] and Chivo Lubezki [ASC, AMC], among many others, and I feel we need

to continue probing our contribution to the film and television industry in the U.S. During this massive wave of streaming, multiculturalism is a very important element to preserve.

Filming in Mexico is a beautiful but challenging experience. It is an industry where many tools are available, and its strongest assets are the crews and dedicated, passionate people who give their best to produce wonderful content. There is also a creative magic there that is the result of improvising solutions and the desire to achieve things that could look impossible. There is a passion to create. However, there is a big need for structure and protection for

the crews. The absence of labor organization among the workers creates a big gap for abusive and unsafe practices that need to stop.

When I come back to the States after a long job in Central or South America, I immediately remember how lucky we are in this industry and how important the achievements that our union has obtained are. We have benefits and salaries that are unthinkable in other places. We have access to equipment and training that are a dream for crews over there. We are very privileged, and we should not forget that. I feel I need to honor this privilege every day by being better at doing my job.

PHOTO BY DANIEL DELGADO, JR. / DISNEY

CINEMATOGRAPHY FOR A SERIES (ONE HOUR)

Adriano Goldman, ASC, BSC, ABC “Sleep, Dearie Sleep”

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OBSERVER

“WE HAVE BENEFITS AND SALARIES THAT ARE UNTHINKABLE IN OTHER PLACES. WE HAVE ACCESS TO EQUIPMENT AND TRAINING THAT ARE A DREAM FOR CREWS [OUT OF THE U.S.]. WE ARE VERY PRIVILEGED, AND WE SHOULD NOT FORGET THAT.”

My greatest nostalgia is New Zealand – my beloved Aotearoa. New Zealand combines some of the best I have found in the industry in the USA and Latin America. There is some direct and simple love and passion for the craft of filmmaking with solid professionalism and great crews. I owe to New Zealand and the film and television industry some of my most important lessons and experiences. I went to film school in New York, then Mexico, and I did my MA in the U.K. I worked in all those places, but I got the core of my professional formation in New Zealand.

Film and television industry are very different around the world. Still, I’ve always seen my job from the same perspective: a visual storyteller who builds the story with the director and crew motivated by the writer or the writer’s room. In some places, you don’t have the same tools as in the USA, Canada or the UK, but we learn to tell stories with the available tools and force our creativity to devise solutions when approaching a scene.

I’ve been thinking about and studying AI in the last couple of years. We forget that we have been using this technology for a long time to create environments and operate heads and robotic or motion-control supports. Also, [we’ve used it] in cloning, “cleaning” and doing “beauty passes” to some characters. We need to use AI for our creative benefit. I remember when digital technology and the first digital cameras came out, there were a lot of debates about “anybody being able to be a DP” now that you could see immediately what was on the screen. The same thing will happen with AI. We are a group of people thinking, discussing, creating. We are not programmed to only execute in one

way but to improvise solutions in our constantly changing environment (and schedule).

Working on television is one of the most formidable things I have done. Television has allowed me to experiment and learn several aspects of the relationship with Studios, writers/showrunners, production and crews. Very often, I’ve been exposed to circumstances, challenges and tasks that have made me a better cinematographer, like shooting a show in Vancouver that was supposed to happen in the Mediterranean Sea, shooting several superhero shows with high VFX and stunt sequences, period shows that require a lot of accuracy in the lighting and straight-out drama that demands a flexible visual approach to support the actors. I have learned to become more patient, to collaborate with different departments to achieve goals in a concise time frame and to listen carefully to everybody.

Some of the best ideas and solutions often come from communication and allowing people to participate in technical and creative debates. I must thank my friends Jaime Reynoso (AMC) and Scott Peck for giving me opportunities in their projects and helping me put a solid foot in the American television industry in the mid-2010s. Television has become my center of creative interest. I have had the opportunity to go back and work in Mexico, Colombia and Canada, getting to know different crews and working dynamics and learning their codes and ways.

Shooting Will Trent for ABC and Hulu is personal to me. I like having a Latino hero on the screen, a main character who is not a gang

member or a cartel boss but a sensible, funny, and honest guy with the power to understand and solve crime scenes differently. This show is trying to do a few things differently in conventional network television, and having the support of [co-creator] Liz Heldens and [showrunner] Dan Thomsen, along with my A-Camera operator, Steward Smith, SOC, helps a lot. Even having Betty, Will’s beloved dog, helps us to go through our days. She is a funny and adorable dog, very clever, and often will have the initiative to do things. In an episode where she was supposed to only walk to Will, her leash was on her bed and she went back, picked it up, and continued her run to Will, a spontaneous thing that made us all laugh and push to add a line there about “Betty, you want to go for a walk?”

Television and streaming have become very competitive markets, and it is our responsibility to honor our role as cinematographers in this medium. As technology moves forward, we hear more and more people trying to make cuts and do things in post. We are visual storytellers, and we are in charge of the quality of the visual content that will fill the screen.

As a cinematographer exposed to so many different markets and places to shoot, I feel we need to learn to balance what we want to do, the interpretation we have from what the director wants, and the options that production will give us to achieve what we want. The more knowledge we have, the better we will serve the director and production. Knowing how to manage the budget is very important and differs from one market to another. Knowing how to develop solutions that best serve the story is why we are here.

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MIKAEL (MIKA) AND ILAN LEVIN

BY PAULINE ROGERS

PHOTOS BY SER BAFFO

It’s one of those rare relationships – two brothers who do practically everything together and love every minute. Although Mikael (Mika) and Ilan Levin grew up in San Diego, they have deep family roots in Mexico City. As children, they became fascinated by the arts and photography while on family trips to Mexico. When not wandering around art museums or watching classic films, they would borrow their father’s still camera and begin to lay the groundwork for what would eventually become their careers.

Ilan went on to study film at USC, and three years later, Mika followed suit, overlapping with Ilan for one semester. “Mika slept on my dormroom floor because he hated his roommate,”

Ilan remembers. They would stay up all night watching and analyzing movies they had rented from the university’s library. “I’m pretty sure we watched every Gordon Willis [ASC], Conrad Hall [ASC], and Sven Nykvist [ASC] movie that we could get our hands on,” Ilan adds.

When they graduated from film school, they took different paths – sort of. “I traveled extensively before landing a job as a camera PA on a feature in Mexico City,” Ilan recounts, “and then I worked for a year in post at Disney before finding my way back on set.”

Mika, on the other hand, went straight into camera. “I scoured Mandy and Craigslist for jobs – usually only being compensated with ‘meal, copy, credit,’” the younger of

the two shares. The brothers worked both together and separately on features, shorts, commercials, music videos, documentaries, branded content and reality TV. “We said yes to virtually every job that came our way, whether it was camera, grip or electric – sometimes all three at once!” Mika adds. They would use these opportunities to discuss what worked and what didn’t, developing a shared language and an understanding of the craft. They also used these jobs to bank their 100 days to get into the Union.

Mika recalls his first union job was “dayplaying on Mozart in the Jungle for Amazon. My first shot was of Gael Garcia Bernal conducting the LA Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl.

Christopher Nolan at Ghost Ranch, New Mexico. Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures

We only had one take in front of 17,000 people – no pressure!” For Ilan, it took more than a year after joining Local 600 to book his first union job as a B-Camera operator on Season 1 of Lopez for TV Land. “Mika was A-Cam/ Steadicam. I came in late in the season, joining the crew for two episodes set in Las Vegas,” says Ilan. “What happened there? I’m not at liberty to discuss,” he jokes.

Although the brothers love joining forces, the opportunity to work together is not an everyday thing. While Mika has worked on such movies as Haunted Mansion and such shows as Griselda and Minx, Ilan was working in episodic – Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers and The Morning Show. Still, the brother bond follows them wherever they go.

“We are constantly being mistaken for one another,” Ilan reveals. “People I’ve never met come up to me on set and say, ‘So good to see you again!’ I have no idea who they are, so I have to clarify that they’re thinking of my brother, an operator who looks just like me.”

Sometimes, however, they like to have fun with how similar they look. “We were both up for a DP job on a pilot,” recounts Mika. “Unintentionally, we had scheduled back-toback in-person interviews, so we thought it would be funny to wear identical outfits,” laughs Ilan.

“Needless to say, neither of us got the job!” says Mika. The brothers are excellent collaborators – for the most part. “There was this one time on season one of HBO’s A Black Lady Sketch Show when I was seeing Ilan’s camera in the shot, and we got into an argument over whose shot had to change.”

“I may have been on B-Cam, but I’m still the older brother,” responds Ilan. “Yeah, but my shot was obviously better,” Mika quickly adds.

When they don’t get a chance to team up, they will refer – and sometimes even replace –each other. “One time, Mika booked a Facebook commercial shooting in the U.S., Europe, and Asia,” says Ilan. “But two days before leaving, he broke his hand playing hockey. So, at the last minute, I took his place. I know what you’re thinking; but it wasn’t me that broke it.”

While some brothers seem to always be in competition, these two help raise each other without a twinge of jealousy. When Mika wanted to learn Steadicam, the operator-brother turned into an actor-brother as they took turns strapping on the rig, endlessly practicing to develop this new skill set. When one brother would start to wane, it was his turn to become the actor and design a shot for the other to execute.

One of the most memorable moments in their careers came on Season 1 of Hulu’s

Unprisoned. Mika recalls that “Ilan had been day-playing on the show and, due to COVID, he gradually went from C-Cam to B-Cam, and eventually took over for me on A-Cam when I bumped up to DP for the final episode. Finally, little brother got to tell big brother what to do!”

“Joking aside,” Ilan chimes in, “it was amazing how little discussion was needed. Most times, a gesture or a glance was all it took to communicate between us.” Mika adds, “It was significant to have my brother’s support and share this milestone with him” – the culmination, he notes, of developing a filmmaking shorthand from years of living and working together.

While each brother has forged his distinctive path, they cite the projects they’ve done together – including Lessons in Chemistry and Dear White People – as the most fulfilling.

“I love being creative and telling stories, but getting to do it with my best friend and doppelgänger is that much better,” Ilan concludes.

Both brothers hope to keep working for decades to come, continuing to wear their matching t-shirts on the first day of production that read: “I’m the cool brother.”

“It confuses most people, but we find it amusing,” says Ilan – or was that Mika? Honestly, I’m not certain. It can be hard to tell them apart!

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BLAKE CROUCH

CREATOR/SHOWRUNNER

Novelist Blake Crouch has delivered the goods with a bevy of thrillers and tales that includes elements of the fantastic and a strong techno-scientific basis. After penning a series of successful suspense-thrillers, two in collaboration with J.A. Konrath, Crouch wrote the bestselling Wayward Pines trilogy, which featured an ever-deepening puzzle in a small U.S. town that almost made Twin Peaks seem like Petticoat Junction.

BY PAULINE ROGERS

PHOTO BY SANDY MORRIS / APPLE TV+

DARK MATTER

BY PAULINE ROGERS

PHOTOS BY SANDY MORRIS / APPLE TV+

Wayward Pines was adapted into a TV series in 2015 that drew on talents including M. Night Shyamalan and the pre-Stranger Things Duffer Brothers, while Crouch’s novel Good Behavior followed a year later. Among his more recent books is Upgrade, which focuses on genome hacking, and Recursion, featuring an epidemic of the mind where people begin recalling memories that are not their own. His novel Dark Matter, published in 2014, focuses on a hijacked man’s desperate race across infinite alt-realities of the multiverse to get back home. While that might not sound like the easiest sell, the author’s handling of “new physics” aspects is masterfully concise and has become another huge success. Crouch became invested in developing an adaptation – first, abortively, as a feature and now as an Apple TV+ limited series of the same name, starring Joel Edgerton and Jennifer Connelly, and for which Crouch was showrunner, co-writer and executive producer.

ICG: John Carpenter managed to work non-causal physics and a mention of Schrödinger’s cat into Prince of Darkness, and Christopher Nolan drew on Kip Thorne’s expertise to get the science both right and engaging for Interstellar. But grabbing and holding a home audience with mind-blowing scientific concepts that are more substantial than the usual sci-fi technobabble sounds like a challenge. Blake Crouch: When I wrote Dark Matter, there weren’t yet a million different shows all featuring a multiverse, but in the interim, there have been so many that you couldn’t throw a rock without hitting one of them. Marvel jumped into “Let’s use the multiverse in everything” mode. As I watched these things come out, I just kept hoping there would still be some space for us by the time we got Dark Matter up and on its feet. What became apparent very quickly is that we needed to emphasize elements to distinguish our approach to the concept as opposed to others like it. And that meant emphasizing the characters. We approached it in as grounded a fashion as possible.

For a number of years, you pursued the idea of adapting Dark Matter into a feature film. Given how lean and fast the novel reads, was your thought that it would lend itself to that approach? When we tried to do it as a movie, it became very clear that the important character moments were getting tossed off the side of the ship in favor of just getting to tell the story in a limited time. It was cool and sleek – but it was a little bit soulless. So, the more I thought about

“I FELT SPECIAL PHYSICAL EFFECTS WERE THE BEST WAY TO GO FOR THIS. GROUNDED AUTHENTICITY –REALITY – COMES THROUGH WHEN YOU SHOOT REAL LOCATIONS.”

it, the more I realized that there are a lot of things you can do in a book that don’t translate directly to a visual medium and that the reverse was also true. To explore this idea to the fullest, it seemed that spending more time with the characters, especially up front before he gets abducted, was the way to go. In this way, the audience knows enough about Joel’s character that when he begins musing about paths not taken, they can become invested that much more deeply. That was the intention anyway.

And the longer running time of a TV series allowed you to further develop supporting characters. Did you plan for their storylines to serve as cutaways during each episode? That was a big part of it. And since I had a much fuller picture of what Dark Matter might become in series form, it had become that much more important to me that we do it properly and really pull it off. So it only made sense for me to remain involved creatively all the way through from development to shooting and postproduction. I threw my hat in the ring as showrunner and then benefited enormously from having a team of very smart executive producers and department heads, along with line producers and UPM’s with an innate understanding of what goes into making a shooting day on budget.

And that meant you wouldn’t wind up underwater from the start with budgets and visual effects? Yes. And it was a very ambitious

shoot, entirely done in Chicago. Winter in Chicago, which, while mild by their standards, was still tough. We shot as much on location as we did on stage, taking advantage of a variety of found locales, some of which were modified to serve as different worlds our characters explore.

One nice visual aspect was getting to see this massive box appear in radically different environments. I felt special physical effects were the best way to go for this. Grounded authenticity – reality – comes through when you shoot real locations. We took the box all over Chicago. We went to Gary, Indiana for the scenes in Episode four when they explore a world where skyscrapers are falling down. Gary is something of a ghost town, though there are still people living there. We shot inside an abandoned bank, which was a great find for us because we could do our special effects rigging and not worry about ruining anything. There’s a big snow scene for an Ice Age Chicago, on a crooked hill near Lake Shore Drive, but there wasn’t any snow. We wound up waiting for a strong cold snap, then brought out our snow and wind machines and made it all happen. Then, when the box was supposed to sink in Lake Michigan, we were back on stage, using scuba divers and a tank.

What were the most difficult aspects for everybody to get their heads around? We were shooting different worlds, some of which

were only slightly altered from the original one, plus we’d be shooting multiple versions of the same character, which had the potential for serious confusion – asking actors to perform two or three versions of their character on a given day. We’d try to avoid falling into that, but Joel Edgerton was in nearly every scene! That put a lot of guardrails on what we could or couldn’t do. And we were shooting this during the last full season of COVID, which brought its own challenge to filmmaking.

The hardware aspect of transitioning between universes was handled in an understated, almost nondescript way. Was there a conscious effort to avoid the usual VFX/wormhole razzle-dazzle? I brought in Scientific Consultant and Astrophysicist Clifford Johnson to advise on aspects of the box, which had to plausibly seem like a construct that could block everything from getting inside, even neutrinos, which fly out of stars and are passing right through our bodies all the time. I wanted to rely on practical filmmaking techniques as much as possible. Obviously, we had to rely on green screens for certain aspects, like extending the corridor inside the box to infinity, and for a couple of really huge scenes of devastation.

But within the apparatus… When the characters close the door to the box, they are then in the corridor, which is a whole separate set, and that meant we faced continuity issues when it came to getting the many scenes

intercutting these stage builds to play. It was important for me that the corridor inside be long enough that we could have the actors play full scenes in there without having to go through a reset, and that they could build up to a good run when they needed to. When VFX ramped up last summer, we finally got to see those corridor scenes with the extensions added and that amped things up so much for us!

Did the production process provide many surprises – good or bad? We had gotten six out of nine scripts in the can when we started filming. But one episode had a whole approach to doing a particular world that, as it turned out, would have been obscenely expensive. So we reimagined a whole episode only a month out from shooting it.

You hadn’t had anything like that happen on Wayward Pines? Development was never easy on Wayward Pines; it was wild at times. I don’t think of season one as perfect, but it landed in a good place and succeeds in what it tries to do –specifically, how we structure things leading up to the big surprise reveal. The second season was a different group and they got away from things a bit, so it became a kind of hospital drama.

That’s where you met [Writer/Producer] Chad Hodge? Chad was instrumental on Wayward, he was the creator and showrunner on season one and brought me into the circle

to see how a film gets made. Not a lot of novelists get to witness this, and since we had such a fun time together, it made sense to go on and do Good Behavior with him as well.

Since your work often involves a level of research and scientific speculation, do you consider your stories to be cautionary tales, perhaps like Michael Crichton’s technothrillers? Some of my books, such as Upgrade and Recursion, are somewhat cautionary tales. I don’t think of Dark Matter as cautionary about scientific advancement so much as it focuses on how we roll around in regret. I’d say that is the cautionary aspect here.

Depending on the response to Dark Matter, would you consider doing another season to explore other realms with some of the supporting characters or new ones? I mean, there are infinite possibilities with quantum mechanics. There are definitely some characters who are at certain points that could be further explored. Where I came out on this was settling on how the show tells us what it wants – if that makes sense. If the characters tell us there is more story to tell, and then we see the way audiences respond to them and our multiverse concept. Since we used up everything from the book, any further stories would require a whole-cloth, startfrom-scratch approach. I guess I’d say we shall see, and that all will become clear in the coming months – he said, vaguely [laughs].

FOR THE APPLE TV+ SERIES

DARK MATTER, DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY JOHN LINDLEY, ASC, AND JEFFREY GREELEY, ALONG WITH A STRONG CHICAGO-BASED TEAM, PLUMB INFINITE OPTIONS OFFERED BY THE ROADS NOT TAKEN.

BY KEVIN H. MARTIN

PHOTOS BY SANDY MORRIS / APPLE TV+

FRAMEGRABS COURTESY OF APPLE TV+

In Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken” (originally titled “Two Roads”), the poet muses over possible routes one might take before ultimately electing to take the path less traveled, concluding, “and that has made all the difference.” In the new Apple TV+ limited series Dark Matter, physics teacher Jason Dessen (Joel Edgerton) has begun to wonder about his own life and career paths and those of his wife Daniella (Jennifer Connelly). He experiences a serious dose of alt-reality when he is abducted and transported to a parallel realm of existence, one where he never married, and where his doppelgänger – who is responsible for the kidnapping – has pioneered astonishing breakthroughs in quantum mechanics. The result is a device capable of bridging all the various timelines in the multiverse, each splitting off from every decision Dessen has made in his lifetime. He then embarks on a series of adventures, entering multiple realities while seeking a way back to his true home and family.

The narrative concept of a multiverse has been explored in series as wide-ranging as Star Trek and Family Guy (and every Marvel movie in between). What makes Dark Matter unique is how Showrunner Blake Crouch (Exposure, page 24) grounded the source novel in a way that created relatability for his readers. The project attracted the attention of significant creative talent, including director Jakob Verbruggen (Black Mirror, The Alienist) and Directors of Photography John Lindley, ASC, and Jeffrey Greeley, as well as Production Designer Patricio Farrell. I spoke with the creative team from Dark Matter, all shot in and around Chicago with a veteran local crew, to hear how they visualized all the “roads less taken” and where that brought them in the end.

Executive Producer Matt Tolmach: When Blake and I first started working together, in 2014, I had optioned the book as a partial manuscript, and we were developing the project as a movie. We tried that for several years. But the problem was that to reduce the story to two hours, we were compromising so much of what makes the book great, which is that it’s a true odyssey. We weren’t willing to lose all the many worlds that Jason had to travel/inhabit, as well as the emotional journeys of the other characters around him. Fortunately, the people at Sony TV – now at Apple TV+ – encouraged us to pivot to television, where we were able to expand on Blake’s vision and do the novel justice. We shot the show entirely in Chicago, and in some ways, it’s a love letter to that city. Blake came up with the idea for the novel while visiting a friend in Logan Square. Our decision to work with Jakob – who directed the first three episodes – was an easy one. He has an incredible eye for nuance and detail, as well as scope – and this show demands both. Jakob approaches everything with clarity and confidence, which is critical when telling a story as multi-dimensional and complex as Dark Matter

Production Designer Patricio Farrell: I started the design process before there was a DP or director attached to the project, so

Blake and I worked closely at the beginning of prep. Both Blake and the production team were incredibly welcoming, always open to listening and considering different ideas or approaches to the challenges that we faced through that whole year together. It is not every day that one has the chance to conjure up what kind of world would be on the other side of the door!

Director of Photography John Lindley, ASC: We chose the Sony VENICE up front. There are many great cameras out there, but I find it very solid and like its predictability. I chose the lenses. Jeff and I both went in early and had plenty of time to try things out. It was fun playing with the exposure index because you can intentionally create noise. Alternately, you can suppress it with noise reduction. I’d say that between the two of us, we had more than twenty LUT’s made up before the show even started, and after tweaking, wound up with at least thirty by the time we wrapped. There were certain LUT’s we used repeatedly and others that we used only in certain worlds, and only at certain times within those particular worlds. The concept at the outset was to make Jason’s real-world very warm and – I won’t use the word normal because I don’t think that ever was a goal – but at least inviting.

Director of Photography Jeff Greeley: I had just finished a long job and was looking forward to some time at home with my family. It was on the flight home that I read the first few scripts, and, wow, did I love them! Then I read the book and I knew immediately that I wanted to be part of this project. Working with writer/creator Blake Crouch, and actors Joel Edgerton and Jennifer Connelly, was the icing on the cake. I’ve known John [Lindley] a long time; first, operating for him and then as co-DP. We work similarly in the way we run the set and have the same taste in crew, which made the process on Dark Matter seamless. Shooting with the Sony VENICE 2 – the camera is a workhorse and you can take it everywhere. The internal ND’s let you scale from ND .3 to ND 2.4 at the press of a button. We did carry zooms but shot mainly with Cooke S4 primes throughout.

PF: When it comes to designing sets, there’s always an aesthetic side, as well as the emotional aspect and mechanical side. So, while I want the space to look fantastic, I also try to put myself in the crew’s place, and how to make the space work efficiently for them – different ways to get in and out, areas to place monitors, carts, video village, et cetera. Most of all, I like to make sure there are built-in opportunities for the DP to light the set in a natural way. Perhaps a window at the top of the stairs or transoms above hallway doors. Sometimes, those opportunities are used, other times not so much, but it is important to me that the opportunities are there. The same goes with the addition of pilasters and other elements to hide seams, so walls can fly away as easily as possible, or soffits that allow for ceilings to be raised and brought back down as needed.

Chief Lighting Technician Michael

Kelly: This was the first show I’ve ever done without any standard tungsten units on the truck. We used some 20K’s for sunlight. We used a lot of Vortex Lighting and Fiilex products, and quite a few RuPixels. Because everybody remained receptive to new ideas, there was no pre-conceived agenda for using any one manufacturer. It really was an open palette, a matter of choosing the right instrument for the right moment. Scenes of the “real” home had us playing a lot in the 2800-degree range to get the softer, warmer look. MBS Chicago took very good care of us.

“WE SHOT THE SHOW ENTIRELY IN CHICAGO, AND IN SOME WAYS, IT’S A LOVE LETTER TO THAT CITY.”

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER MATT TOLMACH

The major visual challenge of Dark Matter related to realizing the apparatus that allowed the “superposition” physics effect to be achieved. The exterior was a monolithic black box, while its interior featured a seemingly infinite corridor, which would require a combination of a large physical build and significant VFX set extension.

JL: My toughest lighting situation was the warehouse where the box lives. It’s supposed to be subterranean, so even during the day there’s no sunlight coming in. Looking into the darkness at a black box can be tricky. We actually used a lot of light, but very selectively, plus some atmosphere just to backlight it.

MK: The box was supposed to be all black, but that concept works better for radio [laughs]. We tried with John, and especially with Jeff, to find lighting that didn’t make it look lit. Since the walls of the box were reflective, a lot of our lighting related to placement and how a particular angle would put a shine on the surface. We used a lot of Astera tubes for the box because we could move those around and shape the light more easily than we could with more specular sources. Finding a color that didn’t look like anything was also a challenge. We came up with a steel green that felt like it was coming from nowhere, very magical. As they entered, we had Asteras on all four sides inside the box, as there was a soffit to tuck them into this 10-by-10-foot area, before they entered the infinity corridor.

PF: Because the box and the infinite corridor are completely devoid of windows or lighting sources, I knew it was going to be a challenge for the DP’s. I did set out to help as much as I could, having protruding corners to the box that add visual style and help break up the simple cube shape, but also provide a way to wild all walls in and out as needed. Something similar happened with the box’s ceiling; the raised element on top is not only visually pleasing but could be easily removed and replaced with a soft lighting panel or another

camera port. All of these elements were then recreated along the infinite corridor.

JL: Production had started way ahead of me. But there were still a lot of things to figure out, like lighting the box and handling the “infinity” aspect. The basic shape had been determined by Patricio and the producing team. I was given an opportunity to amend the corridor. There were changes to doors and colors – they wanted it dark but to be able to see something. There are lighter values on the walls and the floor so they aren’t all just black. We shot tests to find a good balance of dark but not invisible.

JG: When I’m too old to keep on shooting and start to teach, one of my quizzes will revolve around our issue on this series: “How do you shoot a black man in an endless black corridor with no light?” [Laughs.] We benefited from the corridor construction, since it was metal, permitting us to attach battery-powered LED lights magnetically for fill and other needs. That was a real savior. We also had a little green top light coming down from above – it was that color because we needed to avoid blue out of the feel of daylight it might give off, and there was no day source that penetrated down to this chamber. I also changed up the lenses for scenes of the characters entering the box and going down the corridor, using uncoated Zeiss Super Speeds to give a slightly different look and feel. That came through, especially with the way their lantern spilled light on the walls and flared.

MK: The lantern lamp Joel’s character carries took a lot of design work from props as well as our fixtures team. It had to look interesting while remaining a practical lighting source, and the build had to prove durable since it got beaten up a lot. We also didn’t want to have to go the old route of running cords down an actor’s leg to power it, so it was battery-powered and fully wireless. Joel Edgerton should get a credit in the lighting department, along with his other credits on the project. He is a genius with a flashlight.

JL: We had hidden lights in the lantern

base on the off-camera side so it projected more light than you got just from the bulb. Plus it had to pass muster with Blake, who didn’t want to have to give the character six flashlights and twelve lanterns. Our dimmer board operator could regulate the amount of light coming out of the lantern as well as how much illumination came from the base.

JG: In Episode 4, Alice Braga [Amanda] is freaking out in the corridor and starts running away. We used an e-car, building a ramp for it so we could pace her, and added a light alongside the camera to accentuate the effect of the lantern she is holding and how it registers on these weird dark walls as she sprints along this 80-foot stretch of tunnel, which was extended much further with green screen.

Unit Publicist Ernie Malik: We only considered using the box and corridor for EPK talent interviews, because each of those connecting sets are characters in-and-of themselves in the story. We could have also considered Patricio Farrell’s handsome Dessen house stage set for interviews, but it is crucial to shoot video interviews on the sets that best represent, thematically, the arc of the story. When planning the media marketing day, which we scheduled two weeks before wrap, I discussed my idea of the Box and Corridor with Blake Crouch and Executive Producer Don Kurt. Not only did they both embrace the idea, but Don suggested having Jeff Greeley assist in lighting the set so we could simulate the exact look as it appears in the story (as Jeff established the lighting in the episodes that introduces these sets). I also had a fantastic collaborator for EPK footage and interviews on this project in [Chicago-based] Camrin Petramale. I hope when audiences see the interviews, they will be wowed by the backdrops and how Camrin created the lighting to help bring these sets to life.

EPK Videographer Camrin Petramale: John and Jeff did such a wonderful job creating a really unique environment, and a diverse tone for the show. I was excited to get a chance to light the interviews in a space with such an established look.

JL: We had lengthy discussions about when or whether we should tip-off the audience to whether we were in the “real” original world or just one that was very close to that one. There are times Joel’s character goes out of the box and he is clearly not where he wants to be, like the apocalyptic version and the snow version. But the times when he steps out and thinks he has made it back – we wanted the audience to be fooled right along with him. They’d come to the realization at the same time he did. But then there were a few times when we wanted the audience to know instantly that this was a wrong turn. When they go to the utopian world in one of my episodes, I wanted it to be clear that this was a visually very different environment. It used to be that you’d be asked about your previous work that involved visual effects, but now it is practically a given. I’ve dealt with VFX in a pretty big way on films going back to Pleasantville and Legion, and in television with Pan-Am. I think the best relationship to establish is one where both teams acknowledge the strengths and weaknesses and work out a plan that maximizes the former while being realistic about the budget.

JG: The first two episodes I did were 4 and 5, which featured these wildly different worlds with extremes of water, ash, and winter. The water world required a huge tank that we dropped the box into. It took three days to shoot what was on screen for maybe a minute and required a whole gantry setup, plus an underwater housing for the VENICE. When they went to the snow world, we had to build the top half of a house and then put it up against a hill. Shooting on a lake in a freezing Chicago winter presented its own challenges. Ash World was shot in Gary, Indiana. We shot the ash, while the big building collapse VFX stuff was planned out with an art department person who was good with the computer. He made up a previs so we’d know how the actors would be running and what the camera would need to do to capture them against green screen in a way that would allow VFX to deliver the big visual moments in frame at the right time. We storyboarded all the VFX stuff. That running shot was done from an E-car again, on a black arm using a Ronin. So we were racing ahead of them to keep the framing right. There was a particularly difficult shot later on, where they step out of the box and walk through a building where the roof has collapsed and go out onto the street. We used a small Technocrane to do this as a oner, including when they pass a revolving door.

EM: Ash World was one of the alt-realities Joel Edgerton’s character finds himself in during his odyssey to get back to his true life, and it was a dystopian version of Chicago. Without denigrating the Northwest Indiana town where we shot, its downtown has a battered, almost war-torn look that Location Manager Nick Rafferty presented to Patricio Farrell and Blake Crouch as an option to stage this eye-popping sequence. To create the ashen look, the show’s set decorators, led by Helen Britten, working with the SFX team, used the same compound many productions utilize when dusting a snowbound street. Here, the environmentally friendly material is gray, not white, thus giving the impression that Chicago has been consumed in ash. These types of scenes are ideal for BTS video coverage because it’s an exterior location that allows Camrin multiple shooting angles to capture the scene. Also, as soon as we arrived on the Downtown Gary street, we were blown away by the look created by Farrell’s art department to visualize this apocalyptic reality, which also included an abandoned bank building also buried in ash.

A-Camera/Steadicam Operator Ron Baldwin: There were certain types of moving shots that were hard to pull off when the dolly grips were carrying the Ronin. The issue is the way the Ronin interprets some unwanted movement, which I then have to counter, doing things backward to keep those moves from showing up. We were super lucky with our directors, a couple of whom really understood the camera. Alik Sakharov (ASC) – who was a director of photography on The Sopranos – directed our last two episodes, and he had a fantastic eye for framing in what was almost a Fincheresque way. Alik didn’t do a lot of coverage but staged these meaningful masters that could get you feeling stressed over when operating. Because the shots were so ambitious, you get to thinking, “Am I

going to get fired if this doesn’t work?!” But in support of such challenges, the crew in Chicago was amazing. There was nothing my Focus Puller Chris Wittenborn couldn’t do, while Key Grip Ed Titus was so far ahead of the game on everything that we never had to wait around.

JL: The AC’s on this series were extraordinary, and, overall, the crew was as strong as any I’ve worked with. Our A-Camera operator and gaffer came from Los Angeles, while our great key grip, Ed Titus, was a local Chicagoan. Second AC on A-Camera, Eric Arndt, and Second AC Shannon DeWolfe are based in Chicago; Second AC on B-Camera Jonathan Kurt and B-Camera Operator Scott Thiele are also local to Chicago.

EM: I always get to know my Local 600 brothers and sisters on a show, even though my craft is publicity, not camera. I also ensure that the BTS video crew are IATSE union members, especially the EPK videographer. I have worked with a halfdozen Local 600 videographers here in Chicago, and they’re all great shooters. I did not know about Camrin before Dark Matter Not only do I look forward to reuniting with him on a future project, but I would highly recommend him for other productions. Chicago has a wealth of camera talent. Maybe not in the same volume as one might find in bigger markets, but the locals whom I know and have worked with over the last four decades are as talented and as dedicated as any in the industry! This was my second project with Director of Photography John Lindley; the other was back in 2006 called Reservation Road (which also starred Jennifer Connelly). It was a joy not only to watch John ply his art and craft, but also to chat offset with him about union matters and career war stories, especially Field of Dreams , a film on which I would have loved to have worked.

“WHAT JOEL DID WAS QUITE EXTRAORDINARY. KEEPING TRACK OF WHICH VERSION OF THE CHARACTER HE WAS PLAYING MUST HAVE TAKEN ENORMOUS CONCENTRATION.”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY JOHN LINDLEY, ASC

JG: Our amazing color timer at Picture Shop was Pankaj Bajpai, who did a seamless job. He was dealing with multiple vendors and with elements coming in at separate times. When I was doing my look, it might be based on an image that has only a third of the total VFX in place. So I had to trust Pankaj to carry that through when the rest came in, and he always did.

JL: What Joel [Edgerton] did was quite extraordinary. Keeping track of which version of the character he was playing must have taken enormous concentration. He makes it look easy, but believe me, it’s not. When his character gets taken, we at first

planned to have somebody else playing the kidnapper. But since both of them are Joel’s characters, he wanted to play the masked kidnapper as well as “our” character. How any given person moves is often a combination of very specific motions and actions, but we don’t necessarily tally up all the details in our minds. This made it more complex to shoot, but to his credit, Joel was right – his performance is very physical, and he sells it all the way through with every different version of his character.

RB: Watching Joel’s performances – plural – was one of the joys of this project. It was a kind of homecoming, as Jeff and I both

operated back on Season 1 of Grey’s Anatomy . I’d worked with John on Hunters as well as collaborating with him on safety issues through the union. I’ve always admired John’s dedication to this immensely important issue; he has always made his sets a safe place and will speak up more than any other DP I’ve ever worked with if something isn’t right or has the potential to go wrong. It’s such a pleasure having a boss who is so concerned about everybody’s well-being. Along those same lines, I remember how Blake was on set every single day, always writing. Even with all the pressures of being a first-time showrunner, he remained the nicest guy.

“THE CREW IN CHICAGO WAS AMAZING. THERE WAS NOTHING MY FOCUS PULLER CHRIS WITTENBORN COULDN’T DO, WHILE KEY GRIP ED TITUS WAS SO FAR AHEAD OF THE GAME ON EVERYTHING THAT WE NEVER HAD TO WAIT AROUND.”

A-CAMERA/STEADICAM OPERATOR RON BALDWIN

2ND UNIT

DOWN

As in its two prior years, Season 3 of FOX’s hit drama The Cleaning Lady showcases the craft skills of a highly motivated New Mexico-based union team.

BY MARGOT LESTER

PHOTOS BY JEFF NEUMANN / FOX FRAMEGRABS COURTESY OF FOX

OWN DIRTY +

“I’ll be honest; I was surprised by the success of this show,” shares Miranda Kwok, the creator and showrunner of FOX TV’s dramatic series The Cleaning Lady, based on the Argentinian episodic series La Chica que Limpia. Success is no exaggeration. The pilot for The Cleaning Lady was the highest-rated dramatic pilot on Hulu in FOX history, and Season 2 averaged 5.3 million viewers per week. Furthermore, audience data indicates the show’s Southeast Asian protagonist is popular with the (predominantly) non-Asian viewership, so it’s no wonder the New Mexico-shot series was renewed for a third season. “It just goes to show you that there is an audience and appetite for content featuring people and stories from marginalized communities – stories and characters we haven’t seen before,” Kwok adds. “We all crave deeper understanding and [to expand] our understanding of other people and other worlds.”

The show follows the travails of Thony De La Rosa (Élodie Yung), a Cambodian doctor currently residing in Las Vegas after seeking specialty medical care for her young son, Luca (Sebastien and Valentino LaSalle). Since Luca’s medical visa expired, the former surgeon takes any work she can get, which includes working under the table as a cleaning lady. That’s how she finds herself witnessing a murder and cutting a deal with local crime boss Arman Morales (Adan Canto). Working with organized crime leverages both of Thony’s professions in new ways: cleaning up crime scenes and tending to injured henchmen.

“When she does bad things for good reasons, sometimes people get hurt, and this season she’s been paying the price for that,” explains Executive Producer Jeannine Renshaw. “I think we’ve done a good job showing how Thony’s made her way through all these trials and tribulations and come out as repentant, successful and powerful as she can be. It’s changed her this season. She’s evolved into someone who’s taken more power and control over her own life, and that’s important. We’re showing empowered people in powerless positions; Thony is growing and taking more control.”

Kwok (a member of the AAPI community) describes the series as an underdog story of resilience, “especially for women and marginalized people,” she adds. “[The series] is a way to champion voices of people who aren’t normally heard; showcase their struggles and triumphs, their strengths and resourcefulness; and portray them as heroes. And we do that all within the framework of a fun crime drama – only from a perspective we’ve never seen before.”

LEFT/RIGHT: CO-SERIES DP ALAN CAUDILLO SAYS HE EMBRACED “THE BIG ROLE COLOR PLAYED IN THE PILOT,” PUSHING PRIMARY COLORS TO REFLECT THE CHROMATIC VIBRANCY OF LAS VEGAS AND THE CRIMINAL WORLD THAT IT EMBODIES. “THE USE OF THE LARGE-FORMAT CAMERAS MEANS THAT EVEN WIDER LENSES LIKE A 35MM FALL OFF BEAUTIFULLY, DRAWING ATTENTION TO THE ACTORS AND AWAY FROM THE BACKGROUND.”

The filmmaker says The Cleaning Lady’s production team tries to be “authentic in all aspects of our storytelling, both behind and in front of the camera, so that involves hiring women and people from the different cultures we represent on screen,” Kwok continues. “We also delve into the specific cultures of the performers we cast. We make sure we’re creating multi-layered, multidimensional characters, showing that people from a place are not a monolith. And we try to be true to different cultures on a visual level. [Our] incredible production designer, Roshelle Berliner, does extensive research for every set design that comes down to the colors on the walls and the knobs on a cabinet to patterns and fabrics. That’s all captured by the cinematography and comes together beautifully.”

As for that cinematography, Marshall Adams, ASC [ICG Magazine August 2022], lensed the pilot. He, Kwok, and coshowrunner Melissa Carter collaborated to design a look and language that captured the movement and scope driven by characters and Thony’s POV while showcasing the many worlds of Las Vegas.

“Marshall and the pilot’s director, Michael Offer, crafted an extremely visual, cinematic show, bouncing between the warm

familial life of our heroine trying to save the life of her child, and the harsh, flamboyant life of the Vegas criminal underworld she is dragged into,” notes Series Co-Director of Photography Alan Caudillo, who joined the production for Season 1 with Director of Photography Vanessa Joy Smith. Caudillo adds that “color played a big role in the pilot, and I embraced that, pushing primary colors to reflect the chromatic vibrancy of Las Vegas and the criminal world that it embodies. The use of the large-format cameras means that even wider lenses like a 35 millimeter fall off beautifully, drawing attention to the actors and away from the background.”

Caudillo selected ARRI Alexa Mini LF cameras, shooting in ProRes log 4.5K with a 2:1 aspect ratio serviced by Panavision. For the glass, he chose the Panaspeed series; a rectilinear Laowa 12mm; an ARRI 100 macro for specialty shots; and Panavision Primo 70 series; 70 , 1 50 , and 250 mm for the long end. He also employed RXO II and a PL-mounted Sigma FP-L for crash, stunt and “security/ surveillance” footage. Tiffen Black Satin filters rounded out the kit.

The capture package was “a terrific choice for the AC’s because it blends the reliable and robust Mini LF platform with the mechanical improvements Panavision has made to the

cages,” notes A-Camera 1st AC Sebastian Vega. “Wide- and medium-wide-angle closeups with the LF camera in close proximity to the actor look great on the Panaspeeds.” The approach also kept the images consistent, “especially in the way focus fall-off and bokeh look. [They] consistently deliver precise focus, predictable flare control and mechanical reliability,” Vega adds.

Smith, who decamped for Season 2 to shoot Mayans MC (replaced by Juergen Heinemann), returned to The Cleaning Lady for Season 3 and brought Steadicam Operator Matthew Pearce with her. When Director Mo McRae proposed a oner for Episode 308, “Know Thy Enemy,” Smith and Pearce were eager to revisit an approach they used a lot on Mayans. The sequence involved a long phone conversation shot through a door, a walking two-shot into a champagne bottle being uncorked, and the mob boss’ wife Nadia (Eva De Dominici ) being arrested – all in a 360 move finishing with her being led out of her club, La Habana, with a high shot, slowmotion close-up.

The La Habana location is one that’s featured regularly throughout the series, with the lighting and color schemes changed to match each scene’s mood. Caudillo notes, “We used a huge amount of bi-color and

RGB LED lights throughout the space. When emotions were high, we’d lean into reds with cyan highlights, lavender, and reds when passion was in the air.”

To prepare for Episode 308, Smith and Pearce rehearsed with the director and 2nd Unit team the day before to “figure out where certain moves were going to happen in the space as well as on what dialogue,” she remembers. Smith and McRae worked with the writers to tweak the dialogue and performances to keep the camera moving. They showed Chief Lighting Technician Steve Litecky and Key Grip Brian Malone the light placements and sketched out the design and location of a ramp (deftly hidden behind a pillar and some extras) to provide an overhead perspective.

“On the day of shooting, Vanessa and Mo worked with the actors and writers to make the adjustments necessary to tighten the performance up to hit all the beats and not require additional coverage,” Operator Pearce recalls. “After that, it was just up to me

to execute the shot and keep the Steadicam moving safely through all the background actors. I needed to trust my [dolly grip JeanPhilippe “JP” Pasquier] to lead block for me and get me lined up with the ramp so I could climb up for the final frame, which ended in a static close up for the final take at Mo’s direction.”

“Overall, we were all pretty stoked on how it turned out, particularly given the constraints of delivering within a strict runtime on a network show,” Smith adds.

The Cleaning Lady is yet another union TV series shot in New Mexico, joining past hits like Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, and Dark Winds among others that have taken advantage of the large and experienced local crew base and unique locations. The region easily stands in for nearby Nevada, as Caudillo describes. “Albuquerque is naturally similar –high desert, bright lights, casinos – and the light is fabulous, mostly sunny days and blue

skies,” he says. “We would digitally composite imagery of Vegas over our exterior scenes to help the audience feel we were there. In the wintertime, if we blocked correctly, we could have backlight all day long, rarely needing to build overhead diffusion on exteriors.”

Adds Smith: “Not to be dismissed, is the short distance from Albuquerque to L.A. that makes it much easier to get any sort of specialty equipment or added crew, though they have almost everything we ever needed locally. Probably, the best thing about filming in New Mexico is undoubtedly the local crew. Every individual, regardless of their experience level, displays a remarkable eagerness and strong work ethic. This level of dedication isn’t consistently found in every production city I’ve worked in, but it stands out in New Mexico.”

It’s not by chance the region has built up a strong union crew base. While some states have dropped their incentive programs for political reasons, New Mexico has remained bullish on entertainment and, according to

Santa Fe-based Unit Stills Photographer Jeff Neumann, “continues to build in a positive direction. Sound stages are rising. Crews are growing in number. The three seasons are here, the space is immense; plus, it’s a fast flight back home to Los Angeles,” he shares. Albuquerque-based AC Ryan Bushman, who has been with the production since the pilot, agrees. “When I was living in Phoenix, I had read an article in Variety where someone being interviewed said New Mexico is more laid back than L.A. but the same amount of work still gets done. That’s what initiated my move here and I have found it to be true. When I moved here in 2010, I found that within just a couple of years, I had worked with nearly every crew in town. It’s an ‘everyone knows everyone’ film community that requires strong mutual respect between every craft. The most unexpected challenge for most shows coming here for the first time are the windy days and the accompanying dust and exhaustion – it can be unrelenting.”

Pearce, who lives in L.A., offers this

assessment: “The New Mexico climate and environment creates significant challenges. The locals are very knowledgeable about all the solutions that are required to keep equipment working and to keep people healthy and safe in the wind and heat. The dry air and static combined with the altitude catch up with you very quickly when operating in the heat. My First AC [Vega] and Dolly Grip [JP Pasquier] were always putting bottles of water in my hand when I got too busy to remember to hydrate. They saved me!”

The region also provided practical locations that served the narrative, including – perhaps surprisingly given the desert climate – an aquarium. The ABQ BioPark Aquarium appears in Episode 305, “All of Me,” directed by Season 1 and 2 Showrunner Melissa Carter. Luca runs away from home, sending Thony into a panic. She ultimately finds him at the aquarium. “I was able to push several large HMI’s from above into

the water to create the most beautiful azure dreamscape for the reuniting of our hero and her son,” Caudillo recalls. “It accentuates the emotions that are going on in front of the camera…and almost feels like we faked the scene and shot it in front of a blue screen.”

Elsewhere in the episode, a 100-yard nighttime Steadicam sequence occurs in one of the desert’s ubiquitous drainage culverts as Cartel head Jorge Sanchez (Santiago Cabrera) searches for a ne’er-do-well selling dangerous drugs. “Between the fluidity of the Steadicam move, the crowded and difficult floor space, wireless interference due to the thick concrete tunnel, and the wide aperture we were at for the dim nighttime lighting, it presented a fairly hefty challenge,” Vega asserts. “One of the things I enjoy about working with Matthew [Pearce] is that he understands the technical needs of the focus puller and works cooperatively to make the shot the best it can be. This challenging sequence in particular benefited from that team approach.”

ABOVE/OPPOSITE: SERIES CO-DP VANESSA JOY SMITH SAYD “THE BEST THING ABOUT FILMING IN NEW MEXICO IS THE LOCAL CREW. EVERY INDIVIDUAL, REGARDLESS OF THEIR EXPERIENCE LEVEL, DISPLAYS A REMARKABLE EAGERNESS AND STRONG WORK ETHIC.”

Of course, no crime drama is complete without a chase sequence. And Episode 306, “El Reloj,” features an elaborate one through the high desert. Thony and her sister-in-law Fiona (Martha Millan) chase after a truck, hoping to rescue the kidnapped Arman. The vehicles drive side-by-side as one of the captors points a gun at the woman’s car. In an attempt to save them, Arman redirects the gun. It fires, the truck swerves and then tumbles off the cliff.

“Because we are an eight-day-episode show, we had to figure out a way to shoot this sequence in one and a half days,” Smith recounts. “I worked with director Catriona McKenzie and 1st AD Sarah Lemon to break the sequence into main unit and stunt unit days. From there we broke down every shot and setup so we could hand off to the stunt unit knowing exactly what we wanted. Then we broke down every shot for dialogue. I made a diagram of the car that started as chicken scratch with every camera angle we needed and in what setup we’d be getting it in a way that we weren’t shooting the other

cameras. On top of that, we had specific shots that would end up being VFX face replacements.”

The sequence ended up requiring eight cameras, including a drone, multiple crash cams, precision drivers and an arm car. “Vanessa’s experience on Mayans was so impressive when it came time to shoot the driving and action sequences,” shares Caudillo, who lensed the chase working closely with Stunt Coordinator Jeff Cadiente. “After doing a roadshow like Mayans, she had a handle on gear and planning driving shots, and I learned a lot from her.

“Timing it so that the big stunt happens at exactly the right moment to silhouette the launched vehicle behind the sun was a challenge,” he continues. “But the most difficult part for me was having to put an end to Adan’s character. We had been friends for a decade after working together on a show called Mixology. It was an emotionally difficult day for the whole cast and crew.”

Canto had been absent when Season 3 started shooting in December 2023 but was

expected to return. He died unexpectedly of appendiceal cancer at age 42 a month later. As Renshaw states of Canto’s tragic passing: “There was no coping with it. We just had to live in it and the grief was overwhelming. I don’t think we ever lost touch of that the whole season; it stayed with us in everything we did. We all grieved him. We had our funeral for the character [Episode 307 directed by Melissa Carter], and Arman’s funeral was sort-of Adan’s funeral. It was an emotional and exciting sequence that was shot so beautifully and visually. Everyone did an amazing job, and it honored the character and the man who played him.”

“The loss was especially difficult because so much of the crew has been on the show for all or most of its run,” Vega notes. “By season three it was a close-knit family. That brought a tremendous level of comfort and confidence to all of us,” Kwok adds, “Adan was genuinely loved by the entire cast and crew. He was a hero to all of us, and we wanted Arman to leave in the same light – as a hero to Thony and to the show."

ALBUQUERQUE-BASED AC RYAN BUSHMAN, WHO HAS BEEN WITH THE SHOW SINCE THE PILOT, NOTES THAT “WHEN I MOVED HERE IN 2010, I FOUND THAT WITHIN A COUPLE OF YEARS, I HAD WORKED WITH NEARLY EVERY CREW IN TOWN. IT’S AN ‘EVERYONE KNOWS EVERYONE’ FILM COMMUNITY THAT REQUIRES STRONG MUTUAL RESPECT BETWEEN EVERY CRAFT.”

BY PAULINE ROGERS

Big Brain Theory

VIEWERS RECENTLY HAD TO SAY GOODBYE TO ONE OF TV’S MOST BELOVED (AND POPULAR) COMEDIES, YOUNG SHELDON . THE PARTING IS JUST AS HARD FOR DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY BUZZ FEITSHANS IV AND HIS ICG CAMERA TEAM, WHO SPENT ALL SEVEN YEARS TOGETHER ON THE SERIES.

PHOTOS BY BILL INOSHITA / WARNER BROS.

BY

PHOTO

ROBERT VOETS

When ICG Director of Photography Fred “Buzz” Feitshans IV and his team (who have been together for more than 15 years) walked onto the set of Young Sheldon, in July 2017, 10-year-old actor Iain Armitage (carrying his everpresent briefcase) could slide through the legs of most of the crewmembers. Seven years later, when a tearful crew shot the last sequence for the walk-off-into-thesunset episode, in April 2024, the nearly 16-year-old Armitage was taller than many of that same crew.

When Young Sheldon premiered (pilot shot by Tim Suhrstedt and directed by Jon Favreau), it was an opportune time for Feitshans, who had shot a variety of singlecamera shows and was looking to bring his crew onto something new. The initial meeting with Steve Molaro and Chuck Lorre went well. Producer Lorre showed his confidence early, telling Feitshans, “I want you to make sure it gets better every season.”

As Feitshans recounts: “I was excited about moving into this style of comedy, but there were limitations. First, it had a somewhat predetermined look because another DP started the show. Then, there were the time limits with underaged actors. But, producer Tim Marx, who liked my work and my thoughts on the show, was most happy to find out that the group I’d been working with for the past several years was available, too.”

Feitshans did a lot of prep – and thought – before the show began.

“I knew that we would make adjustments along the way, but they had to be very gradual and grounded,” he continues. “The look we used was common in the 1980s, with just a little more warmth and slightly muted colors, usually associated with Kodak 5247. We kept that style alive with the help of [Senior Colorist] George Manno at Picture Shop.”

As the show grew and became “Buzz and his team,” the producers grew accustomed to seeing more camera movement. Steadicam was used more, and they did a lot of pushins to fill time during voice-overs and slowly

bring in more of a visual edge. The show is primarily captured on ALEXA Mini, with the occasional GoPro or Sony A7S II mixed in for smaller spaces and quick run-bys or stunts.

“We found that having an extra camera for the Steadicam to be ready at all times was a distinct advantage,” Feitshans adds. “It was a formula that included the best camera crew I’ve ever worked with, led by Neil Toussaint, whom we call ‘the tip of the spear’ and is the most diplomatic and capable operator I’ve ever worked with. Neil managed the cast and directing team with grace and humor. Our B-Cam Operator, Aaron Schuh, brought a strong Steadicam ability and a wonderful demeanor. Aaron was the best choice I could have made for this show. He was a newcomer to our group and fit into the team seamlessly.”

Feitshans describes 1st AC’s Matt Del Ruth and Grant Yellen as “focus ninjas. Over seven years, there was 99 percent focus perfection,” Feitshans continues. “I’ve yet to get used to the focus puller not being at the camera anymore, but they would always be close. They could hear everything going on, pulling focus off sophisticated monitors and wireless Preston systems. They, too, have been with me for the past 14 years. As for 2nd AC’s Brad Gilson and James Cobb, they are the most versatile people I’ve ever met. They can troubleshoot anything and are a tremendous part of the blocking process. Rehearsals were quick, and the marks were thrown quickly and silently. Our Loader Bailey Softness and Utility Conner McElroy make up a young

competent team who were always there to make stage moves and quick antenna-array adjustments on the fly.”

Chief Lighting Technician Bob Field is another longtime set partner of Feitshans. Among the shows on which they’ve worked together are The OC , Chuck , Hart of Dixie , Community and Recovery Road . After a lengthy discussion about the noticeable price difference between legacy tungsten and the new wave of multi-adjustable LED’s, Feitshans and Field opted for LED’s.

“Young Sheldon was the next opportunity to light a show our way,” describes Field. “Tim Shurstedt had shot the pilot, and I was his gaffer in the 1980s and 90s, and we knew that Tim and Buzz were true ‘brothers from different mothers’ and their lighting styles would be compatible.” Field says Feitshans wanted to utilize wide lenses and lower camera angles (often due to the shortness of the children against the adults). “Buzz wants to see ceilings in the house, and that mandates us to light softly from a lower angle,” Field adds. “In the first four seasons, we used large soft boxes made out of pipe covered with black ripstop and lined on the inside with white ultrasoft bounce material. We put Cineos mounted on the bottom pipe, bounced them into the ultrasoft on the back, and then passed through grid cloth on the front. They were very cumbersome and took two operators and two stands to move them around. Somehow, we found the placements and locked into a very natural look. LightPad

PHOTO BY ROBERT VOETS

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY BUZZ FEITSHANS IV

A-CAMERA OPERATOR NEIL TOUSSAINT

“I ALWAYS REFERRED TO LIGHTING WITH BUZZ AS A DANCE. I BLAST OUT OF THE GATE LIGHTING RIGHT AFTER THE REHEARSAL, AND IF HE HAS ANOTHER IDEA, HE NUDGES ME IN THAT DIRECTION. THERE AREN’T A LOT OF WORDS. IT JUST HAPPENS.”

came in with an LED light that replaced the boxes and made the set lighting techs happy. We had small softbox LED lights that we could hang and control the light from above when the light was window [day]- or fixture [night]-driven.”

The real workhorse was the practical light fixture above the dining room table.

“We spoke in amazement at how such a precious fixture survived seven seasons,” Field continues. “It was like having a paper lantern to do the perfect soft light you could photograph. I always referred to lighting with Buzz as a dance. I blast out of the gate lighting right after the rehearsal, and if Buzz has another idea, he gently nudges me in that direction. There aren’t a lot of words. It just happens.”

Feitshans adds that “we would not know exactly what the actors were going to do, and even the directors didn’t provide details, so we lit [zones] that could tolerate a range of motion without having to make any adjustments and wouldn’t tie the actors to specific marks. If they were in the zone, we were good. In the anything-goes comedy world, we’d adjust on the fly; new lines and jokes would come in at the last minute, even after some of the scenes were shot.

“In my tent, I had iris control and false color monitors of two different kinds for redundancy of exposure control,” Feitshans continues. “Our communication protocols are brief and similar to air-traffic control, keeping instructions and reply confirmations clear and verifiable. My communication with our dimmer board operator and floor grip/ electric crews was the same. Still, on different radio channels, I kept separate simultaneous instructions available to call as fast as I could spin the channels.”

Looking back over the show’s life, Feitshans says Season 1 was probably the most challenging. “There was a lot of pressure on things that didn’t click with

CHIEF

LIGHTING TECHNICIAN BOB FIELD

the expected multicam world,” he recalls. “Cranes, Steadicam, foreground elements and handheld shots were different for this team – but they were the first to see how these styles enhanced their story.”

As Feitshans’ longtime operator (Community, Chuck, Hart of Dixie, Yes Man, and Pineapple Express 2nd Unit), Neil Toussaint describes the DP’s approach as “a thoughtful and measured way of addressing storytelling needs. Buzz is what we call a ‘3D chess player,’” Toussaint states. “He is thoughtful regarding the script and the best ways to achieve the director’s vision for each shot and episode. He’s always calm and approachable, an invested collaborator. He makes himself and his time available, especially for the neophyte directors with questions or thoughts. He’s truly a steady hand on the wheel.”

Toussaint says Feitshans’ approach is highly efficient. “Buzz is a multitasker who can address many situations,” Toussaint continues, “starting with camera placement, lighting, and production schedule demands, seemingly all at once. His work is professional and efficiently executed to keep the look consistent while staying on or ahead of schedule.”

Assessing the vast changes and memories from seven years of Young Sheldon is a big task. Everyone watching has a favorite moment, and everyone working on the show has to dig deep into memory banks for theirs. Hopefully, what we chose to highlight provides a clear picture of the unique work this IATSE production team pulled off every day, over some 150 episodes for a show that left the air this year as (still!) the highestrated comedy on network television.

As Toussaint recalls, the first shot the team did with Sheldon was the high-school hallway set. “Director Michael Zinberg was in charge,” he remembers. “A small-sized Sheldon navigates his routine among the giants for his first days in high school. His mad hallway dashes through throngs of bigger high-school students, running into

an empty science lab classroom for refuge, which contrasts with his older brother Georgie’s high-school experience of girl chasing and [pursuing] side hustles to make money. It’s also the shot where we first began working with kids.”

One obvious challenge working with minors is the scheduling blocks and what the team calls “pumpkin” times – in this case, all shooting with minors must be completed by 5:30 pm. “Our lunch hour was always two to three p.m.,” Toussaint explains. “So after, there was a mad scramble to get Sheldon, Missy (Raegan Revord), and Georgie (Montana Jordan) shot out. We often used photo doubles, which could start and finish work after Iain’s ‘pumpkin time,’ to achieve overs from Sheldon’s shoulder with other actors.”

Blocking shots with child and adult actors presented framing challenges, so the team often used the “Vanessa Ramp,” a carpeted wooden ramp named after Vanessa Hudgens (with whom they had worked on Powerless) to raise the minor actors. There was also the matter of getting the kids to focus while explaining what the technical crew was trying to achieve. And, of course, if there was a cabinet, the pre-teen Iain Armitage would find a way to crawl in.

Only a few days into the shoot, Feitshans’ team had one of their biggest challenges, with input from Producer Tim Marks that became key to the shot’s success. “Buzz designed a very cool shot involving a 50-foot TechnoCrane,” recalls 1st AC Matthew Del Ruth, “that had 30 feet of track and a real cow. He explained to Neil and me that many people would be watching the shot, including the VP of Warner Bros., Chuck Lorre, and Steve Molaro. It would be our way of showing how great our team was and that situations like this are what we train for.”

The team began rehearsing the shot for the title sequence, as Del Ruth observed Feitshans communicating seamlessly with everyone. “The grips, camera operator,

Technocrane technicians, director and producers, everyone – was focused on his work,” Del Ruth recounts. “That’s when I realized how special this moment would be and that I would remember it for the rest of my life. The creativity Buzz envisioned for that title sequence set the look for a show that has won the hearts of its viewers for seven years.”

The sequence had to be choreographed to match the song “Mighty Little Man.”

It starts on an empty patch of dirt and scrub brush, as a pair of cowboy boots stomp into frame. The boots pivot as the camera slowly pulls back and booms up to reveal “the mighty little man” himself, Young Sheldon. Then it flies back, revealing the rest of Sheldon’s family standing with him. A cow then tries to butt-in frame left, while the family is unflappable.

The shot included a 50-foot TechnoCrane, a 120-foot curved blue screen, and a turntable that could bear the weight of a Texas Longhorn bull. The platform had to be raised on a 4×40 steel deck with a runway from the turntable to where the rest of the family stood and posed after Sheldon walked in wearing his cowboy boots. It was shot at a high frame rate and had to be perfectly timed with the

crane pickle operator, two dolly grips and the camera operator. It also had to be completed in 15 seconds!

As Del Ruth continues: “We had 40 feet of travel and a vast pull-away and zoom-out from Sheldon’s boots to the family, adding to the shot’s complexity. It took 11 hours, and everyone was under tremendous pressure. Focus was challenging, lighting levels had to be raised to shoot speed, and the elements of an eight-year-old boy and his inconsistencies had to factor in. We did the shot at least 40 times!”

March 2020 brought one of the most extensive setups the team had attempted. It included two contrasting graduations –Sheldon’s with all the bells and whistles and Missy’s in a simple auditorium. “We’d used Van Nuys High School for the front entrance shots of students entering/exiting school and the football field where Sheldon’s father George was a high school football coach,” Toussaint shares. “Two-thirds of the day was scheduled for Sheldon’s graduation, which paralleled with his younger sister Missy’s grammar-school graduation, shot at a small church auditorium across the street.”

Feitshans recalls how “lighting the auditorium of Van Nuys High School was relatively easy as the school already had an existing truss system hanging on stage. We added some PAR cans, a few Source Four lights for accent, and a follow spot for the speakers. The audience was lit with 4K PARs through 12×12 T-boned light grids. The crew was told to keep separate from the students due to health concerns and the spread of COVID-19. An hour and a half into our day, there was talk that LAUSD [Los Angeles Unified School District] and the principal of Van Nuys High might ask us to leave. But we kept going as much as possible.”

“We started a telescopic crane shot on A-Camera and B and C-Cameras as Sheldon steps up to the podium to give his valedictorian speech,” Toussaint adds. “The rumor turned out to be true. The shooting company was asked to wrap it up and be out within two hours. So, we had to shoot fast to get as much coverage as possible. We then went to the church auditorium across the street and had A-Camera on the crane with two tighter cameras to shoot a group of kids singing and dancing in a musical pageant as Missy graduates. We had maybe an hour of filming there before they made us leave.

PHOTO BY ROBERT VOETS

ABOVE: FEITSHANS CALLS HIS LONGTIME AC’S MATT DEL RUTH (LEFT) AND GRANT YELLEN AS “FOCUS NINJAS. OVER SEVEN YEARS, THERE WAS 99 PERCENT FOCUS PERFECTION,” THE DP BOASTS. “I’VE YET TO GET USED TO THE FOCUS PULLER NOT BEING AT THE CAMERA ANYMORE, BUT THEY WOULD ALWAYS BE CLOSE. “

BELOW: OPERATOR TOUSSAINT DESCRIBES FEITSHANS AS A “MULTITASKER WHO CAN ADDRESS MANY SITUATIONS,” STARTING WITH CAMERA PLACEMENT, LIGHTING, AND PRODUCTION SCHEDULE DEMANDS, SEEMINGLY ALL AT ONCE.”

“THE DINING ROOM WAS 12-BY-12 WITH A LOW CEILING AND ONLY TWO WALLS THAT PULL. IT WAS ALWAYS CRAMPED, AND WE SQUEEZED JUST ABOUT EVERY TINY JIB ARM IN THERE AT ONE TIME OR ANOTHER TO SEE WHAT WE COULD GET AWAY WITH.”

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY BUZZ FEITSHANS IV

We wrapped before lunch – having shot two halves of two big sequences.”

Feitshans adds that “we had no idea we’d be off for the next five months following that day. And, of course, after we came back, the kids were different. Voices had changed. Teenage growth had kicked in. Trying to match what we did earlier that year was a challenge. We shot them from behind at first, using the crane and Steadicam to highlight the audience instead of the speakers. Visually, we succeeded, but the burden was on the postproduction to even out the voice changes.”

I’m fairly sure I heard a collective groan when I asked the crew to sift through seven years of precociousness, sometimes the Tasmanian Devil energy of the kids, family happiness, tragedies, and life nonsense. But after a little prodding, the smiles started to widen, and I got a few more gems.

Those included a baptism scene from Season 2 (shot at a church in Studio City) where Georgie falls for his new love. “The kids were in the water, and they decided at the last minute to go high speed,” Feitshans remembers. “It was not a problem for us – we compensated and kept shooting because they had only 20 minutes to complete the scene.

“I instructed the electric department to go to flicker-free,” he continues. “One lamp, the most important close-range lamp, did not get switched. The whole scene had a flicker. A painful undulation of light during the most important moment! I called [VFX Supervisor] Rick Redick over and asked to see how he could fix it. They were able to minimize the flicker but not eliminate it. I embraced the final result, as it enhanced the imagery in the sequence. Everyone loved it.”

When recalling Episode 3, Season 1, Feitshans shares that “Sheldon’s father has a

heart attack in that episode, so we were cut loose to do what I do best – live-action, nonrehearsed drama. During a moment when Sheldon saw his father in the hospital, we cut the shutter angle, added filtration, and went handheld in a dark-looking ER room where life and death were both possible. The reverse push to Sheldon’s reaction had lifelong implications.”

IATSE Local 80 Key Grip Isaac Chee adds his thoughts about rigging on the show. “There was a scene where an actor was required to lift Sheldon, holding him at arm’s length while spinning him around in circles,” he shares. “The scene required a special rig attached to the actor to see Iain spinning. Buzz and I devised a backpack rig with a Sony a7 attached to the rig. And it worked perfectly.” There was also an episode where a baseball came at Missy Cooper. “She was pitching,” Chee adds. “The director wanted to see the baseball on the flight to home plate. We came up with a rig that attached the baseball to the dolly. We laid some track and could shoot the baseball in slow motion coming at the batter.”

There are also memories from some “dreaded dinner table scenes,” where every cinematographer has to face the unexpected. As Feitshans recounts: “The dining room was 12-by-12 with a low ceiling and only two walls that pull. It was always cramped, and we squeezed just about every tiny jib arm in there at one time or another to see what we could get away with. We shot dream sequences, flashbacks, tragedies and hopes in that room.”

In a more quiet tone, Feitshans recalls the team’s last “walk into the sunset” shot, as Sheldon goes off to become the grown-up character (played by Jim Parsons) audiences fell in love with on The Big Bang Theory. “It

was a complicated 40-foot TechnoCrane sequence,” he explains. “We were on the Caltech campus [in Pasadena, CA] with a shortened window of time. The shot included 180-degree staged action that presented the last and most optimistic future Sheldon would face. However, the sun didn’t break as expected and we got an overcast veil. We had planned out shots based on the sun’s travel. But it didn’t happen. So, Sheldon’s walking into the sunset was overcast. Neil did a great job with it, and we rushed the footage to Picture Shop to see if they could make it look more sunny. During lunch that day, we looked at samples of a warmer look and decided to add shadows and a little flare through the trees.”

In summarizing seven years of Young Sheldon, Toussaint makes the comparison to playing jazz music. “We had lots of dialogue changes, lots of action changes, and the creators constantly tried to make the show more relatable by reworking scenes and dialogue,” he states. “This meant we all had to be ready to make changes on the fly and to revisit setups we had already photographed, where camera placement and lighting had to be re-established.

“Everyone on this series worked so hard to recreate the feelings of a period [19891994] that all of us had experienced, except for the young cast members acting those moments out. In a sense, Young Sheldon was a way of reliving some of the best and most awkward moments of high school for many people on the crew. It also brought us back together with the best cinematographer I’ve ever worked with, as well as the chance to come home and have dinner with our families almost every night. Young Sheldon was – simply put – the best work experience of my life.”

A-CAMERA OPERATOR NEIL TOUSSAINT SAYS THAT “IN A SENSE [ YOUNG SHELDON ] WAS A WAY OF RELIVING SOME OF THE BEST AND MOST AWKWARD MOMENTS OF HIGH SCHOOL FOR MANY PEOPLE ON THE CREW. IT ALSO BROUGHT US BACK TOGETHER WITH THE BEST CINEMATOGRAPHER I’VE EVER WORKED WITH, AS WELL AS THE CHANCE TO COME HOME AND HAVE DINNER WITH OUR FAMILIES EVERY NIGHT. YOUNG SHELDON WAS –SIMPLY PUT – THE BEST WORK EXPERIENCE OF MY LIFE.”

LOCAL 600 CREW

Director of Photography

Buzz Feitshans IV

A-Camera Operator

Neil Toussaint, SOC

A-Camera 1st AC

Matthew Del Ruth

A-Camera 2nd AC

Brad Gilson Jr.

B-Camera Operator

Aaron Schuh, SOC

B-Camera 1st AC

Grant Yellen

B-Camera 2nd AC

James Cobb

C-Camera 2nd AC

Baird Steptoe Loaders

Conner McElroy

Bailey Softness

Technocrane Operator

David Hammer

Remote Head Tech

Chris Garcia

Still Photographers

Bill Inoshita

Robert Voets

The network game show has a long (and fascinating) history, as we step up to “spin the wheel” for our June/July TV issue and see what chance has in store.

by Pauline Rogers

please! final answer,

“It’s all about the angles.”

It’s a quote that several people offered up while I was researching this month’s special feature on the history of game shows. And it’s a description that seems appropriate when you look at a phenomenon that stretches back to the 1920s and is still going strong today. What is the secret to the format’s longevity? One answer is that savvy TV producers down through the years – including Merv Griffin, Ralph Edwards, Mark Goodson and Bill Todman – studied the angles of what made the genre tick. And through the occasional disaster, they came up with a perfect blend of snappy catchphrases, larger-than-life personalities, and thrilling moments of triumph and defeat, all designed to keep audiences of all ages glued to their sets as they became invested in such iconic shows as Jeopardy!, Wheel of Fortune, The Price Is Right, Truth or Consequences and many others that are still alive today.

Unlike some of our other tech-heavy dives into television history, this one begins with exploring the elements that helped to create one of the wackiest of entertainment genres. Of course, there are also the many talented union camera and lighting teams (working under various jurisdictions depending on the network) that were available in the studio warehouse at the time these shows were produced. And those crews had challenges. In the beginning, game shows were mostly constrained to heavy cameras on large, bulky pedestals. We’re talking gear from Norelco, Hitachi, and the RCA TK11s. (Rumor has it that The Price Is Right added a little excitement with one of the first uses of Steadicam.) Traditional high-key studio lighting was omnipresent, yet game show directors still found angles to capture the magic.

The origins of the genre lie in what was once the most popular medium in the country: radio. Historians often point to a 1923 show called Spelling Bee as the first “game show.” The Brooklyn Eagle, a daily newspaper, planted the seed with a radio show called Brooklyn Eagle Quiz on Current Events. The staff noticed that these bees were held in school auditoriums, often to standing room only. Audiences raved about the “content” (often Bible-oriented educational information), and that filled the auditoriums. Spelling Bee was broadcast on WNYC, and host H.V. Kaltenborn asked questions to area high school students. Astonishingly, by today’s standards – the show remained on the air for 18 years with no cash prizes and no major giveaways; i.e. cars, trips or home makeovers. It was radio, so the flash factor was limited. But people tuned in for the competition. A century

later, nothing has changed. They’d found an angle.

In the 1930s, a show called Pop Quiz caught the attention of Radioland; to raise visibility, producers took it on the road. With Ask-it Basket, audience members were asked questions, and the high scorer was given $25. Quiz Kids and Information asked listeners to mail questions in for panelists to answer, with a few dollars awarded to people whose questions were stumpers. The radio format worked until the summer of 1941, when television came on the scene.

Ralph Edwards led the transition to the small screen based on his radio program Truth Or Consequences, the concept of which was asking guests off-the-wall questions. If they couldn’t answer them, there were “consequences.” Think of a pie in the face or anything else humiliating the staff could dream up. The show did not appear on TV again until 1950; NBC picked up the show and did it from Burbank.

In January 1957, Truth or Consequences (which won a Primetime Emmy) became the first game show broadcast in all time zones using a new technology – prerecording on videotape. According to the network’s press release, the “audience-participation program was [chosen] for presentation by tape recording because, originating in Hollywood, it had to be put on at 8:30 a.m. PST to be seen in the East live at 11:30 a.m. By using the magnetic video-tape process, which records television programs on a rapidly moving magnetic tape in much the same manner that sound is recorded on tape, it can be recorded at a more convenient hour for studio audiences and replayed for telecasting at the scheduled airtime.”

HOST BOB BARKER WITH CONTESTANT ON HOLLYWOOD SET OF TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES , 1957 / PHOTO BY BETTMANN / GETTY IMAGES

Thanks to TV’s huge popularity, game shows in the 1950s took off. That meant producers began looking for new ways to create unique and often outrageous angles to capture and hold an audience: cash prizes. Big giveaways. Larger-than-life personalities.

Sometimes they even got a little desperate. One such example was in 1959, when Charles Van Doren admitted – before Congress – that he’d received the questions in advance for Twenty-One (shot on RCA TK11s and probably history’s most infamous game show footage). In reality, it was much more than that. Done live from NBC Studio 6B, the fourth and final round between Van Doren (a university English professor) and Herb Stempel (a 29-year-old college student with an excellent memory) resulted in this famous final question: “What motion picture won the Academy Award in 1955?”

Stempel knew the answer was Marty but he had been coached (bribed) to say On the Waterfront instead. The show had been scripted for the “nerd” to lose to the “intellectual.” The ensuing scandal was so large, it triggered amendments to the 1960 Communications Act. One amendment made it illegal for the outcomes of any contests of skill or knowledge, including quiz shows, to be put forward in any way that was pre-arranged. Another required stations to clarify when money or other consideration has been received for broadcast material. More recently, the Twenty-One scandal spawned the 1994 Oscar-nominated feature Quiz Show, directed by Robert Redford and shot by Michael Ballhaus, ASC. (In another vein, all those “spontaneous questions” asked on the street and seen on game shows were often preceded by PA’s scouting coffee shops, bookstores, and such to find “spontaneous” guests, and to – you guessed it – find an angle that would appear to be off-the-cuff and excite the audience.)

Scandals aside, smaller “cheats,” such as a winner who memorized the repeated questions

from years before and another who noticed patterns on the board, helped propel the game show genre to new heights. New shows started popping up – Password , The Match Game, Let’s Make a Deal, The Dating Game (and, yes, Farrah Fawcett and Tom Selleck were on the show and did not get a date). Some even became launching pads, as when a young female psychologist named Joyce Brothers, in 1955, won the top prize on The $64,000 Question. Broadway stars who didn’t mind stepping out of their personas and had a sharp sense of humor became another angle of success. Charles Nelson Reilly, Brett Somers and Richard Dawson all became big draws, so much so that people turned in to see just how outrageous they could be on various shows –and how impossible it became to rein them in.

As with westerns and soap operas, the game show genre went through peaks and valleys. In the early 1970s, the genre got a much-needed facelift, led by shows including The New Price Is Right (hosted by Bob Barker), Concentration, Password and Let’s Make a Deal, all of which offered lower paydays but high levels of fun. One show that has never waned in popularity is Jeopardy!, in which contestants are presented with clues in the form of answers and must rephrase their responses in the form of questions. The original daytime version aired on NBC from March, 1965 to January, 1975, and was revived in various forms throughout the 1970s.

By far Jeopardy!’s most successful incarnation was the daytime syndicated version with host Alex Trebek (who passed away in November 2020) and announcer Johnny Gilbert. With 7,000 episodes aired, the daily syndicated version has won a record 30 Daytime Emmy Awards and a Peabody. Over its long run, NBC outfitted both Jeopardy! stages with RCA TK44 cameras. In 1974, the king of the talk show format, Merv Griffin, wanted to

ABOVE/LEFT: THE NEW WHEEL OF FORTUNE (CREATED BY MERV GRIFFIN) PREMIERED IN 1975 / PHOTOS COURTESY OF SONY

OPPOSITE: HOST TODD RUSSELL WITH CONTESTANTS ON CBS-TV N.Y.C. SET OF THE ORIGINAL WHEEL OF FORTUNE , 1953 / GETTY IMAGES

broaden his mark on the small screen, so he experimented with a Hangman-style game show. Looking for a fresh angle, Griffin added a roulette-style wheel (nabbed from his many years in Las Vegas).

Griffin pitched his early incarnation of Wheel of Fortune to Lin Bolen, head of NBC’s daytime programming division, who liked the concept but wanted more glamor (to attract a growing female audience). So was born Shopper’s Bazaar, hosted by Chuck Woolery, with Mike Lawrence as the announcer, during which contestants (shoppers) chose products they liked, and, with the help of Woolery, would bid on them in a “bizarre” market of sorts. Shopper’s Bazaar flopped. Another, slicker incarnation, hosted by Edd “Kookie” Burns, failed to catch on with viewers.

Wheel of Fortune (shot with RCA TK47 cameras), which continues to this day, originally found its legs in a format where contestants solve word puzzles to win cash and prizes determined by the spinning of a giant carnival wheel. (Merv’s Vegas nod paid off!) It premiered on NBC in January 1975 and is still on the air today. Throughout its run, it experienced significant changes – for instance, the Wheel was turned horizontally and spun by the contestants; there was a lighted mechanical puzzle board with manually turned letters; showcase prizes were located behind the puzzle board; and during shopping segments, a list of prizes and their price values scrolled on the right of the screen. One interesting tidbit: No one won the car audiences saw on stage. Winners had to travel to Galpin Ford and choose a car – and, of course, pay taxes on it.

So, what do ICG members who have worked long-term in the genre have to say?

Everyone is familiar with the delicate balance ten-time Emmy Award-winning lighting designer Bob Barnhardt (Super Bowl, So You Think You Can Dance? and more) has

ABOVE: THE ORIGINAL DAYTIME VERSION OF JEOPARDY! AIRED ON NBC IN MARCH 1965, AND HAS BEEN ON THE AIR EVER SINCE IN VARIOUS INCARNATIONS. / PHOTOS COURTESY OF SONY

achieved over his career. But did you know one of Barnhardt’s cornerstones has been game shows?

“Twenty-six years ago I was offered Family Feud [hosted by Louie Anderson],” Barnhardt recounts, “as it was coming back after a fiveyear hiatus. Growing up watching the game show, I knew how it was played and the blocking of the contestants and hosts. But I was not prepared for the extreme difficulty of making the ‘Horseshoe’ so evenly lit. The Horseshoe is the area of the two-family podiums, the face-off area, and the host who wanders between them.

“The host wandering around in the middle of it and looking every which way in a close-up has been the challenge of that series,” he adds. “The time it took to focus the lights on that show made me dread the beginning of each season. Another game show I did around the same time was Hollywood Squares [hosted by Whoopi Goldberg]. That had nine celebrities sitting in individual boxes, a host, and two contestants parked at a desk. That was the easy part. The hard part was lighting celebrities in a box. Luckily, Kino Flo tubes had made their way onto the scene and made life much easier. Now, with the advent of LED’s, including tuneable LED tape, the process is pretty simple.”

Barnhardt laughs when he adds, “I’m sure the original lighting designer of the Hollywood Squares, in 1965, Lon Stucky, would be jealous of the gear we have now. Lon worked with cameras in the neighborhood of 150 footcandles just to make a level. But, no production company ever likes to make things easy. To make sure Hollywood Squares loaded out after every weekend of taping, and then back in Friday night after The Price Is Right had finished, we had to work all night, and the tape day would start when we got the show focused.

CBS’s Stage 33 was the busiest in Hollywood. If Family Feud had done that, I doubt I would have lasted twenty-six seasons.”

The designer notes that when he began in game shows, the cameras were Sony 323s, “which were far better than the previous generation of cameras,” he continues. “Although they still wanted about 70 foot-candles for crucial light. This meant a lot of light competing with a game board that was a projection screen. The difficulty came from trying to keep all the loose lumens from contaminating the screen surface and the anemic power of the projectors. When Sony HD2500s came on board, we could comfortably shoot at 35 footcandles – or even less – and our color range systems were introduced. Over the years, I’ve developed a long-throw/soft-light system that has made blending the Horseshoe much easier. The bad news is that we are left with fewer excuses. I know what Lon Stucky would say, so I’ll say it for him: ‘Kids these days have it so easy!’”

Operators Keeth Lawrence and Ed Nelson observe that when both began working in the genre, in the 1980’s, the workflow was basically the same from decades past – four cameras in the same positions. Everything was shot in a straightforward manner on pedestals, “occasionally adding a jib or flying camera,” recalls Lawrence who worked on The Price is Right. Nelson, who also worked on The Price is Right in the ‘80s, and is back on the show today, says “Price was always a little different. Even with the standard cameras, it was a dance in and out of the set and the participants.” “We began shooting 360 degrees, hopscotching and flying all over the stage,” Lawrence states. “And we were one of the first to use wireless cameras.” “Today, we’re doing every kind of

OPPOSITE PAGE: EMMY-WINNING LIGHTING DESIGNER BOB BARNHARDT, WHO GREW UP WATCHING FAMILY FEUD SAYS “THE HOST WANDERING AROUND IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ‘HORSESHOE’ AND LOOKING EVERY WHICH WAY IN A CLOSEUP HAS BEEN THE MAIN CHALLENGE” OF HIS MANY YEARS ON THE SERIES. / PHOTOS BY

ERIC MCCANDLESS/ABC

move imaginable,” concludes Nelson, who can trace what has changed in the format, depending on the studios where they’re produced.

Two-time Emmy winner (and 10-time Emmy nominee) Jeffrey Engel has worked on many different kinds of shows in his 50-plus-year career as a lighting designer and director of photography. Those include many awards shows – People’s Choice, Emmy, Oscar, Soul Train – Saturday-morning kid shows, and game shows, including Name That Tune and, for more than 25 years, Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! Engel remembers: “Back in the day, Merv Griffin owned a television facility on Vine Street called Trans American Video. While working on some pilots and The Sammy Davis, Jr. Show at that facility, I met many people on Merv’s staff. Shortly after he moved Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune to Sony Pictures Television, and one of his producers, Lisa Broffman, enlisted me to design the lighting for both shows.

“Game shows shoot five or six episodes daily every few weeks, and some shoot an entire season in 10 to 12 weeks,” Engel continues. “Under Harry Friedman’s leadership, the two shows shared crews and facilities. Jeopardy! has a standing set on a dedicated stage, so it is ready to shoot at any time. The set has been enhanced for celebrity and primetime specials.

“Wheel of Fortune has had many different sets depicting the week’s theme, so the crews book other shows on those days. Sometimes I would have an associate cover for me on a game show, allowing time to go off and do a special or awards show. The shows were consistently number one and two in syndicated ratings, sometimes beating network primetime

TWO-TIME EMMY-WINNING LIGHTING DESIGNER AND DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY

JEFFREY ENGEL SAYS LED PANELS ARE NOW THE PRIME DRIVER FOR LIGHTING ON GAME SHOW SETS. “THE OLD CYCLORAMA ON JEOPARDY! HAD 180,000 WATTS OF CONNECTED CONVENTIONAL LIGHTING,” ENGEL EXPLAINS. “WITH LEDS, WE ONLY CONSUME ABOUT 12,500 WATTS, WITH MANY MORE CHOICES OF COLOR.” / PHOTO BY BONNIE OSBORNE/CBS

shows. Friedman recently retired, and the new leadership may take a different direction.”

Engel says that over the years, technology has changed, with LED panels now being the prime driver of lighting on sets. LED’s have also cut down on power consumption and air-conditioning loads. “The cyclorama on Jeopardy! we used to have,” Engel explains, “had 180,000 watts of connected conventional lighting. With LED’s, we only consume about 12,500 watts, with many more choices of color. LED’s also provide intelligent lighting to create excitement in places and ‘bump’ in and out of segments and commercials. They facilitate quick turnarounds on shows like Wheel when we have to change a set overnight.

“Camera technology and shooting styles have also changed over the years,” he adds. “Early on, it was common to have three or four cameras on peds, some dollies and even a crane. Today, it is not uncommon to have seven, eight or more cameras, with many more rigging options available – hot heads, jibs [fixed or remotely extendable], rails, towers, et

cetera. Formats have changed from the original 4-by-3 aspect ratio to high-def 16-by-9. I was involved with Wheel of Fortune when it became the first syndicated show to broadcast in high def. The wider format sometimes frustrated us because contestants were side by side; it would be easier to isolate them for singles if they separated their positions more than with the narrower 4-by-3 format. On American Gladiators, Director Bob Levy came up with the idea to use helmet cams. This was innovative as it was pre-GoPro. These days, the possibilities are endless.”

Now (in the spirit of the format), here’s a quick test of game show knowledge.

Q: What are the three main formats?

A: A quiz show concerning knowledge via questions and answers; a show that poses physical challenges, including stunts – fun or silly, humiliating, or worse; and panels with celebrities and everyday people, sometimes trying to guess someone’s secret.

Q: Why have game shows been popular with every generation?

A: Snappy catchphrases; larger-than-life personalities; and thrilling moments of triumph and defeat are just a few of the qualities that have kept viewers tuned in for more than a century – along with the sheer pleasure of viewers seeing everyday people like themselves competing for out-of-this-world cash and prizes.

As to what the future of the game show genre portends, many ICG members said they are mounting increasingly complex productions (which are all under NDA and therefore cannot be revealed). Suffice it to say, fans of the genre should keep checking in for upcoming shows such as Deal or No Deal Island , The Flipside , Card Sharks , Ridiculous , Mall Madness and Star Wars: Jedi Temple Challenge , as well as exciting new iterations of mainstays, including Celebrity Jeopardy! , Wheel of Fortune and The Price Is Right. Those readers who want to learn more about the history of game shows should head on over to eyesofageneration.com, where I gleaned much of the information for this article.

DEAL OR NO DEAL ISLAND / PHOTO BY MONTY BRINTON/NBC

JEOPARDY! QUESTION TOWER / PHOTO BY CAROL KAELSON

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

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JEFF NEUMANN

THE CLEANING LADY

Neo-noir is alive and well in New Mexico’s film and TV industry! It’s a bizarre region that can withhold treasured secrets while also adapting, chameleon-like, to stand in for almost any spot in the country. It’s a gorgeous place that has crept into Hollywood’s imagination for its vast, changing terrain, desolate vistas, monuments, ancient human suffering, corruption, and western ambition. All that is required to reap New Mexico’s many rewards is the bravery to look deep down its rabbit holes.

At first glance, the goal of our heroine in The Cleaning Lady – to save her son’s life – is desperately honest and wholesome. Yet, if you turn down a lone dark alley, trouble will find you. And no matter the depth of Thony’s sin or saintly do-good personality, all who surround her will fall into hypocrisy and enticement. In this image, we see the laws of consequence loom above Thony, who is surrounded by menacing shadowy figures and grimacing light. Her options narrow down to a few. Whether she lives or dies all depends on the American spirit she’s adopted.