ICG Magazine - November 2023 - Unscripted Issue

ICG MAGAZINE

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CONTENTS UNSCRIPTED ISSUE November 2023 / Vol. 94 No. 10

DEPARTMENTS first look ................ 12 deep focus ................ 14 exposure ................ 16 production credits ................ 64 stop motion .............. 68

SPECIAL Augmented Reality .... 50

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FEATURE 01

SUGAR & SPICE

Netflix’s hit baking series Is It Cake?, now in its second season, is a sweet addition to the world of unscripted programming.

FEATURE 02 BAD MEDICINE Killers of the Flower Moon is an epic feast for the senses; its dark, cautionary message feels right in sync with our time.

SPECIAL 01 AUGMENTED REALITY Cine-style techniques are becoming increasingly popular in the unscripted world, as these Local 600 projects all show.

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PRESIDENT’S LETTER

P hoto by Scott Everet t W hi t e

Family Ties

Baird B Steptoe National President International Cinematographers Guild IATSE Local 600

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Last year I had a chance to visit the set of America’s Got Talent, and I’m still shaking my head at the incredibly high level of talent that runs through that camera crew. Remote, robo cam, handheld, Steadicam, you name it – there wasn’t a type of capture they didn’t have nailed down. While I was there, they were doing the “live rehearsal.” I wasn’t even watching the stage because the process of the camera crew was so fascinating.

They’d be on a tripod, and then during a commercial break, they’d take that camera off and follow the performers backstage, all while the camera operators are typically zooming and pulling focus themselves. I remember watching the Steadicam operator doing an extreme close-up, and after he was done, I asked, “Where’s the focus puller?” He pointed to the rig and said, “There’s the focus and there’s the zoom. I do it myself.”

And it wasn’t just Local 600 camera teams that impressed me so much on that visit. Local 33 stagehands working alongside Local 728 electrics, alongside our members, all seamlessly putting out a product that has to be perfect the first time, every time. There are no second takes in the unscripted world.

That’s why the level of professionalism is so incredibly high. And it’s also why I’m so very proud to introduce this annual November issue highlighting our unscripted membership. One of the parts of our union that is enjoying a modest amount of work during these multiple strikes, unscripted crews are a tight-knit community; they’ll finish The Masked Singer on Sunday and be on the set of America’s Got Talent early Monday morning (as they were when I visited).

It’s a family within the larger family of Local 600, and the unscripted teams always have each other’s backs.

Publisher Teresa Muñoz

November 2023 vol. 94 no. 10

Executive Editor David Geffner Art Director Wes Driver

STAFF WRITER Pauline Rogers

COMMUNICATIONS COORDINATOR

Tyler Bourdeau

COPY EDITORS

Peter Bonilla Maureen Kingsley

CONTRIBUTORS David Geffner Melinda Sue Gordon, SMPSP Jimmy Matlosz

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

COMMUNICATIONS COMMITTEE

John Lindley, ASC, Co-Chair Chris Silano, Co-Chair

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POSTMASTER: Send address changes to ICG 7755 Sunset Boulevard Hollywood, California 90046 Copyright 2021, 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.

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AFM23 ®

LE MÉRIDIEN DELFINA NOW TAKING RESERVATIONS. SANTA MONICA OCT. 31 – NOV. 5

AMERICANFILMMARKET.COM PHOTO: DYLAN PATRICK PHOTOGRAPHY INC

Photo by Sara Terry

WIDE ANGLE

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ne of the unique things about this union is how many amazing filmmakers we have who inspire, mentor and lead without any desire for selfpromotion. Either they’re inherently modest and don’t need the gloss, or they’re just too busy (and good at what they do) to have any time (or interest).

And that’s where ICG Magazine comes in. Our [core mission] is to “promote” the high level of talent in this membership to the wider industry, as well as to other Local 600 members. Point in fact: many Guild members may not know the massive footprint Mande Whitaker, SOC (Deep Focus, page 14), has put down in her 22 years as a union camera operator. That is, unless you work in unscripted (the theme of this November issue), in which case you’re probably screaming right now, “It’s about time our union magazine told the world just how incredible this person is!”

And I'd like to be the first to yell "Mea Culpa." I've been programming this Unscripted issue for seven years, and I did not realize how treasured (NEB member) Mande Whitaker is by her fellow operators.

Here's what Benda Zuniga, SOC emailed me when I was searching for candidates for our upcoming Generation NEXT issue: “Mande Whitaker has helped the unscripted community in so many ways. She has helped organize several shows, she connects Guild members and motivates them to come together to raise rates, she is knowledgeable in union rules and serves as a sounding board for union questions.

Most importantly, Mande has inspired so many women to become camera operators, me included.”

The email continues: “I had heard of Mande for several years before I got the chance to work with her (back then it was rare for two women to work on the same crew), and when we finally got the chance to meet, we became instant friends. The reality world can be brutal – long days, lots of hours on the shoulder,

never enough money – we shoot everything because producers are trying to figure out the story as it unfolds. We know it’s the nature of the business, but it’s humans like Mande who made us know our worth.

(Shooting in cars is now a thing of the past because of people like Mande!) She is a mentor and motivator for so many men and women and is never afraid to speak up about safety, even at the expense of her career. I know she would hate the attention, but I can’t say enough good things about her.”

I know she would hate the attention…but…

I can apply similar words to a man who is known worldwide for his skills as a cinematographer, and yet every time we talk, it sounds like he just shot his first film – and the only reason he finished it was because of his union crafts partners. And while not everyone reading this may have previously heard of Mande Whitaker, pretty much everyone has heard about Rodrigo Prieto (ASC, AMC), who shot Killers of the Flower Moon (page 34). Most everyone also knows that Prieto is an Oscar nominee (three times over) and has shot Martin Scorsese’s last four features.

But I’d wager only those who have worked on his camera team know how inspiring he is, in the most unassuming of ways.

Prieto is, among other things, a color-science nerd; a loving dad to two daughters; a massive fan of camera operators, 1st AC’s, gaffers, production designers, and 1st ADs; and a mentor who leads by example.

Here’s what Killers of the Flower Moon A-Camera Operator P. Scott Sakamoto, SOC (who also worked on The Irishman), told me: “Rodrigo is the ultimate collaborator. He has an artistic eye and expresses his ideas with great clarity, yet is open to options. I can always express, without hesitation, a complement, a suggestion, or an alternative, and he sincerely welcomes the discussion or change. There are some ‘masters of light’ who are not that open to change – not that that’s wrong, but collaboration sometimes brings out the best solution. Rodrigo’s openness motivates me to excel at the craft/art of operating a camera and reinforces my appreciation for him.”

ICG Magazine values the many “quiet leaders” nested throughout this membership, and would love to champion more of them in these pages.

So, please, let us know!

C O N T R I B U T O R S

Melinda Sue Gordon, SMPSP Bad Medicine, Stop Motion “Set photography encompasses imagery suggested by the script as well as the ever-fluid process of translating that story to a motion picture. Thankfully, there is an audience for both.”

Jimmy Matlosz November 2023 Web Exclusive “I met Pete Kozachik, ASC, when he hired me as an AC for Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas. To say I was lucky to work on a film with such artistry and staying power, under such a gifted gentleman (and only three years out of college) is an understatement. Pete set the bar so high for creativity, humanity and professionalism, that many of us have spent the better part of our careers honoring him. I wish I were honoring him in person, but I’m glad I have the opportunity to share with ICG readers what all of us collaborators already know: Pete was a remarkable person. Godspeed, my friend!”

ICG MAGAZINE

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David Geffner Executive Editor

Email: david@icgmagazine.com

Cover Photo by John P. Johnson / Netflix

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FIRST LOOK

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DAVID HEIDE, SOC

BY PAULINE ROGERS PHOTO COURTESY OF DAVID HEIDE

Ever since David Heide, SOC, picked up his first VHS camcorder – in his junior-year TV Production class at Stamford High School in Connecticut, camera operator has been the only job he’s ever wanted. Heide aimed to shoot sports, and while his path has not been a direct line, he says he’s now making great strides in that direction.

The trajectory started at Fordham University where the training offered in television was livebased. “I loved the fast-paced immediacy of the workflow and how important it is to be on your game and get the shot in the first take as it happens,” the New York-based Guild member describes.

Heide credits veteran camera operator (and fivetime Emmy nominee) Tom Dowling (who passed away several years ago) as a prime mentor while interning at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. “Tom set me off to work one of my first jobs in show business, as a runner at sports events,” Heide recounts. “I then left the sports world because I wanted to get more experience all around the camera department. In that process, I met Alan Pierce, SOC, whom I assisted for many years. Al taught me more than he could imagine about how to be a camera operator and improve in the craft.”

The freedom and ability to travel and connect with others who make their careers in live productions has always been a big draw for Heide, who adds that “you never know where the job comes from. I have always been a huge Howard Stern Show fan and an avid listener. When Howard was on America’s Got Talent in New York City, I was lucky enough to get

hired. Not only did that job allow me to make my hours for years, but it also let me get into the Stern Show Studios for the radio broadcast to shoot a couple of segments for AGT. I felt like a kid in Disney World!”

For many years, Heide freelanced with a broad skill set in live TV and film. But learning the ropes in the sports world has been eye-opening. “I remember my first game,” he recalls. “It was WNBA, and I only got it because of another operator’s failed COVID test that same day. I got there a little late and asked the op in the position next to me why the utilities hadn’t built my camera yet.”

Heide laughs as he recalls the operator’s response: “‘You have to build it. Welcome to sports camera operating, pal!’ I had to give myself a crash course in camera assisting because it had been many years, even well over a decade since I’d done much of that. It’s staggering how much more work is done by the camera ops in the sports world. After all my years in Local 600, I never thought I would be muscling to wrap 100-foot copper truck cables as a camera operator on the clock. Crazy.”

New challenges aside, Heide says he feels like a kid in a candy store shooting live sports. He always loved attending games with his dad and still enjoys seeing sports fanatics at games. “Fans typically arrive on our lunch break, and the kids and sober people always show up early,” Heide laughs. “It is heartwarming to see all the families.”

Also, he adds, “shooting handheld in sports has

given me an opportunity to shine because of all of my years as an unscripted operator. Truck handheld cams have no battery, audio hops, or wireless most of the time, so it can be easier to shoulder the payload on long takes. I’ve done countless cooking rounds, dinner dates, various timed challenges, shooting handheld, for hours, all to prepare me for when I’m on a sideline and a group of football players races right down the barrel toward me.”

At about three years in, Heide says he’s beginning to see and feel changes in sports productions.

“Cinema-style shooting is creeping in,” he shares.

“When you watch an event, a lot of the in-house and graphic content in the broadcast is done with cinema cameras and studio lighting; lens-flares, Steadicams/ gimbals, and shallow depth of field.

“Much of sports programming is not just the actual game or desk [and] news,” Heide continues.

“Interviews and very cinematic B-roll are also incorporated. I shot a segment for NBA on TNT last season that was gimbal shooting on cinema cameras [shot on ARRI ALEXA Mini with a Mōvi Pro]; it was a beautiful piece about an amazing subject.”

Heide admits there’s been a shift in shooting live. “With more productions bringing cinema to the fringes and some major non-sport events, it’s going to impact everything,” he concludes. “But not as much as sports. It’s a particular niche, and I must say, I’m really enjoying it. Solid crews. Great action on the field. And I get my health insurance, enjoy the variety of productions, and go home to my family when I’m done for the day.”

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DEEP FOCUS

MANDE WHITAKER, SOC

BY PAULINE ROGERS PHOTO COURTESY OF MANDE WHITAKER

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When I started working in nonfiction programming, it was very hands-off documentary style. We didn’t interfere, and we didn’t “produce” the cast. It was one-hundred percent fly-on-the-wall. It was truly single camera and the perfect environment to learn what “dialogue driven” coverage means.

12 hours a day listening to and watching people.

We become experts in human behavior to the point that we can predict reactions and responses before anyone in control even knows what’s happening.

That’s how we catch those seemingly unexpected moments.

In those days, the production only hired one woman operator at a time and paired her with a woman audio mixer. This was so that a crew could follow if female cast members went into a sensitive situation. The team on The Real World made sure I had access to learning. We often give people opportunities without the support to succeed. At a time when hardly any women were working in the camera department, I feel extremely fortunate to have landed working with this team.

In unscripted, our intuition and instincts are so well trained that when we are allowed to dance together, the product is near seamless coverage. What feels to the audience like an unpredictable moment is often seen coming by the operators and mixers as we have learned the pattern of the talent’s behavior.

We notice microexpressions and small changes in body language. That tells us all we need to know to be in the right place at the right time.

The original, early 2000s Fear Factor was one of my most challenging jobs. It was more a game show than reality, and my first time working with a stunt team. I loved being rigged to the top of an 18-wheeler shooting a stunt happening on a racetrack or shooting from a Condor 80 feet in the air with helicopters circling as the stunt happened in the air. Our stunt team was focused on safety and was always open to hearing if I felt something could be safer. Our director wasn’t afraid to put women in challenging positions, which gave us opportunities we don’t often get to shoot the thrilling stuff we all want to do.

The biggest challenge of nonfiction camerawork is doing your best under extenuating circumstances.

You may be rushed or not have the creative space to make your shots as beautiful as they could be given the situation. You may have to compromise eye line or coverage due to being understaffed or because the scene’s location is less than ideal. The best and most beautiful shows don’t overshoot. They staff properly, and they value quality over quantity.

Cutting the wrong corners in a fast-moving genre like nonfiction just sets everyone up for failure.

The actual operating becomes second nature and muscle memory. The tough part is keeping your body from giving out before the story is done.

Although nonfiction operating can be extremely physical, the biggest skill is listening. We spend

Speaking honestly, safety on set can be a difficult area for freelancers to navigate. We are all nervous that speaking up or asking questions could affect our ability to get work, and nonfiction is no different. As part of the Unscripted Working Group and the Local 600 Safety Committee, I’ve been lucky to become a sounding board for all kinds of concerns about how to advocate for safer working conditions. We’ve had quite a few major steps forward in the last 10 years. Much research has been done regarding RF [radio requency] and extended periods of handheld operating. We’ve passed two new Safety Bulletins – #44 and #45. [Safety Bulletins] Another fantastic tool is the free driving video. That video has done so much to protect operators in unscripted. It used to be common to have an operator shooting handheld in cars driven by cast, but we are now using mounted cameras to cover these scenes.

The unscripted world has made progress in bringing women into the camera department.

We have proven ourselves over the last couple of decades and are often the most senior operators on the set. But even though unscripted has made strides, gender inclusion is still lacking on many sets. I, along with other women and non-binary folks, work together to introduce directors and DP’s to talented and experienced people they may not have worked with yet. The fact that there are so few directors and DP’s who hire in a gender-inclusive way is disappointing. But I’m hopeful that if we keep working together, this will improve.

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EXPOSURE

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RICH KIM

DIRECTOR | IS IT CAKE?

BY PAULINE ROGERS PHOTO COURTESY OF RICH KIM

“I don’t think you could be further away from Hollywood than I was,” observes Director Rich Kim of his childhood growing up in a small, blue-collar factory town in Michigan.

Even though his immigrant parents didn’t understand or trust the entertainment industry, Kim says he still set his sights on going to Los Angeles to direct movies. And somehow, he seemed to be in the right place at the right time. Accepted into the American Film Institute (AFI), Kim found mentors and friends to help him grow as a filmmaker.

A series of positions as an assistant helped ground him in the industry before he began working with a prominent music video director and then, later, directing small videos on his own. “Then Napster happened, the industry crashed and the music world changed,” he reflects.

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EXPOSURE

Kim changed as well, moving into the unscripted world via a former AFI colleague who was a showrunner for a major reality series. Kim’s quick learning skills, sense of humor, and ability to think on his feet have all helped him in an unscripted directing career that now spans more than 20 years.

So has Kim’s quickness to embrace new technology, sometimes adding more than 20 cameras of mixed pedigree, unusual support and long lenses to major 360-degree shoots. And, as he describes, he urges his willing crew to “run faster, be more daring and have fun” as they build the energy to what Kim calls the “wow” moments that are crucial in unscripted production. It’s an approach that’s earned Kim a Primetime Emmy Nomination (LEGO Masters), a Daytime Emmy Nomination (LEGO Masters), two DGA Award Nominations (also LEGO Masters) and a Dove Award Win. As of this writing, Kim’s working on two of the most popular shows on the air – LEGO Masters and Is It Cake?, with an upcoming new series, Snake Oil with David Spade, that’s sure to push the limits of the unscripted format.

Talk about going out on your own in the music video world. It was a dream come true. I had a great grounding and a vision. One of my videos toured with RESFest, and another won a Dove Award. Eventually I was hip-pocketed by one of the biggest music video production companies in Los Angeles. Still, the timing couldn’t have been worse because Napster launched around the same time. Free music streaming collapsed the music video industry overnight. Of the few that were made, the budgets were slashed and were being taken by big-name directors. Newbies like me were out of luck.

What was it like getting into AFI so soon after moving to L.A.? Rich Kim: I didn’t even realize how prestigious the school was. On the first day, all the students gathered in the lecture hall, and the head of our school, the legendary screenwriter Frank Pierson, told all of us to look around the room at our classmates as they would be the ones we’d be working with for the rest of our lives. And for me, that turned out to be true! AFI’s curriculum was based around hands-on filmmaking and emphasized storytelling and collaboration. For all our cycle projects, which were 20-minute short films we had to make every semester, we were told to crew up with different people. I learned early how to collaborate with people who are not only very different personality-wise but also how to pull their best work out of them.

Describe the setup for us. In the house where the cast lives, there’s a control room with 60 hidden cameras to surveil the cast 24 hours a day. I’d sit in the control room waiting for the cast to begin interacting, which would be when I’d send in the camera crew.

The crew consisted of a field director, a camera operator, an AC and a sound mixer. We’d capture the coverage for the story as it was happening live, then communicate story notes to Post so they could begin formulating the storylines for the episode. Later, I would write interview questions based on the week’s worth of shooting. We had to get the interview bites that would become the connective tissue for our episode. It was during these formative years that I honed my story instincts.

You wanted to be a director, and you got to assist Martin Weisz, one of the top music video directors in the game. How did that impact your journey?

I learned so much from him. Not just the technical side of directing but also by having a very up close and personal look at the life of a successful working director. We worked on Korn, P. Diddy and Sisqo videos, to name a few. I carefully studied Martin’s process, especially his prep. I watched how he gathered references from all kinds of mediums to formulate new visual ideas. Also, Martin embraced new technology, and his specialty was post, specifically SFX. I remember sitting in his Flame room for days, just watching and absorbing as he worked tirelessly on his effects for his videos.

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That’s when your AFI connections kicked in, and you began a different adventure. My fellow AFI alum, Anthony Dominici, had risen up the ranks to become the showrunner of The Real World, and he brought me into the unscripted industry. The Real World Chicago, and San Diego, which I also directed, were mostly single-camera vérité style coverage. The show’s roots are in documentaries. As the director, you’re laser-focused on how the storylines unfold.

Did you have any idea what you were getting into when you signed on for America’s Top Model?

[Laughs] None! Everyone working on the show was so young, and the genre was just beginning to grow. Honestly, we were just trying to figure it all out. Back then, we would take the show out of the studio a lot. I’d be directing out of any space big enough for a Multiview on location. We’d have control rooms in the back of U-Hauls, a penthouse apartment, the stairwell of the Empire State Building, a Buddhist temple in Tokyo, a haunted castle in England, a bathroom stall in the Waldorf, and even on the back of an elephant in Thailand.

We had no idea that what we were creating would later become the standard format for competition reality shows.

You were, in essence, inventing a genre on the spot. Pretty much. How to tell and capture the story was all new, and we were just beginning to lay down what would later be the building blocks of that genre’s craft. Back then, as the lead director, I’d have to design and direct the multicamera coverage, do interviews and OTF’s (on-the-fly interviews) with the cast, and write story notes for post. Nowadays, the director’s responsibility is more focused on setting the style and look of the show and designing and executing the multicamera coverage.

Why was directing the first couple of seasons of the Jada Pinkett Smith show Red Table Talk so interesting? We took the daytime talk show format out of the studio and to a real location. The goal was to create the most intimate environment for Jada, her family and the guests. No audience. No studio lighting. We wanted our celebrity guests to open up and talk about their feelings. We sat everyone around a small round table in Jada’s house. Guests sat close enough to be able to hold hands. I covered the talks in the round, 360 degrees. We often had up to eight people sitting at the table, making it difficult to keep the cameras from shooting each other.

Challenging, to say the least. Each composition was literally like threading a needle. We shot on nine Sony VENICE cameras with cine zooms to give the show a cinematic feel. In addition, we had a couple of Sony A75 cameras on remote-operated motorized sliders. This gave the camera coverage movement without having an operator close to the talent. Cameras were pushed back into the shadows of the room’s far corner so they would essentially disappear. Prompters and monitors were hung above and around the table but not in the eyeline of the guests. We lit for night, allowing for an even more intimate setting. The low light levels, shallow focus, and 360 blocking all helped add to the cinematic feel.

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“TODAY, NEARLY EVERY UNSCRIPTED SHOW SHOOTS WITH LARGE-SENSOR CAMERAS AND PL-MOUNT LENSES.” Once we would start rolling, we had a rule to never stop Jada’s interview with the guest. We found that the celebrity guests were opening up to Jada in a way that was so personal and emotional. One day, we were having issues with one of the cameras, and rather than stop the show, I had the AC’s and tech team crawl through the set to get to the camera so they could try to fix it. It must have looked like the D-Day beach invasion out there. [Laughs] One of your highest-rated shows is FOX TV’s LEGO Masters [ICG Magazine November 2022]. Why is it so popular? When LEGO Masters began airing, I was surprised at the number of people who told me it’s the only TV show they watch as a family. Honestly, I didn’t expect that. Most people think of LEGO as a toy, and I thought LEGO Masters would appeal mostly to kids or young adults. I guess it was able to reach a wider audience because it showcases the limitless creative possibilities, a concept that appeals to all ages. Plus, Will Arnett is a great host, and his humor resonates with adults.

It’s also fun and creative from a visual standpoint.

I love using other genres as influences and burying them in a show. We looked at films like Deadpool and the animated LEGO films. Our color schemes were directly influenced by those films. I’m also influenced

by Broadway musicals. I love how they’re staged and how set pieces come in and out live. With LEGO, we took that idea and automated all our signs and giant brick lights. Our set is built to be shot 360 degrees.

It’s a closed-off, four-wall set, but half of the walls are on motors that we raise and lower depending on the required camera coverage. These techniques are how I can create a “wow” moment for the cast in the room, which, besides shooting a lot of 360s, I try to have on all my shows. I love creating big lighting and automation cues. I love watching the cast or contestants’ expressions as we transform

the environment around them. I believe every show needs a few of these “wow” moments to build toward in the episode.

Is It Cake? has become wildly popular. What is it that draws people to this kind of unscripted programming? Food is an easy entry point. Everyone eats, right? Most people love food that tastes amazing. Many people love to try new things. Some people like to cook. And food made by real people with interesting stories and big personalities will always be intriguing. When you combine that with a way to express yourself creatively with food, it seems like a perfect match.

What makes Is It Cake? unique in the food genre? It has an interesting twist. It’s a baking show and also a game show. Audiences are wowed by the skill of the bakers to make ultra realistic cakes. Sometimes, the real object (decoy) looks less real than the cake! The bakers try to distress the decoys to make them look more cake-like in the lineup. We then must find a light level that is low enough to make the game hard to play, but not so dark that no one can guess the right answer. Lastly, we must figure out the distance the judges stand from the cakes. It’s the same as before: too far, and the game becomes unwinnable. Too close, and it’s too easy. A delicate balance of these three elements makes our game show work.

You’ve done just about every kind of unscripted program. What were some of the more outrageous moments your crews have had to pull off? Probably the most outrageous show I ever directed was a body-painting competition called Skin Wars hosted

by Rebecca Romijn and judged by RuPaul. The painters would be paired with a model every episode.

The model would be their blank canvas, so to speak, and would be naked except for a nude-colored thong.

I remember one of the PA’s telling me he bought every

nude-colored thong in Southern California! The painters would have around 10 hours to completely cover the model with their artwork. The models differed in every episode, including women, men, twins and even Sumo wrestlers. I remember shooting one painter working with a tiny paintbrush, a flower on the tip of the crotch of a male model, and thinking to myself, “This is the most bizarre scene I’ve ever shot.” [Laughs] At the end of each episode, the losing painter and their model would be eliminated from the competition. The episode’s last shot was always the model walking into a glass shower and washing the paint off their body. Funny, this show was a huge hit for GSN and later Netflix.

What’s driving any recent changes in the unscripted format? Two things have pushed the progression of reality TV. First, it’s been a while since we’ve had the implementation of cinema cameras, lenses and specialty equipment like the Techno Jib, 3D wire camera systems, rail cams, and other gimbal-based systems. Once we started moving away from the ENG look and towards a more cinematic style, the unscripted genre took a giant leap forward. Today, nearly every unscripted show shoots with large-sensor cameras and PL-mount lenses. We had to wait until costs came down, since, unlike a film where only a few cameras will be used at any time, I sometimes use more than 20 VENICE’s, FX9s, RED Dragon, Varicam, ARRI Alexa and Amira. We tend to lean on the PL-mount zooms like the Canon 50- to 1000-millimeter and the Optimo 24- to 290-millimeter, all mounted on TV studio peds. The second is merging directing techniques from the live-TV world into reality TV. I feel that a lot of our SM’s and AD’s who started in reality have crossed over to the studio world and brought many of those protocols and logistics back to reality. It’s only helped us become more efficient, and our filming has evolved because of it.

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SUGAR & Netflix’s hit baking series Is It Cake?, now in its second season, is a sweet addition to the world of unscripted programming.

BY PAULINE ROGERS PHOTOS BY JOHN P. JOHNSON / NETFLIX FRAMEGRABS COURTESY OF NETFLIX

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Is It Cake? is a comedygameshow-baking-competition hybrid series, in which contestants are asked to create cakes that look like everyday objects and then present them to judges alongside the real objects to see if those judges can be fooled. Created by Dan Cutforth and Jane Lipsitz, and hosted by SNL actor/comedian Mikey Day, Is It Cake? has produced confections that resemble everything from a flashlight to an ottoman, a perfect Doc Marten-style boot, and a full-sized toilet.

The audience plays along at home, trying to find the cakes.

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A

s Director of Photography George Maxwell describes: “Production Designer James Connelly created a beautiful set. The main focal point is the Cake Wall, which stands on a large turntable. This is spun to reveal different set pieces, as well as the cakes, during gameplay.” On one side of the turntable are the baking stations where the contestants create their cakes.

Across from them is the Gallery (where the safe contestants watch the show), and the Judges’ Podiums are directly across from the Cake Wall.

“All of the set is rigged with LED tape, and most of it can be backlit, which gives us enormous flexibility in creating different looks,” Maxwell continues.

“The show often shoots 360 degrees, and one of the challenges is not seeing all the cameras. Director Rich Kim [Exposure, page 16] had the grips create camera hides between the set walls to obscure the operators.”

Is It Cake? offers a unique challenge of applying a cinematic style to what is ostensibly a hybrid gameshow format. As Maxwell, who along with Kim who was brought on for Season Two to shake things up, adds: “When I think of what a traditional game show looks like, I think of digital video flatness, with everything in focus and a high refresh rate that produces a soap-opera look. By using Sony FX9s with Cinema Zooms [often wide open], we can bring a more dramatic and dynamic feel to the show, a shallower depth of field, stronger contrast, and more natural motion. I feel the cinematic look makes the show more engaging.”

The ask for Maxwell and Kim for Season 2 was to “make the show bigger, brighter, with more pop.” First to step up was Production Designer Connelly, who rendered images with a star field of lights between the set pieces. Key Grip Carson Griffin then rigged a series of pipes, and Chief Lighting Technician Matt Wieland hung an array of Chauvet Colorado Solos to create a twinkling starfield. “To enhance the gameshow vibe, eight-foot Rainbow 2 tubes in Pixel mode were added to the ladder pipes as well as over the entire set,” Maxwell notes. “These create a colorful chase during gameplay that reflected beautifully off the shiny floor.”

That means, Maxwell adds, “that all the cabinets are now backlit with color-changing LED’s. Pixel Tape and LED Tape add an extra layer of depth. Dramatic shafts of light are produced by VL2600 moving lights.

The cast is keyed with a mix of Clay Paky Scenius Unicos, ARRI SkyPanel 360s, and Creamsource Vortex 8s. This creates a dynamic set that produces dramatically different looks for each show segment.

All the lighting is controlled by Programmer Josh Vazquez on an Onyx NX1 console.”

How did the team expand the camera department for Season 2? “On the main floor, we have nine FX9s

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on peds, and five are outfitted with Canon 50-1000-millimeter lenses,” Maxwell explains.

“Our A-camera operator, Jim Coker, has an Angénieux Optimo Ultra FF 12:1 [36-435 mm] on his pedestal, and he’s always hunting for the most artistic shots. In addition to the peds, we have two on wheeled sticks with Canon 25-250-millimeter lenses. The Techno-Jib flies a Canon 15-120-millimeter to give Operator Nick Gomez the ability to capture amazing wideangle shots and get in tight for the details on the cakes. John Lovell operates the Ronin 4D [4-axis gimbal] with an assortment of Sony G Master primes on a wheeled rig he designed. There are also six Panasonic UE150 PTZ remote cameras rigged above the worktables and the turntable for overhead detail shots. In the Interview stage, there are two FX9s. The close-up camera has a DZO Vespid FF 125 millimeter and the wide shot a Sony G Master 85-millimeter Prime.”

Complex? You bet. Confusing? At times.

And certainly, a major change from a more conventional reality competition series. As Maxwell continues: “One of the drawbacks of this style is that it can reveal flaws that traditional digital video would obscure. I remember one day, a contestant made a cake that looked like an exercise stability ball. It was extremely well done. Standing five feet away, it was hard to distinguish from the real thing.

Once a camera zoomed in on it, it became clear that the fine texture details were not quite perfect.”

Fast thinking and a little laughter, of which there is a lot on this show, remedied the issue.

“So much of the comedy comes from [Host] Mikey Day and his interactions with the judges and cast,” Maxwell adds. “Mikey ad-libs all the time as he races around the set. Some funnier moments have come as cameras attempt to reposition and keep up with him. In one episode, Mikey borrowed a wheeled stool from one of the operators and was scooting around the set when he collided with a camouflaged cable crossover that sent him flying. It was all captured perfectly by Nick Gomez – trust the Techno to always capture from above what we don't see from the floor.”

As Guild member Richard Martinez picks up: “I’m just one operator in a group of highly talented individuals. Working with Rich Kim allows me to do what I love and showcase some compound moves. Rich dislikes a static camera. He uses the term ‘pumping water.’

If you’re on a ped and you have a solid shot, boom up and down while tilting, keeping the

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subject composed symmetrically within the frame. This gives you some movement in the background, and the shot becomes a little more interesting. “...which fits in with cinema style, to keep the shots dancing,” Martinez continues. “Using the Sony FX9 with the Angénieux Ultra FF 12:1 lens allows me to connect multiple shots in one move. For example, starting macro boomed up high on the ped, I can zoom out while booming down and dolly at the same time, revealing the baker and what this one is making. So, now I am revealing another baker down the line in the kitchen, then zooming into that baker and showcasing details in their creation. In that one move you have a series of edit points the editor can use at any moment, so the shot basically edits itself. Drop a couple of insert shots within that compound move, and it makes for a seamless, dynamic moment in time.”

Martinez admits there are some unique challenges to the show, like anticipating moments where interaction between bakers happens. “We need dialogue for the show to have some depth,” he states. “Producers do help by setting up moments, but as in music, it’s the notes in between the notes that have the magic.

Being ready and alert enough to watch body language and notice that a baker is about to speak to another baker about style or technique is crucial. Now, where it really gets hairy is bake days, as we shoot all day, and, towards the end of the day, you can feel like you’ve exhausted your angles. That is when the one piece of dialogue is said that you need, and you have to stay ready.”

What Operator Brett Smith likes about the show is the long-lens [50-1000-mm standard] cinema look. “Shooting with a wide-open iris gives more separation from backgrounds, not to mention the sets almost become an additional character. It’s colorful with a lot of nuances.

“A show like this requires a lot of B-roll,” Smith adds. “The ‘hero’ in most instances is the cakes the contestants create. They are often detailed, intricate, and phenomenal, and it does take a trained eye, especially from a distance, to tell the cakes apart from the actual real items they are attempting to mimic.

Therefore, the show requires many shots to describe the various elements that go into the cakes, however minuscule they seem. Also, the cakes are 360-degree elements and need to be covered from all angles. We spend a lot of time with multiple cameras obtaining those shots, and most of them get used in the edit.”

One of Smith’s responsibilities is to follow the host as he sets the pace of the show, comments on the action, and brings

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OPERATOR BRETT SMITH NOTES THAT, “SHOOTING WITH A WIDE-OPEN IRIS GIVES MORE SEPARATION FROM BACKGROUNDS, NOT TO MENTION THE SETS ALMOST BECOME AN ADDITIONAL CHARACTER. IT’S COLORFUL WITH A LOT OF NUANCES."

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his spontaneous approach. “Mikey Day is a gifted performer, and it is both a privilege and a challenge to photograph him,” Smith continues. “The challenge is that often he will break off-script and improvise, which is what makes him so special. Those are the moments that you must capture. I need to maintain my sight on him wherever he goes – and he can go almost anywhere – keep my lens on him, and keep him in focus. It sounds easier than it sometimes is,” he laughs.

Ask the Guild camera team about the show and they all agree some of the wildest material comes from Nick Gomez. High up above the fray (most of the time), Gomez, too, shoots a lot of B-roll and beauty shots of the cakes (and decoy cakes – yes, they have decoy cakes). Then, as Gomez says, it’s a total laugh-out-loud game show while he floats wide shots.

Is the cinema approach different for a seasoned unscripted operator? “I feel like it’s become so popular in the reality world that I’ve gotten pretty used to it," Gomez shares. "For us, it's having the right adapters so I can still handle focus and zoom with my controllers.

Thanks to my tech, George Valenzuela, and the team at Camera Support, we have what we need for the Techno-Jib for the cinema setups. George has selected the very forgiving Canon 15-120, so focus rarely becomes a big issue. Shout out to the f5.6/8 split!”

Like everyone else, Gomez says he has fun shots to remember, most of which happen during the game portion of the show. “I have a blast timing my movement to hit the big lighting cue at the end of the 20-second countdown,” he continues. “It’s nice to show off the set on one of George Maxwell’s sweet lighting cues. Also, it’s fun for me to add to the franticness of the celebrities trying to decide on the cakes. I sometimes think I’ve seen everything and can pick out what’s real and what’s cake, but they’ve had me fooled. Like the time we had a cake that looked like an egg carton. I work here. But I picked the wrong one.”

Operator Petra Costner (who, with assistant Robyn LoVecchio, is on the Sony FX9 camera with wide lens) chuckles when she says, “They’ve started to call us ‘the silhouette sisters.’ Rich Kim is always laughingly saying ‘run faster’ as we race around to capture key moments. The set is made up of 12-foot walls that have muslin backings. George backlights the entire set.”

After game play, the contestants who don’t win are told to sit down and watch as the baker

who fooled the judges plays the final-round game, “Cake or Cash.” Costner and LoVecchio must run their camera, lens, and sticks around the set on the fire lane, place the camera, go to the doubler on the lens, find the frame, and set her shot all before the losing contestants sit down. (And Costner, being on the smaller side, must carry an apple box.) When Kim asked Costner to reposition at one point, she panicked and decided to take the fast way.

“We were racing to our next point and created a perfect ‘dual’ silhouette. Someone yelled ‘the silhouette sisters,’ and it stuck,” Costner laughs.

The Sony FX9 is ideal for this type of capture. Light enough to move around but with an incredible sensor, “which is so good that it can pick up the slightest flaw in a cake or even in a contestant,” Costner says frankly. “We have to be extra careful and focus – of course, on what we are seeing – but also what we might not want to see.

“Frankly, we all love the challenges,” Costner adds. “Game day is an incredibly fast-paced shoot day. Rich loves movement, so an operator shouldn’t get too comfortable in one spot. I love not sitting still, so I feel right at home. Then there is the bake, which is a much slower-paced process. But the reward, for me, is watching the super-talented cake artists whip up their batter and bring a cake to life. There are just so many possibilities for moments. When I see it, I go for it, not at all worried that Robyn will have my back, I’ll be in focus – and we’ll both be ready for Rich’s next position. Faster, of course.”

Maxwell, too, has his “cake tales,” which often revolve around Rich Kim’s creative excitement and pushing the envelope. “Shooting 360 can be a real challenge,” Maxwell begins.

“Rich treats all shows like live and repositions cameras without cutting on the floor. At one point in the show, cameras have to move across the set without interfering with the shots of the other operators. Our amazing AC unit, headed by lead AC Dave Hawes, facilitates these moves.

They swiftly maneuver our peds behind the turntable, avoiding obstructions and lifting these beasts of camera platforms over cable runs. The fact that they can get the cameras in position for their next shots without pausing shooting is a testament to their dedication and professionalism.” Maxwell describes the repositions as a beautifully orchestrated ballet.

However, even operators can get confused about what is on camera as they cross the stage.

“One operator [who shall remain

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OF THE SHOW'S CINEMA-STYLE APPROACH OPERATOR NICK GOMEZ SAYS, “I FEEL LIKE IT’S BECOME SO POPULAR IN THE REALITY WORLD THAT I’VE GOTTEN PRETTY USED TO IT. FOR US, IT’S SIMPLY HAVING THE RIGHT ADAPTERS SO I CAN STILL HANDLE FOCUS AND ZOOM WITH MY CONTROLLERS."

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“THE SHOW OFTEN SHOOTS 360 DEGREES, AND ONE OF THE CHALLENGES IS NOT SEEING ALL THE CAMERAS.” DIREECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY GEORGE MAXWELL

nameless] crossed through three other shots during a repo. Let’s just say – this only happened once,” he adds.

There is one other big change for Season 2 – an ACES HDR workflow. David Kaplan, who has worked as a technical supervisor for Netflix content since they started doing unscripted content in 2016, explains that “Netflix allowed us to push the game technically where in many other parts of the industry, it has become stagnant and repetitive.” Kaplan has been working with 4K capture and delivery, approved camera lists that sometimes exceed 20-plus cameras, as well as Local 600 members as production technology teams (like Charlie Shain as tech assist and Andy Reynolds as DIT) to push the envelope in workflow.

Last year, when they finished The Big Nailed It Baking Challenge, the Netflix team reached out to Kaplan and Reynolds to discuss an ACES HDR workflow he had been dreaming up for shows like Cake. “Netflix delivers all of their new shows in HDR, and there is a real issue currently with HDR monitoring on set,” Kaplan explains.

“In a large multicam environment like this,” he continues, “HDR monitoring is just not economical or feasible to implement in the traditional ways. We don’t have the luxury of a Livegrade or HDR monitoring workflow [creating a standard LUT in an SDR environment], which does not translate to the final product. This leaves the directors of photography with a false sense of their final product and no overall control over how they captured the show. The colorists essentially must throw away these traditional SDR LUT’s and start from scratch for the HDR grade.”

For now, it’s uncharted territory to ensure the SDR look seen on set is properly translated to the colorists. “To combat the issues with applying SDR look-up tables to an HDR color pipeline, we worked with Andy Johnson and used his formula. George Maxwell, Rich Kim, Andy Reynolds, Joe Kuntz (head of post at Alfred Street, who did post for Cake), and I

discussed the plan for this pipeline and got to work implementing it,” Kaplan adds. “We took a Color Space Transform in DaVinci Resolve to go from S-Log3.Cine to ACES 1.3. We exported this as a .cube file and loaded it onto all the cameras.

This ensured a display-agnostic look that translated perfectly from set to post and color.

We tested with success and were impressed at the ability to now have more control over the final grade. To our knowledge, this is the first time a Netflix unscripted show used this ACES color pipeline from field to post.”

The complexities didn’t end there. With Season 2 nearly triple the gear of Season 1, Kaplan had to deal with longer lenses (Canon 50-1000s) and use the dual base ISO of the Sony FX9s to achieve proper exposure for the longer and slower lenses. “Our tech team also implemented six Panasonic UE150 robo cams filming in V-log to capture overhead station content, and we were able to apply the ACES workflow to these overhead cameras as well,” he shares. “It’s a huge job that we couldn’t do without the team at tvacom Rentals, who work closely with us to put this whole package together and help achieve all the technical advances. Charlie Shain, tech assistant, is amazing. She can implement, problem solve, and create a strong bridge between the Local 600 camera and tech crew.”

Don’t ask the team behind Is it Cake? what limits they will stretch for another potential season. They’re still digesting this season. But they’re ready for anything.

“Is it Cake? is such a joy to be a part of,” concludes Maxwell. “All departments work together in harmony and with mutual respect.

[It’s] a tone set at the top by producers and our director that permeates all the way down.

Our Local 600 crew comprises the best in the industry. Most of us have worked together for years, and when we get together, it feels like family. The fact that we get to shoot a lighthearted show and have such fun doing it is something that we all appreciate.”

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LOCAL 600 CREW SEASON 2 Director of Photography George Maxwell Operators Jim Coker, Mario Pendilla, Richard Martinez, Brett Smith, Petra Costner, Alex Wentworth, Jeffrey Wilkins, Suzie Weis, John Lovell Lead Assistant Nate Hosseini Assistants DeAndre Green, Dominic DeFrank, Marcus Herring, Dary Hosseini, Robyn LoVecchio Techno Operator Nick Gomez Techno Job Tech Jorge Valenzuela Technical Supervisor David Kaplan Technical Coordinator Charlie Shain DIT Andy Reynolds Still Photographer John P. Johnson

"[DIRECTOR] RICH [KIM] DISLIKES A STATIC CAMERA," REVEALS OPERATOR RICHARD MARTINEZ. "HE USES THE TERM ‘PUMPING WATER.’ IF YOU’RE ON A PED AND YOU HAVE A SOLID SHOT, BOOM UP AND DOWN WHILE TILTING, KEEPING THE SUBJECT COMPOSED SYMMETRICALLY WITHIN THE FRAME. THIS GIVES MOVEMENT IN THE BACKGROUND, AND THE SHOT 2023 BECOMES INTERESTING." 32 MORE NOVEMBER

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MEDICINE Killers of the Flower Moon is an epic feast for the senses; its dark, cautionary message feels right in sync with our time.

BY DAVID GEFFNER PHOTOS BY MELINDA SUE GORDON, SMPSP / APPLE TV+ NOVEMBER 2023 35 FRAMEGRABS COURTESY OF APPLE TV+

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The story of what amounts to an attempted genocide of the Osage Native peoples in Oklahoma in the 1920s (also known in the region at the time as the “Reign of Terror”) is the subject of what may be Martin Scorsese’s most potent film since his Oscarwinning The Departed in 2007.

Although Apple TV+’s Killers of the Flower Moon is based on David Grann’s book of the same name, which details the birth of the FBI, the federal agency that investigated the more than 60 murders and/or disappearances of Osage people between 1921 and 1925 (all of whom possessed wealth due to their headrights to the oil that was discovered on Osage land), it departs significantly from its source material.

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As Director of Photography and three-time Oscar nominee Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC, explains, “When we started in 2019, we were preparing to shoot a script that was much closer to the book, with a focus on Tom White (the FBI Agent who investigated the murders, played by Jesse Plemons) and scenes with J. Edgar Hoover. But then we started scouting locations in Oklahoma, and Marty kept saying, ‘You know, things are kind of changing,’” laughs Prieto, who has shot Scorsese’s last four features.

“Marty is a director who loves to tinker, so I thought that just meant small changes here and there. But after we had our winter hiatus, we didn’t go back to Oklahoma. Then COVID hit. By the time we finally began shooting [in Oklahoma], the changes turned out to be much bigger. More than any other film I’ve done with Scorsese, there was this feeling of experimentation and evolution, including what the look would be.”

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ne approach Prieto always had in mind was to emulate the evolution of photography. “There’s a scene in the beginning where the Osage have a pipe-bearing ceremony,” he describes, “and I did tests – film and digital – to see if I could shoot it on a pinhole camera. I also considered using infrared film, since there was this spiritual plane the Osage inhabit that’s unseen to the white European settler culture.

We even considered shooting parts of the story in black and white with a technique called ‘tinting and toning,’ where the bright area of the frame is one color and the dark area is another. That was used in the famous documentary Nanook of the North. In the end, we didn’t do any of those things, but Scorsese’s willingness to experiment – as long as it serves the story – is a wonderful place for a DP to start.”

With a story now centered on Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo De Caprio), a World War I vet who comes to live with his uncle, local cattle baron William Hale (Robert De Niro), and the Osage woman Ernest marries (at the behest of Hale to get her headrights), Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone), Prieto’s visual choices centered on the Oklahoma locations.

“We shot in many of the locations where real events unfolded, and that was important for the energy of everything – for the actors, for the look,” he says. “For example, the office of the two doctors who are helping Ernest poison Lily [supposedly with insulin for her diabetes] is still there in Fairfax.

In that same building is where we shot the Masonic

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Hall – an intense scene with Hale and Henry Roan [William Belleau]. Marty is big on authenticity, and that included having Osage advisors on the set. For me, it meant understanding how the Osage incorporate nature into their lives and how it would impact the cinematography.”

As an example, Prieto notes the importance of the sun in Osage culture. “For the bearing of the pipe scene, I decided to have the sun straight overhead, coming in through a gap in the tent [a small teepee-like structure] that was used for smoke to escape when they had fires going,” he shares. “That was achieved by [Chief Lighting Technician] Ian Kincaid putting an ARRIMAX on a Condor with a mirror tilted at 45 degrees, as the HMI light is much too hot to point straight down. [The grip team rigged a battery-operated tilt control so Kincaid could move the mirror by a matter of degrees.] For the funeral of one of Mollie’s sisters, where we have a low-angle shot of an Osage person leading the ceremony, we see the sun flickering through a feather he’s holding up. That’s because any life event in Osage culture always occurs at noon when the sun is high in the sky. It’s not the most flattering light for actors, of course. But I wanted to be completely accurate.”

Being faithful to real events extended to capture media – 35mm Kodak negative (5219) – which, Prieto says, “has a deeper color depth than current digital cameras, and better renders nature, specifically different shades of green.” One of the LUT’s Prieto employed, with Company 3 Finishing Artist Yvan Lucas, emulated 5219 negative – as it looked printed on Kodak vision stock. “It was

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RODRIGO PRIETO, ASC, AMC

BELOW: A-CAMERA OPERATOR/STEADICAM P. SCOTT SAKAMOTO, SOC, SAYS SCORSESE "IS EMOTIONALLY DRIVEN BY HIS CHARACTERS, SO MANY CAMERA MOVES ARE CREATED AND MOTIVATED ON THE SPOT."

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mainly used for scenes involving Osage characters without white people around,” Prieto shares, as well as for footage shot on a Phantom high-speed camera and night scenes with the Sony VENICE. As Lucas notes, “the LUT constrained digital adjustments to the characteristics of the stock, and it also helped bring portions not shot on film into the same space as those that were.”

Prieto particularly liked how the 5219 LUT worked for the Osage exterior scenes – “like when Mollie is praying to the sun in the morning, and in her mother’s house,” he adds. “The other main LUT was based on Autochrome, a color technique the Lumière brothers in France invented in 1907,” he adds. “We wanted to represent these new Americans with a look that emulated what color photography looked like in the 1920s.

It was how they saw this new world, as opposed to the more natural way the Osage saw their land.”

The Autochrome process, as Prieto describes, involved a transparency on a glass plate with a coat of color filters that are grains of tinted potato starch.” The light goes through the potato starch filters and excites the silver halide layer,” he explains. “The potato starch is tinted with a red-orange color, green and violet-blue. Yellows and greens get desaturated, blues go purplish, and the skin tones go a warmish orange.

The potato starch creates grain, but we didn’t want that aspect; it was more about emulating the feeling of color.”

In fact, the Autochrome LUT benefited from years of front-end work by Prieto, Lucas and Color Rendering Scientist Philippe Panzini, the latter of whom designed a slider tool (dubbed “PPL” for Prieto, Panzini, Lucas) that offered a different approach to color grading.

“Color Rendering Scientist Christophe Souchard turned that slider into an OFX plug-in for Baselight,” Lucas reveals. “It still wasn’t perfect. Nothing is. But with some trial and error, we could create LUT’s that allowed us to shift a specific part of the color spectrum without affecting other colors. For example, pushing saturated reds in a redyellow direction would often also involve skin tones that we wanted to leave untouched. We used the PPL within Baselight to build the Autochrome LUT; working out exactly how it should affect every color was the result of a lot of research by Rodrigo, Phillippe and myself.”

Prieto also incorporated a third look based on ENR (a color-positive developing

technique that utilizes an additional blackand-white developing bath inserted at an appropriate stage of a print’s processing to retain silver). “It’s much harsher than Autochrome, even less saturated and more contrasty,” Prieto describes. “The ENR look starts with the explosion of the house of Mollie’s sister [Reta, played by Janae Collins], and from that point on takes over the film.

We wanted [the ENR LUT] to represent this feeling of fear, dread and guilt. You can see it clearly when Ernest is taken out of jail to Hale’s house and all of the white power brokers are gathered to ensure he supports Hale [and the truth does not come out]. The realistic way of lighting that scene was a warm tone as Hale’s house would have had lightbulbs and/or firelight. I shot it that way with the knowledge that Yvan, who also supervised the dailies [with Company 3’s Rich Flores], would time the scene cool. I wanted them all to look like marble statues to Ernest – pale and completely lacking in feeling or empathy.”

Lucas, who first worked with Prieto on Alexander in 2006, says their approach is to do a lot of the work up front with custom LUT’s.

“It’s almost like designing a custom film stock that reacts to color and contrast in a certain way so Rodrigo can light accordingly,” explains Lucas, who began his career timing film. “There are certainly other ways to do color grading, but Rodrigo and I both like doing the heavy lifting before production starts. It makes the final grading process simpler because so much has already been worked out.”

Authenticity played a key part in other aspects of Killer Moon’s look. As Production Designer Jack Fisk, who has done five films with Scorsese, shares: “Research is my way of communicating design ideas. When I came on the film, Producer/Archivist Mary Anne Bowers provided a lot of background material. I also went through real estate and county records in Fairfax and Pawhuska, so if I had an idea, and I could show that’s the way it was in research, Marty accepted it readily.”

Key locations in Fairfax – the train depot when Ernest arrives in Oklahoma, and the bustling main street, where he first meets Mollie – were shot in nearby Pawhuska.

“We built the train station on the site of a commercial depot that had just been torn down,” Fisk recounts. “But the ground was so contaminated from whatever had been there,

we could only work on the surface. We built the station based on a plan I had gotten from old railroad books, and then we put in 1600 feet of track to bring a train in from Reno.”

Fisk had two blocks of Pawhuska to work with to emulate Fairfax’s main street.

“We added second-story windows on all the buildings, with new glass frames as many of the existing buildings had been abandoned,” he continues. “We put in telephone poles, added dirt and covered many of the existing buildings with false fronts. The pool hall was a hometown appliance center, which we gutted, took out the false ceilings, and took off the metal awnings. It also doubled for a movie theater scene that Rodrigo lit entirely with projection from the LED screen we put in.”

Yet another example of period correctness was the Fairfax pool hall also containing a barber shop. As Fisk explains: “I grew up in a small town in Illinois, and I remember being taken to get my hair cut and seeing all these men playing pool, and they looked dark and mysterious. When I checked the fire-insurance maps for Fairfax from 1900 to 1925, I saw several pool halls that were also barber shops. Marty loved that idea.

“Hale didn’t have a big house on his ranch in real life, but it seemed like a better representation for someone who called himself ‘The King of the Osage Hills,’” Fisk adds. “The interior, in particular, was meant as a contrast to the Osage homes, namely Mollie’s and her mother, Lizzie Q’s [played by Tantoo Cardinal], which had green wallpaper and were more natural. [For Hale’s house] we went with red walls and a Lincrusta wallpaper, which is textured, and we gave it a leather finish. We upscaled furniture to look heavier and more masculine, enlarged the windows and views, and made everything grander.”

Another influence was an Oscar-winning film from the 1950s shot by William C. Mellor and directed by George Stevens. “When you see Ernest being driven by Henry Roan to his uncle’s home,” Fisk notes, “that approach was inspired by Giant, which both Marty and I love, and, for me, represents the Western qualities Marty was looking for.” Hale’s house also figures in a surreal night scene later in the film, taken from real events, where Hale’s workers stoke fires all around the property (which Hale did to collect insurance money) – a hell-like image straight out of Dante’s Inferno.

“For that scene,” Prieto recounts, “we positioned four [LED] Dino lights, with a flickering effect, behind the house Jack built.

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One of the primary LUTs Prieto designed with Colorist Yvan Lucas was based on Autochrome, "a color technique the Lumière brothers in France invented in 1907,” Prieto explains.

“We wanted to represent these new Americans with a look that emulated what color photography looked like in the 1920s."

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That backlit the smoke machines we had going and created a silhouette of the house.

Special effects put in gas pipes [for the fires] strategically around the location. We used maps to locate all the pipe placements in preproduction. We had two cameras – one shooting the wide of all the workers stoking the fires, and then a long zoom. We put flame bars underneath the lens to create some of the distortion. But we also had bigger flame bars midway between the cameras and the location for the wide shot. The camera with the tighter lens went through both layers of flame bars, creating an additional layer of distortion that was unexpected and mesmerizing. It was something I’ve never seen before, or achieved on past films.”

Kincaid (on his fifth Scorsese movie) says the approach to fire was dependent on scene and location. “Our fires went from two-foot Astera tubes in a fireplace to several large reflection panels – 20 by 20 – that the grips would bounce 10K oscillating color light into to give a fire effect, like for the scene at night after Rita’s house has exploded and Ernest is walking through the debris. We also had some S60s hidden in the crater with a flicker pattern to create these small residual fires caused by the explosion. It was underneath where they discovered Rita’s body.”

First AC Trevor Loomis, another Scorsese regular, says Prieto shot anamorphic to capture the full scope of the Oklahoma prairie. “We shot on Arricam Studio and LT cameras,” Loomis recalls, “and Rodrigo had this vintage look in mind, to reflect the early nineteen-hundreds. We love Panavision’s T-Series anamorphics, so we approached Dan Sasaki to modify the T Series to look more like B- and C-Series lenses. Rodrigo wanted the anamorphic flares to go warmer, in that vintage approach, as opposed to the more contemporary blue flares you think of with anamorphic lenses. We also used the Sony VENICE for the night exterior scenes and night interiors where we needed the extra stops.”

Loomis is a bit of an outlier in the focus-pulling world, noting that “there was no difference for me switching between film and digital [capture] because I’m not a monitor focus puller. Ninety-nine percent of AC’s use a Preston and a monitor, but I stand next to the camera. For specialty shots, like roving handheld or on a crane, I’ll put a Preston on. But for the majority

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of what I do, it’s still hand on a focus knob.

“It’s an old-school way of making movies,” he adds. “But there are so many benefits to having the operator, the focus puller, and the dolly grip [physically] together and talking to each other. It’s a tight three-man team, and when you’re all in sync, incredible stuff can happen.”

A-Camera Operator P. Scott Sakamoto adds that a great camera team, along with a good dolly grip, is “always important. I was fortunate to have worked with Trevor many times through the years and also Tim Christie, who was our dolly grip, so collectively, we had a shorthand. That means that when Marty devises a challenging shot, we as a team can quickly figure out how to execute the move and understand the purpose of the shot. Marty is emotionally driven by his characters, so many camera moves are created and motivated on the spot. Having a first AC and dolly grip who are experienced and understand good cinema makes my process smooth and rewarding.”

Working with Scorsese, Loomis reflects, is interesting because “people think he doesn’t move the camera much and is fairly traditional, but he does come up with shots that can be super challenging. Like the Steadicam shot in the train station where we had to pull Leo through the crowd, as well as another shot in Hale’s house where we dolly around De Niro and get very tight around both sides of his face and then pull all the way back.”

Sakamoto says that when Prieto first talked about the train-car scene, “my first suggestion was to use a Ronin as a moving remote head to get the camera over the seats. We brought in Jule Fontana, who uses an anti-gravity vest to carry the Ronin down the train car’s aisleway. As Jule walked, I operated the head to capture interesting faces and actions, ultimately finding Leo seated against a window.”

Loomis also points to a challenging night sequence at a large outdoor dance on Fairfax’s main street. “We did that shot on a 1200-millimeter lens,” he remembers. “We had to follow Leo through this big crowd until he reached De Niro’s character, so my best option was to put glow sticks down as a path for Leo to walk through and to serve as my focus marks. It was hard to see him because there were so many people on the dance floor and in the crowd.”

“Using a long telephoto on that scene,” Sakamoto adds, “was a great way to discover

Leo walking into a large night exterior with 300 to 400 extras partying and dancing.

Seeing him navigate among the guests looking for [Robert De Niro] was challenging because I could hardly see him; sometimes just Leo’s hat would show and other times he would disappear behind a group. Both Trevor and I fought hard to make that shot work, and fortunately we did a good job.”

Another unique challenge was footage shot with Scorsese’s own 1917 Bell & Howell 35mm hand-cranked cinema camera.

Panavision refurbished the camera, with Loomis and Sakamoto ensuring the parallax was correct. “Those were all pretty much lock-off shots,” Loomis recalls, “as I had to learn to work the hand-crank. We did do one dolly shot, and that was pretty interesting.”

“Being able to operate Marty’s own hand-crank camera was a real pleasure,” Sakamoto shares. “That camera, loaded with black and white film stock, gave the movie a real authentic feel of the nineteenhundreds newsreels. It was a brilliant choice to cinematically mix in that feel of the period.

But I’m not sure how they operated the camera in those days because it took two, if not three, of us to crank and hold down the camera steady!”

Period research played such an important part that changes were made during production. One such example is a night scene where Ernest goes to Mollie’s house for dinner, (their first “date”) and sees the connection the Osage have with the natural world.

“That whole moment where the storm starts to rage outside her house and Lily stops Ernest from closing the windows, so they can just sit and be in the moment with the rain,” Prieto recounts, “came from Lily Gladstone, who went deep into her character’s history and the Osage culture. I originally was just tenting the windows for a day-for-night interior scene, and then I hear that we were going to add rain.

“For that exterior,” he continues, “we did late dusk with night lighting, using ARRI 360s on one Condor to sidelight the house, and another Condor with a 20K Lee Filters’ Steel Green gel to backlight the rain.

The rest was ambient nightfall, with the house silhouetted against the sky. We did many different techniques for night in this movie. For all the dusk-for-night scenes, Ian [Kincaid] had to change out all the car

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“WE BUILT 20-BY FRAMES,WITH 12-BY FRAMES UNDERNEATH, ALL SUSPENDED ON CONDORS, THAT CREATED A SHAPE WE CALLED ‘CHANDELIERS’ BECAUSE OF THE WAY THE LIGHTS DRAPED DOWN LIKE A GIANT CRYSTAL UNIT," EXPLAINS CHIEF LIGHTING TECHNICAN IAN KINCAID OF THE RIGS USED TO LIGHT FAIRFAX'S MAIN STREET (AND MANY OTHER SCENES).

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headlights with LED packs on dimmers, so we could alter the headlight as the dusk turned into night.”

Kincaid says that because his team had to build [the LED packs] into cars from the 1920s, “we had to find the original lamps, cannibalize them, insert them into our LED packs, power them up with batteries, and then install our wireless controls.

We’d do two takes at full power, another few takes at 75 percent, and some at 50 percent before it got dark. It took a bit to refine them, but once we got it going it worked out really well.”

Research into the Osage culture also revealed that tribal members hung “fraid lights” throughout their neighborhoods – hanging string lights meant to ward off the murderous curse that had befallen them. “Rodrigo had worked on Silence with Marty, and for that film, they had built a rig with [household incandescent] light bulbs for overhead illumination,” explains Kincaid. “I have often used light bulbs in frames in the past, so we started talking about doing this for Killers. It started with an eight by eight and grew much larger.”

For the on-camera “fraid lights,” forty-watt standard incandescent bulbs were looped on strings; these became the inspiration for lighting entire scenes via a unique rig that could emulate the practical string lights. As Kincaid adds: “We built 20-by frames, with 12-by frames underneath, all suspended on Condors, that created a shape we called ‘chandeliers’ because of the way the lights draped down like a giant crystal unit.

“The frames had 350 shatterproof 300-watt bulbs, run through switches and dimmers, and could be adjusted per seven-bulb strand,” he continues. “They were dipped in Teflon to create a quiet, safe bulb that could withstand the rain, and more importantly, the Oklahoma wind. They didn’t cast any hard shadows that would be problematic when they moved in the wind. Also, we could fly the Condors without people in them, which is a huge advantage given all the lightning storms.”

Once Prieto saw how effective the chandeliers were, Kincaid says, “they became part of our main lighting package for other scenes. Like the big dance on Fairfax’s main street, which was backlit on either side, depending on the action, and the chandeliers boomed out over the main intersection from each side. We could control each of the five panels of the chandeliers, meaning Rodrigo could reduce the light on one side if we were too close to a building, or dim the bottom of the frame if there was too much light shining straight down.”

Prieto says the “chandeliers” were used when Hale and Ernest first drive into the neighborhood with the “fraid lights” and see all the fear and tension from the Osage tribal members. “Then they go to town and find the guy beaten up by Henry

Roan,” he shares. “We lit that with the chandeliers as well as a bigger, 40-by-30 rectangular frame on an industrial crane, on an empty lot with a fake façade Jack had built. We liked the warm amber light from the chandeliers and would use them instead of creating moonlight.”

Kincaid credits "our longtime colleagues" at MBS for supplying the lighting arsenal. It included HMI’s, K5600 Fresnels, and 18K ARRIMAXes. "Our tungsten package went from ARRI 20K’s and T-12s to BamBams [12 rows of nine PAR38 650-watt globes in a Wendy-like fixture], 24 globe aluminum Dinos, and a smattering of traditional Mole Richardson Fresnels," Kincaid notes. "We had a huge package of very thin LED’s from LiteGear that were incredible.

We could pancake them into ceilings two inches deep. Rodrigo had us build a 6-by-6 square LiteMat, as he wanted to replicate Kino Flo’s fluorescent ‘Blanket Light’ from back in the day, but with the control of LED’s. We used that light for the checkerboard floor in the Masonic Lodge scene.”

One of the film’s tipping points is the explosion of Bill and Rita’s house, which shows the true depths of Hale’s pathology. Prieto praises Scorsese’s gifts as a storyteller, recalling that “we were going back and forth about how to do it as a miniature or with CGI. And then Marty had this idea of feeling the explosion from inside Ernest and Mollie’s bedroom. They’re sleeping peacefully, and then suddenly the whole room rocks, the window blows out, and debris goes everywhere. We see Ernest rush to Mollie’s sister’s house and walk through the aftermath, without ever seeing the blast itself. Brilliant solution.”

Sakamoto says that “Marty loves the camera to be with the characters, moving frantically with them, seeing them entering and exiting in all directions, so the Steadicam was the tool of choice.

When the windows blow out, all hell breaks loose; we choreographed that shot in the house to ultimately follow Leo out the front door and down the street.

Tracking Leo from behind, seeing the massive destruction all around him and culminating with a close-up in front was so impactful – it felt like he was in a war zone.”

Fisk says he had pictures of Bill and Rita’s real house, “and I started looking around Fairfax for houses built around the same time,” he recounts.

“We found one two blocks from the original house.

No one was living in it, so when the location manager was going to make the deal I said, ‘Ask them if we can blow it up.’ He came back and they said yes, we can blow it up! The house belonged to the grandfather of two Osage women. He had been married to a white woman, who was his guardian, and she had taken all his money. They were excited to see the house go, and to give the empty lot to their grandson.”

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"It's much harsher than [the] Autochrome [LUT], even less saturated and more contrasty,” Prieto describes of the ENR LUT used for the latter half of the film. "We wanted [the ENR LUT] to represent this feeling of fear, dread and guilt.

You can see it clearly when...alll the white power brokers are gathered 48 to ensure Ernest supports Hale [and the truth does not come out]. " NOVEMBER 2023

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For a hell-like night exterior Prieto used two cameras and backlit Hales's house in silhouette.

"We put flame bars underneath the lens to create some distortion [of the workers stoking the flames]. And we had bigger flame bars midway for the wide shot. The camera with the tighter lens went through both layers of flame bars, creating an additional layer of distortion that was unexpected and mesmerizing."

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Due to environmental laws, the house could not physically be exploded. “So, we stripped it down to this skeletal thing,” Fisk continues, “and took off anything that had lead paint. Then we brought in an excavator to create this debris-strewn structure.

Most of the burnt sections were just black paint.”

Fisk says all the houses in Fairfax were painted white when he arrived, “and that wasn’t correct for the period. So, I went to all the homeowners and said, ‘We would like to paint two sides of your house – the ones we see on camera. After we finish shooting, if you like that color, we’ll paint the other two sides, or paint it back white the way they were.’

Only one house in the whole neighborhood wanted to go back to white.”

For the ending courtroom scenes, where Hale’s murderous actions are finally laid bare by his nephew, Fisk says, “We wanted it to be large, to show how small a person Hale is now that he’s on trial.

It was a set built inside a Baptist church, and we created false walls and windows that Rodrigo could put lights behind to emulate the bright sun.”

Prieto recalls that the space had fairly “severe” limitations when it came to lighting. “I wanted this harsh sunlight coming in on Ernest, but the space to create the sun, on the second floor, where Jack Fisk had created these false windows, was very tight – maybe eight feet. In the end, the best solution was to try and hide robotic moving lights behind the set builds to create shafts of directional light.”

Kincaid adds that “we had no room to project light at the angle we needed. So just to have a threequarter backlight or a three-quarter front when we did a reverse, we had to jam these movers all the way

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into the corner of the balcony above the courtroom, even turn them upside down, with no tripods, and lean on them to get them as far back as possible. It was challenging and frustrating but, in the end, I think we got what Rodrigo was after.”

As for shooting in the same physical spaces that had such a bloody history, Fisk observes that “usually, you’re shooting in Atlanta and they say, ‘Make it look like Oklahoma. Well, we were not only shooting in Oklahoma but in the same structures where this happened. The doctor’s office is above what used to be a museum. We went through all the old paperwork and found checks from various Osage guardians. In that same building, where we shot the Masonic Lodge, there was a picture of Mollie’s guardian. There are relatives of Ernest Burkhart still living in Fairfax, as well as relatives of many of the Osage who were there in the 1920s.

Whether they’re white businessmen or Osage natives, they’re walking around side-by-side knowing their history. It’s kind of a tense situation, but, to me, it always reinforced the importance of getting this story right.”

Kincaid, who has Native blood, along with his wife and children, says that when he heard Scorsese was doing the film “and Rodrigo was shooting it, I put the word out that I needed to do this movie.

Shooting in Osage County, where this all happened, it was hard not to be affected by the significant evil of these characters. I’m so proud to be able to have helped Marty and Rodrigo tell this story the right way. The people in Osage County are still suffering the effects of something that happened 100 years ago. It’s as relevant today as ever.”

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MUCH OF THE FILM WAS SHOT IN LOCATIONS WHERE REAL EVENTS UNFOLDED. AS PRIETO CONCLUDES: "MARTY IS BIG ON AUTHENTICITY, AND THAT INCLUDED HAVING OSAGE ADVISORS ON THE SET. FOR ME, IT MEANT UNDERSTANDING HOW THE OSAGE INCORPORATE NATURE INTO THEIR LIVES AND HOW IT WOULD IMPACT THE CINEMATOGRAPHY.”

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LOCAL 600 CREW Director of Photography Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC A-Camera Operator/Steadicam Scott Sakamoto, SOC A-Camera 1st AC Trevor Loomis A-Camera 2nd AC Chris Sloan B-Camera Operator Steve Matzinger B-Camera 1st AC John Holmes B-Camera 2nd AC Benedict Baldauff Unit Publicist Larry Kaplan Still Photographer Melinda Sue Gordon

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BY PAULINE ROGERS PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE MEMBERS

LOVE IS BLIND PHOTOS COURTESY OF NETFLIX

AUGMENTED

REALITY

TV audiences are getting ever more sophisticated.

The beauty and detail they see when viewing films in the theater or long-form streaming stories have conditioned viewers to expect a lot – in every form of production. That’s just one reason why producers in the unscripted genre have sought ways to up the visual ante and add cinema-style techniques.

For our annual November Unscripted-themed issue, we wanted to explore how and where cinema-style filmmaking has “augmented” reality programming. It hasn’t necessarily been a natural transition, with unscripted productions having established a specific way of capture over several decades.

Still, cinema techniques have penetrated some of the most unexpected places – like the world of corporate events. As Director of Photography Cameron Barnett, ACS (Encanto at the Hollywood Bowl, Apple Music Awards: Billie Eilish), describes: “The Google I/O live stream is a particularly challenging event. Everything that we prepare for must be carried out meticulously so that the Google branding is presented perfectly. Two months ahead of the show, the graphics team from Google, who have built the keynote files, come to L.A. so that we can test the exact Google colors displayed on the LED screen.”

Barnett says his team has to be “precise with the pitch of the screen for the black level, as it is an outdoor show, as well as the potential for moiré.

While Google people have exact requirements for their branding colors, they are reinterpreted by the camera sensor and the audience in the room once displayed on the LED. Our job is to create a color balance for both the audience in the room and the viewing audience worldwide. My main challenge is to bring a cine-style approach and apply a singlecamera aesthetic by using wider primes and movements that wouldn’t usually be considered in this space. There is much information to be communicated at the podium, and we try to elevate that delivery by making the experience come to life.”

That called for a tight collaboration between Barnett, Lighting Director Seth Bernstein, and Screens Server Operator/Video Controller Terrance Ho. “There are so many moving parts, and the lighting and environmental conditions change constantly, and we have to be forensically watching the output all the time,” Barnett adds.

The choice of cameras, Sony VENICE and F5500, take advantage of the large sensors and their shallow depth of field. “On tighter shots, the background falls off drastically, so visually, it gives a much better separation between the foreground and background – one of the characteristics of the cinematic look,” Ho explains. “The challenge in using the VENICE cameras for live/broadcast stream is to deliver fully color-corrected footage.”

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VENICE cameras natively acquire in S-Log3, giving postproduction maximum latitude for color timing. “However, for live shows, we must deliver a fully finished product without going through postproduction,” Ho adds. “External software such as Livegrade Pro becomes essential to the workflow because it allows us to color-correct the footage in real life. Since both VENICE and F5500 cameras were used in this production, there were subtle differences in how the camera sensors processed color information. F5500s were Super35 sensors with native real-time controls built in for live shows, and the VENICE cameras were used in conjunction with Livegrade Pro software. As video controllers, we must ensure both types of cameras are identical in color accuracy, saturation, skin tones and exposure.

With the availability of the F5500s, we’re starting to see them being used with VENICE and other live shows that want cinema-style cameras.”

Ho emphasizes the team effort, working closely with the lighting department as with any live or liveto-tape shows. “Since there are no retakes, we do our best to deliver a perfect show,” he smiles. “Our goal is to capture what lighting has created through the lens. On this project, as on others, we sometimes asked the lighting team to help us with intensity or

color temperatures. And on the flip side, we would help the lighting team if something were to happen out of their control. Communication and looking out for potential issues are critical to a successful show.”

Google I/O is a prime example of how union members can even bring a cinema-style shoot to the corporate world. “And, to other live shows,” Ho concludes. “The principles stay the same. The usage of cinema-style cameras and lenses simply creates a different visual perspective,” he chuckles, a veteran of every form of “oops” that can happen when you can’t do a re-take. “The ultimate goal is to deliver a perfect show. Electronic components can fail at the most inopportune times. Still, we just have to know how to remedy the issues in the least amount of time.

We’re well-trained Local 600 members – and ‘the show must go on’ is part of our DNA.”

As unscripted programming gets more complex and visual enhancement becomes an ever-bigger part of capturing the audience’s attention, hit reality shows like Love Is Blind are moving deeper into cinema-style techniques. “The style of the show is very much attributed to the collaboration of our people behind the tools we choose,” explains

OPPOSITE: DIERCTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY CAMERON BARNETT SAYS HIS MAIN CHALLENGE FOR THE GOOGLE I/O "LIVE STREAM," SHOT OUTDOORS, "IS TO BRING A CINE-STYLE APPROACH AND APPLY A SINGLE-CAMERA AESTHETIC BY USING WIDER PRIMES AND MOVEMENTS THAT WOULDN’T USUALLY BE CONSIDERED IN THIS SPACE."

Director of Photography Sean McKelvey (Claim to Fame, Disney’s Fairy Tale Weddings). “Our director and executive producer, Brian Smith [ICG Magazine November 2022], working with a hugely talented camera team, can create world-class, stunning coverage on-the-fly with little or no rehearsal, and classical cinema-style. That means a smooth, designed camera movement look, with cinema glass, shallow depth, and flattering lighting whenever possible.”

Love Is Blind has three style phases, each with a unique setup. It starts on stage, meeting the cast, then goes out into the field, where the audience follows the real-life stories of the characters in practical locations, and finally ends with the finale.

“On stage, since we have more control, we optimize our organizations,” McKelvey continues. “Cinemastyle tools are used in shooting zones. The field is more documentary, so we’re scaled down but much more agile – never giving up on cine techniques but incorporating stage-cinema on locations.”

To give the cine look needed for a slick, romantic, sometimes intimate show, the Love Is Blind team uses full-frame Super 35mm sensors for a classic cinema feel, shallow depth of field, and a beautiful bokeh with high-quality cine glass. McKelvey says

ABOVE: LOVE IS BLIND LIGHTING DIRECTOR ADAM BIGGS’ SAYS "THE PODS ARE THE MOST RECOGNIZABLE AND DYNAMIC ELEMENT IN THE SHOW, SO WE WANTED TO CREATE AN INTIMATE, WARM, LOW-LEVEL LIGHTING ATMOSPHERE TO GIVE THE COUPLES A FEELING OF PRIVACY."

that “although we have 84 cameras on the stage phase of the show, the main cameras are the Sony VENICE on peds, Techno, over 20 dolly positions.

The VENICE is supported with specialty cameras like the Sony FX6 on a couple of Dactyls [overhead cable-style cameras], SmartSystems Matrix Ultra, [high/low Steadicam], et cetera. These cameras give us a lot of flexibility, with the advancements in digital image capture inspired by film emulsion. Dynamic range, color science, frame sensor size and budget have increased access to the film aesthetic. Color science in that VENICE produces stunning images with great color separation, shadow detail, and natural filmic skin tones under various conditions.

The dual ISO sensors perform brilliantly on stage and in docu-style low-light practical locations. Not to mention choosing a frame size for a specific setup or a desired FX.” McKelvey cites a designed, stylized setup, where “we often opt for full frame and FF Angénieux primes, resulting in the shallowest depth of field on wide shots, or we need a wider angle of view,” he notes. “Unpredictable scene work calls for as much lens range as possible. Switching to the Super 35 sensor gives us a greater focal length for the same zoom while maintaining the cine-style shallow depth

of field. Depending on the camera position in a particular zone relative to the scene, the operators pick from the Canon, 17-120 millimeter, 25-250 or 50-1000-millimeter zooms or the Fujinon Cabrio 14-35 and 85-300 mm.”

As Love Is Blind is a show about real people making serious, life-changing choices when they pick their “forever” person, the crew tries to be as unobtrusive as possible. “It is critical we are attentive and nimble, so we can capture real moments since there are no do-overs,” McKelvey states. “Handheld agility is a logical choice to get the camera operators into the optimal position to cover unexpected moments. Still, it’s not our look.

“On stage, however, what is traditionally a broadcast tool – pedestal cameras – are used to achieve a similar agility as handheld, but with the added advantage of a classic cinematic look. Peds offer a stable camera platform allowing on-the-fly mini vertical jib moves and lateral tracks that feel designed, stylized and smooth. We embrace as many camera-support platforms as we can to achieve smooth lateral and vertical movement. Our camera operators are amazing. They pull off on-the-fly camera moves on peds that can mirror the mobility of a handheld camera. [Director] Brian [Smith] loves

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ABOVE/BELOW: LOVE IS BLIND DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY SEAN MCKELVEY ADDS THAT "ON STAGE, SINCE WE HAVE MORE CONTROL, WE OPTIMIZE OUR ORGANIZATIONS. CINEMASTYLE TOOLS ARE USED IN SHOOTING ZONES. THE FIELD IS MORE DOCUMENTARY, SO WE’RE SCALED DOWN AND MORE AGILE, WHILE STILL INCORPORATING CINEMA TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES ON LOCATIONS.”

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to embrace movement in the coverage, and we sell it with rifts through the foreground horizontally and vertically. We use a number of Dactyls, sliders, dollies and Steadicams.”

Lighting Director Adam Biggs’ [ICG Magazine “Deep Dive,” November 2020] adds that his job is to create an “elegant, intimate design that complements the visual camera style for the dating pods and all the other stage elements. The PODS are the most recognizable and dynamic element in the show,” Biggs explains, “and we wanted to give them a warm, intimate, and low-level beautiful lighting atmosphere to give the couples a feeling of privacy. The camera drifts slowly through the foreground's refractive materials in all of our sets and wedding venues, and we make sure all lighting setups give cameras that nice shallow depth of field with beautiful bokeh.”

Biggs says using “a lot of low-level lighting was challenging because we still needed to see the cast’s faces and emotions but still wanted that sense of intimacy. The Sony VENICE cameras were mostly shooting wide open, and we intentionally left some areas under-lit with just a touch of ambient light to see their eyes.”

Both McKelvey and Biggs agree that the "graduation" from broadcast to cinema gives crews more opportunities, "and provides the kind of beauty that captures the audience's attention, and keeps them invested in everyday people on shows like Love Is Blind,” Biggs concludes.

LOCAL 600 CREW VOGUE WORLD LIVESTREAM Director of Photography Rick Siegel Operators Miguel Porto, Marc Bloomgarden, Jeff Latonero, John Pry, Christopher Ferguson, Jill Ellen Sager 1st ACs David Flanigan, James Hair, David John Carroll, Doug Kofsky, Edwin Shimko, Sam Elliot, Jay Eckardt 2nd ACs Trevor Wolfson, Olga Wagner Camera Utlities Michael Joyce, James Tomlinson, Scott York, Zach Solomon Video Controller John M Hurley

FOR VOGUE WORLD NEW YORK, DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY RICK SIEGEL EMPLOYED AN ARSENAL OF CINEMA TOOLS – LARGER SENSORS, DYNAMIC EXPOSURE RANGE, LONG LENSES, AND SONY VENICE CAMERAS – TO CONTINUE WHAT SIEGEL DESCRIBES AS AN "EVOLUTIONARY CHANGE IN HOW WE FILM LIVE FASHION SHOWS."

Yet another unscripted project impacted by cinema-style filmmaking comes in an unexpected genre. On September 12, 2022, the face of shooting fashion changed when Vogue World took up residence on West 13th Street in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District. It expanded what a fashion show – and how to tell that story – could be, and streamed around the world. “Coming out of the darkest times of the COVID pandemic, Vogue World became a very special moment for Runway Fashion shows,” recounts Director of Photography Rick Siegel (HBO’s Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill, Vevo’s The Weeknd False Alarm). “There was a large outdoor audience – and a global online audience – and a reinvigorated New York City atmosphere.”

This year, director Sam Wrench (Taylor Swift: Eras Tour) had a vision to match the Vogue special event with an imaginative cinematic style. He connected with British Director of Photography Brett Turnbull (Elton John Live: Farewell from Dodger Stadium) to create the visual approach – using 18 cameras to shoot the runway show on a single cobblestoned city block. When Turnbull could not physically attend the live event, he handed off prep, pre-light, and shoot days to Siegel, who calls the experience “amazing.” Collaborating with Lighting Designer John Torres (The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window), Siegel set the tone and sculpted a look that made the city vibe come alive.

“We embraced cinematic multicam filmmaking to achieve a unique viewing experience for the global audience watching on the live stream and for those lucky few to watch in person on the street,” Siegel recalls. “We utilized seven Sony VENICE cameras,

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LOCAL 600 CREW SUPERBOWL HALF-TIME SHOW W/ RIHANNA Operators Rob Balton, Danny Bonilla, Kary D’Alessandro, Keith Dicker, Sean Flannery, Shaun Harkins, Helena Jackson, Tayler Knight, Tore’ Livia Jr., Allen Merriweather, Jofre Rosero, Keyan Safyari TAIT Automation Tech Eric Smith TECH TEAM Tech Manager James Coker Video Control Terrance Ho John M Hurley DIT Matt Conrad CAMERA TEAM MovieBird 52 (Lead Crane Op) Peter Drinco Arm Operator John Pry Stabilized Remote Head Tech Kevin Denning Agito (Tech/Driver) Michael Catapano Stabilized Remote Head Tech Scott Hazel Head Utility Bill Greiner Utilities Tony Arpaia, Robert Brown, Ryan Jordan (Steadi), Paul Morales, Scott Spiegel, Angel Vazquez, Drory Yelin Camera Techs Daniel Balton (Jib), Rick Compeau, Ryan Schultz, Brian Sheid Fiber Techs Kit Donovan, Jim Washburn Lead AC (Camera) Adam Kirschhoffer ACs Yoshi Abe, Tiffany Aug, Gus Bechtold, Mike Lemnitzer, Dylan Conrad, Mike Farrell, Ryan Guzdzial, Candace Higgins, Juan “Nito” Serna, Joseph Soria 2nd ACs Neo Arboleda, Matt Ewing, Matt Leslie, Lamont Reeves

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System Utilities Billy Butler, Randy Maldonado NOVEMBER 2023

ABOVE: DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY DYLAN SANFORD LED A LOCAL 600 TEAM THAT TOOK SUPER BOWL LVII HALFTIME SHOW STAR RIHANNA 70 FEET IN THE AIR. "THAT POSED A UNIQUE PROBLEM FOR COVERAGE AS CAMERA POSITIONS ARE A PAINSTAKINGLY NEGOTIATED PROCESS,” SANFORD SHARES. “THE BEST VIEW IN THE HOUSE ALSO TENDS TO BE THE MOST COVETED."

some mounted on a dolly, several on Steadicams, and we also used tripod-based sliders and one Agito Sport. Additionally, we installed a block-long [407 feet] overhead wire with a VENICE Rialto, along with various smaller sensor cameras, all hardwired or wireless, so Sam could call a live cut for the livestream audience.”

Siegel adds, “We used VENICE cameras to capture an outstanding lineup of celebrities, models and couture looks on the street that night. To give our New York City-based story a few moments of whimsy and grit, we used several other cameras and solutions. For instance, when Sesame Street’s Oscar the Grouch appeared from a nearby trashcan set, we chose a Sony FX9 to capture his antics.

Further up the street we had two VHS cameras providing an old-school low-res vibe, four-by-three aspect ratio and a distinctive gritty look to broaden our visual motifs. Early in the show, we had a GoPro mounted on bicycle handlebars trained on the choreographed gang of bike riders as they rode down the runway. The on-screen results had a cool, stylish, NYC gritty vibe.”

The biggest challenge Siegel faced was during the evening rehearsal day when it rained for the entire length of the workday. With no cover set, the elements made a rehearsal impossible. “But we had a great Local 600 team who are well versed in the ‘no-reshoot/live/unscripted’ mentality.”

Siegel says today there is an “evolutionary change in how we film live fashion, music or theatrical performances. The next steps for digital multicam filmmaking are to use cinema techniques that are more commonly associated with feature films.” Siegel notes, “This camera evolution is further enhanced – larger sensors, stunning color reproduction, dynamic exposure range, an ever-growing choice of lenses are all part of this progression. In every subset of Local 600 work, for what was once purely filmed with a broadcast [2/3-inch sensor] camera and lens we are now fully embracing the change to Cine [S35 and Full Frame] cameras and glass that can give us more aesthetic choices that support our craft and vision,” he insists. “The ultimate goal is to engage your audience’s imagination and involve them in the story we are telling.”

Given the advances in technology, what could benefit more from extreme beauty and dexterity associated with cine-style shooting than a massive musical concert that only runs 14 minutes? Some may even wonder why it took so long for the Super Bowl Halftime producers to explore a move to a

cine live/hybrid approach. But, historically, camera teams at the Super Bowl have had to leverage existing game (2/3-inch) cameras and infrastructure to accomplish the unthinkable: being fully ready for a live multicam broadcast with only an eight-anda-half-minute commercial break to prep. Director of Photography Dylan Sanford (Beauty and the Beast: A 30th Celebration, Foo Fighters: Preparing Music for Concerts) says, “The show is unique by any metric in its complexity and time constraints, so adding any layer of difficulty had to be well-planned and executed with the highest precision. As it had always been a traditionally structured broadcast event, there was never a DP.” When producer Aaron Cooke and director Hamish Hamilton were hunting for a DP who could straddle the multicam/cine live disciplines, Sanford’s name came up. “We conducted a test shoot at the end of 2021 to demonstrate the latitude and appeal of the Sony VENICE I cameras as well as the useability of a Livegrade system for real-time ‘shading’ of the cameras,” Sanford continues. “There was some natural resistance to change, but we endeavored to take it on for the historic 2022 SB LVI Halftime show at SoFi stadium, featuring Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige, Kendrick Lamar, Eminem, 50 Cent, and Anderson .Paak.”

Sanford notes that since it was the first year of trying to capture the show with primarily digital cinema cameras, a number of redundancies needed to be in place, and the finest team needed to be assembled. “James Coker and Morgan Kellum, with Funicular Goats, spearheaded the ‘cine live’ technical side,” he describes. “Bruce Rodgers designed a wildly complex ‘city’ set. I think lighting designer Al Gurdon was initially unsure where a DP fit into the system, but we quickly found a very fruitful existing collaboration. Tim Kubit sought to bridge the introduction of the cine cameras into the broadcast setup.

“On paper, we were predominantly Sony VENICE 1s [with a loaned FX6 in the mix], further supported by a number of game cameras [about 60/40 mix].

Our video operators – JM Hurley, Terrance Ho, and DIT Matt Conrad – had to coordinate everything with the game truck. Much work had to be done to match our cameras to the game cameras, including changing the native frame rate of 59.94 to 29.97. And all in six minutes. It was, without a doubt, the single most stressful half hour of my working life!”

The Halftime Show garnered a higher viewership than the game itself and took home three Emmys, including Outstanding Variety Special [Live]. “After the show, Hamish said, ‘Well, I think we

just proved we’re never going back to the old way,’” Sanford recalls.

Fast forward to SB LVII, with Rihanna headlining and Apple Music taking over for Pepsi, with Roc Nation and Jesse Collins returning as producers. At first, Sanford feared they’d taken it to the limit the year before. But, as usual, the producers’ mantra – “Let’s outdo ourselves” – prevailed. “That meant automated flying platforms that took Rihanna and the dancers some 70 feet in the air in a carefully choreographed, gravity-defying sequence,” he states, letting out a deep breath. “Talk about breaking the ceiling!”

TAIT Automation provided the system for controlling and programming the seven platforms that flew from the rafters and the two Navigator cable cam systems that shared the airspace.

“A huge amount of planning went into ensuring that interaction posed minimal risk to life and limb,” Sanford adds with emphasis. "Every single elevation, every speed, every camera approach had to be programmed, tested, vetted, and approved.

An extensive previs system had to be employed and near-constant communication channels opened.”

Sanford recalls how raising Rihanna to a number of heights posed a unique problem for coverage as camera positions are “a painstakingly negotiated process,” he shares. “The best view in the house also tends to be the most coveted, so finding ways to get our cameras in those spots is challenging [and costly]. Ultimately, we only had to lean on one long-lens game camera [due to its height in the stands]. We captured everything with 16 large-sensor digital cinema cameras [15 Sony VENICE 2 cameras and one FR7] painting in realtime in Livegrade and conforming to a homogenous HLG broadcast. With the success of last year, we stretched our camera package a bit more, which included the ARRI Trinity 2 and the brand-new Fujinon DUVO 25-1000 PL mount box lens – an extraordinary feat of engineering.”

The result was another unqualified success, with the 2023 Super Bowl Halftime Show being nominated for five Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Technical Direction and Camera Work for a Special. Sanford and his crack Local 600 team are already thinking about what “ceiling” they will try to break in 2024. As Sanford concludes: “The public’s appetite for cinematic visuals isn’t abating.

I’d argue that video games and prestige TV have only accelerated it. But the old systems are starting to catch up – both in the production of these shows and the inclusion and classifications of the talented people who make them happen.”

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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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11.2023

MELINDA SUE GORDON, SMPSP KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

This production still from Killers of the Flower Moon is from a scene set in 1922, a night interior in the ranch library of William Hale (Robert De Niro).

Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) receives counsel from Hale, his uncle, aka “King of the Osage.” Pulling back, we are actually in 2021, Bartlesville, Oklahoma, with the film crew intent on their conversation.

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