American Cinematographer - February 2010 - 26

•|• Cassaday Imprints “The Attic” •|• The Dollhouse episode “The Attic,” which finds Echo (Eliza Dushku) trapped in a perpetual nightmare in which she faces a mysterious villain named Arcane, marks John Cassaday’s directing debut in the episodic-television world. After directing TV news in Texas, Cassaday moved to New York and broke into the comic-book industry, illustrating such books as Desperadoes, Captain America, Planetary and, with Dollhouse creator/comic-book writer Joss Whedon, Astonishing X-Men. When Whedon offered Cassaday a turn behind the camera, Cassaday was eager to oblige. He spoke to AC about the experience, and here are some excerpts from the conversation: American Cinematographer: What did you think of the premise of ‘The Attic’ when it was presented to you? John Cassaday: When I read Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen’s script, I walked over to their office and said, ‘This is a gift. Thank you.’ It was tremendous, and I felt like it was tailor-made for me. This episode is kind of a condensed version of Planetary, which gave me a chance to dive into all kinds of different genres from one issue to the next. In ‘The Attic,’ we jump from Alice in Wonderland to slick scifi to the war in Afghanistan to a horror film. It’s been mind-boggling for me. Did the fact that the Attic hadn’t been seen onscreen before enable you to contribute to its actual design? Cassaday: A lot of it was in the script, but I was able to tinker with many facets visual. I’d swing by [production designer] Cameron Birnie’s office every day during prep, and we’d sketch different ideas. Among the pieces I helped design is a large tree that rests in the center of the Dollhouse set; it was something special to see my drawings become reality. There’s also an apocalyptic scene where we see what the future will bring, and it involved a big crane shot with a huge greenscreen; [visual-effects supervisor] Mike Leone and I would go back-and-forth about what I wanted to see [in the final image]. The episode’s nightmare landscape lends itself to visuals that are quite unlike anything we’ve seen before on Dollhouse. How did you feel about taking the show into uncharted waters? Cassaday: It was daunting, but there was also a comfort factor in that my episode didn’t have to conform to everyone else’s. There are moments within the Dollhouse where I had to maintain the established look, but then there are all these ‘dreams’ that allowed us to play in some uncharted territory. Your artwork shows a great understanding of light and shadow and an appreciation for their emotional impact. What was it like collaborating with a cinematographer to realize those effects in a live-action environment? Cassaday: The visuals obviously matter a lot to me, and more often than not, [cinematographer] Lisa Wiegand and her crew were making it look even better than what I hoped for. There’s a scene in Adelle’s [Olivia Williams] office where I wanted to create a film-noir look with heavy shadows and lights beaming through the blinds. Lisa and her crew set it up superbly. Adelle says something horrible and threatening to Topher [Fran Kranz]. She’s like a cat with a mouse, and when she threatens him, he backs up into this shadow that rests on his face, like he’s putting on a mask. You can still see him, but he’s trying to hide. It was a thrill to shoot, and putting it together in the edit was just as interesting — I felt a strong correlation between the editing process and breaking down panels on a comicbook page. — Jon D. Witmer To read our full interview with Cassaday, visit www.theasc.com/magazine in February. A gnarled, snow-covered tree fills the center of the Dollhouse in one of the nightmare sequences in the episode “The Attic.” during her lunch break. “This experience has reinforced how important my team members are, and I’ve had a great team on this show,” she says. “I’ve relied quite a bit on them. I’ve learned so much, and Joss has been completely supportive.” Once it became clear Dollhouse would transition to digital capture, it was Wiegand who made the choice to shoot 1080p high-definition video using Panasonic’s VariCam AJ-HPX3700, recording to P2 cards in the 10-bit 4:2:2 format (using the AVC-Intra compression scheme). She also worked closely with Whedon to reconstitute the look of the show, a change motivated in part — but only in part — by the switch to digital. “By the time we realized our budget would be cut, I was already a little frustrated with the pace [of production], and I thought we really needed a visceral, visual intensity to carry it all through,” says Whedon. “All these things came together. I realized we could save time and money and also rethink the visual design of the show, which I wanted to do anyway. “The main change Lisa helped me institute was to get more expressionistic — lots of sparks and pin spots and more depth and separation in the frame without actually putting up walls, and just letting things be a little more traumatic,” he continues. “I threw a little bit of my pedantic attachment February 2010 American Cinematographer

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American Cinematographer - February 2010

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