American Cinematographer - March 2013 - 32

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Trials by Fire

Top: Key players in the sixth season include Atticus Fetch (Tim Minchin, left), a musician
collaborating with Hank on a rock opera, and Faith (Maggie Grace), a groupie who serves as
Hank’s muse. Bottom: While directing the first episode of season six, Duchovny confers with
cinematographer Michael Weaver, ASC (seated on dolly) on location in New York.

own look and style based on what he is
experiencing.”
Each episode is shot in five days
mainly on location in and around Los
Angeles. (The current season also
involved work in New York.) “We’re a
location-heavy show — we’re usually
out two or three days a week,” says
Weaver. “We have a standing set or two,
but that’s it. We have a warehouse stage,
not like a big studio, so we have to deal
with limited ceiling heights. We don’t
have perms in there, so basically we’re
rigging right to the roof and there’s not
32

March 2013

a lot of room to work with. We have
specially-made space lights that are
shorter than normal so we can fit them
in there. We really use the sets a lot more
like practical locations with hard ceilings
and lighting with a lot of practical
fixtures — it forces me to approach our
stage work pretty much the same as
location work, mostly from the floor.”
Over the course of six seasons, the
production has run the gamut of digital
capture, starting with the Sony HDWF900 and then moving on to the Sony
F23, the Panavision Genesis, the Sony
American Cinematographer

F35 and the Arri Alexa, which has been
the main camera for the past three
seasons. “HD cameras have certainly
evolved, and I’ve been able to play with
a lot of them,” says Weaver. “That first
year of HD was really frustrating. The
F900 was top-of-the-line at that time,
but it had significant contrast issues, and
we spent a good deal of that season
shooting in a glass house! The contrast
problems got better with the Genesis
and the F35, but the Alexa has brought
us so much closer to [the capabilities] of
film. We can look out a window and
know that the highlights out there are
going to carry — we don’t have to bring
up the interior 3 stops to match! The
Alexa is also a big improvement in
terms of handheld and Steadicam operating. It’s really the closest thing I’ve
seen to a film camera in the digital
world.”
Alexa footage is captured to SxS
cards in ProRes 4:4:4. “We don’t use any
look-up tables,” notes Weaver. “We just
shoot it the way it is and send it off to
[colorist] Tom Overton at Keep Me
Posted. Tom has been our colorist from
the beginning, and he has a great feel for
what I like to do.” The production also
shoots some 16mm (with a Bolex) for
the show’s interstitials, dream
sequences, fantasies and flashbacks,
which are “a lot of fun to shoot,” adds
Weaver.
“We’re pretty light on lenses,” he
continues. “We rely on Angenieux
Lightweight Optimo zooms most of
the time because at least half of every
episode involves handheld or
Steadicam. Apart from that, we carry a
few Cooke S4 primes: 75mm, 100mm
and 150mm. We use 12:1 [24-290mm]
Optimos when we’re in studio mode.
That’s about it. I tend to migrate to the
long end of the zoom for the more intimate moments compressing the foreground to background, and for the more
comedic moments, I go wider and put
the camera closer to the action. But we
don’t hold too fast to those rules. I try to
avoid being formulaic and really just
reach for what best represents Hank’s
mood at that moment.”

American Cinematographer - March 2013

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