American Cinematographer - February 2013 - 18

Production Slate

Power Plays
By John Calhoun

The Netflix series House of Cards exists in the bubble of Washington, D.C., politics, but it isn’t a seat of government that connects
with the populace at large — it’s more like a viper pit with no views
in. Says director of photography Eigil Bryld, “Most of the windows in
the show are either burned or black. The idea was that the outside
world doesn’t really matter. What matters is what’s in the room, not
what’s beyond it.”
What’s in the room — connivers, manipulators and schemers
— is not pretty. The master manipulator is Southern Congressman
Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey), the House of Representatives
Majority Whip, who vows to get revenge after he is passed over for
a cabinet post by the incoming president.
Spacey is an executive producer on the series, as is David
Fincher, who directed the first two episodes and largely created its
aesthetic. Bryld, a Danish cinematographer who is based in New
York, says Fincher and Spacey’s involvement was among the factors
that attracted him to his first episodic TV drama. “I don’t watch a
lot of TV series, and I’ve always had the rule that I would only do
projects that I would watch myself,” explains the cinematographer,
whose credits include the features Not Fade Away and In Bruges (AC
April ’08). But, he adds, “I’ve always sort of been a political animal,”
and the combination of the source material (a novel by Michael
Dobbs), the script, and the participation of Fincher and Spacey led
him to sign on.
Shooting in a slightly cropped 2:1 aspect ratio with two Red
Epic cameras simultaneously was the cornerstone of the visual
18

February 2013

approach. Fincher has worked with Red Digital Cinema since The
Social Network and has a strong relationship with the brand. “He
loves the look and the camera’s design,” says Bryld. “He works very
closely with the company to get what he needs. He’s very technically
clued up, much more than I am!”
Images were shot at 6:1 compression and recorded to SSD
cards. One option on the Epic that proved especially useful on House
of Cards was the HDRx option, which “we used to control the sky
and windows, and to reduce contrast if there was a harsh sun,”
adds Bryld.
Fincher, Bryld and other key collaborators spent 10 weeks
prepping the series in Baltimore, where most of it was shot. Much
of this time was devoted to designing the camera package, which
Fincher continually pared down. “David doesn’t want a huge
camera truck, and he kept an eye on how much gear we were
using,” says Bryld. “We didn’t carry a lot of big lights. We had a van
custom-built so we could roll out our dollies and cameras very
quickly. We didn’t have a DIT [digital-imaging technician]. We basically shot everything around 4,000°K and then adjusted our lighting
as opposed to tweaking the camera or building complicated looks.
The general idea was, keep it simple so we can stay open and add
layers upon layers of ideas, thereby creating something very complex
and dynamic.”
Fincher’s ground rules included “no Steadicam, no handheld
and no zoom lenses,” the cinematographer continues. The first two
techniques were avoided for stylistic reasons. “If people were walking down a corridor, we weren’t interested in using a Steadicam or
tracking in a close-up,” says Bryld, who cites A-camera operator
Gary W. Jay as a major collaborator on the show. “To a great extent,

American Cinematographer

House of Cards frame grabs and photos (by Melinda Sue Gordon, SMPSP, and Patrick Harbron) courtesy of Netflix.

Rep. Frank
Underwood
(Kevin Spacey,
right) establishes
a secret
relationship with
an ambitious
reporter, Zoe
(Kate Mara), in
the Netflix series
House of Cards.

American Cinematographer - February 2013

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