American Cinematographer - February 2013 - 22

At the A and B
cameras are
(from left)
B-camera 1st AC
Kurt Parlow,
B-camera
operator
Peter Gulla,
cinematographer
Eigil Bryld, and
A-camera
operator Gary
Jay. The camera
at left is a prop.

ceilings for soft ambience. Kino Flos wired to
dimmer boards were used in mixed color
temperatures. “We tried to balance everything as close to daylight as possible because
of Red’s daylight-balanced sensor,” notes
Bryld. “We used the 1-stop polarizer, which
cools the image in a way that works well
with the Red. We would typically try to cool
off the practical bulbs with either ¼ CTB or
½ CTB. In the newspaper office, we changed
all the fluorescent tubes to drive the color
towards the cooler spectrum.” Compact
fluorescents were used in many practicals,
and “we weren’t too worried about the
green.” The White House and other settings
closer to the source of power are “less contaminated with green; they have a warmer,
cleaner, more contrasty look.”
In two sequences in the second
episode — the inauguration and the inaugural ball — power is very close indeed. The
inauguration was shot in a warehouse
doubling as an exterior. “We wanted to use
real footage of crowds from Obama’s 2009
inauguration, so we had to match that
light,” says Bryld. “We created the sun with
12-light Maxi-Brutes through 20-by-20
frames of ½ Soft Frost, and we hung a 20by-20 of blue-tinted fabric in the ceiling and
bounced 10Ks into it to create ambient
skylight. In addition, we had to light a
number of greenscreens to allow for set
extensions and crowd replication in post.”
For the inaugural ball, existing chandeliers in the War Memorial were used,
along with Kino Flos and China balls on
boomed-in Menace Arms. “We were using a
lot of flags as well, basically taking away and
then adding a little bit of separation,” Bryld
says. “That scene is a really good example of
how we worked: we looked at what was
22

February 2013

there and augmented it with either lighting
or the set design. We built a frosted-Plexiglas bar lit from inside by Kino tubes that
helped define that space, and we had practical lamps on the tables and greenscreens
around the stage that were replaced by
images of the American flag in post.” This
sequence features a Technocrane shot of
Spacey crossing the floor, a move that was
typically methodical in its planning, with
“measured-out, taped-down space, and as
soon as we were done with the shot, we
came off the Technocrane and moved on.”
Whatever the setting in House of
Cards, darkness is never far away. “We shot
at incredibly low light levels,” says Bryld.
“The Master Primes are very fast, and
Fincher is not afraid to shoot at T1.4, even
though that’s challenging for the first assistants. With the combination of Master
Primes and the Red, you can never say there
isn’t enough light, because there pretty
much always is! But Fincher knows his craft
well, so he always fully understands what
he’s asking the camera crew to do.”
Because Fincher is so specific about
what he wants the image to contain, “you
light specifically for that.” Also, the A and B
cameras are usually kept very close, often
stacked one on top of the other. “We typically had one camera doing a low-angle
wide over and the other doing a tight over,”
says Bryld. Continuity is key. “If you have
perfect continuity, I think it creates a
hypnotic universe, like you’re almost experiencing something in real time. In Fincher’s
world, you have to respect space and time,
and two cameras help with that.”
After the first two episodes, the
world of the show expanded to include
other directors, such as James Foley, Joel
American Cinematographer

Schumacher, Carl Franklin and Allen Coulter. After shooting the first 11 episodes,
Bryld moved on, making way for Tim Ives to
shoot the last two. (Bryld returned toward
the end of the shoot to do some secondunit work with Fincher.) “I did 130 days
pretty much back-to-back,” says Bryld. “We
had 15 days per episode on the first two,
and then the rest of the episodes were 10
days each. I didn’t have much time to
prepare with the incoming director other
than location scouting after a long day’s
work.” This, he notes, was one reason the
10-week prep period was vital: “We knew
we weren’t only prepping the first two
episodes.”
However challenging it was for him
to “shoot with one director on a Thursday
and another on a Friday,” Bryld notes that
House of Cards presented some challenges
for the directors as well. “We had to try to
accommodate the new director’s ideas but
at the same time stick to the rules. A lot of
the directors were used to working with
Steadicam, and sometimes they would ask
for a shot that would be a natural
Steadicam shot, but we’d go to great
lengths to track it or design it differently.”
There also was very little time for
Bryld to be involved in post, which Fincher
supervised at A52 in Santa Monica, Calif.
“During the shoot, David did a preliminary
grade using the Pix HD system, viewing
images in ProRes 4:4:4 on a Boland monitor
and sending his notes to [colorist] Paul
Yacono,” says Bryld. “I was sent the first
two episodes for comments, but David
followed through on every detail.”
Netflix will make all 13 episodes of
House of Cards available for streaming on
Feb. 1. The company has committed to two
more seasons of the show, but Bryld says his
involvement will most likely be limited. “In
order for me to take a project, it has to scare
me in some way, and having done 11
episodes of the show, I’m not sure it scares
me enough anymore. But it is my baby, so
we’ll see!”

TECHNICAL SPECS
2.0:1
Digital Capture
Red Epic
Arri/Zeiss Master Prime

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American Cinematographer - February 2013

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