American Cinematographer - March 2015 - 57

Ragnar Lothbrok's brother, Rollo (Clive Standen, far left), joins forces with opposing leader Jarl
Borg (Thorbjørn Harr, second from left) in the historical drama Vikings.

Vikings (History)
Cinematographer: PJ Dillon
Photographed by PJ Dillon,
History Channel's Vikings brings to life
the ancient Nordic sagas of medieval
Scandinavia. The show focuses on the
famous Danish chieftain and former
farmer Ragnar Lothbrok (Travis
Fimmel), his family, and his legendary
raids upon England and mainland
Europe. Season one sees him
commanding a new generation of fast
longships on raids into North East
England. In season two, Ragnar grows
in power and influence as alliances
within his circle shift, and forces
conspire against him.
Years before going behind the
camera for Vikings' second and third
seasons, Irish-born Dillon worked his
way up through the camera-department
ranks, starting out as a trainee in Ireland
before spending a few years as a camera
assistant in the United States. He shot
his first feature in New Hampshire in
2000, the independent Something Sweet,
while still assisting on bigger shows. "I
learned the craft from working with
other people, and applied that to what I
was shooting myself," says Dillon.
Since then, Dillon has added

Primeval, Game of Thrones (AC May '12)
and Penny Dreadful to his cinematography credits. In 2012, he was back in
Ireland shooting the British series
Ripper Street when he got the call from
Vikings to join the crew as second-unit
director of photography. "They have one
cinematographer who does the whole
series, but there's quite a lot of crossover
days and a lot of second-unit work,"
Dillon explains. "At the time, the mainunit cinematographer was John Bartley
[ASC], and he was very generous in
terms of sharing his knowledge with
me. When season two came around and
he wasn't available, the producers asked
me to step up."
In season one of Vikings, Bartley
and director Johan Renck developed a
desaturated look for the show that
emphasized contrast and largely
excluded blues and greens from its color
palette. "When I came on board in
season two, the general feeling was that
the look of the show was great and well
received by the fans and critics, and we
wanted to develop it further," Dillon
recalls. "People kept talking about the
'punk rock' aesthetic they wanted to
maintain. I met with showrunner
Michael Hirst, production designer [for
seasons one and two] Tom Conroy,
www.theasc.com

costume designer Joan Bergin, the
producers, and [director] Ciaran
Donnelly, to discuss what really worked
in season one and what could change
without compromising the established
look."
One of Dillon's first changes was
the introduction of blue and green into
the show's color palette. "It was important because sometimes the script would
describe a scene in Wessex, in England,
as green and verdant compared to
Scandinavia, and we had to reflect that,"
he notes.
His other significant contribution
to the look of the show was his use of
diffusion filters - 1⁄8, 1⁄4 and 1⁄2 Tiffen
Black Pro Mists, favoring the 1⁄4 - and
a more frequent application of soft light.
"I felt that some halation in the
windows would add to the look that
John had established," he says, adding
that "there was quite a lot of hard light
used in season one, and I wanted to
soften that a little."
According to Dillon, there are no
hard and fast rules as to what the show
should look like. There are established
guidelines - such as favoring primes
and avoiding zoom shots - but the
show's producers and executives tend to
allow for the application of a director's
personal aesthetic, "and as the cinematographer, I want to respect that,"
says Dillon. "For instance, some like to
use a lot of handheld while some don't
like it at all. We're lucky to have two very
intuitive operators, Iain Baird on A
camera and László Bille on B, who tend
to develop relationships with the directors quite quickly."
Since season one, Vikings has used
Arri Alexa cameras with Panavision
Primo SL lenses provided by Panavision
Ireland at Ardmore Studios just outside
of Dublin. (Panavision's Kevin Greene
provides technical support to the
production.) For season two, the camera
crew carried two full sets of Primo
primes, a pair of 11:1 (24-275mm T2.8)
Primo zooms, and a 3:1 (135-420mm
T2.8) Primo zoom, the latter of which
was primarily used for covering largescale battle scenes.
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March 2015

http://www.theasc.com

American Cinematographer - March 2015

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