American Cinematographer - March 2021 - 56

BROKEN SOUL

fact that the character's inner experience is incongruous with his external experience, " says Anthony. " We wanted to maintain that, to explore
a character who's out of sync with what's happening around him. " They
also wanted to convey that Cherry " is struggling against an existential
threat that's much larger than he is - that was elemental to how we
thought about the narrative, " Anthony adds. " Fate, " Joe emphasizes, " is
critically important to this movie. "
The key crew Sigel assembled for the Cleveland-based shoot included
longtime gaffer Bob Krattiger and new collaborators such as A-camera/
Steadicam operator Geoffrey Haley (a veteran of several Russo productions), key grip Jim Shelton and A-camera 1st AC Dan Schroer. Aerial
specialists/drone operators Tim Sessler, Kevin LaRosa Jr. and Michael
FitzMaurice were instrumental in achieving some of the overhead perspectives the Russos favored to suggest what Joe calls " the oppressive
sense of fate hanging over Cherry, diminishing him. "
Two notable drone shots descend to ground level and become handheld moves. Cherry opens with one of these: The camera flies toward
the city and then directly over a neighborhood, looking straight down,
and then dives into the neighborhood, revealing kids on bikes and other
signs of life as it travels along a street lined with houses. It stops in
front of one, as Cherry, thin and haggard, steps out the front door. He
approaches the camera, walking into a medium close-up and looking
straight into the lens. " First impressions of a character are important,
and I like to put a lot of thought into that moment, " says Sigel. " Here's
this nice, typical all-American neighborhood and here's our main character - and he's a mess. " To get the shot, Sessler flew an Alta drone
equipped with a Hawk 45mm V-Lite lens, and when it reached the front
of Cherry's house, Haley grabbed it and finished the move. " That shot is

about the world, about the setting, but also about finding an individual
among all these people to tell a story about - and it's just one story of
thousands that are this harrowing, " says Joe.
" I've come to love large format as much for the lenses it forces one
to use as anything else, " says Sigel, who shot Cherry in 6K with a Sony
Venice. " To put a 50mm three feet from an actor and have this great field
of view without distortion is terrific; it reminds me of medium-format
stills photography. "
Throughout the shoot, Sigel set the look for dailies by applying a
baseline film-emulation LUT he developed with Company 3 and tweaking it for each chapter. Sigel performed the final color grade at Company
3 with colorist and ASC associate Steve Scott.
The movie's emotional spine is Cherry's relationship with Emily
(Ciara Bravo), and through testing at Keslow Camera, Sigel determined
Todd-AO anamorphic lenses should be " the core of our look. " He recalls,
" Nothing else had that romantic, beautiful, creamy, soft fall-off. It's a
fairytale quality I thought was perfect for this story. Each chapter has
its own visual recipe, but we start with the Todd-AOs and come back to
them. "
Sigel also selected a Sigma 14mm Cine lens, Leitz Cine M 0.8 Series
primes and Hawk class-X primes, as well as some specialty lenses he
chose to punctuate pivotal moments in Cherry's story. One of these moments is his first conversation with Emily, which takes place outside
after they've sized each other up in the classroom. When Haley moved in
for close-ups, Sigel switched to a Lomography 55mm Petzval MKII lens.
" Everything else is falling away and there's just the two of them, " Sigel
says. " The center of the Petzval is actually quite sharp, but it falls off
beautifully, especially when you shoot wide open and have a background

PHOTOS BY PAUL ABELL, COURTESY OF APPLE TV PLUS.

Left: Directors Joe and Anthony Russo with star Tom Holland.
Right: Cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel, ASC blocks out a scene with Holland.

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American Cinematographer - March 2021

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