American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 81

Mother of George photos courtesy of Oscilloscope Laboratories.

Set in Brooklyn’s
Nigerian
immigrant
community,
Mother of George
follows newly
married Adenike
Balogun (Danai
Gurira) as she
struggles to
conceive a child
with her husband.

away,” says Young. “This was someone
paying close attention to the rich tapestry of skin tones within the African
diaspora, [and that was] married with
the festive, celebratory, intricate design
quality of African textiles.”
Additionally, Young looked to
the paintings of Lynette YiadomBoakye, whose oil portraits are often
dark-on-dark, with ebony complexions
melting into abstract brown and black
backgrounds while an article of clothing
— white collar, red stockings, blue dress
— pops out. “Both artists were playing
with what we wanted to play with: How
far can we bury these bodies in darkness
to heighten their skin-tone value, but
also pull them out through wardrobe
and lighting?” says Young.
The filmmakers’ sole day of testing was devoted to “seeing how extreme
we could go with color, and then how
that color would look against our actors’
skin tones,” he continues. “We put that
smack-dab in the middle of normal
New York City spaces to test the relationship between a striking-looking
human being with very striking color
and the city, which has a graphic quality

to it. We wanted Mother of George to
feel intentional, but not contrived.”
Having shot Restless City on a
Red One, Young and Dosunmu
decided to continue with the brand.
“We found that the Red did a lot of
interesting things with skin tone when
we let it fall off in deep shadow,” says
Young. For Mother of George, they chose
a Red Epic, shooting 5K at 3:1
compression for a final extraction of
2.40:1. Pleased with the image quality
of the raw file, Young was ecstatic when
he saw what colorist Alex Bickel could
achieve in the grade at Manhattan post
house Color Collective. Bickel
enriched the look by mixing colored
versions of the same image together
using the DaVinci Resolve’s layer mixer
nodes. “We tried to grade as if we were
using traditional printer lights,” says
Young. “Alex brought a technique and a
photographic sensibility to the grading
that gave more texture to the image and
made Mother of George fly.”
Young shot the picture mostly on
Cooke S4 prime lenses. He used an
Angenieux Optimo 24-290mm zoom
“very sparingly,” and a Canon EF
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400mm for many day exteriors. The
50mm, 65mm and 100mm primes
were his workhorse lenses, however, and
close-ups were emphasized. Young
explains, “The idea of marginalization is
very important to our story. Andrew
always talks about how New York is a
place of great diversity, but we’re not in
communication with each other. We
filled the frame up with faces that New
Yorkers see every day, but don’t really
see, even though they might live next
door.”
For lighting, he continues, “we
stayed away from HMIs and tungsten
and used only fluorescents. We wanted
the film to feel slightly futuristic, like
you’re looking at something 20 years in
the future. Also, in Africa, Asia and
Latin America, light sources are usually
fluorescent. I’ve often been struck by
how unusual certain skin tones can look
in that light.”
Young also emphasized toplight,
which not only allowed the camera to
move freely through cramped locations,
but also gave him the ability to subtly
shift the lighting as the story progressed
while retaining consistency. “We
April 2013

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American Cinematographer - April 2013

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