American Cinematographer - May 2012 - 18

Production Slate
Person of Interest frame grabs and photo of Maniaci courtesy of Warner Bros. Television. Photo by Giovanni Rufino. ©2012 WBEI. All rights reserved. John Reese (Jim Caviezel) is on the move in New York in a frame grab from the CBS series Person of Interest, shot by Teodoro Maniaci. Reflections play a role in many of the show’s visually layered compositions.

Building a Layered Person of Interest By Iain Stasukevich

“Let me tell you about this day we had last week,” director of photography Teodoro Maniaci says from across the table in a quiet restaurant in Brooklyn. Sitting next to him is digital-imaging technician Gabriel Kolodny. “It’s a three-camera day. We did two separate car-interior driving scenes with dialogue. Then we staged a crash where a truck T-boned a car. Then a six-person gunfight broke out. Then we did a company move to another location for a surveillance scene, and then another scene inside where Jim Caviezel threw a statue through a glass window, requiring special effects. A stunt-filled fistfight ensued, followed by a two-page dialogue sequence.” Maniaci is the cinematographer on the CBS crime drama Person of Interest , which stars Caviezel as John Reese, an ex-CIA operative recruited by eccentric billionaire Harold Finch (Michael Emerson) to intervene in the violent crimes detected by Finch’s topsecret computer program. The show is shot almost entirely on location in New York City. There are two standing sets onstage at Silvercup Studios East in Queens: the N ew York Police Dept. precinct staffed by detectives Joss Carter (Taraji P. Henson) and Lionel Fusco (Kevin Chapman), who are allies of Reese and Finch, and the defunct library where Finch houses his computers and works. The production schedule is similar to that of most episodic TV dramas, and, as Maniaci’s opening remarks convey, the show is ambi18 May 2012

tious. “Sometimes the sides are 25 pages long,” he notes. “The characters’ stories have become so closely intertwined that we’ll have scenes with three people on the phone at once. It’s one conversation, but we’ve got to shoot those scenes three times because one person is on the library set, one is walking down the street, and another is breaking into an apartment.” In the world of the show, a “person of interest” can be a victim, a criminal or neither, and this freedom enables the filmmakers to experiment with different looks and new locations in every episode. “Each episode has a different director who brings a different personal style,” says Maniaci. “There isn’t really a regular way we do things. We have an approach to framing and lighting, and our colors are thematic but not rigidly mandated. The Reese and Finch worlds look cool to neutral, and the Carter and Fusco worlds are warm to neutral, but those stories are overlapping now, so the styles do, too.” Person of Interest is shot mainly on the production’s three Arri Alexas; two are always in play, and the third is kept on standby for Steadicam work. (Canon EOS 7D HDSLRs, GoPro Hero HDs and Sony PMW-EX1 cameras provide the surveillance-video footage seen in the show.) Maniaci’s lens package comprises two Angenieux Optimo 12:1 zoom lenses, assorted Cooke S4 primes, Angenieux Optimo 15-40mm and 28-76mm zooms, and a Canon/Century 150600mm zoom. ➣

American Cinematographer

American Cinematographer - May 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - May 2012