American Cinematographer - May 2016 - 61

From left: Eric
O'Bannon (Jamie
McShane), Chelsea
O'Bannon (Chloë
Sevigny), Danny and
Kevin Rayburn
(Norbert Leo Butz)
gather for drinks at
the bar.

"obsolete," especially as he can load four
LUTs into the F55 and select from
among them on any shot. "We put the
LUT on the slate so the dailies guys -
and later, the final colorist - can add
the correct one to the footage." The
cinematographer created the LUTs with
a DIT while fine-tuning the look
during the first two weeks of production; the use of the in-camera LUTs is
one of the contributions Reynoso
brought to the show.
Another is the use of broken
filters to create distortions, flares and
streaking. Crowley explains, "[Reynoso]
shines a light on the filter and, as the
light hits the crack, it creates a [streaking
quality]. It's one of the signature looks
Jaime created for the show." A-camera
1st AC Anthony Zibelli adds, "Jaime
will pick a particular shatter array,
depending upon the look he wants to
create."
Zibelli also notes, "Shooting wide
open, with the focus plane a half-inch
deep or smaller, allows the first ACs to
show the audience the calm and confidence - or anger and agitation - the
characters are feeling. Danny has more
fast-moving racks, which serve to
convey both his irritability and the fact
his mind is always one step ahead of

everybody else's. Shots of Kevin, on the
other hand - especially his POVs -
[incorporate] slow focus racks to indicate when he is drunk or high."
Off-speed frame rates also factor
into the flashbacks and flash-forwards
that pepper the show. The flashbacks
tend to feature Sarah (Angela
Winiewicz), a fifth sibling who died in
a water-related accident as an adolescent. These segments exude a dreamy
quality, have a slightly blown-out look,
and are always in slow motion.
The flash-forwards - which
suddenly pop up, completely out of
context - are initially confusing; when
the same footage appears again and
again, often with a few seconds of new
material, the viewer surmises that these
are events that haven't yet transpired.
John, Meg and Kevin each have their
own flash-forward sequences. John is
seen half-stumbling and half-swimming through a mangrove swamp
during a ferocious storm; dressed in a
suit and soaking wet, he seems to be
alternately propping up and dragging
Danny's body through the dense tangle
of roots. The sky is dark and the choppy
waters batter John as he tries to keep his
grip on Danny.
According to Crowley, these were
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"perhaps the toughest scenes to shoot
for both the actors and the crew. [The
terrain was very uneven], we were up to
our waists in muck, under a constant
barrage of water, and all the gear had to
be rain-proofed." Backlight was needed
to illuminate the rain, but space was
limited due to the density of the
mangrove. Gaffer Jim Pescrille
managed to squeeze in a couple of unfiltered 18K Arrimaxes and two M90s,
but Reynoso felt the rain needed to be
even sharper, so he closed down the
camera's shutter angle to 45 and 22.5
degrees.
Another flash-forward reveals
Meg rushing out of her apartment and
down exterior stairs to her car. It is
nighttime and, again, pouring rain. She
opens the trunk and looks in. Her cell
phone rings and she throws it down in a
panic when Danny's face appears on the
screen. "To enhance the rain here we
used scissor lifts with 5K Fresnels reaching over the garage," recalls Pescrille.
"They were gelled with Half CTB and
Quarter Plus Green, but diffusion was
left off as we needed maximum punch
to push through all the foliage.
"Our daily lighting arsenal for the
first season consisted of 18K, 9K and 4K
Arrimaxes, and 1x1 Litepanels LEDs,"
May 2016

61
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American Cinematographer - May 2016

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