American Cinematographer - May 2016 - 64

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Family, Friends and Infection

The crew shoots a night exterior featuring Hap in a raft with his ex-wife, Trudy (Christina Hendricks).

with our A-camera operator and Movi
whiz Richard Moriarty - opened up
the possibilities for the camera movement and speed we needed for an
episodic schedule. We shot for 1.85:1 in
4K at Redcode 7:1, which gave us the
flexibility to reframe and stabilize in
post. We recorded to [RedMag] 1.8"
SSD Cards.
We shot the majority of the show
at the camera's native ISO 800, but
would go as high as 2,000 for certain
64

May 2016

night shots. We were using the camera's
Low-Light Optimized optical low-pass
filter [OLPF], and based on the testing
we did in preproduction the grain levels
were more than acceptable [even at
2,000 ISO].
Which lenses did you choose?
Samul: My original dream was
to shoot on Cooke Xtal Express
anamorphics, which I'd recently used
and fallen in love with on another
feature, but a [2.39:1] aspect ratio was
American Cinematographer

not within the Sundance Channel's
specifications, so I did a lot of testing
with vintage spherical lenses: Canon K35, Zeiss Super Speed, Cooke Panchro
and Super Baltar. While we loved the
personalities of those lenses, we felt that
with our accelerated schedule, the benefits of a faster, more reliable set of
modern lenses outweighed the aesthetic
benefits of shooting with vintage glass.
Factoring in our plans to do quite a bit
of Movi work, which made the prime
weight a huge factor, we ended up with
two sets of Arri/Zeiss Ultra Primes and
the 45-250mm [T2.6] and 18-80mm
[T2.6] Arri/Fujinon Alura zooms.
Jim and I both agreed that the
show still needed some sort of vintage
visual personality, and after more testing
I found a net that we stretched over the
rear element to bring some of the
blooming and softness that hark back to
the look of older films and television,
which also kept us from wasting a slot in
the matte box on a diffusion filter.
Was principal photography
conducted on an episode-by-episode
basis, or in a more holistic fashion, like
a long movie?
Samul: We shot for nine weeks,
from the end of April to the end of June.
Since it was only a six-episode run, there
was talk in preproduction of doing one
big movie schedule in the style of The
Knick, but we ended up bringing in a
second director, Nick Gomez, and did a
three-block schedule of two episodes
each. Jim took episodes one, two, five
and six; Nick did three and four. Being
the show's only cinematographer, it was
a new challenge not being able to techscout locations, but after a few days of
working with my crew, I knew I could
trust gaffer Chip Carey and key grip
Duane Cooper to scout for me, and
their best boys, Kris Weaver and Justin
Crawford, to gaff and key in their stead.
As one of the constants behind
the camera, were you tasked with
preserving the look of the show?
Samul: We established a look and
pace early on and did what we could to
keep it going throughout the shoot. As
the showrunner, Jim was also around for
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