American Cinematographer - July 2020 - 47

The Alienist: Angel of Darkness photos by Kata Vermes, courtesy of TNT.

that's a bit like The Shining, and
Episode 4 is a little bit Raiders of the Lost
Ark. I tried to let the terrific sets speak
for themselves. When you have great
art direction, great scripts and terrific
actors like we did, I'd just as soon let
the photography disappear by being as
appropriate but subtle as possible.
"For Episode 4, we had a huge,
labyrinthine set that was as big as some
of the ones I'd worked on for Game of
Thrones. The labyrinth had to fill with
water, and we did some very ambitious underwater sequences. We
wanted the camera to be on and under
the surface with the actors, but mostly
pretty solid and smooth - not handheld. Key grip Seth Greenwald came
up with the idea to make a catamaran
out of a boogie board sawed in two,
and then mount our Arri Maxima
Stabilizer on it, which dolly grip Ralph
Scherer could then glide around with
[and shoot] the actors on the surface,
while Bob Gorelick operated A camera
remotely from dry land. It worked brilliantly.
"Our production designer,
Kalina Ivanov, is exceptional. She gave
us some beautiful things to photograph. As a cinematographer, you
respond to what you have in front of
you. I never go in with a really lockeddown sense of what I'm going to do -
or at least I haven't for a really long
time. I like to leave lots of room for
responding to what happens on the
day"
Watson: "Gaffer Dan Murphy
and his team would have all of our
interior sets and locations pre-lit with
wireless Intelligent DMX fixtures,
which made it very easy for us to set
levels with our 2nd unit. Once 1st unit
landed, we would fine-tune at the
monitors. My grip brothers, led by Seth
Greenwald, had their hands full on
every day-exterior, where they'd fly
massive flyswatters and lots of negative fill.
"In one episode, we time-travel
to the past and the future. We used
LED screens provided by PRG Atlanta
to create portals that, when opened to

different streams of time, would project
the light of what was taking place at
that moment. At one point, our characters open a portal into 1920, moments
before a riot is about to take place, and
on the present-day side of the portal,
we can feel the light from the fires
burning in the streets projecting
through the portal.
"Whenever possible, I love to
create effects in-camera. One of our
directors wanted to do all the flashback
sequences in a way that would feel as if
we were moving through a long, dark
tunnel toward the subject. My Acamera 1st AC, Stephen Early, sourced
a Clairmont Squishy lens at Keslow
Camera in Los Angeles, and the effect
was amazing!
"[Our] Sony Venice [cameras]
were supplied by Otto Nemenz in
Atlanta. I was impressed by the
camera's latitude and low noise levels,
even [at] ISO 2,500. When paired with
the Zeiss Supreme Prime lenses, at 6K
3:2, the images were breathtaking."
McLachlan: "The Zeiss lenses
are incredibly sharp but forgiving, fast,
and lightweight, so it's great to
combine them with the speed of the
Venice - and the ease of changing
NDs in the camera. It's so easy to flip in
an ND and open the lens up if you
want to keep your depth of field
consistent [while shooting] with a
different focal length.
"Each episode has 300 to 600
VFX shots. My wife, Robin Griffin, is
the VFX producer; Kevin Blank is the
VFX supervisor; and vendors in North

America, Europe and India deliver all
of these shots. The current situation
[with the Covid-19 shutdown] makes
everything even more challenging; it's
tricky just to get bandwidth big
enough to get the material to everybody! They're trying to move gigantic
6K VFX files for release in 4K, and it's
tough. I've been timing the shows
[remotely] using iPads that production
sends me, with the cuts on them.
I wanted to do this show because
I really had never seen anything like it
and I felt it had something important to
say - and honestly we weren't sure
how it would all come together. It was
so novel, but after seeing the footage
cut, I'm pumped. It's very cool, and I
think it's going to work."
Cathal Watters, ISC
The Alienist: Angel of Darkness
TNT
Based on Caleb Carr's novel of the
same name, the story is set in New York in
1897, one year after The Alienist. Laszlo
Kreizler's associate, Sara Howard, now a
private detective, seeks his help in locating
a kidnapped infant.
"Director David Caffrey, whom I
collaborated with on Peaky Blinders,
brought me aboard the show. He
directed five of the eight episodes; I
shot six, and Alejandro Martínez shot
the other two.
"Like Peaky Blinders, Angel of
Darkness is a period show shot in a very
modern way, but the scale of it is just
insane. We shot in Budapest, and the

Cathal Watters, ISC
calls The Alienist:
Angel of Darkness "the
biggest production I'd
ever worked on."

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