American Cinematographer - September 2017 - 44

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Sacred and Profane

Top: Cinematographer Jo Willems, ASC, SBC (left) watches the action on a monitor for a
scene inside Shadow and Laura's home. Above: Director Adam Kane, ASC (left) and cinematographer
Aaron Morton, NZCS discuss a scene inside Vulcan's mansion.

40-80mm (T2.8)] Bailey anamorphic
zoom, which is a great little workhorse.
I didn't use zooms that often because I
wanted to keep the language pure;
David and Jo had started off that way,
and I tried to honor that. Laura's
coming-to-America story [in Episode
4, 'Git Gone'] was half the episode, and
then it becomes spherical. Episode 7, 'A
Prayer for Mad Sweeney,' is Mad
44

September 2017

Sweeney's backstory. Because it's set in
the past, the whole episode was shot in
anamorphic.
Morton: David [Slade] was
really specific: shallow depth, no zooms.
I liked working with the Summilux-C
lenses a lot. It was great having a fast
stop to go to.
The focal length [for any given
shot] came out of working with the
American Cinematographer

directors, who had quite different tastes.
There were certain looks that evolved
across the series. David Slade is 'Mr.
Long Lens.' Adam Kane was happy to
shoot in the 20s and 30s.
[T-stop] would depend on the
scene, but I tried to keep it in the T2.0
range. I'd often do that with ND filters;
I would light to about T2.8 and pull it
back [with an ND] so I could always go
high-speed if I needed to, rather than
just living on the edge all the time.
We had an Image Shaker [from
Clairmont Camera] which is fun to use,
and we used a [P+S Technik] Skater
Scope, which gives you freedom to do
nodal revolutions in-camera quickly and
easily. We were not limited by budget
for tools; when we needed a crane, it was
a 50-foot Techno with a Gator base. We
carried lots of diopters, lots of macro
gear - we always carried a 100mm
[Arri/Zeiss Master Macro, and 2nd unit
also employed an Innovision Optics
Probe II].
Tiernan: We were wellsupported by the production department, headed by [unit production
manager] David Coatsworth, [production manager] Lisa Kussner, [assistant
production manager] Vair Macphee and
[production
coordinator]
Jackie
Alexander. We would go to production
and say, 'I need this, and this is the
reason why.' Everybody was conscientious; there was no waste, and anything
we asked for was used extensively on the
day. So there was always complete
support from production - even when
it was crazy for them!
Willems: I want to commend the
crew because [this production] was not
easy. There were scenes that were big.
We were shooting at a thousand frames
a second [with a Vision Research
Phantom Flex4K camera], and you
need a lot of light, and you need experience, and you need speed to make all of
that happen. We did setups as big as I've
done on anything else, and the crew just
went with it. They were very open; they
weren't negative. Focus pullers Barrett
Axford and Brian White were brilliant,
just going with it and shooting wide

American Cinematographer - September 2017

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