American Cinematographer - September 2017 - 74

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Mean Streets

Above: Cast and crew ready a dinner scene. Right: Lights push through windows
for a studio interior.

cowboy films have always done." Having
since completed the Laurel and Hardy
biopic Stan and Ollie, Rose anticipates
more work with Mielants. "He's written
a script about a nudist camp, and it's very
funny," Rose says. "It's European-funny,
but there's a plan - stylized and dark. I'd
do anything with Tim because he comes
at things at an interesting angle, and I'm
always up for that."
***
Principal photography for the
fourth season of Peaky Blinders is
approaching completion at the time of
this writing, and Cathal Watters, ISC
spoke with AC during week 13 of a 15week shoot.
"You're being handed over a
mantle," he begins. "The producers were
saying, 'Make it your own, do your own
thing,' but I knew that it still had to be
Peaky Blinders. Hopefully, some of my
work style will come out inherently by
the decisions I make. That was very
important for me because I think Peaky
Blinders is so visual."
Watters grew up amid the smell
of chemicals from his press-photographer brother's home laboratory. "With
74

September 2017

my first job," he notes, "I bought a
camera. I've developed my own photos
for a long time. I went to Trinity College
in Dublin and did a degree in drama and
the Irish language. As soon as I finished
the degree, I started looking for newscamera positions. I went out shooting
news. I didn't want to go into drama
straight away; I wanted to start shooting
- to have a camera in my hands.
"There's a small station here in
Ireland - TG4," Watters continues. "I
started shooting for them in 1997. They
wouldn't give me a job on the camera at
first; I started [as an editor]." These
opportunities built into an enviable
camera career in documentary and
current affairs, including work as far
afield as New Zealand, Iceland, the U.S.
and Rwanda. Since then, Watters has
worked on both the big and small
screen, with his first feature, Vivienne de
Courcy's Dare to Be Wild, released in
2015. Recent highlights include Paddy
Breathnach's 2015 film Viva, which
earned Watters the Irish Film and
Television Academy's award for best
cinematography, and the television series
An Klondike (Irish for "The Klondike,"
known as Dominion Creek in the U.S.).
"If people asked me last year,
American Cinematographer

'What TV show would you like to
shoot?' it would be Peaky Blinders,"
Watters cheerfully states. "I'd worked
with [Peaky Blinders Season 4 director]
David Caffrey on a series, Love/Hate -
he directed five seasons of it. I'd say it was
the biggest drama show ever produced in
Ireland. I did second camera for the final
season."
Peaky Blinders' six-hour Season 4
called for a 75-day shoot with two Alexa
Minis - cameras preferred for their
compact dimensions, whose size was
further minimized by a 15mm rod setup
suggested by Gadd, who is serving as Acamera first assistant this season. The
Minis record ProRes 4:4:4:4 to CF
cards, and often shoot up to 200 fps. "So
much of it is shot at high frame rate, to
give us the option in post to ramp it or
make it look cool," Watters notes.
An unconventional lens choice
was suggested by Caffrey, who had just
finished an anamorphic production. "He
was interested in shooting anamorphic
and cropping to 16:9," Watters recalls,
"so I tested anamorphic. I've shot music
videos in that format - I loved it and I
think [the lenses are] great.
"We were looking at anamorphics
and diopters," Watters continues,
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