American Cinematographer - October 2015 - 30

Top: The "attack on the Death Star" visual. Bottom: Cinematographer Tim Palmer, BSC mans the
camera, while director Jon East (wearing glasses) looks on.

the camera package for the whole job. It
proved to be the right decision because
we used the Excellence two or three
times every single day. The lens took us to
places we would never dream of going:
highly unusual close-ups of actors, under
arms, through fingers, into fridges - all
sorts of things that really gave the show
its signature style."
That style, says Palmer, also has its
roots in Stanley Kubrick's films. "The
director, Jon East [who helmed the first
three and last four episodes of the
season], and I wanted [Critical] to have a
Kubrick look," the cinematographer
acknowledges. "We are both big fans of
Kubrick. Jon told me his father took him
to see 2001: A Space Odyssey when it
first opened, and that childhood experi30

October 2015

ence cemented his desire to become a
filmmaker. I went through A Clockwork
Orange and 2001 literally frame by frame
in order to analyze the compositions."
Kubrick's rather geometric
approach to framing is something Palmer
"really tried to adhere to - I made an
effort to keep the camera absolutely
level, especially with such a rectilinear set,
which from any view contained multiple
vanishing points and myriad horizontals
and verticals. Particularly on a wider lens,
I'd get quite obsessive about ensuring
that the camera was absolutely level, to
the point where I would check to make
sure the tilt was 'on the bubble' before
locking off the tilt, and then only jibbing
to alter the frame height and not tilting
the camera."
American Cinematographer

Additionally, the filmmakers made
a point of avoiding mid-range focal
lengths. "In a lot of preproduction
conversations with [East], he didn't want
anything in the middle; he either wanted
it to be really wide or really long. We were
between the 14mm and the 21mm on
wide and mid shots, then the 27mm and
32mm for close-ups. After that it would
be the 100mm and 180mm. There was
very little use of anything between a
40mm and a 75mm." On the periscope,
Palmer generally mounted the 14mm,
with occasional use of the extremely wide
(and non-rectilinear) 10mm lens.
Writer-producer Jed Mercurio is an
ex-cardiologist known, as Palmer puts it,
for "bold medical dramas." With Critical,
Palmer adds, Mercurio was "determined
to show everything exactly as it was, in as
minute detail and with as much veracity
as possible. Within each episode there
were three, perhaps four major events,
whether it was a resuscitation or an invasive surgery or a CT scan. Once we knew
what procedure we were going to be
filming, there would be a medical advisor
- sometimes two or three from St.
George's [Hospital] in Tooting - who'd
come on set and start talking through
with the actors what would be happening at that point."
The talk-through of the proposed
procedure, Palmer remembers, could
easily take two or three hours, followed
by another two hours of rehearsals. "One
character goes to fill a syringe here,
another character is putting on a mask
here - all action that would need to be
procedurally correct. As the drama was
being filmed in real time, every single
piece of action would have to be covered
on camera. When you get to an operation, it would become even more
detailed. We could easily spend half a day
rehearsing. It's unheard of in TV. But
when we started filming, it was non-stop
for five or six hours, save for reloading
cameras and changing lenses." The result
was a greatly variable production schedule. "Some episodes were finished in 12
days, some in 17 or 18 days. It depended
on the complexity of the surgical procedures. It was a whole new paradigm in a
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sense, certainly for me."

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - October 2015