American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 20

Production Slate

Radical Hackers
By Iain Marcks

Mr. Robot tells the story of Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek), a
young cyber-security engineer who suffers from social-anxiety disorder and clinical depression. In the show's first season, Elliot is
recruited into a group of hacktivists led by the surly anarchist known
as "Mr. Robot" (Christian Slater). The group aims to erase all debts
by cyber-attacking large corporations. The second season deals with
the fallout of their success. Both seasons were photographed by
cinematographer Tod Campbell, who, along with director and
showrunner Sam Esmail, set out to break as many rules of image
composition as they could. Their success has yielded one of the most
unique-looking shows on television.
American Cinematographer: Since Mr. Robot first aired,
one of the things people continue talking about is how striking the show is visually - the way you short-sight the characters and place them low in the frame, emphasizing isolation
and oppression with massive amounts of headroom. Having
set such a specific look, how does your visual approach evolve
from season to season?
Tod Campbell: When we started shooting season one, Sam
and I knew what we wanted to do compositionally, and we installed
some basic rules to follow because he wouldn't direct every episode.
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November 2016

At that point, I'd only read the script for the first episode, so the look
of the show changed as we saw the story unfold. Going into season
two I was able to read all 10 scripts [prior to production], and I could
arc the photography over the course of the season because I knew
what the end of the story was. For season three, we'll adapt a little
more I imagine.
What are these rules that you mentioned?
Campbell: Composition is a big one. In season one we used
a 32mm lens on Elliot in every single shot, including his close-ups. In
season two we decided to use a 21mm; Elliot thinks he is at his
mom's house when he is actually in prison, and going to a wider lens
allowed us to change the feeling of the background while keeping
him the same size in the frame. We also try to be open-minded and
flexible - that's kind of a rule in its own right.
What evolved from a technical standpoint?
Campbell: A lot of our compositions make use of straight
lines [within the frame], and that was very difficult with the wider
Cooke 5/i lenses. Right after Robot season one I shot Stranger Things
with Tim Ives, who was using Leica Summilux-C primes. When I
came back to Robot we switched to the Leicas. I like them because
they're so beautiful, and it's a flatter lens, which helped us make our
compositions a bit straighter.
Did you change the lighting?
Campbell: One of my main goals was to really tell the story
with lighting. In season two we don't use a lot of fill light with Elliot.

American Cinematographer

Mr. Robot photos by Michael Parmelee, courtesy of USA Network.

Elliot Alderson
(Rami Malek,
left) has an
exchange with
the titular
hacktivist
(Christian Slater)
in the series
Mr. Robot.
Cinematographer
Tod Campbell
often places
characters low in
the frame,
beneath an
oppressive
amount of
headroom.

American Cinematographer - November 2016

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