American Cinematographer - December 2020 - 37

Cinematic Reality
Television producer Rob Rosen's credits include stints as
a supervising producer on Kitchen Nightmares and, more
recently, as executive producer on the hit reality series
The Dead Files and Reasonable Doubt. In recent years, he's
observed and helped encourage a trend among reality shows
striving to create more cinematically engaging imagery, and
he offers his personal perspective on this shi .
In the early days of reality television, any producer who spent
too much time discussing lighting or shot composition would
quickly get the unwanted reputation of being pretentious and
self-indulgent.
The shows were about conflict and competition. As long as
the viewers could see Gordon Ramsay's Shar-Pei-like forehead
wrinkle in frustration, or Kim Kardashian's haute couture as she ran
errands around Malibu, no one was complaining.
In 2011, I began show-running the paranormal reality series
The Dead Files on the Travel Channel. Instead of seeing cinematography as a necessary evil, the show's creator, Jim Casey, saw it
as an integral part of the storytelling. I was finally going to put my
film-school degree from Boston University to use.
We treat each episode of The Dead Files like its own independent horror movie. The show's cinematographer, AFI alumnus Rob
Toth, and I meet to decide what kind of mood, tone and composition each scene calls for. The job has its challenges. We have to
work with our locations - there's no time to paint walls or do elaborate set decorations. We're also rarely able to shoot scenes with
a single camera. This means Rob's team will use up to 12 lights per
setup in order to shape the light for a multi-camera shoot. They'll
o en set up a menace arm to create dramatic off-key lighting. For

practical reasons, the team favors low-wa age LED lights in order
to avoid overloading the circuits.
In 2016, I created the true-crime series Reasonable Doubt for
Investigation Discovery. At this point, there was no turning back.
Instead of treating the visuals as an inconvenient a erthought,
a big part of the show's development involved creating a visceral visual style that would immerse the viewer in raw, real-time homicide
investigations. We achieved this, in part, by treating the camera as
a character in the show. Operators were instructed not to anticipate
the action, but to follow it. The show also features dramatic re-creations - another chance for us to flex our cinematic muscles. Using Lensbabies and moody, noir-inspired lighting, we try to create
impressionistic and dreamy dramatizations - a stark contrast to
the cinéma-vérité footage we get out in the field.
Visuals have become a much more integral part of our
storytelling, with composition, color, camera placement and lens
selection viewed as tools and strategies that can greatly enhance
and complement the stories we're telling. Should we use a super
wide-lens to create distance between two people who are at odds
with each other? Should we desaturate the color pale e as someone emotionally relives a traumatic memory? How do we position
cameras to create a power imbalance in an interrogation?
For veterans of scripted film and television productions, this
mindset probably seems rather mundane and obvious - it's the
way you've always worked. But those of us in the world of reality
TV are entering a golden age where it's no longer an indulgence to
discuss lighting and film composition, but an essential part of the
job. Listening to Gordon Ramsay lay into a failed chef is still entertaining, but careful consideration of how to light and compose the
angry wrinkles on his forehead is now of equal importance.

Executive producer Rob Rosen (far le ) and cinematographer
Rob Toth (wearing cap) on set with the Reasonable Doubt team.

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American Cinematographer - December 2020

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