Stars Align: 3 Rising Stars of Cinematography on their latest projects
Three female DPs discuss their new episodic series: Carmen Cabana on High Fidelity, Kira Kelly on Self-Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C.J. Walker, and Anka Malatnyska on Monsterland
CARMEN CABANA
High Fidelity
“When it comes to love and music, everything is prettier, richer, bolder, just full of life,” says Carmen Cabana, a 2017 Rising Star of Cinematography [AC 2/17]. Her latest project, High Fidelity, is very much about love and music, coupled with a rich, bold look.
Created by Sarah Kucserka and Veronica West, the show is a gender-flipped version of Nick Hornby’s 1995 novel and Stephen Frears’ 2000 big-screen adaptation (shot by Seamus McGarvey, ASC, BSC). This time around, it’s a female record store owner (Zoë Kravitz) who’s been dumped and is struggling to rebound.
This role reversal “refreshed the story,” says Cabana, who shot all 10 half-hour episodes of the series. “I loved that the production wanted to do a female-gaze version, with a female protagonist who showed women’s perspective on the dating world.”
On the show, Rob (short for Robyn) addresses the camera directly, mulling over the quandaries of romantic love. She often does so while striding through the streets of Crown Heights, her semi-gentrified Brooklyn neighborhood, where practical locations were shot.
“High Fidelity was about making the camera feel like a friend walking right next to Rob chatting,” says Cabana. “That’s why the camera had a close proximity, little foreground, and wider lenses.” The cinematographer shot with dual Arri Alexa Minis, framing for 1.78:1. She used customized Panavision Primo lenses, “which produced beautiful flares.” She often exposed at T4 to retain some depth in the background, except when getting inside Rob’s head, “when we were always wide open.” That’s when the “Magic 50” came out, as Cabana dubs it — a 50mm Zeiss Super Speed — was put to use. “We used the Magic 50 every time we wanted to blur the background and get very close to Zoe’s face, to isolate her from everything else and just connect with her emotion.” Angenieux Optimo zooms were occasionally used as well.
As for that rich, bold look, “I wanted a glossier, more magical version of Brooklyn, but to preserve the elements that make it so charming and appealing,” Cabana says. “For instance, the color of lighting was 100 percent based on reality.” She played off the color mix on Brooklyn’s streets: neon signage on old storefronts, streetlights that were enhanced with Arri SkyPanels or gelled PAR cans to extend the light further. For example, all of De Salle’s club scenes “have the color palette of a Pink Floyd homage concert featuring drummer Nick Mason that I attending in my spare time during prep,” says Cabana. “The light show combined four to five colors, but they coexisted without looking like a circus.” Another inspiration was album covers. “They pop so much,” Cabana says, “and I wanted a reference for colors that could live with each other.” She cites Kiss’ Rock and Roll Over, Led Zeppelin’s Celebration Day and Houses of the Holy, and Syd Barrett’s The Madcap Laughs as some examples.
Color is Cabana’s sweet spot. “As a woman and being from Colombia, I find that color is like my main paintbrush when it comes to telling stories, although certain stories, like my upcoming [Blumhouse-Amazon] film Nocturne, call for a desaturated look and a muted palette,” the cinematographer notes. When using colors, she never hesitates to dip into Surprise Peach, Moss Green, Cerulean Blue, Henna Sky and other hues that aren’t often used. High Fidelity’s numerous club and bar scenes gave her plenty of room to play. “The clubs were my paradise. I was like a kid in Candyland.”
KIRA KELLY
Self Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C.J. Walker
Imagine the Great Gatsby by way of the Harlem Renaissance, with snippets of Busby Berkeley thrown in. That’s Self Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C.J. Walker, a four-part Netflix series that tells the story of America’s first female millionaire, who made her fortune in black haircare products.
“It was my first period piece, which I was so excited about,” Kira Kelly, a 2017 Rising Star of Cinematography [AC 2/17], says of the production, which was directed by DeMane Davis and Kasi Lemmons, who each helmed two episodes. “I’d been looking for a period piece because it’s such a challenging thing for a DP to do.” It was extra challenging in this case, because the fact-based series, which debuted in March, also incorporated fantasy elements into every episode via interstitials. In one example, we see a boxing match between Walker (Octavia Spencer) and her rival in a smoky arena; in another, dancers surround Madam Walker in a Busby Berkeley-style configuration in the factory she’s about to open. “These were a way to get into Madam Walker’s head as the story turns inward,” says Kelly, who shot all four episodes. “Each episode has a different look for the interstitial. We wanted these to be a place where we could tap into some fun visual elements.” There are also other imaginings, like Walker’s memory of her enslaved parents picking cotton.
From the start, “the show runners, Janine Sherman Barrois and Elle Johnson, were clear they did not want a period piece that was sepia colored,” says Kelly. “They wanted to make this story alive for right now, and they wanted a very colorful, saturated world.” While the research department gathered period photos showing the era’s hairdos, dress, and cultural milieu, Kelly assembled her own look book with more wide-ranging references. “My office walls were covered with images that included Beyoncé’s Lemonade, If Beale Street Could Talkt, and Annihilation.”
Working with production design and costume, Kelly says, “We were able to find a palette that was colorful and saturated, but not jarring. Madam wears a lot of jewel tones, beautiful emeralds and sapphires—very rich colors that pop very well.”
The cinematographer’s soft, directional light complemented that palette. “I wanted the lighting to have a very natural feel because I knew we were going to be pushing so much color into the sets,” she says. “We wanted the colors to play on their own.”
The stylized interstitials broke from that approach, with bold pink backlight and runways of purple light in the dance scenes, or searing white spotlights and deep shadows in the boxing ring. “We were trying to make them as dramatically different from the main story as possible.”
Lenses underscored that difference. For most of the two-camera shoot, which was captured at 4K, Kelly coupled Sony’s Venice with Panavision T Series primes, but she switched to C Series in the interstitials, “because the characteristics of those lenses helped to visually distinguish that material from the main storyline.”
Book cover for North American Lake Monsters
ANKA MALATYNSKA
Monsterland
In the year since her “Rising Cinematographer” profile in this magazine [AC 2/19], Anka Malatynska shot what she considers to be her breakout project: Monsterland. “It’s one of the most exciting projects of my career,” she says. “ It allowed me to do things visually I haven’t been able to do anywhere else. You can’t do magical light portals on every series!”
Debuting this September on Hulu, the eight-episode anthology is an adaptation of Nathan Ballingrud’s short story collection North American Lake Monsters. The stories are grounded in blue-collar settings and populated by people struggling with lost jobs, broken households, and personal shortcomings. But each story injects a bit of the supernatural. Vampires, werewolves, fallen angels, lake monsters, and more ambiguous beings intrude and push characters towards redemption—or not.
“The core look is realistic,” says Malatynska. “[The story is] something that could happen down the street from your house, yet there are these fantastical moments, which gave me permission to take things to a more magical place.”
For those moments, the creative team took inspiration from Gregory Crewdson’s staged color photos, which often feature unexplained beams of light in familiar settings. But for series finale, Malatynska paid homage to Close Encounters of a Third Kind. She explains, “ I used Close Encounters as inspiration for the magical light portals that our characters step into in their living room, then step out of into a grand [location]. It was light cue after light cue after light cue. Every episode called for spectacular lighting [to] signify the monsters and paint this magical world.”
Creatively involved from the start, Malatynska alternated hour-long episodes with Anette Haellmigk, who also shot the pilot. “Anette and I were both hired in August, right around the same time, an we immediately began collaborative conversation,” she recalls. With executive producer Mary Laws serving as showrunner, the two-camera show was shot in New York with Sony’s Venice (capturing at 4K in the 2:1 aspect ratio) coupled with Leica Summilux-C primes and Angenieux Optimo DP Rouge zooms.
“We used mostly LED lighting, which helped in moving quickly,” Malatynska says. “A lot of our key lights were side lights, or what I call a Rembrandt light, which allowed me to cross-shoot in many situations and feel good about it.”
Shooting an episodic thriller with otherworldly visuals gave the cinematographer room to stretch, both technically and creatively. “It was exciting,” she says. “I didn’t have to do three-point lighting, I didn’t have to worry about fill light, it could get edgy, and it could get incredibly beautiful and completely fantastical.”
