Continuing the ongoing series of interviews with creative artists working on various aspects of movie and TV productions, it is my delight to welcome Anastasia White. After doing art direction on the pilot episode of “Mr Robot”, she joined the second season as the show’s production designer. In this interview Anastasia talks about her first memories of working on movies, her journey through the various roles in the art department, the arc of a production from initial explorations to watching sets being torn down at the end, and evolving and extending the Mr Robot’s universe (including the delightful trip down the memory lane back to the ’90s for an especially wonderful twist).
Kirill: Please tells us about yourself and your path so far.
Anastasia: Throughout college I was in the music business as a side job. While I was there, I realized that I wanted to do something a little bit more creative, and I left music industry when I graduated college and went to a graduate architecture school. I wanted to create more and be more artistic, but I eventually left that as well [laughs] as I didn’t like the structure of everything.
I worked for a couple of years for an architecture firm that did interior design. When the economy went bad, I was laid off along with more than half of my office. The day I was laid off I had a trip planned to New York. I always wanted to live in New York, and I thought it would be my chance to get a job there [laughs]. When I came back, I spent two-three months researching what types of careers I could move towards with the skills that I had from the architecture school.
I never went to a film school, but it sort of presented itself as something interesting that I thought I could do. I researched the production designers that were based in New York City, hoping to get an apprenticeship. Mark Friedberg was the one I wanted to work for, and luckily when I reached out to him, he got me a PA job within about a month. I did a few projects with him as a PA over the next two years, and I thought that art department coordinator was the next logical step. I wanted to learn about what everybody does, how to work with the budget, etc, and that’s what I did for about a year. While I was doing that, I started drafting and doing graphics as an assistant art director, and continued working my way up really.
Kirill: If I can bring you back to those few months in this field, do you remember what was the biggest surprise for you as you saw how productions work from the inside?
Anastasia: I think it was seeing how many people are involved in each department, and how much detail goes into everything. I thought that since it’s on camera, and the audience is so far removed from everything, that these tiny details wouldn’t be noticed. And then pretty quickly I realized that they do matter, even more than a lot of other things.
Kirill: Has working in the industry ruined, in some way, the enjoyment of going out and seeing a movie in the theaters, as you know that what we see on that screen is not real, in a sense?
Anastasia: Definitely. I try to keep myself removed from all that. But if I love a set, I will keep my attention on the way it is framed, or the color palette. I will also start thinking if it was built on stage, or shot on location. I do that all the time, no matter what. It’s hard for me not to think about it. If there’s a tense moment or a very fast moving sequence, I’ll be taken out of it. But I always go back to think about the sets, unfortunately [laughs].
Kirill: When you look back at your earlier productions that are a few years into the past, what stays with you? Are those the good parts that you remember, or the stressful ones?
Anastasia: I remember both. The stressful parts end up fading. I know that I was stressed on every job that I’ve done so far, during certain moments of it. If it’s a big stress, it stays with me, but if it’s the general stress, my memories are just that I worked a lot. I also remember the rewarding moments, and things that were fun to work on.
I learn from everything. If I was stressed about something in particular, I don’t think I’ll be stressed about that particular thing again in the future. I learned from it. I learned how to not create stress around it.
Kirill: Is there such a think as a production with no stress?
Anastasia: There are productions that have, perhaps, a couple of stressful days. I don’t think there’s a production that is stressful every single day from the very beginning. I think there are certain anxieties that go away with experience.
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Continuing the ongoing series of interviews with creative artists working on various aspects of movie and TV productions, it is my delight to welcome Derek Spears. Since joining the Rhythm & Hues Studios about fifteen years ago, Derek has worked on feature films such as “Red Riding Hood”, “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor,” “Superman Returns” and “X-Men: Days Of Future Past”. Most recently, his work as the Visual Effects Supervisor on HBO’s magnificent “Game of Thrones” has won back-to-back Emmy awards for Outstanding Visual Effects.
In this interview Derek talks about the early days of digital visual effects [VFX] and the evolution of the tools since then, the human-intensive parts of the VFX pipeline and his thoughts on what may happen in those areas in the next few years, the discussions that take place between the art department and the VFX department on building things physically, digitally or as hybrid, and the never-ending quest to take the audience on a wild ride of visual storytelling magic. The second part of the interview is all about the last two seasons of “Game of Thrones”, from creating the fire-breathing dragons to meticulously crafting the more “invisible” parts of Westeros and Essos, such as crowds and digital buildings.
Kirill: Please tell us about yourself and how you started in the field.
Derek: My background is in software engineering. I worked at Silicon Graphics for a few years in the apps development group. During my time there I worked with Kodak to help develop their compositing system, and after that I joined Cinesite to help them start their 3D graphics department. After that I worked at Digital Domain, and now I am a Visual Effects Supervisor at Rhythm & Hues on features and episodic shows. There I’ve worked on “Game of Thrones”, “Black Sails” and “Walking Dead” in the episodic world, and on features such as “R.I.P.D.”, “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor,” “Superman Returns” and others.
My background is in computer graphics and the technology world, but I’ve always enjoyed the intersection of art and technology that visual effects has provided.
Kirill: Would it be correct to say that you’ve joined the field when digital was starting, and there were a lot of special effects with animatronics and other physical approaches?
Derek: Digital was still in its ascendancy back then. People were still trying to understand how it worked. It was very much the Wild West, the frontier type of landscape at that point in time. There were no well-developed ideas that we have now, like pipelines, render cues and various approaches and methodologies. We were learning at the time, and it was very interesting to be a part of that.
Kirill: Do you remember how it felt on your first few productions, as you “lifted the veil” and saw how the magic of movies looks like on the inside?
Derek: It was interesting to learn how a production was done. Coming from an engineering background, filmmaking was a new thing for me. The interesting thing about those early days was that every new show you got to, you had to sit down and decide how to do it. There was no well established methodology.
We didn’t typically use ray tracing. RenderMan was very popular at the time, and there were some other choices – such as Softimage and Mental Ray. The choices then tended to be non-homogenous. The options now are more developed, but also more similar in their approach to solve the problem. It was a bit more interesting in the early days. You had to get out there and figure out how to do things.
It was a much bigger chance of failure because it hadn’t been done before. Now if somebody asks you to do something, the chances are that you’ve done something similar to it, and that it’s going to fit into the existing pipeline. We have tools for various situations, and that is not true for the early days.
Kirill: Looking at the evolution of hardware and software at your disposal, would you say that they’ve kept up with demands from the production side to keep on increasing the level of sophistication of the worlds you’re building?
Derek: There are a couple of interesting things here. There’s always the attempt to decrease the amount of human labour in any given problem. Lighting is the one that has made the most advances out of the many disciplines. It used to be a very difficult and time-consuming problem. Now you can capture light on set and then quickly recreate a very close approximation of it in render without a lot of experimentation. You still have to do a lot of work for modeling and texturing as the setup, but the actual lighting process is rather quick.
Animation and motion capture has helped, but I don’t think that it has taken a lot of labour out of animation. There are tools that are better at rigging, but it’s still an extremely labour-intensive process. The same goes for compositing. There’s a much larger toolset to make things work a lot better in a lot more difficult situations, but what we find is that complexity of the problem matches the efficiency of the tools. For everything that gets faster, the complexity is increasing. It used to take 12 hours to render a chrome sphere and now it takes 12 hours to render a dragon. It’s the same time to render, but you get a lot more for it.
I don’t think that things ever get simpler. It’s rather that the available resources increase the complexity.
Progressive layers in VFX for “Game of Thrones” by Rhythm & Hues.
Kirill: Now that there’s so much being done in the digital pipeline of VFX, is there any friction between the art department that lives in the world of physical sets, and the VFX department that is creating all these fantastical sets in pixels?
Derek: In many ways, the art department and the VFX department are quite complimentary. What the art department designs, the VFX department has to realize. In some places we’ve seen crossovers, like on “Oblivion” where the art director came from the VFX background. I haven’t seen any tension between the two departments on the productions I’ve been involved with. It’s always very cooperative, to the point of how can we involve the art department to help design and solve some of the VFX problems.
In fact, it gets so close on some of the shows. On one of the shows that we’re working on right now, we’re acting as part of the art department to help design creatures. I view it as a synergistic relationship.
If you’re talking about trade-offs, one of the things that you have to figure out is that everything costs money to do. When you design a big set of platform for your show to work on, one of the things that the two departments have to work out is what is the most cost-effective way to do that. How much are we going to do practically? How much are we going to do in VFX? In no way is that a combative relationship. Together we figure out the best way to not break everybody’s budget. Usually that works very nicely.
Progressive layers in VFX for “Game of Thrones” by Rhythm & Hues.
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What happens with the raw footage captured by the camera lens after the last “Cut!” sounds off on the last day of shoot? It passes through a lot of hands and eyes until we get to see the final version on our screens. Post-production includes cutting and editing the shots, sound editing, dialogue replacement, foley effects, sound effects and soundtrack, just to name a few. Color grading is an integral part of the post-production process, and is mainly composed of two parts – color correction and artistic color effects.
This is where the shots of the same outside scene taken under different natural lighting conditions (sunny / cloudy) are made to look visually consistent as if they were shot as one flowing sequence. This is where the existing footage gets its colors shifted to change how the viewers will subconsciously interpret the mood of that scene. This is where the magic of visual story telling gets shaped to the final intent of the director.
Continuing the ongoing series of interviews with creative artists working on various aspects of movie and TV productions, it is my pleasure to welcome Norman Nisbet. In the last couple of decades he has worked on a wide variety of productions in film, television, documentaries, commercials and music videos. Do colors carry universal meaning across different cultures in our increasingly more connected world? How do you tackle the limitations of much smaller color spaces on screens? How much have the software tools have advanced in the last decade or so? What went into color grading the wonderful world of “The Neon Demon”? And much more importantly, will we ever agree on the right spelling of the word “colour”?
Kirill: How did you get into the field?
Norman: I stumbled onto it, really. At that time I didn’t even know colour grading existed as a field. I knew about editing but never thought of the colour grading part. I always thought that was for stills photography.
I was working for Multivisio Holdings – an audio-visual company in Jhb, South Africa, doing video productions for the car industry (helicopter shoots etc), as well as staging and engineering shows and car launches. It’s much like the show business and everything that comes with it. At some point the company bought the first component digital editing suite in the southern hemisphere and an URSA GOLD with a Pandora Pogle to go with. The American operators were great guys and they were eager to teach me.
I was in luck! I was editor’s assistant for 6 months then a Telecine assistant for 6 months. Then I had to choose as they were hiring, and I chose the film/colour grading world. I was always painting and drawing, spending school holidays at that company to mount slides from car shoots for multiple projector slide shows. I was always drawn not to photography specifically but image making, if I may call it that.
Norman Nisbet’s work on Mena Maria’s “F*#$ You”.
Kirill: What is color grading? What it is that a colorist does on a feature film or a TV show?
Norman: Colour grading is enhancing the raw image that was shot on film or digital media to present to an audience on different formats. It is the bridge between the camera and the screen. There is a technical translation aspect to it, as well as allowing for a creative side of the process. The cinematographer has a chance here to enhance the image for the audience to enjoy the intended vision of the film or program. Colour grading has replaced the ‘colour timing’ process that was previously done in a film laboratory.
The role of the colourist is to help enhance that image and to be the cinematographer’s ‘hands’ by understanding his vision and making sure the audience will see the program or film in the way the cinematographer intended it be viewed. The colourist has a responsibility to convey the cinematographer’s intent. Obviously we (colourists) give creative input and have the technical know-how to carry out this process.
Norman Nisbet’s work on Medina’s “We Survive”.
Kirill: How do you describe what you do to people outside of the industry?
Norman: I describe it as photoshopping a moving image. Or nowadays as a ‘filter’ applied in Instagram. I enhance images to portray a mood to help the story. I create warmth or cold. Animosity or sincerity. A menacing darkness or a pastel universe. I carry the viewer through the scenery in a subliminal manner. I invoke feelings as the viewer watches the images. There is always the technical side too: matching scenes and shots as they are shot at different times or different lighting. Even making day time look like night time.
Norman Nisbet’s work on Medina’s “We Survive”.
Kirill: Is there such a thing as a universal “dictionary” of meanings to color choices to convey mood and emotion?
Norman: There are, of course, studies which show how a human body reacts to certain colours. Red raises the heartbeat, blue is calming. Mental triggers such as green symbolises growth but green is also jealousy and envy. So these colours can be challenges or to use as tools. Are nights blue?
Kirill: What are your thoughts on a much smaller color space on screens compared to real life?
Norman: Human eyes and the messages relayed to the brain are amazing! The amount of colour balancing that goes on in a split second! Looking at a smaller screen limits this spectrum. You cannot perceive the range of blacks so the picture is always more contrasty. In real life there is no true black or white, there are too many reflections bouncing around. You can almost touch colour if you look properly.
Any screen cannot truly show real life and the smaller the screen, the more distant the viewer – so a more contrasty picture will engage the viewer’s interest. Image compositions are clearer too. I feel it’s a pity that cinemas are losing popularity to home viewing or even on-the-go streaming for commuters, even though it is very convenient. There is still something to be said for the ‘cinematic experience’ as in ‘in a cinema!’
Norman Nisbet’s work on Doctors Without Borders.
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Continuing the ongoing series of interviews with creative artists working on various aspects of movie and TV productions, it is my delight to welcome Carmen Cabana. In this interview we talk about Carmen’s cinematography work on the second season of “Narcos”, being a part of the new digital generation, the art of telling stories with light, the ever evolving technological landscape of her field, the crazy pace of shooting for episodic television, collaborating with the other two cinematographers of the show, planning and executing elaborate action sequences, and working for the very first time in her home country of Colombia.
Kirill: Please tell us about yourself and how you started in the field.
Carmen: My name is Carmen Cabana, and what drew me into the industry was the passion for telling stories and not having a job behind a desk. I wanted to spend my life doing something that would change on a weekly basis, if possible. The film industry made sense for that.
Funny enough, I came to US to pursue writing, and the more I wrote, the more I realized how terrible I was at it. I have no talent for writing, but I have a natural talent for cinematography, lighting, camera, and composition. When I look back now, I find that in a sense I am telling stories by writing with light and images. I’m very happy with that. I’ve had an opportunity to work on several productions that involved different topics and countries, and people from different nationalities. That’s what I really wanted with my life – to be surrounded with people who would stimulate me, and who I would render service in return.
Kirill: Did you have a formal education to become a cinematographer?
Carmen: It was more of a transition into it. I went to the Art Institute of Los Angeles, but I only did a year and a half in associate’s program there. Most of the classes were oriented towards editing, screenwriting and directing. We had one cinematography class and it was very basic. We learned three point lighting, F stops, etc and with that I’d be lighting interviews for the rest of my life [laughs]. It was not enough of what I needed for cinematography.
In my second year at that school I did a documentary in Venezuela about a boy growing up in a neighborhood of gangs. I did everything on it – directed and shot the whole thing. People really appreciated it visually, and that’s what got me my first short films. After that I was blessed that somebody saw one of my shorts called “Miles”, and they liked it so much that they called me to work on a feature. That was “The Sinners”, and after that I did “Letters to Elena”, “The Border” and a bunch of others.
I did it backwards. I didn’t expect to be a cinematographer, but as people kept on hiring me and pushing me in that direction, I had to learn. I remember my first production “Miles”, reading “Masters of Light” book days before the shoot to figure things out. I also read “Reflections” which is a book of interviews with cinematographers, forcing my brain to understand how they think. How do you tell that story? How do they make the decisions that they make? Even now when I start on a project, I go back to written sources, like the American Cinematographer magazine or new books.
Carmen Cabana’s work on “Letters to Elena“
Kirill: Would you say that you’re a part of all-digital generation, or do you work with film as well?
Carmen: Unfortunately, I’m all digital. My school program was in motion picture and video production, but we never learned film. I’ve only shot Super 8. It’s harder to teach yourself to work with film. You’re talking about film stock and expensive chemical processes that are becoming less accessible. So it never happened.
I keep on hoping for a project where the client is going to demand film so that I will have to go that way. So far for me it’s been keeping up with the technology demands of the clients. I haven’t made the time to learn film, sadly.
Kirill: There are some advantages to digital camera. People can see what is captured on the attached monitors, and the equipment is lighter and more manageable, perhaps?
Carmen: I do work out quite a lot [laughs] so the camera weight is not a problem. It’s all about balance, even with the heavier cameras.
Sometimes I use a light meter, and sometimes I gauge light stops with my eye. I’m definitely spoiled by being used to the false color and histogram on digital cameras. You look at it and you know the range you’re in. It would be a learning curve. I’d have to at least understand the relationship between a particular film stock and how it is processed. Working with digital all the time, I know the sensors like the palm of my hand. I know different circumstances and how much I can push into post-production.
Carmen Cabana’s work on “Letters to Elena“
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