The Emmy Awards is just around the corner and Apple TV series ‘Pluribus‘ is racking up nominations.
Recently, Marshall Adams was nominated for his work on the series as the Director photography. Ahead of the awards, we caught up with him to talk about the filming of the series along with its signature look. And of course, we tried, tired, to get answers about the series’s season two. #crossingfingers
So you and Vince Gilligan have worked together a lot, from Breaking Bad to Better Call Saul, so now with Pluribus has anything changed? Has your working relationship or the communication evolved?
Well, I mean, there’s definitely a shorthand that develops that we can kind of read each other’s thoughts of as to what we want to do visually, but Vince comes very, very prepared. He brings what he calls his homework, which is every shot written down from a plan view and almost even how much that shot’s going to cover in the dialogue. So he has very specific ideas of what exactly he wants and we fairly rarely stray from that too far. Paul Donaghy, who was my operator on Saul for a long time, then he moved up on season six on Saul, and he and I alternated on Pluribus. We take a lot of joy in being able to talk Vince into something that he hasn’t planned on now and then, so yeah, it’s very well thought out and talked about.
Has there been an evolution in just your own cinematography from Breaking Bad to Pluribus? There’s always growth on every project, right?
Yeah, absolutely and and some visual ideas and development that it’s a different show and it should have a slightly different approach. I mean, in a lot of ways, our visual approach together is very similar to what it’s been, but with the Pluribus kind of story behind it. So that drives it absolutely much more than Saul did. We came up with a color plan that was different that basically developed during prep that starts after the joining. So it actually starts in episode two, but… it developed and as your style does too things change and you like things a certain way and you get influenced by other people’s work. And yeah, absolutely.
Courtesy of Apple TV
When you first read the script for Pluribus, what was the first image that came into your head?
I think I got very hung up on the VLA, on the very large array, because that’s the very beginning of the show and and there was a lot there. I mean, the chase, the chasing of the truck, following the truck in and and seeing wide shots of that of the array at night and as it was, we actually tried to get there in time. They move those dishes every few months, every couple of months, and they spread them out wider for a bigger, essentially a bigger target, but they can’t pinpoint as closely with it, too.
So they spread it out and they put it back and they spread it out and they put it back. So we were hoping to get there when they were as close together as they could be, but we missed it by a couple of weeks. We just couldn’t put together in time. So they were in their second position, which meant that they were twice as far apart, but they go much further than that.
Amazingly, if you can believe it. But yeah, the thought of how we were going to light that, how we were going to make it feel natural, how we’re going to light all the dishes that weren’t lit so that they felt like, as part of the part of the array and something that happens normally. So yeah.
Was there a moment you realized this is what the signature Pluribus look is going to look like? This is how it’s going to feel? I mean compared to the pilot I feel like the season got brighter as it went on. Wouldn’t you say?
Yeah, maybe a little bit. Vince likes dark stuff, as do I. So, he and I were always kind of egging each other on to go a little darker here, a little darker there and, something we do in color. Dave Cole, our final colorist also was heavily involved in that. So the story not that it got any brighter, but at least there was a little bit of kind of wondering if there was some hope and what was changing kind of in her relationship with the others.
Courtesy of Apple TV
Was there a difficult shot where you’re, man, this is going to be hard? Was there something where you’re like, I don’t know how we’re going to do this?
I think one of the big ones was the opening of episode six the in the suite, where we finally find Samba’s character at the poker table, but it was a long involved shot that we had been talking about for a long time. We were actually shooting on the floor that used to be Elvis’s private floor and now they’ve divvied it up into three big high roller suites, which are incredibly beautiful and luxurious, but you can’t control the practicals in there… I ended up actually 3D printing some pieces that I could cover some or that I could control them… we talked to the casino about it early on and they were like, no, no, no, that’s that’s we can’t start rewiring stuff up there for you.
So we did install that big light that’s over the table. But other than that, it was kind of at their mercy. So, yeah, it was that was a tricky shot. And we traveled. I think we did two 360s in that shot as we kind of worked our way, handing off from character to character until we finally pull up behind Samba at the table.
What would you say is the signature look? How would you describe it?
Boy, I don’t know. I think it’s a combination of things…We used a lot of anamorphic when we could cherry pick some great flares with them. We used a lot of close focus stuff. The shot that we did when we see Carol at the beginning of episode two, when we come out from that bottle that’s laying on the floor dripping, that was a tricky shot. We had a probe lens on that was maybe, I don’t know, half an inch away from the edge of that bottle. And the dolly grip had to pull back and perfectly, I mean, absolutely perfectly to make it as smooth as possible, because you can imagine, going from half an inch to an inch even then now doubles the size of the frame. So, that has to be a very slow, deliberate move. I would say that’s probably close to something that we would say is a signature that we can do stuff like that. We had the time and the and the tools to be able to do that and the ability. I mean, our dolly grips are not as one of the best. But that or the soul of the one-er or as we call, I think it’s scene 54, with Rhea as she’s driving in the pilot episode and everything’s kind of happening around her.
I heard about how that was so hard to shoot?
Yeah…we had the camera so close to her that we were going to end up with camera shadows by using the overhead practicals. And so I ended up building a whole LED screen system that was sitting on the front of the truck so that she actually got a live image that fed to that. So she could interact with what was going on around her, but without actually.
So she was actually lit by that big LED screen that man. So the whole thing was on the biscuit is called, which is essentially a Tesla stripped down to a flat trailer and they can move the driver piece of it anywhere on the car. So the truck was mounted on that thing, just it’s about the same height that it would normally be.
And so that you have a professional driver driving for her because she couldn’t obviously do that with with LED screens blocking her. So it was a tricky one. And then the whole the point of it, obviously, is to try to make it look as realistic as possible and as seamless as possible.
How does the planning work? How much time do you like go into planning these things?
Oh, quite a bit. We were months and months of talking through shots and looking at locations. There’s a lot of planning. And then if Vince has an idea, he’ll bring it to me and I’ll go to some of my guys and say, is this possible? What tools do you think we might need? Or is there something specific that you think would help you? I mean, the great thing about working with him is that all of these ideas are are kind of bandied about and everybody works on them together. So we can come up with a plan as a team and be prepared as possible. So, yeah, there’s quite a bit, but it’s mostly just visiting the locations. Vince and I hanging out at the locations and talking through shots and coming up with ideas. And then, eventually he kind of puts it all down on paper.
Courtesy of Apple TV
Do you ever say I want to film a beautiful shot like Carol running in front of Air Force One, but I have to make it unsettling because that’s the show? Do you try to balance the two?
Yeah, I think a lot of that is kind of comes baked in and also is really sealed with the soundtrack and the music and stuff like that. But yeah, there’s a very deliberate kind of approach to again, making them a lot of the frames kind of big and hollow and letting all of the element’s kind of interact so that the actor can do what kind of comes to them and that scene the Air Force One thing was very visually effects involved, as you can imagine. The art department built that opening, but that was it. We had the nose landing gear and that chunk of the plane and the rest of it was all green screen and done by Visifex, which was absolutely amazing.
They did a fantastic job. But so it’s frame choice and and talking to Vince about what his ideas are. I build a lot of these things in 3D sometimes with a program called SketchUp so that we can look… at shots and kind of frame size and talk through because it’s one thing to say I want to be wide inside the airplane or I want to be wide at the VLA, but what does that really mean?
I know season two is coming. Have you had any discussions with them about what season two is going to look like? Have they given you any sort of timeline, like of when maybe principle would start?
I’m afraid not. I don’t know. I don’t know much about it at all. There’s been some rumors, but that’s about it. And and I don’t think I’m even at liberty to talk about it.
Okay, are you going to be around in Albuquerque [where Pluribus films] anytime soon?
Well, I’m in Albuquerque all the time because I live here so that makes it easy.
