This episode of Indy Mogul is brought to
you by Squarespace.
All of the extras are dancers? How does a shot like this even get shot? It's so seamless now that you don't--
because your brain goes like "Oh." Half the series
one of my electricians is dressed as a
lamp operators. What did you do about the
hard light? This was hard-- For close-ups and
things like that? It's just hard in the
close-ups all right.
What's going on Indy Mogul today I'm here with Emmy winning David Mullen, ASC the cinematographer behind
the show of "Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" Maisel
is coming back next month so today we're
gonna do a walk-through of the camera
choices, the lens choices, the lighting, and
then also walk through a couple of
scenes and how they were actually
accomplished. How was the experience of
shooting "Marvelous Mrs. Maisel"
It's an extremely fun shown to work on, a bit
exhausting but fun. The big issue is
just what is the period look for the
show they wanted to be vibrant -
energetic and lively but still feel like
something of the aesthetics of the 50s
in terms of color schemes and stuff so a
lot of it was about looking at
historical reference combined with
period photography, advertisements are a big
thing, movies to work out the color
schemes and things but camera wise I
felt like the Alexa would give us the
most film ish quality shooting digital
we ended up at Panavision
lenses and I chose primo lenses because
I wanted to use fairly low flare modern
lenses because we do so much camera work
that constantly looks into lights and
windows and I have to do 360 degrees
shots on location that if a lens flares
too much then it could be distracting
over the actors and I could control that
better with filters I just been using
the Hollywood black magics for several years
very familiar with these filters trouble
is that there occasionally still a shot
where you're shooting into such a bright
light or bright window or light hitting
the lens that you see some weird ring or
some sort of strange glow I tested
various diffusion filters the best were
the Tiffen black diffusion effects
filters so I use those when I have
bright lights or bright windows so
sometimes I will mix and match filters
if I want more of a hazy glow and less
of the blurry glow I would I would play
around with the types of filters. Amy
doesn't want tight shots so even though
we're moving around in tight spaces she
wants to keep it like waist up so that
tends to push you in there with wider
angle lenses we'd go 24 on the wider
shots we use the 30 a lot
coverage although when we get into the
performances with multiple cameras I go
to zoom lenses often. Let's break into
one of these performances right now you
start with the first scene let's play the clip.
Oh this is the opening of the
pilot episode of "Marvelous Mrs. Maisel"
it's a flashback to the day of Midge's
wedding to Joel. ["Because fitting into this
dress required no solid food for three
straight weeks who does that I do a day
is perfect it's like a dream or
nightmare if you're my father."] So it sets
up a lot of the tone of the show her
talking in front of a microphone being
the most obvious one so we went for this
Doctor Zhivago it's winter ice palace
theme look but I didn't want to light
the actors with blue light so it's a
square room right here centre door like
this and there's a door in the
background and those windows on this
side and there's some little windows on
this side so I put a square lighting
balloon right over here. And this just
floated up with helium right above her
right?
I had to move it around a little because
what I've learned with top light is that
if you're lighting a person especially
an actress that you wanted to look
attractive you don't want them under the
center you want them on the edge you
want them standing here so that they're
slightly front toplit rather-- So some of
this light can kind of come here and
fill in those facts not to toppy
because the balloon went this way her
parents are sitting back here and her
friends and family are all farther from
the center of the balloon I had to hide
a few Lekos around the room. So these
you probably put them right here and they're
bouncing into the ceiling and then
bouncing back down. Yeah, it's also four
chandeliers basically doing the corners
of the room and then they added some
chandeliers on the stage hidden in the
beam of the stage I just I hung two
daylight key no flaws so they put a
bluish soft top light on the
the band. And this is just natural
daylight coming in? You know I might have
had a little bit of HMI bounce to add to
them as the light change because I did
have some mix of Sun and then no Sun
knowing that the next sort of flashbacks
would be warm I wanted to keep this on
the cold side so you know that was the
basic approach to the wedding they
basically said they didn't want a golden
honeycomb sepia tone look for this show
even set in the past so I have to be
very careful about what scenes I choose
to be warm that's why if I have a lot of
warm scenes in the show I will try to
punctuate it with a seam lit with some
blue light I'd say most of time is a
single-camera show because we move the
camera so much yeah but when we get in
these crowd scenes and performance
scenes where she's in front of a mic it
becomes a multi camera show where we
have two to three cameras running just
trying to get as much as we can within
the time we have
okay so montage that opens episode 4
which is the day she moves out of her
apartment it match cuts shots of her the
day she moved in with the day she moves
out and at some point I just committed
to feeling like the day she moves out
she'd be kind of cold and overcast and
the day she's her happy members should
be warm and golden so knowing that I
knew that even though we matched the
angles there would be a shift in color
when we crossed dissolved from the past
of the present but then we climax with a
shot that had to be completely seamless
where were we she were circling her
during a New Year's Eve party and then
as we're circling her suddenly the room
is completely empty and it's the day
she's moved out and then now the
apartment is completely empty in the
state I'm Amy said when we Circle her I
wanted to transition to the present and
not see the transition I wanted to be as
invisible as possible
let's yeah wait wait wait we're doing I
told everyone that one more time okay a
party so this was shot before lunch yeah
and then right here we've repeated the
move and so how are you going to hide
that transition issues why change the
color change even things like I said you
know if she's wearing one outfit and one
seen another and the other you're gonna
see the outfit change you're gonna see
her hair if it's good you know what she
describes essentially as a morph right
so we're gonna morph from one shot to
the other and make it as invisible as
possible but then you have to start
thinking what's going to change her
clothes are gonna change your hair it's
gonna change the walls are gonna change
it's a moving shot so I try to have the
moment a transition happened the moment
there was a blank wall behind her head
so you wouldn't see the furniture
magically disappear in the shot you have
the perfect moment happens to be a rage
and so we end up having the redesign her
party dress so that it was a similar in
design to her moving date outfit so you
wouldn't see sleeves disappear like go
from a sleeveless dress to a sleeve
dress the two outfits are similar enough
her hairstyle is similar enough but even
then I still had to deal with the fact
that we go from a night scene to a day
scene even though it was a day soon and
she would be lit more from the windows I
had an overhead soft top light for the
night party scene that I kept on for the
day scene and we actually shot the day
scene right after lunch because the
visual effects supervisor was worried
that we would have too many changes if
we shot them on different days and it's
something that normally would do with
motion control to have a perfect match
dissolves no way to do this with motion
control so I had to be a Steadicam
essentially we shot to the past shot and
then we played it back on the Steadicam
monitor with an overlay so the Steadicam
operator Jim McConkey could line up the
walls and the furniture and the
fireplace behind her head as best he
could and then after he sort of practice
it enough he just you didn't do every
take with an overlay the visual effects
Leslie Foster Robson had to steal bits
and pieces of each take to get the
mantlepiece and everything to line up it
wasn't just a simple straight morph but
it's so seamless now that you don't use
your brain goes like Oh
that is crazy here we go in the pilot
you see this big Steadicam move like the
Goodfellas where you're out on the
street and you follow someone you end up
going through the door you see the whole
room you see a band playing on stage and
you follow Mitch all the way up to this
bar counter here a lot of people today
like soft lighting you know it's more
flattering we shot the Gaslight
originally in the pilot in a black box
theater space that was in these Village
Gaslight you know it was a real
historical place and we had reference
photos but the reference photos were all
like shot with flash photography they
have no feeling for what the lighting
might have been like I have to like the
audience have to like the bar area and
have to light the stage but it
essentially it's a raised seating area
mm-hmm and there's a stage area with a
piano mm-hmm this room has these kind of
acorn lights they're just like a six or
eight of them in the room that sort of
give you a general warm yeah but they're
dimmed down so they don't really do much
other than put a little dim fill light
on everyone all through the room there's
a there was a grid you know pipe grid
that I could hang from a me was very
concerned that she didn't even though I
had all these lights in this room that
she didn't want the room itself be too
bright she wanted the stage to be bright
and the bodies to be in the dark
I needed some lights on the audience
because partly we have dialogue in the
audience sometimes but dimmed way down
so I tried to keep him backlit sort of
just etched out the question was when
she started performing is do I put a
follow spot dead center or do I do it
from the corners you know 80 to 90
percent of the series it was always this
one here so we had a leak oh and half
the series and one of my electricians is
dressed as a lamp operators what did you
do about the hard light in terms of
this was hard yeah it was just hard well
for close-ups and things like that's
just hard in the close-ups alright Amy
wanted to do a 360 degree crane move
that was not a dead overhead circle but
she said it was more like a ferris wheel
ride that was high at one end and low at
the others of the camera is is doing
this weird loop from high to low as they
dance
this is a flashback and it's not a
fantasy so I thought well it's a dance
number he takes her dancing it kind of
cool if though there was some colored
lighting but I can't justify it it's not
a fantasy all right this happened around
it was real
well after we were scouted the same he
said could we have the light just
changed like to some colored lighting
like you guys were on the same way
normally we got camera circles yeah the
best way to like people is from the
center of the circle so then the
camera's not shadowing them but the
trouble is the circle has been created
with a crane arm doing this so I knew
the arm of the crane would cross the
center and I couldn't like them from the
center so I had to like them from under
the high point of the crane wherever the
camera is the highest is where the light
is hitting them so hopefully the arm is
not throwing a shadow so this is 7th
Avenue I think and then so the diner is
here in the middle and so we had a whole
scene in the diner and then they come
out and he stands the middle of street
and she's on the sidewalk and as a kiss
week attach the movi to the technical
crane so you guys are literally alive
rigging it and a magnet system so we
attach it with a magnet to the technic
crane and we put a safety chain on it so
the Technic rain is here on the sidewalk
like this so the move goes high here and
then it swings around and then drops
down back to here again low so it's the
arm swings through the center of the
circle cameras looking back at the arm
yeah you know to like this for a dance
number where the light actually changes
from white to pink at the start of the
shot I have a one Condor with white
light lighting the whole block and then
next to it I have another Condor with a
pink light on it that fades up and way
over here I had another Condor just to
put some fill like this direction on
them it's the key here that ones here
that yeah the light on this Condor is
still lower than this camera position so
the light itself is getting under the
lens and lighting them so so it lights
it from underneath if they had been the
same height then what happened is this
high point I would have had a big shadow
of the camera on on everything here so
this light has to be lower than this
camera at this point
and now before we move on I want to talk
to you about our amazing sponsor and
that is Squarespace who actually helped
us make our beautiful Indy mogul website
and could potentially help you out as
well maybe you just graduated from film
school maybe you found photography to be
near new passion in life whatever the
case may be you're gonna need some kind
of visual portfolio to show people all
the work that you're capable of you're
gonna save a ton of money actually gonna
come out with a modern-looking webpage I
actually also really like the video
backgrounds feature in order to do that
all you have to do is actually just
import a video into a custom overlay
stretch it as far as you can and boom it
is that simple
so head on over to Squarespace comm /
Andy mode start a 14-day trial and it'll
actually get 10% off of your first
purchase of a website or domain thank
you again to Squarespace and now back to
the episode Amy likes to hire dancers to
play extras some of these shots are so
complicated that we need extras that can
time themselves to the camera so she'll
bring in our choreographer Marguerite it
makes sense it makes perfect sense
they're dancing to a beat they're
dancing to a rhythm the shot is so fast
if you wanna
the story point is that she's been after
the first season where she gets
confronted in the altman's she gets
demoted so we begin the second season
she's now been demoted to the
switchboard room in the basement is said
to be choreographed for a couple days
they were practicing in the set and then
we saw her her cyl and then had to
figure out how to move the camera with
her and we know it going with the movi
on a stick
it's he's holding it on the end of a
pole but he's still holding there with
his arms
yeah that's Larry McConkey and Jim
macaques on the wheels operating while
arias on the pole because a movi move is
really a two-person job
two people are in sync with each other
we started high and we we push down on
the basket immediately tilt up fast yeah
and then follow the letter basket around
until we enter the room and as we enter
the room the question was which side of
the heads do we do the hardest thing and
go between the heads and each person had
leaned out of the way of the movies I
had to have art department install these
light bulbs along the switchboard so
they would have light in their eyes and
I decided to gel the fluorescence above
them with some blue green gel so they
would have this kind of cyan quality and
then the light bulbs have created a
color contrast again because otherwise
the only light was the fluorescence in
the center of the room which was
throwing a shadow on their faces how are
you not worried about the the movie
blocking the light glass the other
problem is like I was worried I would
see a shadow of the movi crossing every
light bulb on their face because these
are the labels here they're cuddly it
didn't each person has to get it away of
the camera but didn't get right back
into position again she's smoking the
whole time - David what on and this is a
case where I had to switch the filters
because I told you that sometimes with
lights in the frame you get a weird halo
from the Hollywood black man yeah so I
had to use the tiffin black diffusion
effects filter because you're shooting
these like yeah as I passed each light
bulb they were so big and frame and I
got this strange halo glow from the
filter he's interesting but it's also
distracting I don't have the audience to
look at the LEDs yeah sometimes you get
a weird glowing and your eye goes to it
and then
looking at the actor they're looking at
the strange halo it was like it's
honestly like the Super Bowl of camera
movements yeah it's like you have the
best talent with the best tools with the
wildest craziest vision choreographed a
dancer and save it thank you so much for
joining us seriously the best being able
to learn a little bit about the behind
the scenes process I know Mazal comes
back soon too as well summer syncs
December 6th okay so one of those places
coming back number six I first of all I
can't wait to see it as well because we
have a crazy shot in the first step to
southern calling me asking me how again
thank you to Squarespace for sponsoring
this video start designing a portfolio
that you can be proud of by going to
squarespace.com slash Indy mogul which
will also give you 10% off of that first
purchase of a website or domain and a
free 14-day trial and if you want to
know more about David's career in
cinematography we also have a podcast
discussion with David that we're also
gonna include an inscription down below
thanks so much for watching we'll get
you guys like that at one point we go so
low that we actually look right into the
condo our scissors in the middle of this
buck and visual-effects turned it into a
moon which was great it turned that that
was roses relived yeah that is the she
turned delight into a moon oh it looks
great I totally believe it
