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Mad Men is a two-camera show, but Abraham strove to find unique ways to use the B unit — he wanted to avoid simply “spraying down” a scene with additional footage. “I’m not particularly fond of getting shots just because we can,” he says. “I want shots from B that work as part of the coverage plan.” Abraham shot Mad Men on Kodak Vision2 500T 5218 and used Primo prime lenses ranging from 35mm to 75mm, as well as a 4:1 Primo zoom. “We shot well over a million feet of 5218 on The Sopranos every season, so I know it intimately,” he says. “It holds the blacks really well and has great detail and excellent color rendition. “I think the nuances of film stocks can get a little lost in post because there’s so much creative latitude in what you can do on the back end,” he continues. “I timed all the shows I shot because that’s when you make sure your intentions on the set are carried through. It’s important for the crew to be onboard with what I’m doing, but it’s just as important for the colorist — in this case, Steve Porter at Encore in Hollywood — to be onboard as well.” While the first episode of Mad Men was being prepped in Los Angeles, Abraham was shooting another pilot in New York, so the Mad Men team had to use the series pilot as a guide. “I was constantly e-mailing and talking to [series production designer] Dan Bishop,” recalls Abraham. “It turned out they had a poorly transferred DVD of the pilot, so their references for colors and other visual elements were off. Dan was trying to up the contrast in the sets because he was looking at something bad. The cinematographer’s job isn’t done when the camera is turned off. It’s vital to make sure your work is maintained through to the master.” As a rule, Abraham avoided filtration on the lens, even on Mad Men’s frequent flashbacks. “By its very nature, a flashback is a stylistic conceit that calls attention to itself, and imbuing it with a special look is not something I like to do. Camera placement and point of view are of utmost importance in flashbacks.” The sets were designed to be dolly-friendly, even without laying track. “Steadicam and handheld work didn’t feel appropriate to the visual grammar of that time, and that aesthetic didn’t mesh with our classic approach,” says Abraham. Abraham shot the pilot and first four episodes of the series, setting a template that was later followed by cinematographers Frank DeMarco; Steve Mason, ASC, ACS; and Bill Roe, ASC. “On any series, there’s a visual grammar that has to be maintained from show to show, and the cinematographer and production team usually provide that continuity while the directors come and go,” observes Abraham. “On this show, the directors were happier coming than going! Mad Men brings out the best in directors because it’s clearly not just another TV show.” — Rob Feld
Desperate Housewives With its tree-lined streets, manicured lawns and habitually sunny skies, Wisteria Lane seems the very model of the upper-middle-class American suburb. But beneath this tony surface lurk mystery and infidelity, secrets and lies, gossip and scandal, nearly all of which is played with tongue-in-cheek humor. Even the show’s title, Desperate Housewives, suggests a wry attitude. “Douglas Sirk with a comic touch” is how cinematographer Lowell Peterson, ASC describes the primetime soap opera, now in its fourth season on ABC. Peterson reveres Sirk, whose classical Hollywood melodramas were as much ironic social critiques as
they were arch romances about misguided — or, better yet, forbidden — love. Although Desperate Housewives is played primarily for comedy, it, too, carries a healthy dose of social commentary. In lighting the show’s leading ladies, Peterson draws inspiration from Russell Metty, ASC, Sirk’s longtime cameraman, whose luminous close-ups captured what Peterson calls “the inner life of women.” A longtime fan of classic cinematography, with its emphasis on the human face, Peterson was a perfect fit for ABC’s hit show. “In TV in general, the close-up is the money shot,” he notes. His approach includes large, broad sources placed close to the actresses, wraparound lighting tailored to each face, plus contrast and highlights in other parts of the frame. The drawback to big-source soft lighting is, of course, that “it tends to slobber all over the place,” laughs Peterson, who sat down with AC while waiting for the Hollywood writers’ strike to be resolved. “You can’t control it with flags; you can’t cut a big 8-by source; but you can grid it so it concentrates on what you want to light. And because it’s soft, you can bring it around and it’s still flattering on the face. Instead of front-lighting an actress with a big grid [that would] destroy the back wall, I’ll bring it around so it’s lighting the side wall you can’t see. The grid keeps it off the wall you do see.” Barger-Baglites, which were already in use on the set when Peterson joined the show, prove quite useful. “I’d never seen them before and instantly fell in love with them,” says the cinematographer. “They aren’t very deep; they have either three bulbs or six bulbs; and we put big Chimeras on them, 3 feet across for the 3-Lite and 4 feet across for the 6-Lite. We put metal grids on the front of that to direct the light.” Peterson was pleased to “inherit” another asset that was already in place when he came aboard the show, gaffer Lon Thompson. “Lon is wonderful, very innovative, and as soon as he saw that I was into big, broad source-lighting, he found all these great tools. One was the Litepanels Mini, which makes an exceptionally nice eyelight; you can dial it up and down and it won’t change color. “Litepanels also manufactures 1-by-1-foot panels, and we use a large number of them for key light on interiors,” he continues. “They’re very thin, about an inch thick, and we use 2-by-2 frames so we can put four of them together. You can hang them, stick them on a Baby stand, or attach them to a wall with Velcro. They dim with no color shift. We carry both tungsten and daylight varieties.” A favorite unit for exteriors is the SoftSun 3.5K Soft Par, a soft daylight source that serves as fill, liner and even key light. The fixture is light enough to sit on a Junior stand. The crew has nicknamed it “Jiffy Pop” because it resembles a fully popped bag of the microwave popcorn. Peterson says the show’s generous lighting package, provided by Universal Electric, is larger than anything he worked with on previous shows. (His credits include Six Feet Under, Star Trek: The Next Generation and Profiler.) “I still try to use less expensive stuff when possible,” he notes. “For example, I use chicken coops on stage exteriors rather than space lights.”
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