Death looms large both in the narrative and in the development of Under the Bridge, the Hulu limited series based on the book of the same title by Rebecca Godfrey. For one, the story centers on the tragic passing of a 14-year-old girl. And Godfrey, the author whom show creator/executive producer Quinn Shephard worked closely with to shape the series, died before production on the pilot began. Yet despite all this, Shephard described her experience on Under the Bridge and the form the show took as being profoundly life-affirming. Similarly feeling the value of life as it flowed through the project were showrunner/writer Samir Mehta and cinematographer Checco Varese, ASC.
This was due in large part to Godfrey’s talent as a storyteller. The real-life narrative dealt with the murder of a teenager, Reena Virk (portrayed by Vritika Gupta), a Canadian girl and child of Indian immigrants. Her passing became a mystery that gripped Canada and came to underscore the epidemic of teen bullying. Shephard hadn’t heard the story before but fell in love with Godfrey’s writing style, observing that the prototypical crime novel would typically skew towards violence and sexploitation. But instead Godfrey penned a book which Shephard described as “a poetic portrayal of characters and a town,” bringing humanity to the tragedy.
Mehta felt a similar poetry in the book, observing that when we hear of Reena’s death, the immediate reaction is rage over such a massive injustice as several girls are suspected of killing her. Human nature has you wanting people to pay for what they did, related Mehta, adding that such rage spurs on a quest for vengeance–but that was not at all Godfrey’s approach to the story. Mehta described Godfrey as taking a “compassionate and restorative” path. “This was not the traditional ‘catch the bad guys and put them away’ approach. Children are at the center of it and there’s a beautiful amount of empathy”–for Reena as she copes with a family she feels doesn’t understand her, for her parents who suffer an unspeakable loss, even for the “cool” girls whom Reena hooks up with in a desperate bid to gain acceptance.
Varese, who lensed two episodes including the pilot of Under the Bridge, was also drawn to the spirit behind the story. “I didn’t want to do a story about death,” he stressed. “I wanted to do a story about life, this young girl. As much as it is about the fact that Reena was killed, this series is about her life, a truncated life that to me made a huge impact. I have a 16-year-old daughter and it got me to thinking about what happened to Reena in this idyllic island [the city of Victoria on Vancouver Island in British Columbia]. I’m a former news cameraman and war correspondent so anything that has to do with the human state, humanity, human suffering and happiness drives me intellectually, emotionally and artistically.”
Deeply impactful for Shephard was getting to know Godfrey only to learn that the author was terminally ill. It became a race against the clock to develop and adapt her book for the screen. Godfrey didn’t live to see the final series but still contributed significantly to it during over two years of development, noted Shephard. A driving creative force for Shephard was to do justice to both Reena and Godfrey, telling the former’s story and being true to the latter’s depiction and insights into it. Shephard had gotten close to Godfrey–on an emotional level and in terms of geography, moving near the author’s home in upstate New York so that they could meet regularly in person.
Shephard made Godfrey a character in the series, portrayed by Riley Keough. In the show , we find out that Godfrey grew up in Victoria where she had a rebellious childhood. As a teen, she formed a deep friendship–and perhaps more–with another girl. Godfrey left her and Victoria to pursue bright big city lights but returns years later during the mysterious disappearance of Reena–and winds up pursuing the story. Godfrey also reunites with the girl she befriended in her youth who is now grown up and a police officer, Cam Bentland (portrayed by Lily Gladstone). Bentland investigates Reena’s disappearance which eventually becomes a murder case. Through the perspectives of Godfrey and Bentland, we start to learn about Reena and the peer group girls she sought attention from–residents in a foster home facility called Seven Oaks. In order to become a resident with them, Reena falsely accuses her father of sexual abuse. Along the way we gain insight into universal truths about adolescence as these girls grapple with life, family, friendship, crime, morality or the lack thereof, and becoming young women.
Mehta said that fulfilling Godfrey’s spirit and vision for Under the Bridge was akin to “threading” the proverbial needle. The true story carried “immense responsibilities” toward the real people involved. So too was the need to tell a compelling story for contemporary TV audiences without at any time sensationalizing or exploiting the tragedy. Mehta also had to grapple with a dynamic he hadn’t dealt with before. In the past, he found it relatively easy to be detached from subject matter–to stand apart from the story and write it. Under the Bridge was different. “I didn’t expect it to be so emotionally consuming,” Mehta shared, adding that he and his creative colleagues would have “strange dreams….It seeps into your real life in a way. You’re in it deeply and it never lets you go.”
But that life affirmation touched upon earlier–and a sense of purpose to tell Reena’s story–served as impetus to stick with it. In that process, you learn to trust your instincts, observed Mehta. For example, he and Shephard felt they had to cast true to age for the children in the story. So they bucked the so-called conventional wisdom that warns against that, coping with the production difficulties of having that many minors who have limits on their working hours in front of the camera. The youngsters who were cast came through with stellar performances.
Shephard noted that the cast came together as one. She credited in large part Keough and Gladstone for being “kind people who stand for what the show stands for. You couldn’t ask for better adult leads. They were compassionate about working with young people.” Shephard said the youngsters benefited from a mix of rehearsal and improv, a key dynamic being that the teen actors were invited into the conversation the same way as adult characters. Their voices were heard–which allowed the characters they portrayed to be heard as well.
Varese too had praise for the talent and leadership provided by Keough and Gladstone. He is no stranger to Keough, having worked with her before on Daisy Jones & the Six. It was coincidence that he got to work with Keough again but he was elated at the prospect of doing so. “My heart started pounding when I heard Riley was in the cast [of Under the Bridge]. She’s an extraordinary thespian, colleague and collaborator, very human in everything she does.”
Under the Bridge marked the first time Varese collaborated with Gladstone and he hopes it’s not the last. She portrays Bentland, said Varese, as “a warm, strong character who faces her own personal journey in trying to find out what happened to Reena.” Bentland faces misogyny, racism, jokes from colleagues, doubts from her police chief stepfather and police officer stepbrother yet perseveres. It’s a masterful performance, assessed Varese, as Cam Bentland develops a deep understanding of what happened to Reena on “this idyllic island” where seemingly “nothing happens.” As Gladstone starts to scratch the surface of this tranquil paradise, she reveals stark truths.
Also helping to get at that truth, continued Varese, was executive producer Geeta Vasant Patel, who directed the pilot which he shot. (The other episode lensed by Varese was directed by Shephard.) Patel, whose family lineage is from India like Reena, brought an understanding of and respect for that culture with a critical eye on its effect on a teenage girl. Having that wisdom brought to bear on the first episode was most beneficial, helping to set a tone for the entire series. Varese noted that he knows too well that having a female director with a cultural background can be a godsend. He is married to Patricia Riggen, a Mexican director for whom he’s shot several projects, including The 33, a feature film which earned him a Golden Frog nomination at Camerimage.
Speaking of his family, Varese recalled returning home after weeks of shooting Under the Bridge. It was late at night and his daughter was asleep. He hugged her and started crying. I hope the audience gets that. Hug the people you love, be humane and be a human being. Be in touch with your feelings and the feelings of your loved ones.” Varese affirmed that Under the Bridge pays homage to Reena’s life–and “to the beauty that could have been and went away.”
Varese’s body of work also includes such features as Them, It Chapter Two, and the limited drama series Dopesick. For the latter he won an Emmy Award in 2020 for his lensing of the “Breakthrough Pain” episode.
Shephard is known for the feature films Blame and Not Okay. Blame garnered her an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best First Screenplay in 2019.
And Mehta’s TV series exploits have included serving as a writer on Narcos, a writer and co-executive producer on Tell Me Lies, and a writer and producer on Fear the Walking Dead.
Jonathan Nolan, Howard Cummings
An adaptation of the popular video game franchise with the same name, Fallout (Prime Video) is far more than just the survival thriller it appears to be on the surface. Yes, it depicts the insanity of nuclear war, and then takes us to the ongoing aftermath some 219 years later, introducing us to a society living inside vaults which are part of a complex network of underground bunkers, separate from an above-ground world ravaged by radiation and home to mutated forms of life.
But the post-apocalyptic tale takes on varied new dimensions in Fallout–perhaps most notably a dark humor, satirical and absurd at times. It’s a comedy with serious implications, bringing the spirit of the Fallout video games to the TV screen. In adapting the game, director/executive producer Jonathan Nolan (aka Jonah)–co-creator of HBO’s acclaimed Westworld and thus no stranger to a dystopian theme–instinctively knew that in order to make a surreal, other worldly, nightmare of a comedy truly relatable and relevant, he needed to have the show grounded in reality, particularly in the way it was made, looking to accomplish as much as possible in-camera, going on location, and adroitly deploying LED volume stage technology. The latter included, for example, bringing to the high tech stage some original footage captured by a crew in the South African country of Namibia. Thus a fictional setting reflecting a world decimated by war and nuclear fallout became all the more real through wild desert scenes from a land–specifically a defunct mining town buried in sand–that in real life is both treacherous and eerily beautiful. And unlike a green screen solution with some sand heaped upon it, this approach gave actors something to react to and interact with
Nolan grew up watching his older brother, Christopher Nolan, a recent Oscar and DGA Award winner for Oppenheimer, create with “an emphasis on practical filmmaking,” seeing him as a kid fashion stop-motion films in and around the family house on Super 8. Practical is the “natural order of things” in filmmaking, affirmed Jonathan Nolan who too often has seen production turned “upside down” by many with a “fix it in post” mentality rooted in sets with seemingly ubiquitous greenscreens.
Thus for Fallout, Nolan wanted to put production “right side up,” enabling actors to act, react and interact, generating performances that help provide the grounded reality needed to not only suspend disbelief but create belief. It’s one of the prime reasons that Fallout has resonated for viewers, making a surreal premise all too real, with comedic moments being funny because there’s a reality-based truth to them.
Among those helping Nolan to create that stirring reality was production designer Howard Cummings, his compatriot on Westworld. While eager to team again with Nolan, Cummings admitted having a reservation or two about taking on a project adapted from a video game that came with so much design to begin with. Cummings wondered “what am I going to do” with something so heavily designed already. “Am I going to feel good about that?” Thankfully, he kept an open mind, primarily “because of the script and Jonah’s ideas.” So Cummings “researched the shit out of it just like I would a period movie. Once I understood the game, I liked it so much and got very enthusiastic.” The production designer came away with a valuable lesson. “I learned not to pre-judge something that way. I can take something and make it my own even if somebody has designed the hell out of it. I can make it mine or the movie Jonah wanted it to be, taking it to the next level while keeping the scope, style and energy of it all.”
Most gratifying about the challenging set design and creation for Cummings was the reaction of the actors. He recalled “watching actors come on set and they just lit up.” Similarly Cummings was enthused to see Todd Howard, creator of the Fallout game series, walk into one of the constructed tunnels, rub the supports and exclaim, “I’m in the game!”
Nolan assessed that Cummings is always in the game when it comes to his work. “We share I think a number of sensibilities,” said Nolan. “We both enjoy to work–a lot. We like being there on the front. Anytime anything happens on set, he will be there with a shovel, a bucket. He’s putting finishing touches on every set. It’s not enough just to have a brilliant imagination. He has that commitment.”
That commitment has helped Cummings land five Emmy nominations–two for Westworld, two for The Knick, and one for Behind the Candelabra. He won for Behind the Candelabra in 2013 and The Knick in 2015.
Nolan has four Emmy nominations thus far, all for Westworld–two for Outstanding Drama Series, one for directing, another for writing.
Jonathan Freeman, ASC, Richard Donnelly, Danielle Dupree, Marc Fishman
The paths of Jonathan Freeman, ASC and Richard Donnelly first crossed–albeit only occasionally–on Game of Thrones for which the former served as a cinematographer and the latter as a camera operator. Fast forward to the current TV season and the two came together yet again, this time as collaborating DPs on 3 Body Problem (Netflix), the series based on the sci-fi novels of Chinese writer Liu Cixin, adapted by David Benioff, D.B. Weiss and Alexander Woo. Benioff and Weiss famously created Game of Thrones, the landmark series which during its run won a staggering 59 Emmy Awards.
Two of Freeman’s six career Emmy nominations were for Game of Thrones. He earned three nods for Boardwalk Empire, twice winning the Emmy. And his other nomination came for Defending Jacob.
Freeman and Donnelly teamed to shoot the first two episodes of 3 Body Problem–“Countdown” and “Red Coast,” directed by Derek Tsang–which helped to set the visual language and tone for the overall series, recently picked up for seasons two and three. Freeman started on the first two episodes, handing the baton to Donnelly to complete them. The two talked at length via Zoom as well as on phone calls to compare notes and exchange ideas in order to help realize what had been envisioned to best tell the story.
3 Body Problem springs from a fateful decision in 1960s’ China by a young female astrophysicist, Ye Wenjie (portrayed by Zine Tseng and in later years by Rosalind Chao). Her decision reverberates across space and time into the present day when the laws of nature inexplicably unravel, posing an existential threat to humanity which has to be confronted by five former scientist colleagues, known as the Oxford Five–Jin Cheng (portrayed by Jess Hong), Saul Durand (Joven Adepo), Auggie Salazar (Eiza Gonzalez), Jack Rooney (John Bradley) and Will Downing (Alex Sharp).
The narrative criss-crosses space, time and has the cinematographers dealing with multiple locations and worlds. One of those worlds is within the confines of a VR video game, which may carry clues to what has happened and what may unfold next. Still, the main drama takes place in real everyday life. There’s a normality to that which serves as a stark juxtaposition to the VR world as aliens are on a 400-year trek to invade our planet. However the aliens’ impact is still felt by humanity ahead of any invasion as they can switch the universe on and off, and even place a digital countdown in one of the scientist’s field of vision–not to mention her psyche.
Donnelly observed that “one of the great things” for him that came with 3 Body Planet was the “variance” of these “different worlds, different scenarios, different characters who all have something going on specific to themselves in their own worlds. We have an extraordinary story in an extraordinary world also set in this very ordinary world.” Visually this necessitated that the cinematographers deal with a creatively and logistically ambitious balancing act as they’d find themselves in far ranging settings–from shooting characters in coffee shops, down by the beach and then on some remarkable futuristic sets.
The VR game captures an evolving solar system that can wreak havoc and destruction on Earth. This VR game may hold a clue as to what prompted the shocking suicide of a scientific department staffer. The solar phenomenon depicted in the virtual game made lighting a prime concern in terms of how it would most effectively support the narrative. Freeman created complex LED SkyPanels, dubbed a large “wall of light,” that could define, manipulate and differentiate the lighting in this virtual world. The lighting had to be somewhat realistic, cast onto characters to make them appear integrated into a virtual world, covering the variance of time, space and dayparts from night to dawn, then into midday and back to night. Freeman said complex mapping was required to create the lighting programs. The light movement had to be on a massive scale, facilitating many ambitious sequences, including one in which 100 extras are running across a landscape.
Donnelly said that Freeman had designed and built his “wall of light” from scratch and it’s proven to be an integral part of the series. The interactive lighting helped immeasurably to put characters into a virtual world marked by sophisticated imagery and visual effects. “It was an idea I had presented quite early on before we started,” recalled Freeman who described it as a critical element that needed to work. Freeman experimented with a bunch of different versions, initially proved the concept behind it was correct and ultimately came up with a photo realistic solution in order to give the sense that the characters are in an actual lit environment. “It was essentially Jonathan’s brainchild,” said Donnelly, and it served to positively influence actors’ performances. Actors could react to the light with suns rising and setting, helping to make their performances relatable in that world–and ultimately relatable to audiences.
Freeman noted that the 3 Body Problem producers did a marvelous job of “casting” the cinematographers–himself, Donnelly, Martin Ahlgren and P.J. Dillon. Freeman observed that as a collective of DPs, all were “very much similar in our aesthetic approach to light, starting with a naturalism” that was attained in tandem with an expressionism. Beyond casting cinematographers who saw things similarly, continued Freeman, so too were they simpatico in their personalities and the way they worked with crews. “That’s fundamentally important,” noted Freeman, particularly for a show with “a big story” and “a long story” to tell. “You need a team that supports each other.”
Speaking of a supportive team, re-recording mixers Marc Fishman and Danielle Dupree built a rapport on successive projects, working on The Sympathizer and 3 Body Problem. Both Fishman and Dupree have Emmy pedigrees. Fishman has garnered seven Emmy nominations, winning twice–for John Adams in 2008 and The Last of Us in 2023. Dupree is a three-time Emmy nominee–for Laurel Canyon in 2020, WandaVision in ‘21 and Obi-Wan Kenobi last year.
Fishman and Dupree were drawn to the challenge of creating soundscapes for 3 Body Problem spanning real and virtual worlds. On the former score, the series itself opens in the 1960s during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. We’re thrust into a massive bloodthirsty crowd that’s gathered at Tsinghua University to witness the government’s torture of intellectuals, including a scientist. Adding to the brutality is that among those in the crowd is the daughter of that scientist who not only witnesses the death of her father–but his being condemned by her mother, also a scientist. The scene’s scale and scope are all encompassing–yet intimately personal in terms of the daughter (the aforementioned character of Ye Wenjie)–with Fishman recalling that he had some 65 tracks of dialogue to deal with, and Dupree around 100 effects tracks. The process of figuring out how to best do audio justice to that scene was just one of assorted such scenarios presented by different worlds depicted within 3 Body Problem–properly meshing elements of dialogue, music and sound effects.
“Every single episode had these jam-packed sequences,” said Dupree, noting that they often entailed major visual effects work and a stirring musical score by composer Ramin Djawadi. 3 Body Problem, she observed, required “shot-by-shot” decisions as to when music should lead on a particular shot or if sound effects should be the prime dynamic, the value of silence, and so on. This, shared Fishman, in turn required he and Dupree at times leaving each to their own work–knowing when to stay out of the way of each other, and then coming together, engaging in a back-and-forth dialogue.
When in the midst of working, you’re diving into the nuts and bolts of the process, bringing some artistic interpretation and/or style to what you’re doing, related Fishman. Beyond that, though, is the perspective gained after the fact when you see “a kind of postmortem” when the project gets out to the world at large. Fishman has found the feedback gratifying for a very big show with very big sequences and long stretches of dialogue. People are reacting to the show and the characters in such a way, said Fishman, that it reflects that “Danielle and I were able to serve the story with the sound and not get in the way of it…I’m really proud of what Danielle and I did.”
Dupree said that with all the audio considerations, ultimately she has to keep her eyes on the screen. She and Fishman have to be concerned “first and foremost on how we work with the narrative, pushing it forward and supporting it.” Dupree noted that 3 Body Problem helped her “to grow a lot as a storyteller.” And part of that growth is having “confidence in the creators–to let the writers and performers speak for themselves.” This can translate into giving more heed to “quiet moments” in the midst of so many sound-driven options.
This is the sixth installment of SHOOT’s weekly 16-part The Road To Emmy Series of feature stories. Nominations will be announced and covered on July 17. Creative Arts Emmy winners will be reported on September 7 and 8, and primetime Emmy ceremony winners will be covered on September 15.)
