Cinematographer Jas Shelton discusses his work on season 2 of Homeland (Amazon Prime), which brought him together again with director/showrunner Kyle Patrick Alvarez. The two had previously teamed on the feature films C.O.G. and The Stanford Prison Experiment.
Like he did for those two feature collaborations, Shelton created a “visual language” specific to the story and characters–in the case of Homecoming, the nonlinear narrative of Jackie (Janelle Monáe), a woman whose impaired memory is the fulcrum of the plot.
Shelton relied on wider, more deliberate angles and longer takes in early episodes as we unravel the mystery of what happened to Jackie, and tighter, more frenetic hand-held shots in the later episodes. He also played with POV–essentially, going from an objective to subjective standpoint that was super character-driven. As Shelton puts it: “With Janelle, we used a probing and slowly moving camera style to get inside her head as she goes on her journey of discovery. The idea was to never let the camera settle until she comes face to face with Audrey Temple (Hong Chau) at the end of the second episode.” He also made effective use of negative space in the frame, a counterpoint to the split screens the editors deployed later in post.
Alvarez also appears in this video, casting further light on the cinematography and storytelling in Homecoming.
Shelton is nominated in the Outstanding Cinematography for a Single-Camera Series (Half-Hour) on the strength of his work on the “Giant” episode of Homecoming.
