HUNTERS, Rexer, SIGMA, RED
By Adam Noyes
William Rexer is a cinematographer on the hit Amazon Al Pacino show, Hunters. The show is shot with SIGMA Full Frame High Speed Prime and the RED Monstro 8K VV camera.
FDTimes.com recently posted a great workflow outlining Rexer’s work on Hunters with RED. Check out some highlights from the article, below
Jon Fauer: How long were you working on HUNTERS?
William Rexer: There are 10 episodes and they averaged about 12 days per episode. Fred Elmes shot the pilot. He started slightly before we began the series. Due to scheduling issues, we were all working at the same time. Essentially, we were completing episode eight as the pilot was finishing production. It wasn’t like a traditional show where the pilot was done first, analyzed as to what worked and didn’t work, and then the individual episodes began. Instead, it was all happening at once. Most of HUNTERS was shot in the New York area. Ten days were done in Budapest. We finished shooting last March.
Were there different directors?
There were six directors: Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, Wayne Yip, Millicent Shelton, Michael Uppendahl, Nelson McCormick, Dennie Gordon. And three DPs: Fred Elmes, Tim Norman and myself. I did most of the work on five episodes and some of the work on the others. Tim shot four episodes and he and I worked closely together, planning, talking about our scenes and discussing dailies.
Who established the look to maintain continuity throughout?
It was interesting. While Fred and Alfonso were doing the pilot, we were prepping episodes two and three at that same time. David Weil, the creator, wanted Wayne Yip and me to come up with our own look independently. Our producing director, Nelson McCormick and co-show runner, Nikki Tuscano, pushed Wayne and me to expand the look and our references.
I wanted to respect what Fred and Alfonso were doing. I did look at their dailies, but at the same time, David Weil wanted us to embrace more of the comic book elements. We were given license to go our own way and to create a new look for the show starting with episode two. Fred and Alfonso pretty much live on two lenses: a 40 mm and a 50 mm throughout. On the other hand, we mixed it up using a wider selection of lenses and more wide lenses. We were not afraid to introduce 14mm and 20mm. We found ourselves on the 28mm more often than not.
Why do you say comic book style?
It was not based on a comic book. David grew up hearing stories from his grandmother who was a Holocaust survivor. As a little kid, the only ways he could understand these horrific stories were in terms of comic books because he was a comic nerd and saw it in abstract images of good versus evil. He said, “When I heard those stories, that was the only way I could make sense of them.”
That was the direction he wanted us to go in. It was a delicate dance, but we definitely used some of that language of superheroes opposing evil. We looked at Tarantino’s JACKIE BROWN and Marvel action hero films.
To establish the look, I gathered reference material for every scene and had conversations with the director. On episode two and three, Wayne Yip and I sat down with David Weil and Nikki Toscano presented how and where we were were going to take it.
HUNTERS takes place in 1977 with flashbacks to the 1940s. The present day, 1977, has a bit more contrast. I slightly desaturated skin tones and added some cyan into the shadow areas and it’s on the edge of being noir. When we go into the 1940s, there are black and white elements as well. Probably our biggest reference for that was Spielberg’s MUNICH.
Explain the lighting style.
The lighting style is exaggerated naturalism. All the lighting is justified in terms of sources, but at the same time, heightened. The saturation and colors are slightly over the top, but not too far. The camera work is “active participant” meets exaggerated action thriller. We wanted to make sure that the audience was going for a ride with us. I wanted to make sure that the audience experienced the scene as a participant.
It reminded me a little of Kodachrome.
Yes. It leans slightly towards Kodachrome. For the most part, I was thinking of a 5248 film stock look where the blacks were truly black. The reds have a particular color. Of course, the reenactments in Auschwitz are a different story. We created three in-camera LUTs for the show: two for the recreations and one LUT that was consistent all the way through for the 5248 type of look.