How 'The Pitt's cinematographer created show's unique immersive style

And so it begins

I heard you say in another interview that if you weren't a cinematographer, you would have been a psychologist

Yes. What do you mean by that? And how did you become a cinematographer? I think people are so interesting, you know, and I think this is what I love about stories

I think personalities, choices, you know, lifestyle, everything is so intriguing to me

And I think I've always been interested by the psychological aspect of, you know, people and just digging into it

I got into cinematography because I just love, you know, stories in general

I used to like do little novels when I was a kid. And then I started to play with my parents' VHS camera and making films with friends

I think a lot of people started that way. But I just realized I was always the one filming it

I never wanted to be like in front or, you know, like I just wanted to be behind the camera the

whole time. And then in high school, I was in a major in science, but I took an option in cinema

and I had to make more films and learn to editing and all of that. And I just really loved it

you know. And what I loved about it is all the different approaches of characters, psychology

stories, and you get to experience a lot of that. And I think I got attracted to cinematography

too because in a way I felt I wanted to do everything when I was growing up uh I kept

I wanted to be a doctor and I wanted to be making clothes and like all these things I was very

undecided and then I realized behind the lens you can experience it all and I think that's really

the satisfaction I took from cinematography and when I made that choice is I felt complete on

getting to explore all the things I wanted to do I get to do it behind the camera But yeah the psychological aspect of it and I always say cinematographer visual psychologist

because we have to understand the psychology of the character and really dig into it to understand how to visually create the right atmosphere

and pass it through to the audience. And I think that's such a great combination of art and psychology

Absolutely. I've never heard it put quite that way, but I completely agree with the idea that it's like it's the visual of psychology is so is such a such a great, great way to look at it

It is an art. It's a visual art form. Do you have inspirations that they pull from going into a show like this

And what were they for the pit? Yes. When I read the scripts, it was so you were so dragged into them

I read the two first script before I pitched for the show and, and it felt, you know, so intense and you were really leaving it inside the script

So when I started to think about it and visuals, I was thinking it needs to be immersive

You need to be in the middle of it and actually leaving the shift yourself as an audience

And, you know, I was thinking about film that kind of made you feel experienced that and something, you know, quite recent was 1917, I should say Roger Dickens

and that was a big inspiration for the show because you are in the trenches with the soldiers

and you follow them like you're experiencing it with them. And I was like, the soldiers in the trenches

need to be the doctors in the ER and that's what it needs to feel like. So I know it's more steady, it is more steady cam

We are fully handled on the show but the emotion aspect of it was really, you know

where I felt like that was a big inspiration for me. Amazing, yeah, that movie blew me away

And I got the opportunity and he, Roger Deakins is one of my heroes and I got to agree with him for 1917 and hearing him talk about it in the same way of it like being immersive and also obviously having the like one shot feel of it was game changing I think

I know that you used the ZG rig. That's correct. It feels handheld and it feels chaotic in the way that you want handheld to feel and in the moment and in the action

But it has that smoothness of the Steadicam still where I think the way you put in the other interviews that you didn't want the footsteps that you get with handheld because you didn't want it to take the audience out and then be able to sort of feel the person moving the camera

Yes, there was a few elements that came into this. And the first one was the visual approach of being immersive with them

It just became this whole dance choreography where we were like, they always wanted the actors to move freely since the beginning

And that was something that was going to happen. So we needed a system that we never stuck on the ground

It's always moving and dancing with the actors. So this is also a part where we didn't want to be on dollies or tripod

I think we actually don't have tripods, by the way, on the show, which is a first for me

But it was this idea that the camera will constantly move with the actors

And we wanted this handheld feeling to represent a little bit this documentary aspect

So it's like this immersion where you leap the shift for them

And at the same time, you kind of this invisible audience, documentary filming around, you know, it's kind of that cross feeling a little bit

But again, I use the word invisible because we also want it to be invisible

Like you do not think about the shots. You do not think about the camera moving because the camera moves a lot

You want to always feel like it attached to the character and therefore you don see the cinematography you don see the camera moves You just experience the movement through the actors themselves

So these elements were really important. So we knew we were going to move a lot

We knew we were going to have to go backwards sometimes. Sometimes the scene where our doctors or nurses

they move really fast. They walk fast in the... And there was also a height adjustment issue

because when you hand out, you know, you can go down on your legs

But, you know, it gets either tricky sometimes depending on what height you're trying to reach and, you know, if you want to go higher

So we needed a tool that could help us change the height on the go as well, you know

and do this move really fast backwards, forward, side. But we've got, like you said, feeling the footsteps and taking you out of that immersion experience

And so this is where the ZG rig is coming, you know, and it's been such a key tool for us

And I'm not sure I know of another tool right now that could give us that extreme feeling of control, handheld, you know, but invisible at the same time

But the feeling is that you still feel like it's handheld. And then at the same time, we can adjust from a character moving

We're just following them, you know, on the face backwards. And suddenly a gurney cross in front of us

And you go lower the camera and you get, you know, over the gurney to the person

And then, boom, you go again. and then you bring an actor that's like a smaller, you know

so then the camera needs to be lower because we always try to be in that perspective. So the height chance was key

and the ZG really allowed us to do that. But otherwise, the second camera is fully handled

And, you know, half of the time, actually, we are not always on the ZG

Sometimes we also fully handle on the first camera if the moves don't require to be so, you know

intense and choreographic, yeah