Suki Medencevic, ASC creates anamorphic flavor with spherical convenience
The Starz limited series Shining Vale follows a dysfunctional big-city family that attempts a restart by moving into a dark and cavernous house in a small town. The disintegrating family dynamic serves as the basis for uneasy comedy, but eventually, the house’s demons make themselves known in ever more tangible ways. The cast features Greg Kinnear, Courteney Cox, and Mira Sorvino.
A very specific and stylish visual signature features wide, low angles and a constantly moving camera, especially in moments of heightened drama. Suki Medencevic, ASC handled cinematography duties for the seven-episode series, the majority of which would be shot on built sets.
“I worked closely with production designer Jeff Shoen on the requirements, which included a ceiling on every set,” says Medencevic. “For lighting, we limited ourselves to windows and augmenting practical sources for the most part.”
Medencevic says that the assignment was engaging because although it was grounded in realism, it does take viewers to fantasy realms that are detached from reality. “That gave us the ability to play progressively with the lenses and camera angles, and break away from logic, often for purely dramatic reasons,” he says.
Given these circumstances, Medencevic chose to shoot on MiniHawk Hybrid Anamorphics equipped by Hawk Los Angeles. MiniHawks are spherical lenses that use patented mechanics to deliver the bokeh and other optical traits of anamorphic, but with the size and speed advantages of spherical. He had worked with the MiniHawks on Them, where he shared cinematography duties with Checco Varese, ASC and Xavier Grobet, ASC, AMC.
“I wanted to have the advantage of shooting with a decent T-stop and the freedom to move a little more easily than I could with a larger lens,” he says. “On Them, I really fell in love with them. They give you almost everything that you want from an anamorphic lens. But they’re more compact – and as far as close focus goes, you don’t have to use any diopters, which is very important. You can rack focus all the way from infinity to one or two feet, depending on the focal length. That gives us a lot of flexibility in terms of staging, and helps us move faster.”
The MiniHawks are designed to cover the 4K sensor on the Sony Venice cameras. “I didn’t really think to go to LF, because the bokeh matched very, very closely to the look of the pilot,” says Medencevic. “The falloff in the highlights created a distinctive distortion, which is more difficult to achieve with actual anamorphic lenses. That worked really well.”
Focal lengths tended to be wider in keeping with the style set in the pilot. The 65 mm MiniHawk became the go-to lens. “That would be similar to a 35 in 35 mm format, since MiniHawks are marked to match the focal lengths of anamorphic lenses,” says Medencevic. “The 65 mm MiniHawk gave us enough wide feeling without too much distortion. Also, I could actually shoot closeups – not too tight, but sometimes we would intentionally go with this closer or wider feeling. It keeps the character within the context of scene. With the house being such an important character in the story, it was very important to always keep the actor connected to the background, even in the closeups.”
Medencevic combined the unique MiniHawk optics with subtle filtration, which he fine-tuned during extensive preproduction testing.
“I like to use filters,” he says. “I believe that no matter how beautiful a lens is, choosing a right filter can help to add something extra, a nice little touch when comes to the character. So it was important to come to the right level of diffusion. I started with the clean MiniHawks, seeing how they render faces and skin tones, and evaluating the overall image, which is nice and pleasing. Given the sets, I felt the opportunity to add some extra flare here and there, and to blow out the highlights, enhanced by filtration. So I often went with a very light GlimmerGlass, maybe 1/8 or 1/4 depending on how wide or tight the shot was.”
For closeups of Sorvino or Cox, he found that Black Net Diffusion #2 was right – “the oldest tool in the toolbox,” he says. “They are very subtle softening filters that don’t alter the overall image too much,” he says. “They just nicely soften the skin tones.”
The premiere was held at the Chinese Theater in Hollywood, unusual for a television series. “Honestly, I was very pleasantly surprised when I saw it projected on the big screen,” says Medencevic. “It was beautiful to see how it all held together.”
Medencevic is currently working on The Big Cigar for director Don Cheadle. It’s a six-episode 1960s period piece about the friendship between Huey Newton and Bert Schneider. In September, he plans to return to Los Angeles for another season of Shining Vale.
Watch the trailer here.
images: ©2022 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved
