MiniHawks deliver anamorphic feel and efficient production
Them: Covenant is a highly-anticipated limited anthology series for Amazon that centers around a Black family that moves from the rural American South to an all-white Los Angeles neighborhood in the 1950s as part of The Great Migration. Sinister forces – rank prejudice as well as supernatural horrors – converge to destroy their idyllic household.
Indiewire’s Elliott Smith says, “Them looks marvelous, capturing the mid-century modern vibe while accentuating the terrors the Emorys face through an arsenal of camera tricks.”
Among the skilled artists who created that look were directors of photography Checco Varese, ASC, Xavier Grobet, ASC, AMC, Suki Medencevic, ASC and primary director Nelson Cragg, ASC, whose background includes extensive DP credits and two Emmy nominations as a cinematographer. Their main tools included the 4K Sony Venice cameras with MiniHawk lenses from Vantage – hybrid spherical lenses that offer anamorphic characteristics in a compact package.
The show’s creators saw anamorphic flavor as a key part of the period visual signature.
According to Grobet, “We thought the wide format would give us more room to play. We were looking for a world of pastel colors and soft tones to depict the ‘white world,’ and a more contrasted and darker world when in our main character’s minds. We used camera movement to accentuate moments of strangeness, always looking for impossible angles, where the camera wouldn’t normally be.”
Varese saw an opportunity to add efficiency on the shoot while maintaining the squeeze. “The MiniHawks are a way to get the anamorphic world into the streaming production schedule, where we have ten or twelve days per episode, four or five pages a day,” he says. “With standard 2x anamorphic, you can usually accomplish two-and-a-half pages a day. The MiniHawks have the bokeh and distorted highlights of anamorphic, with a little bit of the astigmatism when you go in for a closeup on the 40mm, which is beautiful. We wanted a vintage, yet very sharp look, and the MiniHawks were perfect.”
Grobet adds, “The MiniHawks gave us the anamorphic look we were looking for, with great flexibility. A lot of the language on this show was on extreme closeups, which these lenses are great for – no need for diopters. Spherical lenses with an anamorphic look – that’s what’s so appealing about these lenses. They’re compact, lightweight and have a great look.”
Several bravura scenes were done in virtual environments, including a flashback to the 1800s. Another particularly complex 12-minute scene in episode 3 involved the interior of a school bus as it drives through a period urban landscape, which required plates shot with ten cameras. This footage was scrubbed of 21st-century anachronisms and projected on LED video walls on stages, where the foreground bus interior elements were shot. Correct parallax and finely controlled lighting and depth of field were key to selling the illusion.
Varese says that his decades of documentary experience came in handy for his sense of realism. “It was very organically done,” he says. “The MiniHawks gave me the ability to forget that I was shooting zeros and ones. It felt like I was shooting film, and I could follow my gut instincts as a photographer. It’s pretty seamless.”
Grobet appreciated the opportunity to create the imagery in camera. “What’s most interesting to me is not finding the easy visual effects solution, but instead the one that requires the talents of many departments to create. It’s the magic of making movies practically that inspires me – when you have to find a way or come up with the idea for how to execute it. This show gave us that opportunity, and we had the crew to make it happen.”
Checco Varese, ASC
Xavier Grobet, ASC, AMC (on the right)
Suki Medencevic, ASC
All ten episodes of Them: Covenant were released on Amazon Prime Video on April 9, 2021. Watch Trailer here.
images: Amazon/Vantage Film/SonyCine
