Freud – a mystery crime series for Netflix and ORF
The combination of Vantage lenses and the new Sony Venice camera has directors of photography raving. One recent example is Markus Nestroy, who combined the Venice with Vantage One T1 lenses on Freud, a mystery crime series for Netflix and ORF. The show portrays the father of psychoanalysis as a young doctor who applies his new theories of the human mind to find the connections among a series of mysterious murders terrorizing Vienna in 1886. Marvin Kren (4 Blocks) directed, co-wrote and exec produced the show, which is a coproduction of Satel Film and Bavaria Fiction for Netflix and ORF, Austria’s national television network.
The Vantage One T1 line of lenses offers speed and personality that changes based on the stop – giving cinematographers fresh new flavors. “It’s a beautiful combination,” says Nestroy. “We chose the T1s for flexibility. At T-stop 1, you have this blurry, crazy image. Between T1 and T1.4, it’s still soft but more controlled. At T1.4, you have interesting chromatic aberration, which can be nice sometimes. At T2 or more, it’s like a regular lens. And these lenses destroy the digital feeling.”
The story is set in a period that coincides with the adaptation of electric light, which could be found in a few wealthy homes while most still lived with oil lamps and the like.
“It’s the dawn of the modern age, so we were blending the two worlds, which is tricky,” Nestroy says. “We wanted a vibrant, modern feeling, and a naturalistic feel, even a bit rough at times. And we wanted to be close to the characters, moving with them. We stayed in the wider range of lenses to be close, to have this three-dimensional embracing of the characters.”
Nestroy used the Venice in a Super 35 configuration that delivers 3.8K resolution. He used slight filtration at times, and shot with a LUT that emulates a bleach bypass look – washed-out colors, high contrast and some graininess. Primes were used roughly 70% of the time, augmented at times with a short Angenieux zoom. The set of nine Vantage One primes came from Vantage Prague.
Kren prized spontaneity and flexibility in his approach. On day one of the shoot, the very first shot called for Freud to hypnotize a woman in a dark room. He moves a candle back and forth before her face. To make the shot, Nestroy depended on the Sony Venice’s dual exposure capabilities combined with the astonishing T1 speed of the Vantage One glass – in this case, the 50 mil.
“There were just a few double-wick candles, and Sky Panels dimmed to 5%,” he says. “The candles had nice, original and organic flares, and they’re flickering, making weird reactions with the lenses. In the frame, they gave us a beautiful light. Every chromatic aberration, every flare the lenses gave us, even the distortions of the room on the 17.5 mm, were welcome. And the close-focus capability of the Vantage Ones allowed us to get closer then we might have with Zeiss or Cooke.
“In a show like this, you must feel the images,” he says. “There are lots of metaphysical things going on. There’s black magic and blood and orgies. You have to have the right feeling. It was a joy to work with this combination of Sony Venice and Vantage One. Vantage really cares about their customers, and that’s why they’ve become one of the biggest rental houses in Europe.”
Nestroy and his team wrapped at the end of May, 2019. Eight 45-minute episodes will begin airing globally on March 23, 2020 on Netflix, following the launch on ORF 1.
Watch the official trailer here.
images: Vantage Film, ©Jan Hromadko/SATELFilmGmbh/BavariaFictionGmbh
