Newsletter No. 002: Three new episodes in three weeks, hope you're listening
The podcast is back, and there are three episodes up already.
First up, Tari Segal, ASC, on the Las Vegas block of Margo’s Got Money Troubles, the A24 series for Apple TV+. She had three days, and they came about a month after the rest of the season. Nevada gaming rules meant she could not rig a light or block a camera anywhere on a working casino floor, so they found a dead corner and built a fake lotto desk in it. When a circuit blew at the steakhouse and killed the chandelier for her wide, she put parcans on the floor below and shot them up into it so it would read as on.
Then James Laxton, ASC on Beef, Season 2. He and the production designer built it on cycles, a season of the year for each relationship and for the club too, spring pastels for the young couple, an endless backlit summer for the club. The part he likes is that people move between them. The springtime couple, as he puts it, is the autumn couple by the end of the show. He tells us about a day he dreaded, a parking lot, a moving car, a stunt exit through the door, a Steadicam pickup through bushes, and the fight in the car to finish. He called it impending doom.
And Gustav Danielsson, FSF on A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. The budget was smaller than House of the Dragon, so more of it had to happen in camera. He pushed most of the night onto the half hour of real dusk, two cameras running, four to six wide setups before it set. For firelight his gaffer Seamus Lynch built a bank of up to 48 photo floods that he named the Dalek, and the dimmer operator programmed its flicker off a video of an actual fire.
Tari Segal, ASC
Margo’s Got Money Troubles
James Laxton, ASC
Beef, Season 2
Gustav Danielsson, FSF
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms
We would also like to welcome back Fujifilm. They have been part of the Salon for years, on the podcast, behind the Camerimage series, at the holiday parties and the CineGear kickoff. One December they gave away a camera and flew the winner in. These episodes are made possible by Fujifilm, and it is good to have them here again.
More coming over the next few weeks, thanks for being here with us.
David
From the Salon
The lens database and the fixture calculator are free and open, no login. Reader notes made them better this month: you can now filter primes from zooms, a focal-length search catches a zoom anywhere in its range, and we corrected the format labels on Super 35 lenses that were showing up under full frame. If a lens is missing, or a number looks wrong to you, reply and tell me. That is genuinely how these get better.
If you want a frame featured, send one over. One image and a few sentences on how it got made. Reply here, or email hello@cinematographysalon.com.
The work stays free. Someone still pays for it.
Every episode, every article, and both of the Resources tools are free to use. No paywall, no membership fee, no login. That is not a growth tactic, it is the whole point: learning to light a scene should not depend on what you can afford.
Sponsors cover part of it. The rest is people chipping in.
Monthly or yearly, from $5 a month, less than the price of a coffee. It costs real money to keep the podcast, the writing, and the tools running, and supporting is what covers it.