Reactor interviewed DP Marshall Adams about his work on the series.
Pluribushas more than a few memorable shots from varying points of view, including from the air. Some of those scenes involved filming from show creator Vince Gilligan’s own helicopter (he’s also a pilot), from a drone, or sometimes both. Unsurprisingly, Marshall Adams, one of the show’s directors of photography told me those sequences were “tricky” to coordinate, but were also “a lot of fun.”
I interviewed Adams about his approach to shooting various scenes on the show, including that scene in the pilot where Carol talks to the Hive Seehorn to deliver lines), what it was like shooting at the Very Large Array, and more. Read on for our discussion
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Was there a certain refrain or touchstone that you had overall for the show when working on shots?
One of the conversations that [showrunner Vince Gilligan] and I had very early on was that—except for the times when we were away from her—it was absolutely Carol’s story. It was her experience, and so everything pivoted around her, and we never tried to tell a story that was separate from her eyes.
Throughout the show, we also get non-typical points of view. There’s a few of them, but the first I’ll mention is in the cold storage unit when she has a handheld camera. Can you talk about how you put that together?
It was definitely a unique challenge. The other thing was that Vince wanted that camera to be an old video camera that was laying around, so we did a lot of research on older technologies, The one that we could get a good signal from and the one used as a prop were slightly different, but too much honestly. And the footage from the handheld was [Rhea Seehorn, who plays Carol]. We turned her loose in that set. She could go anywhere she wanted to go, and so she shot that all herself. We put the light on it, and she had free run. I guess you could say she should have gotten operator credit for that because she did such a fantastic job, and the timing was just phenomenal.
The other area was the aerial drone shots. What was it like shooting scenes
We used them for all of the helicopter stuff, which is always a little tricky because Vince also owns helicopters and he’s a helicopter pilot. So oftentimes we were using his helicopter, and the question was whether or not we were going to use a drone or use Vince’s helicopter to shoot from. We would occasionally get them both in there, but it’s tricky using a using a drone around a helicopter—they really have to coordinate and communicate well. So it was tricky, but it was a lot of fun.
There are also a lot of overhead shots. I would love to talk about how the decision was made to go with an overhead shot versus something else. And then once that decision is made, how you practically went about doing it.
It depended on the location. Many of our locations were great to be able to get wide on. There was very little that we couldn’t see. Early on, Vince said that since we’re going to be doing so many crazy things in Carol’s neighborhood, he didn’t want to be beholden to a neighborhood that we’ve tortured by bringing helicopters in and dropping backhoes and doing all kinds of stuff. So we built out that whole cul-de-sac, which allowed us to get wide on stuff like that, which really frees you up creatively in a lot of ways.
We also did overhead shots in episode eight inside that sports arena, and had grips rigged for us so that we could drop a truss down onto the stage floor and rig the camera to it and bring it back up because we had a bunch of lighting up there on a truss up on the ceiling. It just kind of depended on the shot, but it was an option that was always open, which was which was nice.
We did another one in episode eight inside that weird metal sculpture that we did the color change on, where they’re using a telescope that actually had this perfect hole in the ceiling to shoot through. So we had a drone looking down through that hole, which was very cool. But yeah, it just depended on the director and what they were interested in and whether the perspective actually made a lot of sense.
Speaking of that cul-de-sac, another thing I notice about Carol’s home is the lighting when she’s inside her house. I’m thinking of the pilot, where she’s on the phone and watching the TV when she’s first getting the news about the Hive, and that eerie glow on her face. I would love to hear how you worked to create that look.
That scene was a little bit technically challenging because we had the other actor there, so they were able to act off of each other live. That was a direct phone connection, and he was on the other stage on set, so she was basically looking at a live signal, which was again is something that Vince always tries to do, especially for the actors in a situation like that. Vince also likes to do things in camera; he really wants to see what it’s going to look like rather than relying on special effects or visual effects. And it was a little tricky because there was a little bit of a delay in the video sometimes, and that was our first time really in that house, and so we were also laying out what practicals would be on, what would come on when she flipped a switch, what does the sun or the moonlight actually do inside the house. But yeah, it was just so creepy. I could experience all that stuff through her eyes and through her mind, having gone through the hell of a night that she’d already gone through.
I thought the use of shadow was interesting in Carol’s house. There are times when she’d be inside and doing something and be covered in partial darkness. How did you work to create that effect?
We occasionally would shoot out through the windows on the location, but we had that whole set basically on stage with artificial lighting. But we were very careful about making sure that the sun angles for the courtyard area matched. We tried to even track some of the timing so we could match the angles when we were going to be at the location. But a lot of those shadows have to do with the relationship with Rhea. I’ve been working with her for a long time. She trusts me implicitly, and allows me to do some really fun and creative stuff. And Vince is always in the background cheering on, saying “Let’s go darker here. Let’s go darker there when it makes sense.” It’s an ideal situation for a DP, as you can imagine. You get to really flex your muscles as much as you can.
For my last question, are there any specific scenes or challenges, or things you thought just were really cool to do that we haven’t touched on?
Going back to the Very Large Array [the national radio astronomy observatory in New Mexico] was one of the most interesting locations I’ve ever been to. They’ve been listening down there since the mid-‘70s, and those dishes have a safety mechanism—when the wind goes over a certain range, they go into what they call birdbath mode, where they point straight up. So we had set them all individually to look like they matched on their angles, but occasionally the wind would come up and they’d all flip up into birdbath mode.
And the size of that location… I mean, we did some big stuff on the show, but I would say that was probably one of the most challenging. Not to mention that they’re specifically in an area that has no Wi-Fi or any radio transmissions. When we were there on the scouts, you had to go a half mile away before you could even turn your phone on. So luckily, they allowed us to use [their Wi-Fi] because I can’t imagine trying to shoot without it. It was a challenge. It was a lot of fun, and they were just incredibly accommodating and sweet.
The first season ofPluribus is now streaming on Apple TV.
Vanessa Armstrong
Vanessa Armstrong is a writer and editor with bylines at The New York Times, The Atlantic, Smithsonian magazine, Vulture, and many other outlets. She is also the creator of tubetalk.media, a newsletter that focuses on the weird.
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