Gold Derby
“Black Bird” developer and showrunner Dennis Lehane has actually said what interested him most about the Apple TELEVISION+ minimal series wasn’t always its cat-and-mouse video game of a found guilty, Jimmy (Taron Egerton), attempting to get a confession from a supposed serial killer, Larry (Paul Walter Hauser). Rather, Lehane was triggered by how the program’s story might question harmful masculinity and the male look.
“What I’ve said a bunch about the show is that everybody objectifies, I don’t care who you are. We all objectify. Men just seem to weaponize it, and a certain type of man. And so I wanted to look at where every man falls on the spectrum,” Lehane informed Gold Derby in a previous interview. “Because we’re all capable of it. Where do we fall in the spectrum? And that became the journey that Jimmy goes on.”
Bringing that thesis to the program’s images was up to Natalie Kingston. As the “Black Bird” cinematographer, Kingston shot all 6 episodes of the program and played a substantial function in developing a sense of stress within the visuals.
“For me, that was playing a lot with invisible camerawork – not letting the camera upstage the performance or story,” Kingston informs Gold Derby in an unique video interview as part of our Meet the Experts cinematography roundtable. “It meant embracing a lot of stillness, especially b because we’re inside their conversations a lot in the cellblocks. Sometimes that meant embracing static frames or creating movement that felt very subdued and just blended in. It was really supposed to feel subconscious. And when we move the camera it definitely meant something.”
Based on the true-crime narrative “In With The Devil: A Fallen Hero, A Serial Killer, and A Dangerous Bargain for Redemption” by James Keene, “Black Bird” isn’t almost Jimmy and Larry and their twisted relationship, however likewise about Jimmy and his dad, Big Jim, a previous police officer whose inadequacies as a daddy put Jimmy on the course that led him to Larry in the very first location. Big Jim is played by Ray Liotta on “Black Bird” and it was among the late star’s last functions.
“The first time we see them in that visitors’ room in the jail, they’re talking to each other through the glass and so we really played with a lot of reflections that were naturally happening,” Kingston says of shooting scenes in between Egerton and Liotta. “The idea of seeing Jimmy’s reflection in Big Jim’s shot – on his side of the glass – was very interesting, because they’re very similar men. I think that’s a big reason why they maybe didn’t get along, didn’t see eye to eye. So it was just playing with that juxtaposition.”
Kingston says the vibrant in between Egerton and Liotta was “phenomenal” from the very first day of shooting. “It was just really just exciting just to kind of sit back and watch their performances, it was quite inspiring,” she says. “Ray was just such an absolute genius and just an all-around filmmaker. He enjoyed staying on set while we were lighting and didn’t really go back to his trailer. [He loved] the process of it all. And that was really cool to witness.”
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