True Blood : Cutting Edge Camera Work

Interesting article in American Cinematographer magazine, it can be a little technical but it's fascinating.

True Blood
by Jay Holben

When writer/director Alan Ball hired Checco Varese, AMC to shoot the pilot for HBO’s horror fantasy True Blood, the cinematographer spent the next several nights “doing my homework,” he says. “I watched everything I could that was on TV at 10 p.m. I flipped to one channel, and it looked fantastic; the show was moody and had lots of camera energy and a bit of a blue tone. Then I flipped the channel, and that show looked great, but it looked just like the first one. Then I flipped again, and again, and saw that most of the shows looked the same. That’s not the case now — there are a lot of great shows with a lot of great looks — but at the time, they all looked the same to me! I thought True Blood merited a very different look, something sweaty, hot and sexy, which is what Louisiana feels like. Alan, [production designer] Suzuki Ingerslev and I decided to make it a saturated show, with red reds and green greens.”

Another key component of the look is humidity, which had to be artificially created for the Los Angeles-based production. “When you’re in a very humid climate, there isn’t any dust,” notes Varese. “So whenever we shot an exterior, I made sure every inch was wet down.” Fire hoses were used to wet down the vegetation in the background and Hudson sprayers were used to saturate the closer greens. “I was obsessed with that detail because I think it really refines the look,” says Varese. “When you see those details in the trees in the background and the sheen in the foreground, it really looks like Louisiana. The constant wetness was tough on the actors, but it really enhanced the look.”

Set in the sleepy town of Bon Temps, La., True Blood is based on Charlaine Harris’ Southern Vampire Series, which was begun in 2001 with the publication of Dead Until Dark. The invention of synthetic blood has enabled vampires to integrate themselves into human society, but the transition has not been smooth. Tensions in town reach a boiling point when a comely local, Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin), takes up with a vampire, Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer), and Sookie’s associates and loved ones begin turning up dead.

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