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Working Bad: Cinematographer Michael Slovis On 35mm Film, HDTV, And How 'Breaking Bad' Stuck The Landing

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More than anyone except Vince Gilligan, director of  photography Michael Slovis may be responsible for the greatness that is Breaking Bad.  (More on that in a moment.) A resident of Montclair, N.J.--he lives down the block from my daughter’s best friend—Slovis joined the crew in the second season, bringing the visual brilliance that Oscar-winner John Toll applied to the pilot to the show on a weekly basis. (Spoiler warning for episodes up to 515)

A 34-year industry veteran who has worked on projects great and awful, Slovis has a special insight into what makes Breaking Bad special. Find out about the backhanded benefits of 35-mm film, how the rise of HDTV boosted Breaking Bad, and how he created distinctive looks for the Super Lab, The White House, and Albuquerque’s widescreen vistas. He clues us in about his two favorite Breaking Bad moments--which had nothing to do with photography—and why Sunday’s series finale won’t disappoint.

ASJ: Like me, you were smart enough to marry a woman who’s smarter than you, and I gather that your wife Maria convinced you to take the Breaking Bad job.

Michael Slovis: I had been traveling a lot for work, I had just gotten back from working on a movie in Romania or Poland, I forget which. I got a call from Christina Wayne and Vlad Wolynetz at AMC, and they said, “A director named Adam Bernstein recommended you to our show and we’d like you to come to New Mexico.”

We talked for a while and I said “To be honest, I don’t want to travel any more. Thank you very much.”

My wife Maria, who was passing through the living room goes “Who’s that?”

“They want me to go to New Mexico to shoot this little show that I’ve never heard of.”

She literally said “Is it called Breaking Bad? Call them back right away. Immediately. And have them send you the first season and ask them to hold off on making a decision.” She said, “You’re going to go do this series because it’s exactly what you need and what you want.”

They messengered over the first season, and from the moment I saw those pants come down into the frame I said “I'm going to do this show.”

And she said, “I know.”

You came in during the second season and you put your stamp on the show’s aesthetic from the very first shots of the first episode.

When I spoke to Vince Gilligan I said, “You have a spectacular show, maybe the best thing I’ve ever seen. But it deserves a graphic look that is often not allowable on television.”

Vince is a student of cinema and knows movies like the back of his hand. It was always in his mind that this was a Western in the style of Sergio Leone and the Italian Neo-realists. And he loved expressive lighting like The Godfather, so this was the hybrid we’re trying to put together.

I started shooting that first episode and two days later I got a phone call from Sony Pictures who was producing the show.  They said “What in heaven’s name is going on over there?” My reaction was “I knew it, I knew it, I knew it.”

Immediately I got a call from Vince and AMC and they said “Don’t change a thing.”

Sony just wasn’t used to seeing dailies that looked like that:  dark, contrasty, really strong images. But after that they were incredibly supportive for the entire time I was there.

You have an interesting role in Breaking Bad in that you’ve been there as DP or director on every episode, so you were sort of the guardian of the show’s tone.

I was the only person who was there all the time.

Directors came and went.

Writers came and went.

Producers came and went.

So really the only two people that were there on the set every day were Bryan [Cranston] and myself. We were kind of the eyes of Vince on the set, and even Bryan wasn’t there every day. I was pretty much empowered by Vince. He said “Michael’s got it. It’s exactly the way I see it in my head.”

You hear these stories about Vince Gilligan, that if he were a super hero, his super power would be niceness. But clearly there’s something going on beyond just being affable.

Yes. He is that nice. And yes he is that polite and he’s got Southern charm and flair. He and his girlfriend Holly create a family atmosphere. That is not to say that he agrees with everything. He does not. He is also one of the smartest human beings you’ll ever sit in a room with. He’s incredibly well read, incredibly literate about cinema and television and he knows how to tell a story.

Two things: Every time I’d refer to it as “your show.” Vince would stop me and go “our show.” He just would not let people refer to it as his thing. The idea of Vince Gilligan’s Breaking Bad was so alien to him.

At the same time, what was so wonderful, and why the show has turned out to be so great is that he had a very, very clear idea as to how each episode and the entire show would go. Every single frame of Breaking Bad is reflective of Vince Gilligan’s aesthetic. Because he was such a decent and good and creative and talented manager of people that he got everybody on the same page. It’s why the show has a cohesive look and feel. The art direction and the performances and the writing and props and the makeup and the photography and the music fit perfectly into the orchestration of the story Vince would write.

Woody Allen is a brilliant auteur, correct?

Of course.

It doesn’t mean that Woody Allen pulls focus and sets every light. It means he puts together the elements that will fulfill the essence of his story in the way he sees the story. And Vince did the same thing in every single respect. He wouldn’t bake the cookies they serve at craft services and he didn’t go out and paint the sets himself. What he did do was guarantee that each piece was a significant and supported part of the whole. And I can’t think of anything more auteurish than that.

For people who are not knowledgeable about how films and television shows get made, that takes a tremendous amount of skill sets.  For example, Vince is one of the best film editors I’ve ever seen in my life. Maybe the best. I’ve never ever seen a director’s cut of Breaking Bad that wasn’t dramatically improved by Vince’s touches with a fine brush.

You seem to be talking about two things. Vision and control. On the one hand Vince is ceding a certain amount of control to people like you, saying “Go out and do your best work and I’ll support that.” But on the other hand he has a very definite idea of what he wants.

Here’s an analogy for you. The people that work on a film set, art directors, production designers, wardrobe designers, directors of photography, and even directors are all happy to be Ginger Rogers to his Fred Astaire.

In fact, it’s better. We benefit from someone like Vince. I never ever once felt limited. I felt empowered.

Can you give me an example?

Remember the Season Five opener where they go to the junkyard and get that big magnet?  It was written in the script, when they turned on the magnet, here were one or two little things coming off the shelf.

I turned to Vince and I said ”I’d like I’d like it to be like Hitchcock’s The Birds.”

One bird lands, and then another and another, and it’s a slow burn building up to the actual event. I’d love to make a move over this empty room and start with one little paper clip starting to turn.

And his eyes lit up.

And the first time it was shot, I wasn’t 100 percent satisfied. When I wanted to shoot some additional stuff, Vince went to bat for me.

Reshoots costs money.

It’s all about money. It’s lovely to have art. They do want art. They do want it good.

But this is a business and they want it to return their investment.

You have to give props to AMC and Sony. My first season the viewership was slightly under a million. It wasn’t much. But the accolades were incredible. I hand it to Sony and AMC for supporting the show to the point where it became something that redefined American television.

Any theories about why the show built an audience the way it did?

It was almost a Perfect Storm. A  young filmmaker wanted to shoot in the style of spaghetti Westerns. He wanted it wide and he was going to do that no matter what was going on in the world of hardware.

However, it just so happened that during the last seven years, widescreen televisions became affordable. And HD became the norm. Now people could see what we were doing and we didn’t have to tell stories in the old style of closeup [then another] closeup.

We would have told the story if everybody was watching it on tube televisions. But we were damn lucky that people started watching wide screen HDTVs.

Another hardware development that helped us tremendously is that all of a sudden you could DVR and Netflix the show. I don’t know the numbers, but there was a period of time where Netflix was proud of the fact that more people had seen Breaking Bad on Netflix than on AMC. We build an audience because they’re able to binge view and catch up.

And look at Breaking Bad as not 62 discrete hours of television, but something more like a big movie on steroids.

It’s a novel.

It’s an evolution of a character. Every week you tune in, Walt was slightly different.

In the early years of television people would tune in for the consistency.

Marcus Welby would always be Marcus Welby. Loved that show.

But this was a big story told microcosmically. It’s a story people going to savor the way they savor a terrific book.

When you close a great book and you go “Wasn’t that great? I can’t wait to read it again in a year or two.” That’s the way people are going to feel about Breaking Bad when that last shot comes up.

Novels have endings.

I want you to call me in two weeks and you tell me how Vince did. I think Vince hit it out of the park on the finale.  I think Vince redefined series finales.

So what are your favorite moments in the series?

I have two favorite moments in Breaking Bad. People ask me about my favorite shots. They’re almost always surprised because my favorite shots in Breaking Bad have noting to do with photography. They were very simple shots.

My first favorite is when Byran stood over Jane’s body and watches her die. And he makes a decision to let her die.  That is a step toward real badness.

The second, which I couldn’t talk about until this week, was in Episode 514. Bryan’s phone call to Skyler. After both of those shots, Bryan and I hugged.  Those two moments are so character defining. Bottom line, they’re what the show is about.  Bryan took us place that we as an audience have earned by traveling with him..

Breaking Bad is one of the very few shows still shot on 35mm film instead of video. Why?

When we started the name of the station was American Movie Classics. They considered themselves filmmakers.  So they insisted that everything be shot on film.

I think that was a wise choice for Breaking Bad. There are certain advantages that film has for certain kind of storytelling, the cameras are autonomous, they don’t have any cables, and the cameras are robust and sturdy, when you’re shooting out in the desert.

But  most important reason has nothing to do with the technical side: It’s expensive.

And you’re on a budget. And we were allotted 11,000 feet of film a day. If you went over that, somebody came from the office and spoke to you.

Which is meant that  you had to think through, with intent, what it was that you wanted to shoot for the day. There was nothing arbitrary about Breaking Bad. It’s formal.

We did not go shoot a whole bunch of stuff and they go edit into something. The show was shot with loving concern for every single frame.

That's fortuitous, because as televisions switch from 2K to 4K, Sony is going back and re-transferring all of Breaking Bad into 4K which is something you can’t do with shows that are shot digitally. Film is upscaleable. It’s archiveable, as the formats change. I assume that eventually there’ll be a box set for real enthusiasts with their 4K televisions.

Let’s talk about the show’s the inside aesthetic and the outside aesthetic. There are Sergio Leone, John Ford vistas, while The White House is looking more and more like the Corleone mansion…

That’s a really nice compliment.

Talk about the White House for starters.

The White House a hybrid blend of a real house in Albuquerque, with lovely owners who were incredible hosts for us for many years.  And a set.

My style for the show was never about reality. It was always to play, what is the story about, so we always had a plan for the White House descending into darkness over five years. In Episode 508, when Walt is  standing in his living room (having ordered the execution of 10 potential witnesses in prison) and it’s daylight but that room is black. That’s such a low point for him, and I wanted his environment to reflect how low he went.

Contrast that with the flashback when we see the house as Walt and Skyler are thinking about buying it. Completely different feeling.

That episode Vince directed that opens with the 360 degree shot? That was totally intentionally. It’s warm and it’s cozy. There’s all kinds of hope and potential.  They’re going to build a family in there.

Talk to me about the Superlab.

There’s a great injustice…

You mean production designer Mark Freeborn not getting his props? I’m actually interviewing him in a couple of days.

I have an immeasurable amount of respect and affection for Mark Freeborn. So often when people are complimenting the photography what they’re really complimenting is the art direction.

When the Superlab was just plans on paper, we talked about integrating all of the lighting into the structure. As fast as we were able to move the camera, that’s how fast we were able to shoot in there. Those angled ceiling panels were hinged at the top and you could just pull them up with cables and pop lights in. But for the most part we went with the lighting that was built in.

All of those lights you see at the top of the set are film lights that Mark put covers on to make them look like industrial lighting. I took my cue off a sterile, sanitary pharmaceutical situation where everything would be spotless. Or a brewery where the light kicks off the stainless steel. We kept it all polished to a very deep shine and there’s light bouncing around everywhere.

I came up with three basic lighting schemes. One was a cooking scheme, where it just had lights over the cooking paraphernalia. Then we had a clean up between cooks with more broad light bouncing around it wasn’t as centered over the machinery. And then we had a night scheme which had that blue light from the  dehumidifying chamber off to the left hand side.  Just enough light here and there to define the room.

Let’s talk about the outdoor scenes. Albuquerque has become like a character in the show.

I shot a small movie there twenty five years ago and I always remember the coloration. When you go there you can’t help but notice the brown. You notice the sky and the brown.

The orientation to the sun is a huge brushstroke for me. I worked with the directors and the location managers to virtually guarantee myself the proper relationship to the sun whenever we went outside. When you’re working on a television schedule you don’t get that 100 percent of the time, but you don’t need that to create a feeling. I would have locations the backlit to the sun 75 percent of the time. That allowed me to fill them in from the front so you could see their faces or not. People just think you go outside and you shoot and that’s not the case.

I have two other secret weapons in my arsenal. Those are the people who manage the image after it’s exposed. I worked very very very closely  with the my transfer artist and final colorist at Fotokem in Burbank in how those images were manipulated and adjusted. They were as vital a part of my aesthetic team as my operator or gaffer or grip. These two guys were the best at what they do.

Everyone loves those flashy point of view shots, the Roomba cam, the shovel cam, the pool cam. But a lot of what makes the show great is the restraint.

I’m not the biggest fans of those shots. Often directors would come in and dream up as many of them as you could imagine. They’d want to shoot like 25 of them. Those shots very quickly become boring.

Vince had this analogy of an ice cream sundae. If you put chocolate sauce and marshmallow sauce and butterscotch sauce and pineapple sauce and nuts and caramel sauce and maple sauce and whipped cream and cool whip on the whipped cream and then cherries on that and coconut, you quickly lose the idea that you’re eating a sundae.

But if you have one beautiful scoop of ice cream and just a little bit of chocolate and a little whipped cream, you have a beautiful ice cream sundae.

We had the kind of story that could support those shots and they could be very evocative. People started to wait for them and I think there’s great power keeping people at bay waiting for them. But when they weren’t properly used they would pull you out of the story. So to that end we had to execute some restraint.

How has Breaking Bad changed your career?

I feel more changed personally than professionally. Since I wrapped in March I’m completely booked as a director for the next year.

But Breaking Bad has not only affected my career, it’s affected my life. I’ve worked 34 years in the film industry. The whole idea of auteurs is great, the Spike Lees and Jim Jarmusches, are wonderful.  They’re wonderful filmmakers. Geniuses. But for every one of them there are 1,000 people working to earn a living, to buy a house and send their kids to college.

Every so often a job comes along--and for me there have been two or three of them in 34 years--where everything comes together. The material, the support, the cast, the crew, the network, the production.

They become those work milestones, and for me Breaking Bad sits loftily above everything.

You and I are speaking at the end of September. I wrapped the show in March and there hasn’t been a day that’s gone by that I haven’t called texted or emailed the cast, the writers, Sony, my crew.

It was  a family. We had babies born. We had people pass. We had divorces. We had weddings.  It just so happened they were the kind of people who were open about that.

We all knew what we had. I worked with a grip, a lovely man named Pablo. A grip is a guy whose job it is to move heavy objects, to haul lights and sandbags. They work really hard and my friend Pablo is a third grip. On Friday, he would walk up to me and say “Mike, I’m depressed today.”

Why, Pablo?

“It’s the saddest day of the week for me. I have to wait two more days until I come back to work with you guys.”

We had so much fun with each other that the hard work didn’t seem so hard.

Vince talked about the fact that even the worst episode of the worst show you can imagine took tremendous effort.

No one sets out to make a bad show.  Everyone wants to make the next Twin Peaks, the next Sopranos, the next Wire, the next Mad Men, the next Breaking Bad.

Vince just happened to do it.

What's your take? Add your comments below about all things Breaking Bad and watch these pages all this week for a series of exclusive Working Bad interviews with key members of the Breaking Bad team.

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