In Disney’s Ms. Marvel, a teen in an exuberantly colored Jersey City discovers super powers after slipping a magical bangle on her wrist. In FX’s The Old Man, a septuagenarian dusts off a long-dormant aptitude for violence when his former life as a CIA operative catches up with him. In the overlapping Venn diagram of these seemingly disparate shows, you’ll find cinematographer Jules O’Loughlin. The Australian DP shot two episodes of each series, which also share critical flashbacks set on different continents than their main story, as well as shoots that were greatly affected by COVID. With both shows now […]

There’s a saying that a movie is made three times: once when it’s written, once when it’s shot and once when it’s edited. To create the new A24 release Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, that maxim had to expand to accommodate an additional creative cycle. Marcel, the story of a chatty one-inch tall seashell searching for his family, was in essence shot twice. First, cinematographer Bianca Cline captured the live-action components, leaving a Marcel-sized space in the compositions. Months later, armed with copious notes to match lighting, lensing, focus, etc., stop motion director of photography Eric Adkins brought Marcel […]

The past haunts Marie, a chef in a retirement home in the small French village of Luchon. An exile from violence in Africa, she has closed herself off to all but a handful of friends. Then, a new arrival forces Marie to confront a world she has tried to forget. Written and directed by Ellie Foumbi, Our Father, The Devil was shot on a 20-day schedule. It was developed in part through Venice’s Biennale College Cinema. The film screened at the Venice Film Festival and recently at the Tribeca Film Festival, where it won the Best Narrative Feature Audience Award. […]

It’s fitting that The Black Phone, an adaptation of Joe Hill’s short story, was shot in Wilmington, North Carolina. Forty years ago, it was the fertile imagination of Hill’s father—Stephen King—that birthed the city’s film industry. Needing a sprawling estate for an adaptation of King’s novel Firestarter, Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis settled on an antebellum plantation in Wilmington. Pleased with the experience, De Laurentiis made the coastal town his America base of operations, shooting three more King films there (Silver Bullet, Maximum Overdrive and Cat’s Eye) and constructing what is now EUE/Screen Gems Studios—the very soundstages that The Black […]

While the use of larger format sensors like the Alexa LF and the Sony Venice has continued to accelerate—increasingly eclipsing Super35 as the default for robustly budgeted digital cinematography—the sprawling canvas offered by the Alexa 65 has remained more of a specialty, employed by projects seeking a scope of particularly monumental proportions. That’s exactly how cinematographer Mandy Walker envisioned Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis. “I remember Baz and I talking about the film really early on and thinking, ‘This character is larger than life,’” said Walker, who also used the Alexa 65 on Mulan and The Mountain Between Us. “Elvis was epic, […]

In Hustle, a burned out Philadelphia 76ers scout (Adam Sandler) discovers a raw talent (pro hooper Juancho Hernangómez) in a Spanish pick-up game and attempts to put him on the NBA’s draft radar. It’s got the familiar structural bones of the underdog sports drama—complete with epic training montage—but Hustle is like a perfectly run play. Even if you know what’s coming, you’re defenseless when it’s executed properly. The plot mechanics may be recognizable, but the approach to shooting the basketball scenes is novel. As Hustle cinematographer Zak Mulligan points out, televised presentations of the sport—and most basketball movies—offer the action […]