Three years after wrapping up the “Breaking Bad” universe, Vince Gilligan returns to prestige TV with “Pluribus” on Apple TV. The sci-fi series marks a homecoming of sorts for Gilligan, who returns to Albuquerque with “Better Call Saul” co-lead Rhea Seehorn and his longtime “Saul” cinematographer, Marshall Adams.
“It wasn’t long after ‘Saul’ ended that we learned that Vince had something cooking,” Adams said. “We didn’t know what it was. When I finally read it, it was totally and completely different than what I had imagined.”
“Pluribus” follows Seehorn as Carol Sturka, a fantasy author who becomes the unhappiest person on Earth when she is one of the few people immune to a virus that makes the rest of the world a distinctly cheerful hive mind. Adams shot five of the show’s nine episodes, with Paul Donachie on the other four.
“Obviously it’s a new project and you want to bring a new feel to it, but it’s hard to say that ‘Saul’ doesn’t influence us all the time,” Adams said. “It’s an aesthetic that we have developed, and so it’s hard to get too far away from it, especially when it comes to composition and things like that.”
“Pluribus” carries over some of the “feature-style” visual language established in Gilligan’s “Breaking Bad” shows, eschewing the use of frequent closeups and instead opting for cinematic wide shots. Adams shot his episodes on a Mini LF camera with Panaspeed large-format lenses, saying he’s a “fan of large format because I have more control over the depth of field.” Working off a production designer’s lookbook, the cinematographer searched for ways to make the visuals of “Pluribus” stand apart from those of his previous series. This led him to go for an aesthetic evocative of the ’60s and ’70s “with a little bit of grain and some accentuated colors.”
“We went for this kind Ektachrome look after the first episode,” Adams said. “After everything changes, there’s a little bit of a look change that we stick with for the rest of the show.” The change happens after a sequence that has been dubbed “the Joining.” It takes up a large chunk of the show’s pilot and is one of Adams’ favorite moments and biggest challenges.
A nearly two-minute shot shows Carol driving away from a hospital while witnessing the chaos (and calm) of an integrated hive-mind world. Adams noted that this one-shot scene presented a distinct problem, as “there was no way to do what we wanted visually and have the camera (where we wanted it), lighting-wise.” As a solution, Adams’ team built an LED screen, mounted in front of the car, that would both light Seehorn and feed her live footage to react to as her truck was driven by a rig. The cinematographer said he uses 3D modeling to plan shots like this ahead of time, though this particular scene still required a day of rehearsal and a day of shooting.
“I built that driving sequence probably half a dozen times,” Adams said. “All of the big, big shots, I want to make sure they’re going to work so we don’t waste a bunch of time on the day.”
Several of Adams’ “Pluribus” highlights, including an intricate airplane takeoff at the start of the second episode, are the result of such lengthy planning processes. “It’s important that you really think the story through and make sure that those frames count,” he said. “Vince doesn’t do a lot of cutting, and so we’ve got to make sure that those frames tell a story but are also tight enough that you can stay in them for a good chunk of time.”
Yet Adams noted that he loves to discover shots on the day, with some of his favorite moments arising from flexibility rather than careful planning. This, he said, stems from the freedom and trust that comes with being part of Gilligan’s crew. “I had a conversation with (Gilligan and consulting producer Peter Gould) when they first hired me, and they told me that they didn’t want me to leave anything on the table, even if that meant that we had to go back and reshoot something,” Adams said. “I’d never heard that before from any producer: Take risks, and if there’s a consequence, then there’s a consequence, but don’t feel like you’re taking the safe route ever.”
This story first ran in the Below-the-Line issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.
