Cinematographers Martin Ahlgren and Michael Grady are in the Emmy conversation this season for their respective lensing of The Plot Against America (HBO) and The Morning Show (Apple TV+).
Both Ahlgren and Grady got the opportunity to shoot this work based on their prior collaborative relationships with women directors.
And while The Plot Against America and The Morning Show are distinctly different shows in terms of genre, feel and orientation, both tell stories that carry contemporary relevance.
Here are reflections from Ahlgren and Grady on their shows, their connections to and affinity for the directors involved, and choices of camera relative to doing justice to story and character.
Martin Ahlgren
Since he was a teenager in Sweden, Martin Ahlgren has been making movies--initially with a Hi8 video camera. In his formal cinematography education at the School of Visual Arts in New York, he shot assorted student films which in turn led to a start in commercials and music videos. After a decade working on campaigns for major brands all over the world and on music videos for such artists as The Rolling Stones, Beyonce and Kanye West, Ahlgren took on longer form storytelling with indie features and TV. He earned an Outstanding Cinematography for a Single-Camera Series primetime Emmy nomination in 2015 for an episode of House of Cards. The next year he was nominated for an ASC Award on the strength of his work on the pilot for Blindspot.
Now he’s again in the Emmy fray for his cinematography on the HBO limited series The Plot Against America featuring an ensemble cast which includes Zoe Kazan, Morgan Spector, Winona Ryder, John Turturro, Anthony Boyle, Azhy Robertson and Caleb Malis. The show imagines an alternate U.S. history told through the eyes of the Levins, a working-class Jewish family in Newark, New Jersey, who witness the political rise of aviator hero Charles Lindbergh, a xenophobic populist who defeats Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential election and turns the nation towards fascism.
Based on Philip Roth’s novel of the same title, The Plot Against America was adapted for television by David Simon and Ed Burns whose collaborations include creating the critically acclaimed series The Wire. Ahlgren was drawn to the opportunity to work with Simon and Burns, and to the story when he read the book in preparation for the assignment. He was enamored with “the idea of telling a story that’s really a drama but in the context of larger historical events taking place--and from the perspective of their effect on every single member of a family. It’s a subtle, interesting and emotional story being told. I read the first and second episodes (penned by Simon and Burns), compelled by the authenticity they always seek out in their projects, creating a world, characters and dialogue that feel authentic and real, that deal with the complexities of people.”
Ahlgren got the chance to become involved in The Plot Against America thanks to director Minkie Spiro who went on to helm the first three episodes of the series. The two had previously teamed on Crash & Burn, a pilot for Hulu. “She was the one who brought me into the mix,” said Ahlgren, opening the door for him to connect with Simon, Burns and Thomas Schlamme (director of the last three episodes) to make a presentation as to how the cinematography for The Plot Against America should be approached.
Spiro told SHOOT, “Martin gets my sensibilities. I have an obsession with framing and composition and he understands my obsession. I needed somebody on board who would have that anal retentive attitude about precision and going for it. This became a labor of love. He’s a wonderful artist.”
A source of inspiration for the lensing of The Plot Against America was photojournalism during the 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s, including photographers Robert Frank, Helen Levitt and Margaret Bourke-White whose work often used wider lenses close to the action with greater depth of field. These framings offered levels of depth that allow viewers to look about and find different areas of interest. This deep focus became part of the look differentiating The Plot Against America from other shows. Holding the foreground and background in focus can lend a larger than life quality to intimate shots without having them lose their intimacy. At the same time, this put more demands on other artisans such as production designers Richard Hoover and Dina Goldman. Everything had to be more detailed in terms of production design in that “we weren’t going to be hiding things out of focus in the background,” said Ahlgren.
Ahlgren sought to hold as much as possible in focus, giving the audience options of where to look. “It lets your eye linger over an image and find different things,” he explained. To achieve that goal he needed a smaller aperture as well as a smaller image recording area. He tested multiple cameras towards that end, ultimately deciding on a specially adapted Sony VENICE windowed down to a smaller sensor size and with a higher ISO, giving him the look and feel needed to do full justice to the character-driven period piece. Ahlgren said he had to find a camera that had “high enough quality” and resolution to deliver under these adapted conditions, including even in low light situations. He added that the Sony VENICE additionally had a highly desirable “filmic quality.” While history was rewritten for the show, the feeling that this new history look and feel as real as possible was essential, particularly when underscoring the story’s relevance today and some similar parallel contemporary choices facing us.
Ahlgren estimated that only some 20 percent of The Plot Against America was shot in studio, most of that being the set which served as the Levins’ apartment. “Doing a show where 80 percent was on location recreating the 1940s in New York City, Newark and Greater New Jersey was a huge undertaking,” requiring close-knit collaboration among the DP, the production design and visual effects departments.
While most of the still photojournalism of past eras that influenced him for this series was in black and white, Ahlgren had “no doubt” that The Plot Against America should be done in color. He thus had a color aesthetic that took its inspiration from black-and-white photography, impacting how he shaded the lighting and his choice of compositions.
But the overriding visual influence, stressed Ahlgren, was found in story and characters. “You try to figure out ways of telling the story in as captivating a way as possible without making it feel artificial, letting acting and the writing drive the scene, finding ways of telling the story emotionally with (directors) Minke and later Thomas (Schlamme). That drove our approach every day, finding some sort of emotional core to the scenes to help determine how we would approach things visually.”
Asked about adjustments he had to make working with two different directors on the same limited series, Ahlgren shared, “As Minkie’s block was ending, I was sort of gathering a visual library of things, themes to build on, cataloging to show Tommy where we had been.”
Ahlgren added, “Every director is going to approach it in their own way. It’s like when you have alternating cinematographers on a TV show. Everyone approaches it in their own way. You take someone’s creative approach and make it your own within set parameters. Alternating cinematographers may use completely different tools technically in terms of lighting and so on but somehow find a core in the show that is going to unify at the same time with what the other cinematographers are doing. Directors similarly have to live within the same language. Tommy (Schlamme) was involved from the beginning in conversations. The transition was as seamless as possible. The arc continued.”
Michael Grady
Cinematographer Michael Grady got the opportunity to shoot The Morning Show due to his long collaborative track record with director Mimi Leder spanning such notable work as episodes of the lauded The Leftovers and the feature film On the Basis of Sex, the acclaimed biopic of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Grady said of Leder, “Because of our friendship and the quality of whatever she’s doing, it was a no-brainer to again come together on The Morning Show.” Also attracting Grady to the series--which takes us behind the scenes of a morning TV network news show--was the chance to work with a stellar cast which included Jennifer Aniston (a Golden Globe winner for her portrayal of Morning Show anchor Alex Levy), Reese Witherspoon (as field reporter Bradley Jackson, a TV star on the ascent) and Steve Carell (TV host Mitch Kessler who’s fired after news of his sexual abuses at the workplace broke in The New York Times).
Grady has lensed multiple episodes of The Morning Show, including all three directed by Leder (the pilot, episode two and the season finale). For him, the prime challenge has to do with the inherent nature of high-end, well-written, ambitious TV fare whether it be of the network, cable or streaming variety. He came to see the full value of TV work based on his experience lensing HBO’s The Leftovers, which he regards as a career highlight. “It’s all feature film quality,” he assessed. “There’s nothing different in terms of the quality of images and production value except you have to go faster. You need the ability to produce solid stuff over a shorter period of time and with movie stars, often a big group of artists. That’s the constant battle.”
Grady also had to maintain a balance between The Morning Show itself--the production realities of an a.m. news program, sometimes quite static and formal--and the filmic world where the characters reside. One world, for example, required the pedestal studio cameras of a morning show setup, capturing that on-air look. As for the overall Apple TV+ series itself, Grady gravitated to the Panavision DXL2 (8K) camera as well as the new Panavision Primo lenses. “I’m a Panavision guy in terms of customer service and at the time their DXL2 large format system was really brand new.” Apple, continued Grady, wanted “4K or above--now everybody’s caught up to this but at the time there weren’t a ton of choices.” Grady opted for the DXL2, an 8K large format which was “framed down to 4K for distribution.” He found the large format “amazing,” more akin to what still photographers have been doing “forever,” getting “depth of field” with the Primo lenses providing “a sense of an anamorphic image but in a spherical lens. Everyone was super happy with the results.”
Grady observed that he tries not to get too bogged down by the technical. “You can’t ignore the technology,” he said but noted that his prime concern is simply having what he needs to “capture whatever emotional moment may or may not be happening.” While an a.m. morning news show may be static and formal, the emotions in people’s lives can resonate, so he has to be prepared for all that and whatever falls between them in the storyline continuum. As the series unfolds, the complexity of the characters builds. In that vein, Grady said he found his experience of some 15 years-plus with Leder invaluable when it came to The Morning Show, relating that so much is “unspoken” between them but there’s a constant striving and a shared understanding whereby “the work gets elevated.”
That elevation is also rooted, he continued, in the show storylines which are topical and carry a sense of purpose, relevant to the zeitgeist of the #MeToo movement with the sexual harassment aspect as women have to cope with a workplace where men abuse their power. (In The Morning Show, viewers have made parallels to the allegations against Matt Lauer and his dismissal from Today, for example.) “It’s a tragic, sometimes weird story,” assessed Grady, adding that he’s had women tell him they have been emotionally impacted by the show. To move both men and women with a story, he said, is “pretty cool.” At the same time, there are comedic elements to The Morning Show. “If you’re going to make a 10-hour movie that brings out laughing, crying, all of that, then you’re onto something. That’s what makes this a really great job. Yes, there’s the pressure to do great work in a short timeframe but the crew is so amazing. Because of the expertise of all these people, the work shines through.”