HBO’s new comedy The Chair Company, which follows Ron investigating a conspiracy after an embarrassing incident at work, has been receiving glowing critical reviews for its entire run.
Ashley Connor, the cinematographer behind the show, shared with us how she moved away from a classic glossy look associated with the genre and pushed the 70s and 80s thriller aesthetic.
The Chair Company looks so much different from what one might expect a comedy to look like. How did you first approach creating the look for the show, and how did you amp up the tension with your camera movement?
Andrew DeYoung (the pilot director) and I knew we wanted the photography to lean into genre and be in conversation with thrillers we loved from the ’70s and ’80s. We wanted Ron’s journey throughout the season to be reflected and enhanced by the way we film him – long zooms into his face and frenetic camera movement were ways we brought the audience into his perspective. My team was super talented and quick, which helped accomplish the dolly moves we used for most of the season.
What camera and lens did you use? And why?
We shot on the Alexa 35 because I wanted to build texture into the digital negative. Our main lenses were rehoused K35s and a Cooke 25 – 250 zoom lens. I had used this combination in the past and was very pleased with the level of character the lenses brought. We were actively trying to push our lenses to their breaking point in terms of being wide open or adding extenders to get a little more built-in flavor.
Apparently, you distorted some of the visuals with a glass of water in front of the camera. Can you tell us about that and any other creative solutions, or when you utilized things that were already there?
I studied a lot of experimental film in college, and it has become integral to my practice. It doesn’t always mean I’m trying to distort the image, but it bleeds into how I approach image-making. For me, I’m looking for ways of matching Ron’s emotional space. One instance is the glass moment. In prep, I built a rig for the front of the camera where I could attach two water bottles with different levels of liquid and shake them around to – well, actually, I’m not entirely sure how to describe the effect, but it did some wild things. The rig never ended up being used, but what it elicited was a way of discussing Ron’s obsession and how that could be visually represented. Sometimes when I felt creatively stuck or a certain move wasn’t working, I’d do a full take, just violently shaking the camera the whole time. It rarely worked in the edit, but it always felt like we’d hit the reset button and get to a better place of what we were trying to say visually.
How did you approach dealing with industrial-style lights in the office versus exteriors, and when Ron is at home? How did you balance those unique scenarios with having a cohesive vision?
Home was always meant to be a safe space for Ron; his family really grounds him, and it felt important to show how much he loves them, so we always favored warmer lighting with them. The office was unique in that we wanted it to look stylized without projecting too much onto the image. It’s sterile but not unpleasant. Offices are boring places, and we also weren’t trying to make it look like Severance or Mad Men. We really just wanted it to feel like a real office, and since it was our stage build, I had the ability to design a little more through our lighting and rigging.
Is there any sequence you liked working on in particular?
The whole show felt unique because our footprint was so small that it really took every single person on the set to accomplish our ambitious schedule. I think an episode I’m particularly proud of is Episode 5, “I won. Zoom in.” It just felt like an endless fall into insanity; there were physical stunts, car stunts, an explosion, and the most shocking end to an episode of TV I’ve ever shot. Working with director Aaron Schimberg was so fun, and a lot of the handheld I ended up operating myself because we had to move too quickly, and the spaces were sometimes too cramped for multiple cameras. I knew what coverage I needed to make the scenes work. I also love running with the camera, and the episode had a lot of that.
The Chair Company is getting remarkable reviews all around – congratulations! Is there something bout working on that project that was special to you?
The show feels very representative of my style, and I felt really supported by the entire team to take risks, and that felt very special on a TV show of this size.
