SEX LIFE OF COLLEGE GIRLS

BY: Brendan Bell

Brendan: How did you get started as a cinematographer?

Chuck:
I grew up as a child actor and did everything you could possibly do in Pittsburgh. I was in the Pittsburgh opera company, hosted a local TV show, and I was even on Mr. Rogers a bunch, which was shot there. They flew me to Los Angeles to shoot the Christmas special for one of the shows. I was out there for a week and shooting with professional crews, and I think I got bit by the production bug pretty quickly. After that, somebody gave me a camera, and I was always the guy with a camera in my hand. From the age of eight, I had a little box camera, a 35-millimeter camera, and a Super 8 camera. I was going into my senior year of high school, and I watched the movie Sophie’s Choice on HBO. Funny enough, since my new show is on HBO, it was one of those sudden aha moments that you don’t have many times in your life. I was like, wait, you know, this is a beautiful looking movie, and there must be someone who does that job, you know? So, I started researching and thought, ‘Wow, cinematographer!’ I’d never considered it up until that point, so I started applying to film schools and ended up going to USC Film School and concentrating on cinematography. After school, I worked all the jobs you can on set, camera assisting, gripping, and electric. At some point, a friend of mine said, ‘Hey, I’ve got these friends who are in a rap group, and they want to do a video.’ I said, ‘Great.’ “I’ve got a camera and some film, so let’s shoot something. I was transferring some documentary dailies with Stefan Sonnenfeld at the time, he’s now one of the top colorists in the world, and he said, “Yeah, sure, I’ll transfer it for free,” and he made it look amazing. The group loved it; they took it back to their manager, who called me up and said, ‘Hey, you want to start a music video company? Clearly, you can make music videos for nothing, and this looks amazing.” It turns out that the band I did the video for wasThe Black Eyed Peas before they were The Black Eyed Peas, called Atban Klann at the time. The guy I connected with had a lot of connections at Ruthless Records, so we ended up churning out music videos nonstop for about four or five years. I got a reel together and used it to transition into commercials and then finally to tv. That’s the very, very short version of 20 years of being a cinematographer.

 

 

Brendan: How long would you say it took for you to transition from music videos to TV?

Chuck:
My first music video was in 1994. The transition from rap video into my first commercial was pretty easy since it was a spot with Redman and Method Man for St Ides.

Brendan: Wow, that’s cool.

Chuck: It was a smooth transition into commercials. While I was building a commercial reel, I started day playing on TV, which is great because you work with other cinematographers, picking up tips and tricks along the way. I worked on Glee for all eight years with two friends of mine, Joaquin Sedillo, ASC, and Christopher Baffa, ASC, who were the two DPS on the show. Then I started shooting around 2010. That’s when I started shooting on Arrested Development. It was the first show that I was shooting full-time. That’s a pretty long time. That’s about 15 plus years?

Brendan: Yeah, a long time.

Chuck: Yeah, for sure.

Brendan: What would you say is the most crucial part of what you do?

Chuck:
I love my job. I feel incredibly lucky to go to work every day. I really do. But one of the reasons I like it is because I respond well to the different things involved in the job. One is just personality. You have to be somebody who can get along with everyone on the set. You have to be able to lead your crew while at the same time getting along with all the people that brought you there, like the producers and the directors, and responding to their needs. I always think that a DP (Director of photography) can’t have a big ego. They have to be there to bring the script to the screen and to be able to work with the director as smoothly as possible. A good example was on Sex Lives of College Girls. We had an amazing group of directors, but we had a different director every week. And every director has a different way of how they like to work. Some will come to you with exactly what they want to do. They might say, “The camera goes here,” or they want the dolly to go from here to here. They might want to have this lens as a 40 millimeter close-up, very specific. Whereas other directors will have no concept of that part of it and will concentrate on the performance and the feeling of the scene, they leave all that up to me. So from week to week, you kind of have to be a chameleon, as far as how you work with the director. In the end, the most important thing is the day-to-day working with the director and keeping to the schedule, but also at the same time trying to create images that are memorable and things that I’m proud of.

Brendan: So, how would you describe your style of Cinematography?

Chuck:
For instance, if I think about this show [Sex Lives of College Girls], I would say I like my images to feel as natural as possible. One of the impressive things to me when I first went to our stages at Warner Brothers was the sense of reality of the sets that Susie Manzini, our production designer, had built. There were tons of great sets. We filled up the largest stage at Warner Brothers, but they all felt very real, which really spoke to how I like to shoot. I really like to be able to enhance reality. If I go into a set and it’s a daytime scene, I like to throw some light through the windows and make it try to feel as real as possible. You’re not adding color for color’s sake. I’m trying to make things feel real, which, I think in this case, worked perfectly for our show. I wanted it to feel like they’re at a real college, have viewers identify with aspects they remember from their experience, and I think we really succeeded with that.

 

 

Brendan: I found out you used a drone to film.

Chuck: Yeah, we did, but we only had one drone day actually in New York.

Brendan: How different was using that compared to a camera?

Chuck:
Well, drone work can be very creative. You can do anything from shooting four feet off the ground like you would with a regular camera platform to doing a crane shot from four feet to 40 feet, or you could be flying over buildings. Of course, the quality of the shots will depend a ton on the talent of your drone operator. Our guys were great. Mainly, we brought them in to cover the campus. They got beautiful shots of Vassar College in New York, where we shot all the exteriors. We got those all in one day, which is a pretty amazing feat.

 

 

Brendan: If that took one day, how long did it generally take for the whole season one?

Chuck: The season started at the beginning of March. We were shooting for three months in Los Angeles. And then another month in New York at Vassar College for all the exteriors, as well as several interiors.

Brendan: Were you spending a lot of time on set compared to offset during the filming?

Chuck:
The hours are generally 12-hour days. So, it’s five days a week, 12-hour days in Los Angeles, and then when we’re in New York, we’re shooting six-day weeks. The six-day weeks added to the heat definitely made for some grueling days. Justin Noble, our amazing showrunner, joked the other day that a certain scene “took place on the day where it was 140 degrees in the shade.”

Brendan:
I asked that because I wanted to know how much COVID and the pandemic affected not just filming but also whatever you were doing before the show? How much has it impacted you?

Chuck: How do you mean that just as far as before the show, or?

Brendan: Oh, if you were working on anything before the pandemic and it carried over into the pandemic?

Chuck:
Well, yeah. Interestingly, when everything shut down, I had already scouted two commercials that shut down; they were supposed to shoot the week after. That was a simple one. Also, I ended up picking up a show that shut down because of COVID called The Upshaws for Netflix. Donald Morgan, ASC, had shot the first six episodes, and after the shutdown, Don brought me in to shoot the final four. So thanks to Don, who has always been an incredible mentor to me, I ended up shooting that, and that’s actually what I’m currently shooting season two of also.

Brendan:
Back to Sex Lives. How much of your experience did you pull from when working on the show?

Chuck:
Like I mentioned, I feel incredibly lucky to do what I do because I do get to shoot a little bit of everything. I don’t shoot music videos anymore, but I shoot commercials on a weekly basis. I shoot Multicam TV and shoot single-camera TV. I’ve shot the opening to Sunday night football for the last ten years. I think my experience in commercials is the thing that supports what I do in TV because you’re tasked weekly with coming up with new looks for spots. One week you’re shooting a period piece, like something I did for NBC, where we were doing war reenactments. The next week, you’re shooting in Mercedes Benz Stadium in Atlanta with Carrie Underwood and Joan Jett for Sunday Night Football or whatever it is. Every week, you’re doing something different and making something look unique. You want commercials to be eye-catching, so every week, you want a new look. So then, I bring that experience to my narrative work. You walk onto set, watch the rehearsal of the scene, and then you immediately have to come up with some idea that will make this scene unique or interesting to watch. It’s that fast thinking on your feet that I think commercials and music videos really train you for.

Brendan:
Well, speaking of scenes, how is the process of filming an actual sex scene?

Chuck:
It’s always a very delicate situation. The actors have an intimacy coordinator, who they work with so that they know what each actor or actress is comfortable with. I think the most important thing is to make sure everyone’s comfortable. Of course, the set is closed, so there are only the people on the set that need to be there, which is generally only the camera operators and a sound person.

 

 

Brendan:
You mentioned The Upshaws earlier. What would you say is the most significant difference between working on a sitcom versus a comedy-drama, like Sex Lives of College Girls?

Chuck:
Well, sitcoms are shot at a very fast pace. A lot of that comes from the fact that you’re shooting four cameras all at once. So, you’re trying to light for four angles simultaneously, which is incredibly difficult and takes a lot of training to know how that medium works. I studied it for years visiting with Don Morgan on set. He’s the Grand Master of that medium. I’ve learned a ton from him. In a single-camera dramedy, like College Girls, you’re able to be more expressive with the lighting because most of the time, you are only lighting for one angle at a time. So, you’re able to model and control the lighting on the faces and in the sets to create more dramatic looks.

Brendan: So, you’re working on Upshaws season two. Is there anything else you’re currently planning to do?

Chuck:
Oh, definitely. Currently showing weekly is the Carrie Underwood Sunday Night Football open that we shot. This is the 10th year I’ve done that job with director Tripp Dixon, a friend, and collaborator for nearly 20 years. But while shooting Upshaws, I am able to intersperse work on commercials. I’m doing a motion control effects commercial in January that, of course, you sign NDAs for, so I can’t say what the project is for. But again, it goes back to the fact that I feel incredibly fortunate to do a job that I am so passionate about and shoot such a wide variety of projects every year.