Beto Casillas, AMC and technical director Gabriel Kerlegand chatted with RED about the creative process and workflow of the ambitious Amazon Prime series Hernán and more.
Beto, you have built a strong reputation in the advertising industry, but Hernán marks your first full series as director of photography. How did your career path lead to this project?
Casillas: I was lucky because the production wanted some fresh blood, and they gave me the opportunity to prove that I can do it. It is an ambitious project. I have shot a couple of feature films as well as some episodes of other series, but never the whole show. This has been a great experience.
Tell us about the overall look of Hernán and how you prepared for it?
Casillas: When we started discussing the overall look of the series, we didn’t know if we should do a certain look the for the past and a different look for the present. We decided it would be more confusing, because sometimes when there is a jump in time, its only six months or a year earlier – not big gaps in time. We decided it would be better to have the same look and the audience would be able to figure it out.
Can you talk a little bit about how each episode is kind of led by the character, and how that that thread runs through?
Casillas: Every episode is the name of one important character. So, we prep the whole episode like it was one big project and then each episode has different camera movements. For example, Marina had very slow, romantic movements. A lot of the research we did for that episode included Terrence Malick films. Every character would have their own personality projected in the camera movements.
You’re dealing with a place that nobody really knows what it looks like and you must recreate almost all of it. Once you did figure out what it would like, how did you figure out how you are going to light it?
Casillas: It was interesting because none of the architecture of that time exists anymore. Even the pyramids we see now, they were underneath the pyramids that the Spanish saw. Archaeologists and historians had to help us with that. They didn’t have any windows, so we decided to have only one light source in the interior -- the door -- and then we also used fire.
Gabriel, tell us about coming onto the project and you’re approach.
Kerlegand: So, the first challenge was that we had to see which camera was going to be the best one for this project. They already had some different options, but I suggested shooting with RED MONSTRO. This let us keep the workflow very transparent. The RED workflow is quite simple. I think it is the best workflow right now in the market because it is not expensive and doesn’t consume that much memory. So obviously, we needed to have a robust infrastructure in order to shoot in 8K and covering the entire sensor with the lenses.
Did the producers and everybody think that the larger format or the 8K was going to be any different?
Casillas: When they saw the dailies, they were amazed. They were like, there’s something in the image that I can’t understand. They loved the wide angles and the close ups, and then the fall off of focus in the background. They don’t know what it is, but they notice it looks amazing. I just tell them that it’s the sensor making that look.
Do you two have any advice for cinematographers who are just getting started in their career?
Casillas: I started as a production assistant at a TV commercial production house. And I remember in those days Rodrigo Prieto (ASC, AMC) was the cinematographer for that particular production house and he used to shoot all the commercials. I always admired him. Eventually I moved from production to camera because that was what I liked to do. I used to be a second AC to many great cinematographers, and I learned a lot from different cinematographers. It was a great experience. My advice would be don’t give up. Just keep shooting. If you’re in the line, then one day you’ll make it.
Kerlegand: My recommendation for young cinematographers is to trust the people that help you to create your beautiful images. What we want to do is work for them to help get the best pictures that they can get from the cameras.
Beto Casillas and Gabriel Kerlegand participated in a live, interactive interview as part of RED’s Behind the Look Virtual Cinematography Series in 2020. The above Q&A is an excerpt from that conversation.