Pluribus is excellent in every respect, but the beautiful cinematography is particularly memorable, evoking a strange and lonely world in the familiar terrain of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Marshall Adams and Paul Donachie, directors of photography on Vince Gilligan’s Apple TV sci-fi hit, bring a cinematic sensibility, anchoring the look of the show on Carol Sturka’s (Rhea Seehorn) perspective. Adams was kind enough to sit down with Screen Speck and discuss that brilliant oner from the pilot episode, how the team showcases those Sandia mountains, and the shot that made the crew visibly back away from the monitor.
Screen Speck: You’ve worked previously with [Vince] on several of his shows, and even the Breaking Bad movie El Camino. He does tend to bring along a lot of his previous cast and crew members across shows. How has your creative collaboration with him evolved?
Marshall Adams: I think mostly we’ve generated a shorthand, you know, we reference things that we’ve done before sometimes in bits and pieces, details of them, and that’s much easier than starting from scratch. And also knowing his style, and even mine, developing into something very similar. I love the way he tells stories visually. I mean, he’s just absolutely a genius at it, so it’s a pleasure, and I have a very similar aesthetic.
Screen Speck: So, [Pluribus]is a bit different, considering that we’re in a sci-fi universe now. What I love about this show is that it has some of these elements of being like, a zombie show, especially in that first episode, but it is a lot more grounded. I was curious if Vince gave you any visual references from sci-fi films or TV shows that defined how he wanted the show to look?
Adams: Not movies or shows. We have a tendency to look through still photos that he’s gathered together. We reference this Ektachrome kind of idea, which is an older print stock that exaggerates some of the red colors and can kind of suppress some of the greens and the blues. So, that was a large part of our referencing. You know, older stills from the 50s and 60s that he absolutely loved, and Denise Pizzini, our production designer, she put a whole lookbook together of those images, which we all reference quite often. But that was pretty much the only reference that he came up with, that we really wanted to try to discover this look post-joining, so after Episode 1, starting with Episode 2.
Screen Speck: So even though we’re back in Albuquerque, the show does feel very visually distinct. There’s a lot of bright color, there’s a lot of visual depth in those wide shots. How did you, Vince, and Paul [Donachie] decide on the look of the show?
Adams: A lot of it starts with Vince. Paul and I compared notes a lot. We have very similar styles, lighting-wise. He was my operator for a number of years before he moved up and started and became a DP. And he’s just an absolute pleasure to work with, so we collaborate quite a bit, and came up with some visual ideas. The interesting thing that Vince came up with is that it’s a sci-fi show without necessarily having any sci-fi in it. You know, it’s all about the story and the people that are involved. There’s no plywood spaceships or anything like that. So we approached it from a storytelling point of view, which we always do, that it was was anchored with Carol and staying with her to be able to witness it from her perspective, and create the tension that way.
Screen Speck: I’m curious about the cul-de-sac where Carol lives. So, I know that production built that whole neighborhood. And it has those beautiful views of the Sandias. I have to imagine that those really great views of the city factored into how that cul-de-sac was built. I know that Denise [Pizzini] had a big role in that, but I’m curious about what your role in it was, considering that some of those views do feel so pivotal to the look of the show.
Adams: We went out there, we actually spent a day, Vince had narrowed it down to maybe a half-dozen different locations, and we drove to each one, and looked at them. And that one, by far, was the winner. It was, you know, the views were just incredible, both day and night. I actually have a photograph of 8 of us standing around that cul-de-sac. But that was the genius of Denise, that she set it up so [it] accentuated all of those views. We have an entire base camp, which is, probably 100 trucks and people parked off to the side, but it’s completely out of view. So putting a set together like that was interesting, taking advantage of the location, of the views, and being able to actually make it work logistically was absolutely fantastic. And each one of those houses, you have a department, one of them’s got set dressing in it, and the extras, are in some of them, the grips are in another one, so it’s kind of fun, the way it worked out that way.
Screen Speck: Yeah, so you have places to store items and stuff in these other houses. They don’t have completed interiors, from what I understood.
Adams: They do not. They only completed what we needed for [Carol’s] house, and that actually progressed as the season progressed, because we obviously had the interior on stage. But that thing got more and more built out as we went, so there’s a lot of the interior in Carol’s house, but none in the others.
Screen Speck: You were DP on the pilot episode, and I wanted to ask you about that big action set piece in the middle, and obviously towards the end when the virus is really starting to take over. Could talk about some of the challenges of shooting that night scene and visually how you try to maintain audience adrenaline for a fairly extended amount of time?
Adams: Again, I have to hand it to Vince, he came up with the idea of the oner and the truck. Scene 46, as Vince, keeps referencing, which is kind of fun. So I did a lot of research along the lines of that oner, trying to figure out exactly how it was gonna work, how I could make it work, you know, drive that truck through that area without adding too many lights and having to battle that stuff, because we had all the interaction with the flames and stuff. And what we came up with was a thing called the Biscuit, which is basically a stripped-down Tesla. There’s a trailer we put the truck on, took the wheels off and dropped it way down so it was the right height, and then I built a whole LED screen around the front of the truck. So, what, Rhea [Seehorn] was seeing was actually a live image that was on the camera that was on the front of the truck, so that, basically, the environment lit her through those LEDs without having camera shadows and all of the other challenges that you have from some of the practicals. But, yeah, it was a big rig. It was quite the undertaking. Rhea had to actually pretend to be steering, which is the big challenge, but t worked out well. We spent an entire night shooting that one shot, which was pretty incredible.
Screen Speck: The show is so cinematic. Given some of the time and effort that goes into some of these shots, how much of the visuals are actually decided in pre-production, and how much do you find spontaneously on the day of?
Adams: Oh, I would say, especially on Pluribus, Vince does what he calls his homework, which is a layout, it’s an overhead plan that has all of the shots in it. Now, we can twist and turn and change them a little bit, but for the most part, we stick to that religiously, because then he knows exactly that he has the scene visually in his mind. But, I built on a few of them. Two that come to mind are the inside of the vending machine, being able to get that camera [in]. We were jammed in between two bags of chips and that shot, getting the light so we could see the reflections of all the chips, but still feel her coming out of focus and from the background, you had absolutely no idea what was coming. And the other one that I’m really proud of was the pull-up that Rhea did at the hospital, arriving at the emergency room. We suspended a camera that was very, very small out over the hood, so she drove up underneath the camera and basically stopped with the camera maybe 6 inches away from the windshield. So, it was a perfect stop on her point, absolutely nailed the mark. But it’s an interesting shot, it’s not something you’ve really seen before. I remember when we were shooting it, [we] would kind of back away from the monitors as we were watching, like, it really felt like she was gonna hit you, but it was very cool.
Screen Speck: The show is also quite international in scope. We do see a lot of diversity in terms of landscape and architecture. And I know that you did film in quite a few places. I’m curious if you tried to bring anything visually distinctive to these other locations.
Adams: Being in northern Spain, being in the Canary Islands, it’s such a different vibe, different atmosphere. We had a largely Spanish crew, except for some of the department heads that we brought with us. But it really lent itself that way. I mean, that’s why Vince chose those locations, you know? They were great places, you know, for storytelling, and very different from Albuquerque in a lot of ways. You know, Albuquerque, I absolutely love shooting here because, we get those incredible skies, as you well know, especially, you know, in the summertime. But yeah, the Canary Islands was very different, had a very different vibe to it, and then obviously Northern Spain, too. You know, we went to Oviedo to shoot the Opera House that was the same architect that designed the airport, so that it looked so similar, because we couldn’t empty out the Bilbao airport, so it was all in the choice of the locations, and, you know, Denise predominantly picking them from a storytelling perspective.
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