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“Anything That Does a Good Job Everywhere Can’t Do a Great Job Anywhere”: DP Marcus Patterson on Sunfish
Still from Sunfish (& Other Stories at Green Lake). Courtesy of Sundance Institute. In Sundance U.S. Dramatic Competition premiere Sunfish (& Other Stories on Green Lake), the lives of a girl learning to sail, a musician, two sisters running a bed-and-breakfast and a fisherman intersect in the eponymous Northern Michigan locale.
The film, the debut feature by Sierra Falconer was shot largely on location. Below, cinematographer Marcus Patterson (Soukoon) discusses his influences for the film’s look and how he plans around budget limitations without compromising his ambitions.
See all responses to our annual Sundance cinematographer interviews here.
Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this job?
Patterson: Sierra and I met for the first time about ten months before production. She had seen some of my other work and was complimentary, but I think it was our first meeting that gave us both a feeling it would be a good partnership. I’m from Alabama, so I had some insight into how she viewed a textured story in the woods centered around Green Lake. I’ve spent at least part of every summer of my life on the lake, and we were both drawn to the idea of the lake as a place where time doesn’t quite move at the same speed as the rest of the world. In addition to my personal connection to the film, I am drawn to rural stories. I was pitching Jeff Nichols films, particularly Shotgun Stories and Mud. I also showed her some photography I really liked for the film. It wasn’t until later she described the look of the film as an old photograph, so I think that showed we were seeing the same film in our heads.
Filmmaker: What were your artistic goals on this film, and how did you realize them? How did you want your cinematography to enhance the film’s storytelling and treatment of its characters?
Patterson: One of our primary visual goals was to make the film feel like a memory. During our couple weeks of prep, Sierra brought a bunch of old family photos to me, and we looked through them together. The colors had slightly faded and the framing was a little funky, but they had a charm to them that felt right for the film. They felt like someone was telling a story from the lake. The challenge was transferring that feeling—from a static, physical, single photo—to a whole film, with motion and modern cameras and monitors. We didn’t want Sunfish to feel old, just timeless. I tested a couple of different looks two days before production that weren’t in the right direction. Blues and greens were a little too strong; the whole thing felt a little too saturated. Next, I tried building off of some Kodachrome emulation LUTs for the Alexa, but they all felt too intentionally washed out or had a strong color cast. We finally settled on a look that was slightly desaturated but still felt modern. When we were framing, we always looked for at least one wide that felt like one of those photos she showed me. We may need coverage, but we tried to find one angle or perspective that looked like someone might have walked by and snapped a photo.
Filmmaker: Were there any specific influences on your cinematography, whether they be other films, or visual art, of photography, or something else?
Patterson: When I was preparing for Sunfish, I absorbed myself in the photography of Tema Stauffer. Sierra was big on specificity of place—that the images we create paint a portrait of Green Lake and feel unique. Stauffer’s work has this feeling of capturing a place and time that fill in the other four senses for you—you can smell the old carpet in a church; you can hear the roar of the crickets in the woods. The Southern Fiction collection in particular was inspirational because Sunfish takes place in a rural community in Michigan. Sierra also referenced Nathan Pearce’s Midwest Dirt in her deck, which we referenced for portraiture during prep. Everyone in Midwest Dirt feels like they’re in the middle of telling you a story when he snapped a photo, and we really wanted Sunfish to feel like you were dropped into the middle of a day with our characters. In addition to photography, we watched a lot of films together. Lucrecia Martel’s La Ciénega was a big influence on Sierra writing the film, particularly the way the film feels like a memory, drifting from character to character. Photographically, I knew we’d be dealing with a ton of sunlight without a lot of ability to control it. I looked at Nomadland and Aftersun for our daytime work and the way Joshua James Richards and Gregory Oke used the sun in those films. Céline Sciamma’s Petite Maman was also a film we referenced a good bit for its intentionality with the camera; moves are deliberate and motivated, and we really wanted to use the camera to direct attention rather than follow the action on screen.
Filmmaker: What were the biggest challenges posed by production to those goals?
Patterson: I guess the most obvious is the one I’m sure everyone says—budget! Sunfish is a true microbudget film, but Sierra and I never wanted it to feel that way. We wanted designed frames, intentional camera movement, and strong impressionistic lighting. Whenever you’re tight on time and money, the “plan” is in danger of going out the window. Fortunately, we had the most incredible, collaborative team. Our AD Jake Brodsky kept us honest but really worked to make sure we drew the marrow out of every moment. Sierra and I prepped for two weeks ahead of the film, and prior to that we had been meeting for months designing the overall look of the film, so once we were on location together, our shot list came together pretty quickly. We went into nearly every scene with a concrete plan. During our prep we took still frames of 90 percent of our shots so I could put them in a document to share with the rest of the crew. We always had room to be flexible on set, but I was generally able to give the lighting team our hero frame for the next setup and have them working ahead because Sierra and I were on the same page about our approach.
Filmmaker: What camera did you shoot on? Why did you choose the camera that you did? What lenses did you use?
Patterson: We shot on the Alexa LF with Masterbuilt Soft Flares. For boat work, I used an Angenieux 25-250 because I had very little control of the distance between the camera and the characters when we were out on the lake. I also carried an Arri Signature Prime 12mm to get the very widest frame we could without distortion. I liked the LF for this film for two reasons. Primarily, I just love faces on the LF. I like how close you can get for portraits and feel the proximity of the camera to the subject. Also, Sierra said from the beginning she wanted to capture the vastness of the lake and the environment, so the LF gave us a wider field of view with a large format sensor. I settled on the Masterbuilt Soft Flares after an extensive test at Keslow Camera in Los Angeles. We were looking for a set of lenses that gave us the gentle qualities we found appealing in aged photographs but were also reliable enough to shoot in the woods five hours from the closest camera house. I tested a slew of lenses—Ironglass, Panchros, Baltars, K35s, and a selection of funky lenses they dug up for me—and the Masterbuilts were the right combination of gentle and flarey with some falloff but still had a nice solid housing that I thought would hold up for the entirety of the shoot.
I’ve shot with some gorgeous lenses with housings that would scare me in a stiff breeze, and on Sunfish I knew I wouldn’t have the option of calling the rental house to swap out a problematic focal length. We tested a few zooms and found something that matched the quality of the Masterbuilts, but it didn’t cover a full frame sensor. For those shots, I cropped the sensor into 35mm mode. Once we were on set, we learned we liked the severe vignetting of the lens on the full frame sensor, so we used that when our characters were looking through binoculars.
Filmmaker: Describe your approach to lighting.
Patterson: My approach to lighting comes from being in the space and feeling where light “wants” to come from. It’s really tough for me to imagine lighting before being in the space we’re shooting; often times you have to, of course, so I always have a plan before I see the location, but nothing can substitute spending time in the space and feeling where light feels most natural. I tend to light from outside of a space whenever possible and supplement with passive bounce or smaller units inside. I find that too much gear clogging up the inside of a set can be really cumbersome, whether for actors who want to explore more or just turning around and looking the other way. For this reason, I generally try to get a base level down for our wider shots and use the same general setup for closer moments. In general, I like naturalistic lighting—so it feels like its coming from a source that makes sense in the image—and high contrast imagery.
Filmmaker: What was the most difficult scene to realize and why? And how did you do it?
Patterson: Some of the most difficult scenes were the sailing scenes. You have so many variables you can’t control—the wind for Maren, who played Lu, so she could sail; the direction of the camera boat at any given time; the movement of the two boats together. For the sailing scenes, we essentially never cut because we were never sure if the next moment would tell the story better than the last. We planned as much as we could, then just went for it. Really, anytime we were around the water, life got a lot harder. We had several shots just below the surface of the water, but we couldn’t afford an underwater housing, so we used the HydroFlex Splashbag, which is decidedly not the tool for underwater work. It protects the camera, but it’s really unwieldy because it doesn’t have buoyancy control. The more variables you have, the less control you have of the image and your time on the day. I try to eliminate as many question marks as I can before the shoot, but sometimes you just have to trust your preparation and see what happens. Sometimes you have baby loons that just won’t swim the right way! For all of those situations, I tell the AD we need extra time to account for those variables. This allows us to adjust to uncooperative loons, take a few extra shots with the splashbag or spend a little more time on the water to get the right sailing moments. If you allocate a little extra time (or a lot, depending on how many variables you have that you can’t control) I feel like you’re setting your team up for success.
Filmmaker: Finally, describe the finishing of the film. How much of your look was “baked in” versus realized in the DI?
Patterson: I made dailies every night in our editor Chelsi Johnston’s room. In true indie film fashion, we all stayed in a cabin together, so I could hop over to her edit station and finesse the day’s work. I had a show LUT that we used for everything, and I would make a few tweaks to each scene based on how the day went. I am really particular about making sure the editor and director are looking at something as close as possible to our intention because I think it affects how you edit and interpret the story. People also get used to the editorial look, so if it isn’t a close approximation of the final look then you generally get pushback in the color suite because it’s what everyone is used to. It’s miserable! So, I’d say we were about 80 percent there with our show LUT and adjustments. I try not to get deeper than primary adjustments with dailies unless something is really wrong, so I always feel like a show LUT is a little one dimensional. Anything that does a good job everywhere can’t do a great job anywhere; that’s where my colorist comes in. I’ve worked with Nate Seymour on tons of projects by now, and he has a really excellent eye and the uncanny ability to take what we were going for and make it better. I’m rarely changing the look significantly in the DI; instead, it’s usually a polishing process where we match various shots and separate tones out between scenes. And power windows! I get greedy with my power window time.
TECH BOX
Film Title: Sunfish (and Other Stories on Green Lake)
Camera: Alexa Mini LF
Lenses: Masterbuilt Soft Flares, Angenieux 25-250 HR, Arri Signature Prime 12mm
Lighting: Black Lantern Lighting (Los Angeles), X-Men Grips (Chicago), Creamsource, Astera, Aputure, Arri, K5600, LiteGear
Color Grading: Colorist Nate Seymour at Trafik
