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“We Wanted to Get Across a Sense of the Overbearing Heat”: DP Rufai Ajala on Mad Bills to Pay

A man is leaning on a fence as large birds fly overhead.Still from Mad Bills to Pay.

Mad Bills to Pay (or Destiny, dile que no soy malo) is director Joel Alfonso Vargas’s feature adaptation of his short film May it Go Beautifully for You, Rico. The film follows Rico, his family and his girlfriend as they adjust to the latter’s new pregnancy.

The film is a 2025 Sundance Film Festival NEXT selection and was shot by Rufai Ajala, who also served as DP on the original short. Below, Ajala discusses translating New York’s summer heat into visuals and the advantages of shooting in New York City.

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? 

Ajala: I met Joel during my graduate program at the National Film and Television School in the UK. At the time, I was already working on a documentary in New York, which I shot a few months before Mad Bills to Pay; the documentary was shot in and around the same borough, The Bronx. Through the documentary, I got a good sense of culture and livelihood and how a personal fictional story could play out in this cultural melting pot and borough of New York City, which I had never been to before. All of these factors combined, whilst being able to do some early location scouts for the production, enabled me to get the job. 

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?

Ajala: We, as lead creatives, settled on a creative approach that tried to emulate medium format film photography. We really liked how, with analogue medium format film photography, especially portraits shot on this medium, the characters and subjects stood out. The depth of field in medium format film creates a distinctive separation between the foreground, midground and background elements. And we had the hard task of trying to create this visual look on an S35 sensor on the Arri Alexi Mini. I think we eventually were successful in creating that look. 

Filmmaker: Were there any specific influences on your cinematography, whether they be other films, or visual art, of photography, or something else? 

Ajala: The work of photographer Wayne Lawrence (Orchard Beach: The Bronx Riviera) was a key inspiration for what we wanted to achieve. 

Another approach we wanted to take creatively was having very “considered” frames and portrait-style single shots and set-ups per scene, for the whole action to play out for our scenes. A key inspiration we took from cinema that had a similar approach was the film I’m No Longer Here (2019) and how it utilized minimal set-ups and camera angles per scene, allowing the action to take place in a single frame. 

Filmmaker: What were the biggest challenges posed by production to those goals? What camera did you shoot on? Why did you choose the camera that you did? What lenses did you use? 

Ajala: Marni Zimmerman at Panavision New York and Victoria Harris at Panavision London were hugely helpful in giving us the resources to make and create the visual style of this film. Panavision supplied us with an Alexa Mini package, paired with Zeiss Super Speed lenses, and we also used a Sigma Cine 18-35mm lens that was the director’s own. Because of the low-profile nature of the film and the fly-on-the-wall approach we wanted to achieve, our camera package had to be very streamlined, stripped down and low profile to be as unimposing as possible to shoot in the spaces and locations we wanted to shoot in. Hence, our lens choices and camera package. With the lens test we did, we loved the look the Zeiss Super Speeds and Sigma Cine zoom created, especially when paired with the Arri Alexa Mini; they gave the depth and large format look that we were after. 

Filmmaker: Describe your approach to lighting.

Ajala: The overall approach to our lighting was similar in that the lighting had to be based in the real world of the setting of the film and its locations. Meaning we were working a lot with the natural light and just augmenting and adding to the existing lighting that was in the spaces. This meant relying on the pathway of the sun and planning our shoot and set ups accordingly. 

Filmmaker: What was the most difficult scene to realize and why? And how did you do it? 

Ajala: I would have to say the trickiest scenes to light were the interior living room scenes and the majority of the night exterior scenes, both for similar reasons. The interior living room scenes due to how wide and large the space was: it was very hard to hang any lighting fixtures to boost the interior ambient lighting. And because we were on the fourth floor of an apartment complex, it was so hard to light from the exteriors. So, I really had to plan with the pathway of the sun in mind. 

I was particular about what lighting fixtures I needed that could give me the power output for the ambience I needed for day scenes at 5600K (daylight) and the flexibility by being bi-color for night scenes at 3200-2700K (tungsten). So, getting a fixture that could do both owe output and was bi-color was essential. 

When it came to lighting the night exteriors, we relied on the existing streetlamps, shop lights, lights from vehicles and cars, etc. that existed in those locations and environments, and then placing our actors in the most suitable spot. One thing that’s an advantage when shooting in cities like New York City is that it’s a city, a true 24-hour metropolitan city. These cities are generally very bright from all these existing lights that illuminate their streets and advertise to the local patrons, so we were able to utilize this to our advantage. 

Filmmaker: Finally, describe the finishing of the film. How much of your look was “baked in” versus realized in the DI? 

Ajala: Emmanuel Benjamin was our color grader. We did extensive camera and color tests before we left the UK as well additional tests when we were in NYC. The UK’s weather during the summer didn’t us give a one-to-one idea of what New York’s weather would be during the summer, so we did those tests knowing they would not give us the whole picture. 

In our story we wanted to get across a sense of the overbearing heat that occurs during the summer months in New York City, as well as the colors associated with this humid heat. The heat that comes from being in a sprawling, dense cityscape, made from glass and concrete jungles that reflect and refract the light sevenfold making it brighter, warmer and unbearably humid. Two films we used as color references for this visual motif were Raising Victor Vargas (2002) and Do The Right Thing (1989). 

Even though much of the final look of the film is what we shot, i.e. not much was alternated, Emmanuel’s grading and expertise was able to elevate it with nuance that the additions he added were invisible but integral and important to the look and visual world of the film we were trying to create. 

TECH BOX

Film Title: Mad Bills to Pay (or Destiny, dile que no soy malo)
Camera: Arri Alexa Mini
Lenses: Zeiss Super Speeds and Sigma Cine Zoom (18-35mm)
Lighting: Natural Lighting, Aputure (1200D, 300D mark ii, InfiniBars) Tungsten Filament Practical Bulbs, etc.
Processing: ARRIRAW Open Gate 3.4K
Color Grading: Emmanual Benjamin – DI (DaVinci Resolve)

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