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Shutter Angles
Conversations with DPs, directors and below-the-line crew by Matt Mulcahey
“Two Giant Oners Put Together into One Piece”: DP Hillary Fyfe Spera on Daredevil: Born Again
#image_title When it comes to the work of cinematographer Hillary Fyfe Spera, you’ll find two consistent elements – 1970s inspirations and Panavision glass.
Both are present in Daredevil: Born Again, a new Disney+ series that continues the story of lawyer by day/vigilante by night Matt Murdock originally begun on Netflix. The season opens with Murdock (played by Charlie Cox) and his nemesis Wilson “Kingpin” Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio) trying to forsake their daker halves before they’re ultimately pulled back into their respective alter egos as crime fighter and crime lord.
The show’s final arc took a circuitous route to fruition. Nearly six full episodes were in the can when the writer’s strike caused the show to shut down production in the summer of 2023. During that hiatus, the direction of the series was tweaked, with more links to the original Netflix show added (including the return of Murdock cohorts Foggy Nelson and Karen Page). The team of Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead were brought on to direct the remainder of the series. Ultimately, three new post-strike episodes were created, which became the new pilot and the final two installments.
Throughout the changes, Spera was a constant. She lensed four of the pre-hiatus episodes and shot the majority of the new material once work resumed. With the season finale arriving this week, Spera spoke to Filmmaker about bringing Daredevil back.
Filmmaker: The story arc of Daredevil: Born Again shifted after the strike, but did the look of the show undergo a reimagining as well?
Spera: Aesthetically, there weren’t many pivots. About 90 percent of the changes that happened post-strike were story and script changes. The original Netflix show was always a reference. They really nailed it [with that series], so we were always taking a page from it. There wasn’t any sort of a mandate to go and change the look after the strike. We had set up a show that was influenced by 1970s movies that we wanted to be really grounded and human, and that remained the same. One thing we did bring on post-strike with Justin and Aaron were some of the sensory effects that are in the new pilot, which were very cool.
Filmmaker: When I think of the Netflix show, I think of saturated colors, high contrast, very crushed blacks and long fight scenes done as oners. The reason I asked if there was an aesthetic shift when you came back is because the new pilot opens with a sequence that has all of those traits, definitely more so than the more courtroom-centered second and third episodes. You have some splashes of red in that new pilot opening, which is a color that you strategically eliminate in a lot of the other early episodes as Murdock tries to put away his Daredevil persona.
Spera: You’re exactly right. The use of red has been very carefully curated in terms of when we see it. In terms of the saturation and blacker blacks of the original show, we took all that and wanted to evolve it. The 1970s is definitely an era of filmmaking that’s very influential to me. The French Connection was a huge North Star for us. We also took inspiration from Taxi Driver, The Friends of Eddie Coyle and The Conversation. We were trying, through the lensing, color palette and just tone and feel, to infuse it with some of that 1970s New York grit. It was never meant to be a total 180 from the original show, but it was definitely meant to evolve and expand it as we made the new series.
Filmmaker: Cinematographers love those 1970s movies, but I often hear the same ones as references. Do you have a couple of 1970s-era deep cuts that people should check out?
Spera: Variety is a really special movie that I’m not sure as many people have seen. I also love The Panic in Needle Park. I know a lot of people have seen Klute but that’s always a great reference, as is really everything that Gordon Willis shot. Thief is a big one. It’s from the 80s, but I sort of lump it in with a lot of those other films. The tone and lighting of that film are really special. Then photographers like Saul Leiter and Robert Frank are big ones for me. Leiter was essentially a street photographer, but his work seems so curated and intentional in his use of obscurity. That was a big reference for us [on Daredevil], because it’s so much about what’s hidden in the shadows or in plain sight.
Filmmaker: References from the 1970s and Panavision lenses are two constants in your work, and you used Panavision anamorphics on Daredevil: Born Again. That’s a departure from the original show, which was shot 1.78 spherical.
Spera: I always saw this show as anamorphic. In my first interview, my pitch was to go anamorphic. I’m a diehard Panavision person and I’ve worked with them for a lot of years. G Series anamorphic lenses are what we chose for the show. They’re vintage, very textured and smaller lenses. They’re special lenses and when you put them up you see it immediately. Another aspect of anamorphic is the opportunities it gives you to express relationships within the [wider] frame. In the show, we’re trying to juxtapose the storylines and the show’s relationships through the composition. With Fisk’s world, it’s a lot of center punch stuff that feels very institutionalized. Then with Matt and Daredevil, there’s a very grounded feeling. Cityscapes tend to fall into that 2.39 framing world really well too. So, it seemed to fit in a lot of ways.
Filmmaker: In addition to the G Series, you also used some T Series, H Series and Panaspeeds. What situations called for those?
Spera: The H series are also vintage lenses, but they’re spherical. We used those for a lot of different things. Sometimes we used them for wides because we wanted very straight lines. So, when we’re doing architectural stuff on the wide side, we sometimes used spherical. The priority was always the G Series, then we’d use the T Series when we were shooting additional units or some 2nd Unit stuff and just needed the extra glass. The T Series blends well with the Gs. We detuned them a bit to [blend even more]. The Panaspeeds were used for some of the VFX work that required spherical. Those were very rarely used in specific instances. We did also throw in the mix these long anamorphic zooms, which are in the show a lot. They’re also very 1970s, with The Conversation being the big reference. We called them “doom zooms.” There’s a lot of impending doom in the first few episodes, so we used them to show there’s this crushing doom coming that’s unrelenting.
Filmmaker: I did an interview for The Holdovers with DP Eigil Bryld and he talked about how much he loved that H Series 55mm, which opens to a T1.1. Did you use that for anything on Daredevil?
Spera: Yeah, we loved that lens. We also used a Macro Anamorphic 55, which is beautiful. I would say 80 percent of the show is on the Macro Anamorphic 55, a G Series 40 and an E Series 135. Those were our go-to lenses. We had two of the Macro Anamorphic 55s. We were very fortunate because we had so many additional units and both those lenses had different characteristics. They’re very specific, interesting personality lenses.
Filmmaker: You mentioned earlier the effect when Matt is using his enhanced senses. In the pilot’s opening bar scene, you zoom in past Murdock to Foggy outside the bar on his phone and as you get closer the aspect ratio narrows. It’s such a strange effect. I couldn’t figure out exactly what was going on. It feels kind of like a dolly zoom, but the background gradually becomes more distorted until it’s almost like a fish eye. How did you get that shot?
Spera: It’s a combination of things. Most of the sensory effects were done all in camera, but for that one we used a three-camera rig mounted on a dolly. The idea was to really home in on his senses. It’s almost like he’s tuning a radio dial. He hears all these things, and then as he homes in the aspect ratio changes to get smaller, to really pinpoint what he senses. So, the center camera is doing a dolly zoom on a long spherical zoom lens. The two flanking cameras are very wide-angle spherical primes to capture the world, almost like a mini-array system. Those are then stitched together into one image in post.
Filmmaker: Tell me about the long oner you put together for the opening of the pilot. You’ve got Daredevil and Bullseye fighting in the bar, then they continue to battle up several flights of stairs before the scene ends on the building’s roof. Is that all shot in one spot or is it a few locations stitched together?
Spera: The bar is practical in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The first section in the bar and stairwell are all in that same location. There’s VFX elements in that part of the shot, things like the knives, but the lighting cues and camera movement is all practical, and the stunt choreography as well. Then there’s a stitch when they go to the roof, and that’s done on stage. From that point on, that is all a oner as well. So, it’s kind of like two giant oners put together into one piece. It took a tremendous amount of planning and choreography. It’s always fun to work with Phil Silvera, who’s the stunt choreographer. I’d seen the oners from the original Daredevil series and they’re intimidating with how great they are. So, we had our work cut out for us to try do one of our own.
Filmmaker: That oner is a very flashy set piece, but for the diner scene between Murdock and Fisk later that episode you go the opposite direction. You get into the scene in a fun way with this pullback and tilt down from a mirror above their booth, but after that it’s really just two or three sizes of each actor. You don’t go crazy with the coverage or weird angles. You let the performances do the work.
Spera: Exactly. That was entirely the intention. Heat was a big reference for that, obviously, just keeping it very simple. It’s all about the performances. The coverage was minimal, the takes ran long and we did minimal takes. We just kind of let it play. That’s one thing that I was really excited about with this show. I don’t come from a comic book background necessarily, as a DP or as a person. Moments like that diner scene, which are just very human and simple, are as important to me as the fun action sequences.
Filmmaker: In that first episode there’s a scene where Fisk walks into a meeting between his wife and the city’s gang leaders. There are circular overhead lights in the room and when Fisk sits down there’s a reflection in the glass table where those lights become a halo around his head. It works thematically because at this point he’s trying to essentially go straight. Was that shot something that was planned or found on the day?
Spera: We just found that in the moment, which is such a cool aspect of what we do. You have to keep an eye out for those things at all times. You have storyboards and shot lists and everything else, but I love having those happy discoveries. It was a happy accident to have something that fit so well thematically, but also was just a cool visual. You just made my day that you asked that, because I’m so glad somebody saw that.
Filmmaker: There’s some Hitchcockian doubling going on at the end of the pilot as Fisk’s face alternates between darkness and light as he stands atop a city roof. Down below in the street, Murdock is hit with flashing red light. It’s another piece of thematic lighting as both of these men try to sublimate their dark sides.
Spera: White light is always related to Fisk and the institutional oppressiveness of his world, then Daredevil’s color is obviously red. That moment is like, “The doom is coming. Their other identities are coming.”
Filmmaker: The next few episodes, as Murdock tries to find justice through the law, are set largely in the courtroom. Walk me through lighting that space. Is that a practical courtroom?
Spera: It is. It’s up in Yonkers…and it’s on the fifth floor. (laughs) So, we had a lot of lights on lifts coming through the windows. The idea lighting-wise for that space is that it’s almost like a holy place for Matt. When he’s not Daredevil, the courtroom is really his realm.
We wanted hard shafts of lights, something that felt more contrasty and had more shape to it than your typical overhead courtroom lighting. I think on day two, the winds came up so high that we had to ground some of the lifts and move some of the sources inside. Hopefully none of that is felt and it seems cohesive, but, as these things go, you’re constantly pivoting on the day.
Filmmaker: When you moved in from wides to close-ups, how were you adjusting the lighting?
Spera: We used a lot of negative fill, just trying to get some contrast and shape to it. It’s pretty simple, just soften some of the hard sources we’re using when we’re going close and then add negative. We also used some eye lights, especially when someone is on the witness stand. There’s a lot of handheld work in there, so we’re moving fairly quickly. For me, it’s all about giving space and time for the performance.
