When the Apple TV showPluribushit screens, it carried a familiar visual signature crafted by cinematographersMarshall Adams, ASCandPaul Donachie. The two have worked together for nearly a decade under showrunnerVince GilliganonBetter Call Saul. Their shared aesthetic allowed them to alternate episodes seamlessly onPluribus.
“Paul and I have very similar aesthetics,” Adams explains. “There was a shorthand, definitely. We know each other’s style and feel, so we could have conversations about particular scenes and know exactly what the other was thinking.” Donachie, who was the A camera operator for Adams onSaulbefore moving into the DP chair, echoes this sentiment. “Me and Marshall did probably 40 episodes together. He knew the compositions I liked, I knew the compositions he liked. We all really—Vince and his team, Marshall and I—have a very similar view on how things are shot and what looks good.”
One of the hallmarks ofPluribusis its refusal to rely on the standard “shot-reverse shot” coverage found in most modern television. Instead, the DPs lean heavily into expansive wide shots that force the audience to lean in. “I’ve got a theory that if you play dialogue on a wide shot, the audience listens more,” says Donachie. “I’ve never been a fan of flipping and cutting every two seconds. If you hold a wide shot for minutes, the audience pays more attention because they have more to look at.” Adams adds that these shots are never “wide for wide’s sake.” Every vista of the Albuquerque desert or high-angle shot of Carol’s neighborhood is meticulously planned to serve a specific beat in the story. “It’s about finding a shot that tells a story in an interesting way without calling too much attention to the camera. We don’t want someone to say, ‘Look how cool this is’—it’s all about the storytelling.”
While the show feels grounded and practical, it wasn’t without its technical moments. In the pilot episode, Carol (Rhea Seehorn) drives a truck through a chaotic, dangerous environment with her partner Helen dying in the back. Adams shot the sequence as a long, tense oner. But without the ability to attach a lighting rig without casting shadows, he built a mini LED wall around the front window of the truck. A live image from a forward-facing B camera was fed into the panels, and it became both the light source and the world Carol was reacting to. “I ended up building a whole LED screen around that thing, which is what lit her and allowed her to see where she was going,” Adams explains. It’s volume-stage technology but rigged on an insert car. “All hurdles we managed to get over,” he grins.
Perhaps the greatest asset the DPs had was the creative freedom granted by Vince Gilligan. In an industry often governed by playing it safe, Gilligan encouraged the opposite. “One of the first things they said to me was that we want you to take risks,” Adams recalls. “They’d rather have to go back and reshoot something than feel like we left anything on the table. That’s rare. It was a real gift.” Donachie agrees. “The backup and support you get from production, from Vince, is amazing.”
LENSES: Panavision Panaspeeds, large format; multiple additional lenses.
Close focus: A short roundup of news: The shutdown ofOpenAI’s Sora, Meta disconnects theMetaverseas it pivots to AI, and a judge blocks Trump’s executive order tocut funds to PBS and NPR, finding it retaliatory.
Ben’s short end:They Will Kill You, an entertaining horror movie out now.
Illya’s short end: Your local public library is full of free DVD rentals, often in higher-resolution formats.
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SHOW RUNDOWN:
02:22 Close Focus
11:46-46:45 Marshall Adams and Paul Donachie interview
47:22 Short ends
55:47 Wrap up/Credits
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