Weeks of Planning and More

“Oners are so stupid. It’s just the director jacking off while making everyone else’s lives miserable. Audiences do not care about this shit.” 

Welcome to Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s satirical comedy ““The Studio”. The Apple TV+ limited series pokes fun at Hollywood, including directors’ love for shooting scenes as one continuous take. The show’s second episode, “The Oner,” dives into the behind-the-scenes filming of how the shot comes together. In the episode, Ike Barinholtz’s executive Sal complains to new studio boss Rogen, who plays Matt Remick, head of Continental Studios, about the one-take. Sally Polley plays the director who is shooting her film and trying to shoot the important one-take before she loses her lighting. Matt and Sal are frantically driving through the Hollywood Hills to watch the scene being filmed. But things don’t go as seamlessly as they should, because Matt keeps getting in the way of the important one-take shot. On more than one occasion, the scene needs to be reset. In a very meta way, the episode mirrors what’s on screen because it’s also shot as a oner.

When cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra heard about Rogen and Goldberg’s plan to use a lot of oners throughout the series, as well as shoot an entire episode in a continuous take, he was more than game for the challenge. “There were no shortcuts,” Newport-Berra says.

Speaking with Variety, Newport-Berra says it came down to “slogging through every beat.” That meant walking with Rogen and Goldberg with script in hand to get the beats of how they would shoot it. “We would go to these locations and walk through it with an iPhone, the script, and just see how it timed out,” Newport-Berra explains. “Often we’d have to figure out how to blend two locations, or how we would get out of one scene and into another.”

A perfect example of that is in the opening minutes of the episode, where after driving up through the Hollywood Hills, Matt and Sal stop to talk in the driveway. The Ronin gimbal helped Newport-Berra get from one scene to the next.

Here, Newport-Berra breaks down his prep process, his lens choice, working with Martin Scorsese and Kathryn Hahn.

How did you map out Episode 2? What went into that?

That was one of the more terrifying and exciting propositions to shoot. We found an incredible location that we loved, but it was also probably the least conducive to doing what we wanted to do, because it was all glass walls.

The time of day was always obvious so we weren’t able to cheat. There was nowhere to stage any gear or people. Wherever the camera was, if that camera had to pan a little bit left or right, you would have seen a million crew members, monitors and lights that weren’t supposed to be seen. But we spent a lot of time with the location. We went there weeks in advance and started talking through it. Seth and Evan would walk the route, and we would identify any moments that felt like they were lacking or could be more interesting, and we moved through the script fine-tuning it until we had come up with the most exciting route through the space and the best way to show off the location, while also giving the actors a lot to do. It was a process of returning to the location as many times as we could, and everyone in the crew had great ideas. Some of those came early on, and some came in the moment from the actors or the camera operator.

What went into the driving sequence that ends with the two of them talking in the driveway?

That was one of the trickier parts of the episode because it happens at the beginning and the end of the episode. But the technology for camera support is incredible these days. We were using a Ronin gimbal, and we’re able to operate it remotely. We had a car with the operator ahead of our picture car as we were driving up. As they park, that car is in front of the picture car. It then has to disappear, because seconds later, we pull the gimbal off, and then we wrap around the car, and that led us into the rest of the episode. There were a lot of moving parts with people coordinating gear and vehicle movement. There’s so much happening behind the scenes, but it’s also a testament to the actors because it gives them space to change what they’re doing, and they have to focus on their performance while a million things are happening around them.

One of the first things Seth and Evan told you was that they wanted to use one lens, what was your lens and camera of choice for this, and why?

We used the ARRI 21mm Master Prime Lens. We tested a few different focal lens and lengths, but we loved this one because it’s a really fast lens. The close focus on it is quite short, so you can get very close to somebody without having to add any diopters. It’s a really just versatile lens. It’s quite sharp, so if you’re in a close up, it’s really powerful. We shot on the Alexa 35 which is ARRI’s newer camera, and it renders skin tones really beautifully, it works great in low light, and also works really great in high contrast situations. So we didn’t have to overlight things, and we could work with a lot of natural and available light.

Going back to about the rest of the episode, it’s an actual film set where you have lines about whip pans, but with that many people talking, what happened when someone flubs their lines, or stepped into the shot?

We called cut and reset back to one. We tried to be kind, gracious and supportive of everyone, but the truth is everyone would make mistakes, and every single member of the crew at some point flubbed a take or walked into a shot or bumped the camera, and it’s just the nature of what we’re doing. Seth and Evan went into it knowing that, and so they’re patient. It made it feel like a team, and it really brought everyone up to a similar level. Everyone knew they had to bring 100% to every single take. When we were able to pull off a take, it’s one of the most euphoric moments you can imagine, because it’s collaboration at its peak. With this, you nail a take, and that is the show.

Once you knew this episode was happening, did you go off and watch any films or scenes that had oners?

We referenced a lot of stuff. A lot of our inspirations were firmly seared into our memory, and I could probably recite them. But the opening scene of Robert Altman’s “The Player” was a big inspiration; it moved through a studio lot that was kind of like the first touchstone of the show. We knew we wanted to capture that energy, but in our own way. The other obvious references were “Birdman” and “Children of Men,” which have a more handheld approach. My favorite references, though, were from  Mikhail Kalatozo, who directed “Soy Cuba,” which is also referenced in the show. He also made “The Cranes Are Flying,” and they’re still able to pull off some of the most unique and elaborate camera movements and shots I’ve ever seen. It made me realize that I had no excuse not to pull off any of these shots, because it takes willpower to complete these shots, and there’s always a way to figure it out.

Were there any last-minute changes or things that were decided during filming?

We would come in and find a general blocking and figure out what worked best for the actors. And then they would often leave the set for a while, while we figured out how to pull off the shot that we had just come up with. We would often do five or six takes of a shot, and then there would be obvious points where things were maybe less dynamic than they could be, or we were missing a reaction or a performance, and we would take a break in the filming and walk through it again asking how to make the shot better. A lot of times it was because an actor came up with a great improv line that we wanted to then fold into the plan, or if we felt we were missing something, or something could be better. In general, every single day, there were changes to the plan, but that was just built into our process.

How many takes of this episode did it take until they finally had it?

I would say dozens of takes.

Martin Scorsese appears in episode 1. What was it like working with him and his sequences?

It was intimidating. I know Seth was nervous. I was nervous. I think Evan was nervous. We just wanted to do right by him and impress him. We know he has incredibly high standards, and that he was a huge inspiration for the show, so we really wanted to show up for him. He didn’t know ahead of time that we were doing these oners, and it was something that Seth broke to him very late. We were worried that he wasn’t going to be interested in that or excited about it, so Seth had us order a second camera just in case Marty asked, “Where’s the set where are the other cameras?” When Marty came to set, Seth said, “Hey, Marty, we’re doing this all as oners.” Marty said, “Great, let’s do it.” He was totally up to the task. It took a lot of figuring it out together, but just like any of the other cameos, everyone was excited by the fact that we were doing something different and that we were trying to push the medium.

Do you have a favorite mishap, especially when you were so close to getting a take?

I think Kathryn Hahn…she would break the scene a lot of times because she would say something so ridiculously funny, and Seth would crack up, or half the cast or the operator would start laughing. Kathyrn is so funny and has such good timining and improv that she can’t help herself but inject these brilliant moments. There were a lot of takes where she would say something just totally unplanned and hilarious, the take would be ruined, but we would then take that line and reincorporate into the scene in the next take, and we would keep going. She was an amazing source of comedic relief at all times, and a wild card that was very much needed and adored in the show.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.