BY IAIN BLAIR
Director of Photography Tommy Maddox-Upshaw ASC got his start in the industry as a PA working on music videos and commercials, before working his way up the ranks to become a union grip/electric and then a cinematographer. Over the past decade he’s racked-up such credits as the acclaimed ‘80s saga Snowfall (2019-2021), for which he won the ASC award, Empire (2019-2020), and The Man Who Fell To Earth (2022) which earned him a nomination for the Camerimage Golden Frog award. His latest project is Opus, a wild horror-thriller fever dream written and directed by Mark Anthony Green, starring John Malkovich and Ayo Edebiri, who stars in the hit TV show The Bear.
The story starts when a young magazine writer (Edebiri) is invited to the remote compound of legendary pop star Moretti (Malkovich) who mysteriously disappeared 30 years ago, but who’s now suddenly reappeared to launch his new album. Surrounded by the star’s cult of sycophants and intoxicated journalists, she soon finds herself in the middle of his twisted and murderous plan.
(L-R) Ayo Edebiri Credit: Anna Kooris
“I loved the script, and I still do to this day,” reports Maddox. “It’s a really fun script to read, a page turner, and I read it really quickly. For me, it’s a great adventure and social commentary on a lot of like things, like the American workforce, gender and race dynamics. And I thought Mark did a great job in weaving this tale.”
The DP’s collaboration with Green, a former GQ writer/editor who was making his feature film debut with the project following his award-winning short Trapeze, U.S.A. (2017), began with, “lots of talking about references, inspirations and the visual approach,” he says. “I’m a big fan of David Fincher and Harris Savides ASC, so we looked at The Game (1997) and that clinical coolness of the opening corporate setting was the starting inspiration for the movie.
“We discussed the arc of Ayo’s character along with tonal and palette shifts of the story and settings, and the palette is very cold and almost monochromatic at the start when she’s in New York. It’s kind of linear compositions when you first watch it and then we progressively change all that as the narrative starts to escalate and she goes to New Mexico to meet Moretti.
(L-R) Juliette Lewis Credit: Anna Kooris
“Then we start to reflect on the fact that she’s left the cold corporate world of New York for this seemingly warm, inviting world of Moretti and his compound, but then that all changes again. The warm look starts to get mixed with sub-colours and tonalities like cyans and blues when she realises that things are not straightforward and what they seem to be.”
With the strikes looming at the time, early discussions about possible shooting locations included Atlanta as well as New Mexico. “Tax breaks were also a factor, and even Australia was proposed at one point,” he reports.
Ultimately, the filmmakers decided on New Mexico and locations in Albuquerque and Santa Fe.
(L-R) John Malkovich Credit: Anna Kooris
“Once that was decided, we started to scout specific locations in Santa Fe and Albuquerque, and then we came back to LA, prepped some more, and then we went back out and started to shoot in Albuquerque first. We doubled a couple of university buildings for our New York interiors and found an interior in Albuquerque that could double for her New York apartment. Then everything for his compound we found in Santa Fe. Finally, we shot for one day on location in New York City to get exteriors for the magazine’s offices.”
To help immerse audiences in a visually-rich, unsettling world, the DP decided to shoot with the Sony Venice 2 and DZO Vespid Retro Amber primes.
“This is the spherical large format that just came out,” he notes, “and I really liked them because of the warm flares. I thought they really did a good job in terms of reflecting the Santa Fe warmer palette that we were living in for a lot of the movie.
(L-R) Ayo Edebiri Credit: Anna Kooris
“I also had a zoom lens that was made by Keslow Camera LA, that they have in-house which they’ve manipulated and modified recently. Brett Reed from Keslow is the designer of the lens and it’s a Keslow 27-128mm Renaissance zoom T3.6 which is an enhanced 17-80mm Angenieux Optimo. This zoom lens was an artistic choice in the flare characteristics compared to that of the DZO amber primes. I found shooting it a bit deeper would help the outer field fall off the lens so I could load the edges, while keeping the majority of the retro flares and feels. It wasn’t an exact match but it was close enough with a bit more reach than the coveted 20-100 Cooke zoom.
“The DZO Catta Ace zooms were not available just yet, and I truly love my collaboration with the Keslow team. I just used that one set of primes and that one zoom for the majority of the show. So, it was really a simple approach to it all, and as always, I relied on Alex Lim, my first AC, who’s done so many jobs with me, to make a really nimble camera package that really helped in terms of speed and turnaround and setting the bar with the local camera crew.”
Maddox worked closely with his longtime final colourist Mitch Paulson at Picture Shop on LUTs. “Opus plays with several distinct visual worlds, and my approach is always to shoot a clean test in prep and then I relight the test to see what the LUT will do,” he explains.
(L-R) Tony Hale Credit: Anna Kooris
“So, Mitch and I talked about the palettes and about the whole visual arc. I want that cool, bluish tone for one LUT in the beginning of the story. Then for phase two I wanted a warmer New Mexico feel. For phase three, I wanted a LUT that had some sub-colour in there along with the warm base feel. And then for phase four, I wanted a cleaner neutral feel, almost like a regular 709 to even out the palette for the very end of the movie.
“Mitch helped me to figure-out the best way to convey these LUTs, which always helps at the end of the movie because when it comes time to colour, he can almost copy and paste it, but he can also manipulate it a little bit. I think we have even some post grain in there. And it just helped editorially for us to see exactly how it was looking.”
In terms of lighting, “It was a relatively small package as it was such a tight shoot,” he reports. “We had a couple of Condors and a lot of Vortex units inside soft boxes for nighttime exteriors. We also had a lot of Astera tubes, Infinibars by Aputure and some Tungsten fixtures – nothing too crazy. We just kept recycling the same instruments over and over to make this happen in the few weeks we had.”
(L-R) Murray Bartlett, Ayo Edebiri, Juliette Lewis, Melissa Chambers Credit: Anna Kooris
Maddox’s core crew included local gaffer Waylon Brady and key grip Trevor Rogers, “both really good, talented guys. As for all the moving back-and-forth from Albuquerque to Santa Fe, Josh Bachove, the line producer, was really good in terms of logistics and just being a level-headed guy. It also helped that, because of the strike, Mark and I had so much time to prep that if we had to pivot during the shoot it was easy to make the changes.”
The filmmakers’ adaptability was most needed in what the DP calls, “the most difficult scene in the entire film for me to light and shoot. It’s when we introduce Moretti inside this huge dining hall full of candles, and he tells this story. He’s wearing a crushed velvet dark red coat, but it couldn’t be lit by actual lamps or fire bars or real candles, and we couldn’t disturb the ceiling of this real location at all.
(L-R) Murray Bartlett Credit: Anna Kooris
So I’m trying to keep the colour of the crushed velvet, but the candles had to be moving in post because we couldn’t use actual candles. It was very hard, trying to keep the colour of the coat in the low luminance, as we couldn’t rig it properly, and I had to get an exposure that would hold the red colour in the bottom end of the curve of the signal, and I had to shape it up in post.”
For the DP, any needed post work, “like the candles, was that much easier to do because I start the process with Mitch in terms of the LUTs in prep, and then in the DI Mitch really helped us replace some of the greens that were lost in the backgrounds, because the strike pushed our calendar further out into fall and the beginning of winter. So, we were shooting between mid-November and mid-December, and you’ll even see some snow on the ground in some shots in Santa Fe. But Mitch was able to grab colours and to bring a bit greener vegetation back to the eye that we didn’t have when we were shooting there, and Mark was very particular about it and it worked out great.”
Summing-up, Maddox says that, “In terms of creative satisfaction, this is in my Top Five of all the projects I’ve ever done, because I love the script so much and I still feel the emotional impact of what the subtext of this script is about.”
(L-R) John Malkovich Credit: Anna Kooris
