AMC’s The Audacity dwells into the underbelly of Silicon Valley as tech CEO Duncan Park grapples with an increasingly unhinged public persona, threatens to expose his ethically-compromised therapist JoAnne Felder (Sarah Goldberg) and squares off against eccentric billionaire Carl Bardolph (Zach Galifianakis).
As the season progresses, chaos ensues and characters unravel. DP Richard Rutkowski, ASC, pushed the visual language to match the pacing. He shared with Post some of his favorite moments, how he executed the illusion of fires getting closer, tricks behind shooting Vancouver for California and pulling of a practical effect of train almost hitting one of the characters.
Richard, how did you get involved in shooting The Audacity?
“I was introduced to The Audacity by the director, Dan Sackheim. Dan had worked previously on shows written by our showrunner, Jonathan Glatzer. And Dan and I had worked together on several shows in the past, enjoyably. It’s a very good creative relationship. After talking to Jonathon and his producer, Gina, I was immediately taken with the concept and the content of his show. Very dark satire with pointed social commentary is attractive to me and it did not disappoint.”
How did the show’s visual language shape your camera and lens choice?
“I started my work on the second block after pilot block director Lucy Forbes began the show. Working with her DP Paula Huidobro, Lucy set out a strategy of working primarily hand-held and following characters closely in the scenes, staying very subjective. After those episodes, which well established the characters and the overall situation of the show, Dan and I found our scripts moving into more dramatic content, elevated stakes and deeper dives into the character’s lives. We continued with the subjective approach while also beginning to add stylistic touches that heightened dramatic moments in each episode. At camera, the show worked mostly with the Arri Signature Primes and Alexa 35 cameras. Rarely, we’d shift to a zoom lens, and towards the end of the season we began adding more creative solutions at the camera. Initially, there was almost zero SteadiCam or remote arm work, but we began using those tools a bit more as we progressed, generally staying in very character-based coverage while choosing the best tools to achieve that.”
Can you talk about Episode 3 and how you created the visual look of fires approaching?
“There was a very specific mandate desired for Episode 3, as Jonathan, our showrunner put it, ‘The world is on fire.’ Wildfires burning in Napa Valley, where lead characters Duncan and Lili own a home that’s immediately in danger, begin to color the skies and then pollute the air of Palo Alto and Silicon Valley to the extent that people have to wear masks or stop going outdoors entirely. These forces of nature are largely ignored by the self-absorbed characters, but it clearly arrives in our vision via a mix of glass filtration - both color and gradients - and increasing diffusion across the episode. Besides adding ever stronger sky filtration and overall use of antique suede glass, we carefully adjusted the in-camera LUTs to arrive by the end at a truly apocalyptic vision of smoke-filled skies and acrid, dense air.
“An important consideration was making the impact of the distant fires on Silicon Valley feel gradual. We tested ahead of time and then took the results to our post house, Picture Shop, where nuanced changes to the in-camera LUT helped pull blue and green out of the images, combining with the work at the matte box to render darker reds while still preserving attractive skin tones on the actors.
“One of the most poignant elements to this particular episode was our collective experience of terrible fires in California, including many homes lost to friends and family in the Altadena and Palisades fires only a few months before. Combined with images sent from friends in the Bay Area during the actual Napa wildfires, there was a very personal set of references to draw [upon] and firsthand knowledge of how a community can come to a stop in extreme natural disasters. I’m proud of the way our technique on-set and then in final color made these images fundamental to the story.”
What were some of the other practical effects?
“For my entire working life as a DP, I’ve tried to put on-screen as closely as possible the image we’ve created together on-set. However, in some instances, more and more now, the abilities of VFX departments to augment the visual becomes absolutely essential. Still, I usually lead the conversation towards practical effects and in-camera technique. Examples are light atmosphere used in some interiors, choosing alternative lenses or devices, such as low-angle prisms or borescopes to realize expressive shots that add to our story’s visual context. My feeling is always that showing the director and crew immediately the intention of a shot or visual change right away on the monitor contributes to the overall team effort. Simply put, I’m never one to say ‘Do it in post’ unless it truly is the best solution and, equally important, is the most efficient way to achieve it for the overall production.
“Specific to our work on The Audacity, for the season finale we had to show a teen in crisis stepping onto the tracks in front of an oncoming commuter train at night. Clearly, this required a safe yet convincing solution that would in no way involve a real train or any risk to cast and crew. We discussed several options, but settled on what was the simplest and truly most effective way: creating a fake train engine front with lights and outline matching the real thing that could drive down the tracks and then park for a later beat where emergency crews gather around it. We essentially constructed a moving frame, punctuated by lamps in the exact arrangement and scale of an actual Caltrans locomotive, then mounted it to the back of a special pickup truck designed to ride on the actual tracks. At a distance it looked like a black silhouette with a strong beam of light from the top and two smaller ones below. It was so realistic, the actress asked as soon as she got to the set, ‘Wait, is that a real train?’ Its lamps and the subtle movements as it backed up towards her were extremely realistic and created a beautiful silhouette of her with the train in the distance. Then, for closer work, we illuminated Astera tubes rigged behind the soft frost material stretched across the frame, turning the whole thing into a chroma blue screen with headlights. VFX then painted in the train car while sirens on emergency vehicles were the main source of lighting at the ‘accident scene.’ This was as close to a practical solution as could exist while filming without any real trains or their dangers.”
The show takes place in California, but was shot in Vancouver. Did you have to alter the lighting to create an illusion of Californian sun?
“It’s a great question: The concern for establishing a location that feels consistent, even when you cannot shoot on that actual location for the entire show. It was a demand from the start that given 90 percent of our work would be in Vancouver locations and stages, we still needed the audience to buy into the specific world of Silicon Valley throughout. After principal photography in Vancouver wrapped, we went to Palo Alto for a very full set of five days, which were enormously helpful. Driving shots, drone photography and establishing angles were mixed with bigger scripted scenes, and the photography here became a part of every one of the Season 1 episodes.
“We also filmed at the somewhat anonymous office park that became headquarters of Duncan’s start-up company, Hypergnosis. It often happens that you shoot the stage-based interiors of a location before shooting its actual exterior, and this was our situation here. The key was knowing that we wanted bright California daylight to be consistently present in interiors and exteriors alike.
“We specifically discussed the feeling of warm, hot daylight being present in our stage interiors and equally worked hard to keep as much Canadian looking exteriors out of the frame. My own struggle was to schedule work to avoid dark skies or rainfall. We got a bit lucky in that our shooting months of May through August were especially nice and sunny ones, and also that our location scouts and managers were very aware that our visual palette had to reflect the Bay Area specifically.”
Is there a scene or sequence that you would point to as a highlight this season because of the challenges, look or action?
In Episode 8, titled ‘Granfalloon’ in reference to Kurt Vonegut, the entire season’s action points to two parallel events which mirror well the satirical comments on Silicon Valley’s culture and excesses. On one floor of a hotel we depict the WatchCode Forum. A a tech-based defense industry get together, where our characters have enormous interest in selling their intellectual content to the military for many, many millions of dollars. And on another floor, at the same time, the Las Altas school, an expensive private school, where all our major characters have enrolled their kids, is hosting a grandly staged annual fundraiser. It’s part of the true genius of the scripts that these very different events turn out to have similar outcomes and similarly dark undertones from this night's revelations, with tragic events culminating the season dramatically.
“I designed the lighting and worked with the production design in ways to influence how the context of each event affects the audience. Upstairs at the WatchCode Forum, strongly male design and color is predominant. Reds and blacks, large video walls and theatrical lighting bring home a Ted Talk on steroids vibe. It’s designed to sell, and our lead Duncan makes his pitch, only to find his own ruthless technology is dangerous to him too.
“While downstairs at the Las Altas gala, a more gentle color scheme and pastel palette may indicate more altruistic ends. There is still a lot of drama behind the scenes. Duncan’s wife Lili engineers a way to save their daughter from being expelled, but gets her own dose of bad news just as the spotlight is turned her way. It was this metaphor of the spotlight that I enjoyed working with, revealing the characters in their most vulnerable moment with the public attention turned to them at the hardest moment. Then just afterward, on railroad tracks nearby, Duncan and Lili’s daughter Jamieson stares into the spotlight of an oncoming Caltrans train, discussed technically above, intending to end her privileged but stress-filled life.
“In the case of our story’s duel events staged within the same large space, we actually shot in at an event center outside Vancouver, which required careful scheduling to see large windows in the correct daylight and then go to night for much of the work. It was carefully boarded out by our AD and directed with precision by Alex Bueno to fit into one continuous week.
“From the tech departments, we had to coordinate where the lighting would shift from day to night and between the floors of the location most efficiently. Plus, the look to establish in the different spaces was enormously different and involved architectural and stage lighting components, working with the spotlights and other moving lights to fill in the picture. The result on-screen is one of my best creative take aways from Season 1 of The Audacity.”