Watching The Fire Inside, the directorial debut of Mudbound’s Oscar-nominated cinematographer Rachel Morrison, ASC, you may feel like you’re leafing through a family photo album of a hometown hero who went on to shake the world. For their film, Morrison and director of photography Rina Yang, BSC have crafted a look that is both down-to-earth yet also larger-than-life. Each scene strives to capture the intimacy of a snapshot while simultaneously amplifying the mythology of a young woman who overcomes all obstacles to make history at the Olympics.
The movie is based on the documentary T-Rex, which tells the real-life story of Claressa “T-Rex” Shields (portrayed in The Fire Inside by Ryan Destiny), a young Black boxer from Flint, Michigan, who fought her way to winning consecutive gold medals in the 2012 and 2016 Olympics. Numerous boxing matches give the film its kinetic energy, but at its heart, the movie is about family. Despite shooting primarily in Toronto, Morrison desired that Shields’ hometown of Flint be genuinely portrayed on the screen and personally led the second unit — dubbed the “Flint Unit” in the credits — to capture the city that in 2014 was plagued by a water crisis when lead and bacteria contaminated its water supply. Claressa’s rise to Olympic glory during this fractious time demonstrates the human potential to ascend difficult conditions and inspire everyone around her.
Morrison made sure to step back from the camera to give her cinematographer the freedom to fulfill her duties and lend her creative voice to the film. Yang was instrumental in visualizing the story through all stages, from picking the Sony Venice camera with its Rialto extension system to fine-tuning the Panaspeed lenses — with Guy McVicker, Technical Marketing Director at Panavision — that could capture the realism and intimacy Morrison wanted. Beyond its inspirational story, The Fire Inside is a remarkable cinematic collaboration of two exceptional image-makers working at the highest level.
Panavision: How did you come together to collaborate on The Fire Inside?
Rina Yang: I’ve known Rachel socially for a while. I was in L.A., and I knew Rachel was going to direct this movie, and I told her, ‘Wow, it sounds great. I wish I was shooting it,” but I think I was shooting something else at the time. Then the pandemic happened, and Rachel asked me if I was still interested, and I was like, ‘Hell, yeah!’ I watched the documentary and loved it.
Rachel Morrison: Rina had a lot of conviction around the project, which is so important to me because you’re never just making a bunch of pretty images. You want to be aligned in the storytelling, the point of view, and why the film matters. I was looking for somebody whom I felt saw the world similarly but was going to be additive. Although I was making a studio movie, I come from gritty, grounded filmmaking. What Rina’s done, especially in the commercial space, is beautiful and elevated, and I thought we would each be able to bring something different to the table.
What led to your choice of shoot with Panaspeed lenses?
Morrison: We agreed on the Panaspeeds because I wanted the bokeh to be round, and the Panaspeeds have a lovely falloff. We were aligned from the get-go. Rina just pushed them a little further than I had initially.
Yang: I was a little worried about the contrast, since the Venice has a bit more. I wanted to go softer and spoke to Guy McVicker at Panavision. He enhanced the Panaspeed lenses in a way that I didn’t have to use as many diffusion filters as I normally do. Ultimately, I did end up using a few filters on some scenes, trying to lift the contrast and make the image softer.
Guy McVicker: The Panaspeeds are a very large set of lenses. Their close focus is amazing, and they’re all fast, all T1.4. When you transition on a stock Panaspeed from a T2 to 1.4, the lens personality gets very pretty. Rachel and Rina wanted to embrace that and push it further, with softer highlights and blooming halation, which is very flattering for humans. The lens aberrations that they embraced were unique and a nice combination. It was a nice way to contribute to the painterly image that they created.
Were you trying to make the digital image feel more like film?
Yang: I was trying to give it more character. What we can do now with lenses and texture is amazing. You can manipulate the front and back elements and modify the color of the flare. I was trying to create a more characteristic look rather than using the lens straight off the shelf.
Morrison: I think that makes it feel more like film because the beauty of film comes from these organic happy accidents. The thing with film is you don’t always know quite how something’s going to perform or where it’s going to flare. With digital, it can be so mathematical. Anything you can do to bring back some optical imperfections helps, so that each lens has its own characteristics and it’s not necessarily part of a perfectly matched set. Then you fall in love with a lens and it becomes your go-to lens for certain experiences. I think it’s all about making the image feel less perfect.
The movie has a portrait-esque, memory-come-to-life feel to it. How did the optics you chose help you accomplish that?
Morrison: It’s more about the focal length than optical quality. It was a decision to prioritize being with our subjects and having it feel very subjective. Our general default was to go wider and closer, maintaining a close eyeline too, so that you feel two people connecting, as opposed to a camera looking at somebody from a cool angle, because that sometimes makes you feel removed.
Yang: We would have the camera inside the line and have the actors right behind the camera body so it feels like you’re with them.
How did you cover the fight scenes while keeping in close proximity to the actors?
Yang: We wanted to make sure there’s not ‘fight fatigue’ and that each fight is different. We talked about in one fight maybe we use more Steadicam, and for another fight we use more handheld. We can be inside the ring for one scene, and we can be outside the ring for another scene. We made sure it’s not repetitive.
Morrison: There’s only so many ways you can distinguish things. Lighting, locations, all of those were choices to help each fight feel different. But how do you shoot a fight where her coach isn’t there? She’s basically in this fight by herself and feels abandoned. How is that different from a fight where her coach is by her side? How do you shoot those differently? Our approach was informed first by the decision to shoot each fight differently from the next, but then to look for ways to underscore the storytelling and the point of what we’re trying to communicate with each fight.
Yang: We also wanted to make sure we weren’t showing off the cool camera rigs, the cool moves. It’s not a show-offy boxing movie. We tested body rigs, but it just didn’t feel right, so we didn’t go down that route. We pretty much used the Rialto in the ring.
Morrison: Sometimes it feels like people try so hard to be stylized that ultimately it just takes you out of the movie. You’re like, ‘Oh, that’s cool. Oh wait, why am I not even thinking about my character right now? I’m looking at this cool shot.’
Did you have a go-to focal length for the fights?
Morrison: I feel like we used the 29mm a lot and then a 40. I don’t think we went long very often. We tried to stay close.
Yang: From outside of the ring, we would go with a longer lens. When we did the Olympics, we had three cameras and two broadcast cameras, so one camera would be on the longer lens shooting through the ropes.
Morrison: With the exception of the Olympics, we tried to shoot most of the fight scenes like they were a single camera. It was always very much single-camera storytelling, about eyeline and action. Action plays best when it’s coming towards the lens. A punch is always going to feel more dynamic if it’s coming straight at camera than a profile shot. Sometimes you need profile shots for context, but we stayed as close as we could to Claressa’s eyeline, and I think that helped it feel like you’re in the ring with her.
Did you decide on this method in prep, or was it something you discovered through shooting each fight scene with Ryan Destiny?
Yang: We would go to the rehearsal with Ryan and sit there to choreograph, check out the scenes with a phone, and break it down.
Morrison: I’ve shot a ton of action before. You learn from doing. In films like Black Panther, there was a lot of hand-to-hand combat, and though it was with spears, it’s the same idea as two people in an enclosed space. Off-angle shots don’t put the audience in the experience the way that having the object come towards you or move away from you does.
Flint, Michigan is a huge part of this film. How did you imbue the sense of the city into the film?
Morrison: Tax incentives mandated we shoot principal photography in Toronto, but it was essential to me that we shoot Flint for Flint. So every time we came in under on our day, it would go towards our Flint piggy bank. We always knew that it was going to have to be a run-and-gun breakaway Flint unit. Some plates were shot in Flint so that we could then light it and shoot it in Toronto. I joked that for a naturalistic movie, it was like a Marvel film.
Yang: [Laughs.] There was a lot of bluescreen and plate backgrounds.
Morrison: A lot of bluescreen. We were shooting in the summer, and it’s a winter movie. Out of necessity, I shot plates in the winter so that we would have real Flint for our driving scenes. But it was almost all the same glass we used for the main unit.
Rachel, you’ve directed the camera for the majority of your career, and now you’re directing actors. How did your cinematographer’s eye impact the way that you directed the actors in this movie?
Morrison: For one thing, I think cinematographers amass the most time on set compared to any other position. I tried to take everything that I have seen work from past experiences as a DP, and also the things that didn’t work, and let those inform how I direct. I’ve seen firsthand how powerful silence can be. You can say so much without saying anything. Ninety percent of the time for me, the moments in movies that are captivating aren’t a bunch of talky dialogue. It is everything in between that makes or breaks a powerful movie. But also just trying to run our set, top-down with respect and gratitude and inclusivity — like the best sets I’ve been on as a DP.
Rina, working with a director who is a DP, how much room did you have to discover things beyond what was on the shot list?
Yang: Rachel had the director’s cap on, and she did a phenomenal job. She wasn’t micromanaging the cinematography. Some directors are very technical, and I’ve worked with directors whom I felt are more like a DP. Rachel trusted me to do my job, and we could have open discussions. When Rachel might ask, ‘We’ve had enough sodium light, do we need those?’ I could say, ‘Rachel, it’s continuity. I know we’re sick of sodium lights by now, but I need to keep using them through the windows.’
Morrison: I know as a DP I don’t do good work on a short leash. Nobody does good work when they’re being micromanaged. So I made a point with all my department heads really, but especially with my cinematographer, to hire people whose work I like and then give them space to make great work. Obviously I’m guiding it, because it’s helpful to have a singular vision. I also don’t think I do my best work as a DP with a director who’s like, ‘Oh, just do whatever you want.’ You want it to be a collaboration.
How did you both prepare to shoot the film?
Morrison: Prep wasn’t long or drawn out. I think neither of us sit still well. We like to just make things. You put two people who just want to be shooting into a white-walled office, and you start to go a little crazy. It probably felt longer than it actually was.
Yang: Prep was really a full-on day, 10 to 12 hours, trying to get things done. But it still wasn’t enough prep for the whole thing. We had so many locations and sets. It was a challenging movie to deliver on the budget we had.
Morrison: When we got back up after the pandemic shut us down, we got re-greenlit at the same budget we’d been at in 2020. In that time, rates had gone up, materials had gone up, locations had gone up. We basically lost 20 percent of our budget before we started shooting. There was a lot that needed adjusting. For me it was cutting scenes, consolidating, and eliminating some of our bigger set pieces. We also had to deal with the fallout — we’d scout for something, and then the scene would change. It did feel like we had a new fire to douse every day in prep. People say it’s better to fight the fire in prep, because sometimes prep is so smooth and then the shoot’s a nightmare. We definitely had a tough prep, but the shoot was a dream.
If you could speak to a younger version of yourselves, what would you tell them about the process of working with Panavision and choosing the optics for your films?
Morrison: On one hand, I would say to young filmmakers that it’s not about the gear, it’s about the story. If the story is strong enough, the gear doesn’t matter at all. If you’re always in service of the story, it doesn’t matter what camera or what lenses you’re shooting with. That said, Panavision is the gold standard. There is something organic about Panavision’s lenses, whether it’s the bokehs or the flares or something else. There’s a humanity to most Panavision glass that a lot of other glass lacks.
Yang: Panavision has always been helpful throughout my career. When I was a baby DP on short films and music videos, they would help me out. I love how much we can customize the lenses, and we can talk about it with them.
Morrison: The same is true for me. Panavision has done such a good job of building long-lasting relationships, where you start to know each other like old friends and have a shorthand. I call Guy McVicker my patron saint of glass, and [marketing executive] Rik DeLisle has taken care of me since my AFI thesis film. It’s nice to have a shorthand with people that you trust, who care as much about the glass as you do, and whom you can send a text or an email and get a response right away.
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At its core, The Fire Inside is about family. How did that theme impact the making of the movie?
Morrison: In terms of building out a crew, achieving a family-like atmosphere is so important. Most of us are giving up everything to make a movie. I’m literally leaving my kids for months. Other times, they come with me. With Rina and others, people leave their partners, leave their loved ones. I think it’s so important that you’re not just making a creative work of art, but that you’re also making relationships. The set environment becomes like a family, and we should treat each other with respect and love. Life is too short not to.
Yang: For me, the process is more important than the end product. Of course we want the film to be good. But it’s so important that we have good vibes, good people on set, because it’s so difficult to make a movie. We’re sleep deprived, stressed, everything. It’s nice to work with people you feel like you could be friends, go off together, and make a movie together.
Morrison: From the top down, giving people agency gets better work out of them than restricting that agency. It’s quite possible that your set decorator genuinely knows more about what should be behind a door than I do, because she’s actually done the research, so her opinion really matters. Or maybe the third electric is a boxer and sees something on set like a bag that isn’t hung right. That perspective is valid and welcomed. When people feel like their opinions are being respected at every level, it gets better work than when everybody feels like they’re following marching orders. I also think from an inclusivity perspective, having different opinions, different genders, different ethnicities, it makes a difference. That’s the real world. You get so much more authenticity when your crew feels authentic to the world.
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