What gear did you use and why?

Rose and i originally planned to shoot on film and exhausted a good reason to, but ended up having to shoot on digital. Im very familiar with Arri cameras and the Alexa 35 hadn’t been released by that point so the obvious choice was the Alexa mini. It’s a great light weight camera which was helpful for long handheld takes plus i like the sensor not being too sensitive to light, its a little less clean than the larger format cameras out there which i guess for many reasons tend enhance the digital look. Panavision New Mexico serviced our film and were incredibly helpful in allowing us to test a variety of lenses, and eventually we landed on two sets of optics arranged by a mix of PVintage, ultra speeds and super speed primes, we were very selective to get the best looking bunch, they were shipped in from all over the place. 

The red-tinted flashbacks are particularly striking, how did you achieve this and what was the discussion behind such a bold palette choice?

We needed to create a highly abstract and cost effective way to reflect Lou’s mind wanderings of her past, In prep we discussed the red light, but actually went ahead with an icy detachment style, lighting with a cool moonlight to match the crack in the earth dead body disposal location. Later in the edit the colour was swung to red, which worked really well but i was unsure how this would hold up in the grade. I find red is such a difficult colour to get right on digital, often either leaning towards orange or magenta. Thanks to our colourist Vanessa Taylor at Goldcrest I was truly surprised how well we were able to convert a very neutral colour temperature to a solid red with depth.

There’s plenty of spectacular landscapes/skyscapes, what was the motivation/discussion behind some of these beautifully coloured shots and how did you achieve them?

We were very lucky with our skies, shooting in New Mexico during the summer can be a little problematic since there is a higher frequency of storms which bring lightning delays, we would helplessly watch hours expiring from our schedule. But the skies were never boring, and with such an incredible landscape it wasn’t hard to find painterly unreal landscape shots. You could see sand whipping up in the distance heading our direction and we would take full advantage of these staggering visual moments right before we were hammered with sand, rain or both.

Were there any specific visual inspirations behind the film?

The most relevant film references were Show Girls, Crash, The Fly, Paris Texas, To Live and Die in La, and Mystery Train. I took a view that we shouldn’t hold back visually, it was an excessive era visually and a lot of that style was fed into production design, costume and and hair make up. Guy Bourdin, Chloe Sherman, Jeff Wall and Nan Golden are a few of the photographers works who ended up in our references. Looking back at this era the technology or artificial lighting was completely different, and for example in Paris Texas and To Live and Die in LA there is a distinct blue/green tint inherent to the mercury vapour street lights. These have been completely replaced with LED, so where possible gaffer Jon McGinty and i would lean into these colours for night exteriors, we opted to use real fluorescent tubes in our gym location but unsurprisingly the green tint from these were minimal but did produce better results than using astera tubes. 

How did it feel taking home the BIFA for best cinematography?

Super delighted, we were in the mix with incredibly good looking films this year, Rose has really good taste, and a great eye for cinematography that really made it happen. 

How important are awards like these that celebrate independent films and filmmakers?

I suppose independent films need all the help and press they can get, celebrating film makers undoubtably helps their careers, but so many of my favourite looking films aren’t always awarded.

What would your advice be to DPs that are currently operating (or looking to) in the independent circuit?

Hopefully you’re fortunate enough to come across a director with an incredible vision and script that you love and can bring meaning to the images. Getting lost in what you can dream up, and approach the production with a laser focus. I try to block out any expectations of the films success down the road. 

What was your personal favourite scene or sequence?

Dumping JJ’s car and body at the crack in the earth. It was our big set piece, to push a car off a cliff then trigger and SFX explosion is incredibly fun, and some kind of right of passage maybe. It was a big area to light but made simple with a 18kw through grid cloth on a condor for moonlight, then closer to the action we used car headlamps, a handheld torch operated by Kristen and the real flames from the burning car.