Checco Varese ASC on shooting Dopesick

This article has been shared with permission from Zeiss 

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ZEISS Cinematography sat down with cinematographer Checco Varese ASC to discuss his work on the hit Hulu series Dopesick.

CHECCO: The whole artistic concept behind the piece was to be there as a witness of this tragedy. It’s basically the story of how America got hooked into the worst opioid epidemic that has happened in this country.  More than 800,000 people have died in the last decade, countless lives have been destroyed. I thought that this would be something that had to be told in a way that look would not conflict or would not superimpose a different layer of information on top of the information that was given because the truth of the matter was so brutal:  That to massage it with an over-stylized look or push to one way would diminish the impact of the production.

As an artist, Checco told Zeiss how he planned out the look of the series.

CHECCO: There are three concentric circles, the circle of the victims – working class citizens and their strong, close-knit communities, the circle of the civil servant – distant, because their work was so legal and above the affected citizens, and the third circle, is the circle of the owners of this pharmaceutical company, rich people with color and beauty and warmth. But then the circles start changing and the owners become more evil and victims become more tragically involved with the drugs. They are sunk in the middle because they cannot fight the millions of lawyers or dollars and hundreds of lawyers employed by the owners. It was a very beautiful arc that the script had and we tried to follow it with the cinematography and the colors.

When you’re doing a drama and you base yourself in the fact that the audience has to believe what you’re telling them, it’s like having all these tools and use restrain yourself, and you contain. So that was very interesting how to maintain a beautiful and technically consistent look, and yet remain poignant so that the audience continues to be engaged.

A pallet of brushes 

CHECCO: One of the beauties of being a cinematographer is that you tend to surround yourself with people that know more than you. You have a “Pallet of Brushes”, so you take the “Gaffer Brush”, and you do some work over here, then you take the “Key Grip Brush” and you do a little adjustment over there. And then you take the “DIT Brush”, and you start creating a whole new dialogue with the image.

Trusting your intuition and creating challenge for yourself

CHECCO: I think one of the most challenging environments, every cinematographer finds himself is the environment you’re not comfortable with. I found myself in this intriguing moment of saying: “How do I make this environment that I don’t know, which is the legal system fascinating and interesting?”. You may find yourself drifting back to your artistic comfort zone. At that point, you should lean into your directors and say: “I’m starting to pull the ideas that I said I shouldn’t do.”. It’s at that point that the magic of the director shines through. Ultimately, it is their movie, and they will do what counts for the film. What I do is one more piece in the puzzle. Barry Levinson, Patricia Regan, Danny Strong and Michael Questa each one brought their own world of experience and that what made “Dopesick” a great work.