TAKING A PUNT
Fresh off basketball drama Rez Ball, Kira Kelly ASC instantly turned her attention to another sport in Him. Yet, blending American football with surrealist horror, this shoot proved a very different experience for the filmmaker…
“Unless a man believes in himself and makes a total commitment to his career and puts everything he has into it – his mind, his body, his heart – what’s life worth to him?” These words from Vince Lombardi – arguably the greatest American football coach of all time – could be the tagline of Justin Tipping’s Him, a sports horror that, through Tyriq Withers’ rising star Cam Cade, explores just what it takes to become the greatest quarterback of all time. How far are you willing to go to succeed? Are you ready to sacrifice everything to make it happen?
Cam’s quest for greatness leads him to the home of Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans), the main character’s footballing hero who is reaching the end of his career and seeking to bring through a successor – but may have ulterior motives.
Just doing it
Tasked with bringing this story – and every sinister twist and bone-crunching tackle with it – to the big screen was Kira Kelly ASC, who pivoted straight from another sports movie into this one. Though they provided very different challenges.
“When I read the script, I was working on another sports movie, called Rez Ball, a basketball drama for Netflix,” Kelly says, “and so I was like, ‘Wow, do I want to do another sports movie right now?’ And American football is not a sport that I follow at all.
“But once I started reading it, I got interested in the idea of being able to mix the visual language of a sports film with the visual language of psychological horror, and Justin and I just hit the ground running.”
While Kelly wasn’t an expert in the world of American football herself, Tipping provided her with plenty of sources of inspiration. Commercial work has long been overlooked as an art form, but it provided a lifeline for crafting the sports visuals here, while more classical sources proved an inspiration for the horror. “Justin really loved the ‘90s Nike ads, super stylised, which was really fun to play with and pull references from,” Kelly reveals. “For the horror elements, he leaned on this movie that I had never seen before called The Holy Mountain, which was very surrealistic. It’s one of those films where you’re just like, ‘What am I seeing?’ But visually, it is incredible. And then, of course, the likes of Jacob’s Ladder and The Shining were also very big references for the film.”
A unique space
It’s safe to say very few films have blended ‘90s Nike ads with Alejandro Jodorowsky surrealist fantasy, but this bold approach epitomises the tone and feel of Him both visually and narratively, as Cam finds himself in increasingly unusual situations in his pursuit of glory. Aiming to emulate the achievements of his mentor, Isaiah, Cam joins the Hall of Famer at his eccentric bunker-style mansion in the desert – and that’s when things get… weird.
Providing a setting for cultish fans of Isaiah’s and visions of ghostly apparitions, White’s mansion becomes a character in itself. Shooting largely on the ARRI Alexa 35, a camera Kelly has relied on throughout her career, crafting that character took a unique combination of location and sets, with 1.85 squeeze Panavision T Series, 50mm Pathé and 50mm Petzval lenses aiding the process.
“The exterior of Isaiah’s is in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. It’s a few hours outside of Albuquerque, and it’s called Spaceport America, and it’s a NASA facility. It was super secretive. We were able to open the door for the scene where we have Cam walk through the front, and then we pick him up on stage, because we were only able to enter that building for about eight feet. We were allowed to put up a blue screen for that shot, but then that was it. We couldn’t go any further, because it was all secretive,” she muses.
“Everything else in that compound was a set that we built with our incredible production designer, Jordan Ferrer, and it was something that I was super involved in from the beginning, because I knew that I wanted to have as much integrated lighting as I could within those sets.
“So, my gaffer, Bob Bates, and I sat with Jordan and we mapped out where we would have LED strips, where we would have Hyperion Tubes. There’s a room that we called the recovery room, which was in so many scenes; sometimes it’s a sauna, sometimes it holds an ice bath, sometimes it’s the hyperbaric chamber. But I knew that we were returning there so often, I didn’t want it to get boring. I felt like it had to be similar to in Harry Potter, where there’s the Room of Requirement – it changes each time you go in there.”
No rest for the wicked
While talk of recovery rooms and saunas may seem relaxing, Isaiah’s is anything but a spa retreat for Cam. While tension slowly builds from start to finish, increasingly strange things happen as Cam’s training programme progresses. With each new room comes a new threat for the young man to deal with.
“A lot of that was just playing with the idea of questionable things happening in broad daylight,” she says. “The brain doesn’t process well when super scary things are happening in the middle of nowhere in broad daylight.
“But then we also played a lot with leaning into darkness. I think of the hallway scene, where Cam is walking down this curved hallway, and then this football comes rolling along the floor in a strange way, and then he’s framed with the dark hallway behind him. There was just something really great about holding on to that and putting him in this space where it’s like, ‘Oh, this doesn’t feel good.’ It’s fun to play with those tensions, and I think that comes from the really great work that Justin and our editor, Taylor Mason, did.”
Part of this strangeness comes through just how brutal Isaiah’s methods are, with Kelly using X-ray vision to show the impact big hits can have on the human body – a move executed by “placing the Alexa 35 underneath and a thermal camera on top. About five feet away is when the two images would converge.”
Shooting the star
Throughout the film, the audience is right there with Cam, as Kelly sticks close to his face, centre of frame, with every grimace and panicked glare clear to see.
“When you use anamorphic, you can’t get as close, unless you have diopters,” Kelly explains, “but we had this one macro lens that I used throughout the film, so we could really get the camera very close to Cam.
“In the beginning of the film, it was important that it felt fun – it is football, after all. It’s a good time, right? And so the camerawork in that section was more handheld. There was more movement. It was more playful. We were mounting the camera to Tyriq, there were flares and all this stuff. So that’s where that ‘90s Nike ad aesthetic began.
“But then we wanted it to feel like, as Cam spends more time at the compound, and he descends into this crazy world, that our camera movement becomes a little bit more restricted. There was still camera movement, but it was definitely much more centred on him, very symmetrical framing, almost as if we were locking the audience in with him as he’s being locked into this place.”
The end zone
Without diving into spoilers, Cam’s descent into this crazy world ends in a triple-header finale, as the rising star confronts those looking to exploit him – franchise chiefs, agents and his own mentor.
On the latter, Isaiah and Cam face off less like GOATs and more like bucks, butting heads not just philosophically but physically. “That scene is all about pure rage,” Kelly reflects. “We have the lights pulsing up and down, we used the Clairmont Image Shakers on the front of the lens, really trying to show this surging anger and putting that on screen.”
Then, a showdown with the real big bads of the piece: the suits running the show. “That’s the first time he’s outside in a while, so I wanted to play with the idea of it being so bright and disorientating to adjust to that,” she concludes. “It’s the audacity of bad people doing things in the light of day, not hiding from anybody.
“Interestingly, that was ultimately one of the most constrained parts of the shoot. There weren’t any side angles; everything was direct to camera. We wanted it to feel like it was a ritual between Cam and those in charge. Then, at the end, it goes full camp, full gonzo – we went handheld and tried to get this quick, cathartic showdown as he tries to finally escape from his crazy situation.” What’s life worth to him? We certainly find out by the closing credits.
