Cinematographer John Lindley, ASC, was nominated this year for his lens work on ABC’s Pan Am. The show takes passengers on a ride back in time when flying was more than tolerable and stewardesses had legs… and in this show, some are even spies. John sat down to talk with S&P about his behind the scenes work on the one hour pilot, which starred Christina Ricci, Margot Robbie and an entire cast of people prettier than me.
S&P: This is your first Emmy nomination. How surprised were you when you heard the news?
Lindley: I was very surprised and grateful. I try to do what everybody does and do my best every day and hope for the best every day. It’s more a reflection of the material, the director, the actors, the designers. There are a lot of moving parts to a show like this one, and for all those parts to work together speaks highly for those involved.
S&P: What drew you to the Pan Am project?
Lindley: I actually worked with Tommy (director Thomas Schlamme) on a multi-camera concert shoot awhile back and we enjoyed working with one another. When he asked me to be part of this project, I saw it as a perfect opportunity to work with another good friend from over the years.
S&P: Pilots are a little more creative in the sense that you get to create the look of the show instead of maintaining it. Since Pan Am’s a period piece, where did you look for inspiration?
Lindley: Exactly. With pilots, you get to start on a blank page. You’re not following a look that already exists, but rather creating one from scratch. I lived through the Pan Am era and it was a time of transition from black and white imagery to color. I remember these giant Kodak ads in Grand Central Station when I was a kid. They were very vibrant and saturated with color. I wanted to embrace that for Pan Am. I didn’t want the show to carry a brown or muted look. I showed Tommy a book I had which illustrated the contrasted and saturated color imagery I was thinking about and he liked it immediately.
S&P: How did you and Schlamme come to the decision that Arri’s Alexa would be the camera of choice?
Lindley: The biggest thing was to figure out the correct blue for Pan Am. It’s easy to say something is blue, but with every color there are thousands of hues to choose from. What the camera and lighting does to those colors is very important. Since blue can be a very cold, disconnecting color, we chose our color palette very carefully with a group of people. We all grabbed visual references, mostly stills, to share and that mostly influenced or decisions along the way. When it came to the Alexa, because we wanted to saturate the colors overall, it worked very well, because I could put the saturation level at the place I thought it would be at the final grading process so everyone could see what we kinda had in mind.
S&P: How did you try and counterbalance the blues for the viewers at home?
Lindley: We tried to offset the blues with makeup as much as possible. We also moved away from colder hues in any other areas we could on set or in wardrobe to create a sense of balance.
S&P: Flying was elegant back then and there was also prestige to being a pilot. Did your shot sequences try to illustrate these ideas?
Lindley: We knew that this was an era of transition from luxury ocean liners to luxury airplane travel. It was a thrill back in those days to fly. Pan Am had a real group of intelligent and professional people that wanted to work towards one goal of making the best possible show, and there was a big effort to make it look as appealing as possible. Flying now is basically hell. (laughing) Even if you fly on a good airline, it’s somewhat miserable. We all worked really hard to make the show look romantic.
S&P: The show looked phenomenal to me.
Lindley: Thank you.
S&P: It must have been difficult shooting inside the plane. How did you guys manage inside?
Lindley: We played with the dimensions of the real plane before it was constructed. We made it a little higher so we wouldn’t have to crouch and because I knew we would be using the steadicam, we made it a little wider so actors could walk by easily. Though we never had the time, we could have pulled the plane apart if we wanted to, but we didn’t. The seats were made mobile as possible so we could remove them and work in the aisles. Between the combination of zoom and prime lenses, we were able to get everything on schedule with very little surprises.
S&P: How did you approach the variety of locations in the pilot episode?
Lindley: Working with Tommy, I thought every location should have its own color. Whether it was Rome, Cuba, London or wherever. Since the flashback scenes were butted up against real time, I wanted the audience to know immediately they were in a different time to not cause confusion.
S&P: How annoyed were you lighting all those gorgeous women?
Lindley: (laughing) Not at all. Lighting those women was no challenge whatsoever. The show looks good because those women are so attractive. They are not only pretty on the surface, they all exuded a kind of warmth and beauty — it’s very easy to light a person like that. They really help make the scene in different ways and I was blessed to have worked with them all.
S&P: How was it working with some of the visual effects for the show?
Lindley: Sam Nicholson is a cinematographer in his own right besides being a great visual effects artist. It was very straight forward working with the team. We had a lot of very long meetings about what the set was going to look like practically and it made the step by step process of conceptualizing shots easier to figure out. The most difficult was when the stewardesses walked from the mezzanine onto the airplane. There was nothing there for me to see besides a platform, but it worked out in the end.
S&P: The musical cues for the character Mr. Anderson, played by David Harbour, tee’d off to the audience that he could be a potential antagonist. Turns out, he’s MI6 and helps the Pan Am stewardesses. During his single shots, there was barely any color. Was that intentional to give the character a little creepier feeling or did I look too much into it?
Lindley: Definitely. Anytime we can enhance the story with foreshadowing without giving it away is great.
S&P: How involved was the final color grading process?
Lindley: Tommy asked me if I could do it by myself for a couple of days then he came in and made a few changes. Because I wasn’t’ starting from square one and had an idea of what the show should look like, I was doing more slight color changes and matching than anything else. Tommy gave me a lot of responsibility and didn’t make any drastic changes when he came in. We were both happy and he was satisfied with the results at the end.
S&P: You’ve worked on some pretty big films, The Good Son, Mr. Brooks, Pleasantville — you have any you’re most fond of?
Lindley: It’s funny whenever Field of Dreams comes on, my phone lights up. That film is over twenty years old and to get those kinds of calls is very satisfying.
S&P: What are you working on right now?
Lindley: Right now I’m about to start up a Robin Williams and Mila Kunis movie called The Angriest Man in Brooklyn. I get to work with Phil Robinson again from Dreams, so it should be a lot of fun.
S&P would like to thank John for taking us on the Pan Am pilot flight. The Creative Arts Emmys will be held September 15th, 2012 at the Nokia Theatre LA LIVE in Los Angeles.
Photos: Eric Liebowitz, Patrick Harbron & Nicole Rivelli/ABC