Behind Her Eyes: Behind the scenes with gaffer Chris Georgas

Behind Her Eyes: Behind-the-scenes photos

Directed by Erik Richter Strand, lensed by cinematographer Felix Wiedemann BSC, and gaffed by Chris Georgas, Netflix's hit series, Behind Her Eyes, only needed two days to land among the top trending shows on the streaming platform. With its wild and unexpected twist ending, Behind Her Eyes certainly is a must-watch, but if you haven't caught up yet, maybe you should return to this blog post later as it contains some plot spoilers.

We had the amazing opportunity to talk to the show's lighting gaffer, Chris Georgas, who shared behind-the-scenes details about his work on this drama starring Eve Hewson, Tom Bateman, and Simona Brown. Behind Her Eyes is not the first collaboration between Chris and cinematographer Felix Wiedemann BSC. The duo has been working together for seven years since their encounter for the Mr Selfridge series.

Chris Georgas shares: "Whenever Felix comes to me with a project, we always sit down and talk about the characters and how lighting will complement the story. We look at the locations and see what we'll need to do for each of the characters. Felix has a very naturalistic approach, and we tried to maintain a very neutral environment for Behind Her Eyes because of the psychological depth of the characters and the supernatural elements. The dream sequences, astral projections, and body transfers were the main points of our lighting conversations."

Behind Her Eyes' unpredictable and twisted ending left us surprised, but many little clues dotted throughout the series foreshadowed what was to come. In many scenes, the audience is seeing things from someone else's perspective. This is the case in the opening scene; for example, when David and Louise meet for the first time in a London bar, we see camera angles from above. It's revealed this is Adele/Rob's perspective during astral projection spying on them.

Chris comments: "This is exactly the reason why I love filmmaking. The camera and lighting techniques become tools carrying the story. In Behind Her Eyes, all these unusual camera angles lead towards something, keeping the suspense and the audience wondering what is going on. It was quite a brave approach, and Felix really embraced it"

Throughout the series, we see a variety of locations, both indoor and outdoor, with scenes shot during day and night, and special visual effects representing out-of-body experiences of the main characters.

"The project definitely posed us with some unique challenges. The astral projections for Rob, Adele, and Louise were represented with specific symbolic colours – Adele's is pink, Louise's is green, and Rob's is blue. We had to find a way to have an in-camera effect of the astral projections, and VFX would then take and progress that idea. We found a very innovative company to create three spheres in different sizes. The R&D process was quite interesting because the spheres had to be completely self-functional and remotely operated. We had puppeteers manoeuvring these lights for the shots where, for example, Robert and Adele were laying, dreaming, and moving into space with their minds. The LED spheres were placed above the characters' faces, and once they "came out" of their bodies, the light started travelling and the camera followed the spheres into space. The spheres were then obviously removed and replaced in post-production. For me, this was one of the biggest challenges for this show – how to represent the astral projections in a subtle way, without being too obvious", says Chris.

A huge fan of tungsten lighting, Chris never does a job without his favourite piece of kit, a Source 4 Zoom light projector. In most cases, tungsten lighting was used for the project. He explains: "Space can get very hot but what you get as a result of using tungsten is just very beautiful organic light that you don't really get with LED. Don't get me wrong, I use LEDs, but there's something about tungsten and the skin tone and the fall-off that it has in space. For me and Felix, it's our favourite way of lighting."

Much of the shooting took place in London with David and Adele's townhouse contrasted with Louise's flat. "Some of the filming locations posed challenges. Adele and David's house was designed by the art department in a very minimalistic style to counter Adele's and Rob's psyche, and we had to light it mainly from outside with a truss structure in the back garden. We had shots where the characters would be going out to the garden and coming back from the garden to the house. So, we built a structure that could go up and down quite quickly, and thanks to the well-thought-out schedule, we managed to do it only once. The second time, we just took it away within the shoot", shares Chris.

Pixipixel supplied the lighting package for this production. Chris comments: "I have worked with Dave and Toby from Pixipixel for many years. For me, Pixipixel was a natural choice for this big job because of the level of service that the team provides. I'm really pleased with the level of care; the Pixi team has a very high standard. It's refreshing because the UK market has become so busy, and it's rare to find rental companies still maintaining a very personal and a very warm level of service."

Watch "Behind Her Eyes" on Netflix and learn more about Chris Georgas here.

Kristine Mladenova14 April 2021