Cinematographer Tim Palmer BSC on lensing ten-part Netflix drama 'Geek Girl'

‘Geek Girl’ Poster | Source: Netflix

A Netflix number one most streamed series when it first premiered, Geek Girl is a feel good coming-of-age tale about how high school misfit Harriet Manners accidentally falls into the glamorous world of fashion. Based on the novel by Holly Smale, the series is a fun and refreshing story about embracing who you are and staying true to yourself no matter what. Pixipixel had the pleasure of supplying both the camera and lighting packages for the 10-part series, and we sat down with Director of Photography Tim Palmer BSC to talk about his visual approach to the show and how his past experiences as a fashion photographer paid dividends during production.

In pre-production, how did you approach the project from a visual perspective?

I don’t know whether it was a coincidence or whether it was having the right background for the job, but I was a fashion photographer in the late 1980s, and so I had a very strong background in fashion photography. In fact, my first job as a photographer was as a catwalk photographer. I did all the runway shows in Paris and Milan from about 1988 to 1991, so I had a lot of experience in that side of the business, and I drew the producer's and director’s attention to fashion photography. And in fact, the producer Zoe Rocha, her father was a very famous fashion designer called John Rocha, and I remember photographing his fashion shows during the late 1980s, so it was kind of a closing of the circle moment. Generally we looked at a lot of fashion references, glamorous, classic, bright, strong, poppy colours, clean backgrounds, shallow depth, you know all the stuff that makes fashion photography really stand out. So we used that as a template for the series, and even though it was mainly a conventional drama series with actors and dialogue, we wanted to give it a heightened style that was strong, bright and colourful, and not too dark or contrasty, but just the right balance, and so that was the feel of the piece. And there were a lot of very fashion orientated people involved, Karl Plewka, who was one of the show’s chief stylists, had a very illustrious background styling fashion shoots for the last thirty years, and so he really knew how to put together a look and I knew how to light and shoot it to make it look how it should.

Stills photo from Netlix’s ‘Geek Girl’ | Source: Netflix

The series features quite a few large scenes set in busy locations with a lot of extras, such as the fashion show scenes. How did you and gaffer TC Thomas go about lighting such large scenes and spaces?

Well TC was amazing really, I couldn’t have done anything without him, he just took over in so many ways. It was such a busy shoot with a tight schedule, and I was so preoccupied everyday with just making the day and shooting the scenes. I was able to delegate so much to TC in terms of set-up and pre-lighting for the fashion shows and really he was the lighting designer, I’ve got to give him a huge amount of credit for that. He made my job so much easier, I just told him that we needed the set to look like a runway with lights at both ends of the catwalk and for it to be nicely lit all the way down, and he just took that and created the lighting plots, dealt with the rigging and oversaw everything, and I would just show up and it would look great.

There was of course a lot of pre-production and a lot of prep going into it with the production design department, as each fashion show had its own particular look and its own motif, and that was all very design driven. I would liaise closely with the production designer and try and get them to build the catwalk sets so that we could incorporate the lighting into them, and that worked very well, particularly the grand finale fashion show which was a huge LED lit set with an LED ceiling and back wall that was programmable, imagine an LED Volume but it’s a catwalk. So all the graphics were programmed in and changed throughout the show, but they also actually lit the scene as well, so in the last show there was very little supplemental lighting. I think all I had was a couple of 2Ks at one end of the runway so that when the models got to the very end, they had a nice amount of light on their faces. This was because the whole volume acted as a toplight which worked fantastically while the models were walking down the catwalk, but if that would have been the only lighting by the time they got to the end of the runway, their faces would have been very dark, so they just needed a little simple key light in the eyes. But it was a very exciting way of lighting, as the catwalk was essentially one big LED which lit the set and it had an interactive edge to it as the light on the models changed as the background graphics changed. But the other shows that we did were more conventional, lots of old fashioned Parcan’s running all the way down the catwalk so it was front lit and backlit at the same time.

Was this your first time working with gaffer TC Thomas? And can you tell us about the importance of a good DOP/Gaffer relationship?

It’s essential. We’re very good friends as well and I really enjoy TC’s company, it’s the perfect Gaffer/DOP relationship. But also, I have a tremendous amount of respect for him and his knowledge and skill with equipment and with lighting, and he’s got a great eye too. I could happily hand over a whole set to him and he would light it beautifully and I would just arrive and tweak a couple of things here and there. I think that’s the way it should be, you don’t want a DOP telling a Gaffer what to do all the time, you’ve got to let them demonstrate what they’re capable of and TC is fantastic.

Throughout the series there was a very distinct visual and lighting difference between the high school set scenes and the scenes set in the fashion world, almost as if the cinematic style was heightened in the busy world of fashion compared to the everyday school life of a teenager. Can you talk a little bit about how you approached these two sides of the show?

Obviously, the fashion show scenes themselves are what they are, they can’t be anything else except a bright, poppy, glamorous, visually exciting environment which makes everyone look good and feel good and get excited about the world around them, and you can’t change that. But the school was lead character Harriet’s (Emily Carey) personal space where a lot of uncomfortable things happen to her, and the real drama of the story revolves around the school and the antagonists, and obviously it has to be treated in its own way. I wanted the school to feel like more of a hostile environment because Harriet is often out of control here, she doesn’t know who is going to say what to her and so she is often uncomfortable. In terms of lighting, I used something I’ve been doing for quite a long time now. I used some Schneider Storm blue filters on the camera because they give a steely colouration to the shadows, giving an almost split tone look, and if you warm up the highlights or the key light you get nice skin tone and everything else sort of falls of into this slightly cyan tinted world. It creates the atmosphere of a person who is slightly out of their comfort zone as they don’t quite fit in with the background. It’s incredibly subtle, but it works just well enough so that when you go into the grade you can amplify it a touch or dial it down. I did that with Killing Eve and again, the audience wouldn’t necessarily notice it, but it takes the image somewhere that immediately feels a little bit uncomfortable without quite knowing why. But obviously with the lead actors, you can’t light them in a grim, depressing way, we’re not doing a police procedural, it’s still young kids at the sort of prime of their life. They have to look great even though not everything that is happening to them is great. But you can make the environment look uncomfortable and that was sort of my approach.

Behind the scenes of ‘Geek Girl’ | Source: Tim Palmer BSC

Shooting Geek Girl was the first time you had shot a project using the Cooke S7/I lenses, why did you choose these particular lenses and how did you find shooting with them?

I’ve been shooting on Cooke’s for thirty years, I love the look of them, so to be honest I would always shoot on Cooke S4s, but because we were shooting Large Format, S4s aren’t compatible. However, the Cooke S7s are essentially a large format S4, to me they kinda have the same look as the S4s, but just cover the larger sensor, so it was a very simple decision really. I didn’t overthink it at all, I just wanted that straight forward nice Cooke look and the S7s were the right fit for the Mini LF, and they look great. They felt like stepping into the most comfortable pair of old slippers.

What were the different considerations when shooting large format?

I think probably the T-Stop because you’ve got a much shallower depth of field and I’m not a fan of edgy focus, I think it’s very distracting. Obviously, it’s lovely to have that shallow depth of field, but you have to gauge it right so that it gives the focus puller a chance to keep everything sharp. So, whereas on Super35 I might be shooting at 2/8, on large format I would be shooting at around 4 just to keep that same depth of field, so that was probably the main consideration. And then the few times when we had to shoot more wide open, you know if we were working with not much available light, which we did a bit of in Canada, I would be conscious of trying to make sure that what the camera was doing would not compromise the focus, so we would never do any crazy backward or forward camera movement.

Behind-the-scenes of ‘Geek Girl’ | Source: Shane de Almeida GBCT

You like to shoot with the ARRI Alexa camera range and you lensed Geek Girl with the Alexa Mini LF. What is it about these cameras that makes them your go too?

I grew up with ARRI, shot on ARRI BL4’s, ARRI 3s, 435s, ARRi Studios, and when the Alexa came out it just felt like the digital version. I just don’t get into too much of the specificities of what the cameras delivers, if it feels right, feels right in my hands, sits nicely on the dolly, looks good through the viewfinder and looks nice afterward, that’s all I’m going for. I don’t really care about sensor size or pixel count or codecs, just give me a picture that works.

Although I have done a shoot on a Sony Venice and it was great, the look was super and I liked the Rialto mode, but there is something about looking through the viewfinder that I love on the ARRI. What I see through the viewfinder to me is the most important thing and the ARRI viewfinder system is closest to real life, and that’s ultimately why I like to operate with those cameras. And while the image from a Sony camera is fantastic, I always find there’s something distorted about the Sony colouration, and I know that all gets ironed out afterwards, but I just don’t like it so much and the joy of being a DP is to look through the camera and operate the camera when given the chance and you just want to look at the best picture possible. 

Tim Palmer BSC behind-the-scenes of ‘Geel Girl’ | Source: Shane de Almeida GBCT

Throughout the series that a lot of different methods of camera movement are utilised, from handheld camera to sweeping dolly/crane shots and then Steadicam and even Snorricam style shots - was there a specific reason behind this?

The director loves camera movement, and a lot of the scenes were so mobile with a lot of activity, so it wasn’t so much a conscious decision, but just that we use the camera to follow the action and the action was always moving, so we had to be there to take it all in. So there was a lot of Steadicam, James Poole was on B-Cam, so we had Steadicam available to us whenever we needed it. Paul Kemp, the Grip, was fantastic, he kinda came up with a lot of super-rigs and took over the crane stuff, which crane is needed for what and his judgment and decisions were invariably absolutely spot on. He’s one of the most fantastic grips to have watching your back, I really trust him.

But no, there weren’t any special discussions in pre-production on how we had to move the camera, it was just you read the words on the page and you immediately imagine the camera is moving to follow it. And it was fun, especially with the fashion shows, we had one camera on a Techno-crane, another on a dolly moving at the same time, and then the third one static on a long zoom. And then we used the Snorricam for a scene where Harriet is at school having a panic attack. I remember the first time I used one of those I was shooting on 16mm and I put a Bolex on it, they can take quite a lot of weight.

You mentioned earlier that before venturing into cinematography you were a stills photographer for fashion shows. How was it then shooting this show revolving around the world of fashion and how did your prior experiences prepare you for working on Geek Girl?

It certainly helped in terms of the research, I knew what things should look like, I knew what the detail was, I knew where the cameras would be around the catwalk. I spent a lot of time funnily enough working with the background extras acting as the fashion show photographers, who are great to have there, but obviously don’t necessarily know the correct way to hold a camera or what to do. So with all the fashion show scenes I would spend half an hour explaining to them where they needed to stand, how to hold the camera, what they should be looking at to try and make them look as convincing as possible and I think that helped, that was probably my biggest input from my past experience as a fashion photographer. But obviously in pre-production I chased down a lot of my old fashion show and editorial photographs to show the producer so that they were aware of my background and knowledge in regard to the world of fashion. I wanted them to know that I could understand how models move, how they should look, and how they use their body language for the best effect. So that sort of thing is in my DNA really, I understand that instinctively and it came in handy especially on this project.

Geek Girl is now streaming on Netflix.