Cinematographer Jess Hall Discusses Setting the Tone for ‘Monarch: Legacy of Monsters’
FilmSpeak chats to cinematographer Jess Hall about working on the first two episodes of Apple TV+’s Monarch: Legacy of Monsters.
Cinematographer Jess Hall is no stranger to massive entertainment, having previously collaborated with director Matt Shakman on Marvel’s WandaVision before the two reunited for the first two episodes of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. Speaking to FilmSpeak on Zoom during a virtual press day, the cinematographer praised Shakman’s directorial vision for the series and highlighted how great it is to reunite with someone whom he has a close rapport with:
“What's great about collaborating multiple times with a director is you build a shorthand and strategies. You have a body of work that becomes a reference between the two of us.
I did a lot of work on WandaVision in building period photography from the different episodes. And that was a parallel here because this show had three different timelines. You have the 1950s, 1970s, and the [2010s]. I think the work we've done on WandaVision was very useful for that in terms of the strategies we built. We used some of the same techniques in a way and the same processes to get a result.
Matt is a fantastically gifted director when working with the screenplay and actors, and he's also very good visually. He doesn't need much support, but we have a very good working relationship and complement each other. There’s a lot of trust there. You bring all of that to a project, which helps move things forward smoothly. I think, scale-wise, there are some similarities. In WandaVision, we did all nine episodes together. Whereas for this, we were just at episodes one and two, so that was different. It was less of a long shoot and more about the initial setup. But we did have very different shooting locations on Monarch. We shot Tokyo, Hawaii, and Vancouver, so it's very much kind of a location production. That was a really important aspect of it; that it wasn’t a backlog-based production.”
For Hall, shooting Monarch: Legacy of Monsters was akin to working on a massive feature film, especially in setting up the visual look for the beginning episodes:
“You’re sort of setting up the series in a way. Three other cinematographers worked on the show overall, but I was the first one. And whatever I did would have to be, to a certain extent, respected throughout. Building a visual language, the palette, the lighting style, setting a technical base for the show in terms of optics, lenses, a camera system, all those things. When you’re the first, it is hard to do, but it is like the prep that I would do on a decent-sized film. There’s a very interesting and creative canvas for us to work with. A good part of my pre was to figure out the visual language of the show: how was it going to be different than the movies, and how am I going to do that technically? The episodes we worked on didn’t have many action scenes, but we did have some, so all the ingredients that you would have on feature were there, but on different proportions.”
During the interview, Hall also discussed his personal connection with the Godzilla movies, the influence of the MonsterVerse films on the show, his approach to shooting action, and how he achieved Bill Randa’s (Anders Holm & John Goodman) Bolex look for episodes one and two.