The give-and-go between cinematographers Todd Banhazl and Mihai Malaimare Jr. on the HBO series Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty has been as impressive a display as Kareem and Magic running a pick and roll. Playing to the strengths of multiple formats, the two cinematographers helped transport viewers back in time to the genesis of the showtime Lakers of the 1980s. It took a concerted effort to craft the look of Winning Time, with the story on the screen matched by the tenacity and teamwork behind the camera.
The line between our footage and the archival footage is so blurry, it makes for an extremely period-accurate piece, says Malaimare. Describing his experience working with Banhazl, who served as the series' lead cinematographer, Malaimare continues, Todd created a visual bible based on the look of the pilot, and he and I had extensive meetings with writers Max Borenstein and Rodney Barnes to discuss each episode in detail. It was a very carefully planned visual style.
Banhazl shares, The idea behind the visual style of the show was to create a tapestry of American culture and pop culture in the 60s, 70s and 80s. The hope is that audiences will lose track of what we shot and what was actual archival footage. We wanted it to be grainy, greasy, shiny, vibrant, and have a handmade quality to the texture of the image and to the camerawork itself.
My main inspirations came from a mix of photographers, like Barron Claiborne, Bruce Davidson, William Eggleston, Alex Webb and Roy DeCarava, Banhazl continues. In movies, John Cassavetes, Spike Lee, Robert Altman and Wim Wenders were big for us.
Both cinematographers found inspiration in period photographic styles. I tend to use stills for references, Malaimare says, but I also got a lot of ideas from broadcast games of the era. Also, the opening of Any Given Sunday was a strong reference for capturing certain basketball games.
Banhazl adds, We also took cues from all the actual footage that exists of the Lakers in this time period, as well as the dominant advertising looks of the time to attempt to redefine images of the bought and sold American dream.
Embracing the early 1980s aesthetic, the cinematographers primarily shot on 35mm film and mixed in Super 16mm, Super 8mm, and even vintage video. We always knew the show wanted to be shot on film because it would be jumping between real archival footage from the period and our narrative footage, Banhazl explains. It felt like using the actual formats would be the most effective and most joyful way to play within those styles and aesthetics.
Asked about shooting the series on film, Malaimare offers, There is a certain approach that I love. You keep the camera rolling only when it's really necessary. There is a different level of respect that a film camera demands. The HD video tap of the [Panavision Millennium] XL2 cameras definitely made things easier.
Malaimare credits the decisions that Banhazl and director Adam McKay made with the pilot episode for setting the tone of the subsequent episodes. Adam and Todd established the look in the pilot, and it made total sense, Malaimare says. There were moments where it would've been easier for certain scenes to use a smaller digital camera, but I'm glad we resisted that temptation as much as possible.
Mihai is a brilliant artist and a dear friend, so collaboration was easy, expresses Banhazl. We spoke about the visual bible I had created after the pilot, and from there we started trading inspirations and visual references. Each episode demands its own visual flourishes as we jump through different moments in American cultural memory, and Mihai was the perfect collaborator who brought his own ideas and taste to the project while maintaining the overall rather nontraditional style.
Regarding the cinematographers' choice of optics, Malaimare notes, I'm such a Panavision guy. I love the variety of the lenses and the amazing support we get there. I'm usually attracted to old lenses, but we were doing so much to the film pushing one stop, adding even more grain and gate weave in post we realized the perfection and consistency of Primo lenses would help us. We did extensive camera tests, trying a variety of old and modern lenses, but we landed on Primo primes in the end.
We wanted the image to feel like our collective memory of all our favorite movies of the 70s and 80s mixed with a documentary edge, concludes Banhazl. I originally thought we were going to go with much older vintage glass, but by the time we had done everything photochemically and digitally to our film negative, the image was so degraded that the tried-and-true Primos ended up providing the perfect balance of clean, beautiful contrast mixed with the grainy, softer film look.
Images courtesy of the filmmakers and HBO.
Watch Todd Banhazl and Mihai Malaimare Jr. discuss their work on Winning Time here: In Conversation
Read our Season 2 coverage here: Winning Depth and Worthy Company
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
02/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
02/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
02/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
02/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
In its sixth year, the broadcaster's coverage has become a global brand and ...
01/06/2026
Designed to solve a common problem in broadcasting, the automated workflow detects, identifies, removes, and documents copyrighted music
AudioShake has introdu...
01/06/2026
The sports-analytics company combines its data with proprietary AI to help leagu...
01/06/2026
Category line-up & sponsors announced
Photo: Paul Clarke
The Production Music Awards (PMA) have announced that submissions are now officially open ahead of...
01/06/2026
New hybrid sample/synthesis instrument revealed
Excite Audio have just released the latest instalment in their Evolve series, which has been developed in co...
01/06/2026
Latest TONEX expansion captures three rare vintage amps
The newest addition to IK Multimedia's ever-growing TONEX line-up introduces a set of three incr...
01/06/2026
Musically intelligent soft synth gets upgraded
Scaler Music will be probably be best known to many for their music theory tools, but their product range al...
01/06/2026
SBS confirms its broadcast sponsors for FIFA World Cup 2026
1 June, 2026
Media releases
SBS has secured Hyundai, Hisense, Macca's, Rexona, bet365, Com...
01/06/2026
Rohde & Schwarz Satellite Industry Days 2026 guided by the motto From Earth to ...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Marshall Electronics is showcasing a comprehensive lineup of next-generation POV cameras, purpose-built to power today's connected AV environments, at InfoC...
01/06/2026
Adobe Announces Concept to Vector
Deepa Subramaniam June 1, 2026
0 Comments
One of the biggest frustrations we hear from designers is how difficult it...
01/06/2026
Vampire Feature Night Patrol Graded with DaVinci Resolve Studio
Brie Clayton June 1, 2026
0 Comments
Colorist shapes dark, gritty tone for horror thri...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Agentic AI is getting physical.
At COMPUTEX on Tuesday, NVIDIA announced NVIDIA JetPack 7.2 and NVIDIA NemoClaw support on NVIDIA Jetson.
JetPack 7.2 brings a...
01/06/2026
Financial institutions have spent years building AI: fraud models, credit models...
01/06/2026
Mardi 2 juin 14h00
FilmLight (ARRI), 10 rue Ren Boulanger, 75010 Paris
Rejoignez-nous pour d couvrir comment FLAPI (l'API FilmLight) peut transformer e...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
31/05/2026
Olivia P rez-Collellmir to Premiere Original Work at Gaud Centennial in Barcelona The Berklee graduate and faculty member will debut her choral symphony with...
31/05/2026
Back to All News
Netflix Wins 15 Awards at the Canadian Screen Awards - See Pho...
31/05/2026
Taiwan is home to more than 500 NVIDIA ecosystem partners. More than 1 million N...
31/05/2026
As factories move from isolated automation to plant-wide intelligence, manufacturers need AI systems that can connect live machine signals, quality systems, wor...
31/05/2026
The NVIDIA AI Cloud ecosystem is accelerating the global buildout of AI factory infrastructure. Partners are expanding capacity to meet growing demand from ente...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Zero in on one that says yes (and no)
Andy Marken May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Hero image courtesy of Deposit Photos
For content creators the most difficu...
29/05/2026
With InfoComm 2026 just weeks away, NDI is giving attendees plenty of reasons to...
29/05/2026
Reaffirming a partnership that has defined Canadian sports broadcasting since 19...
29/05/2026
Mobile/tablet is No. 2 device for watching TV, suggesting that the sports-production industry needs to take another look at the format
Ring Digital's Sprin...
29/05/2026
Berliner Ensemble, one of Berlin's five major theater companies, has expande...
29/05/2026
Solid State Logic will showcase its new compact, fly-away TCA Tour audio product...
29/05/2026
Gerald (Jerry) Pierce, a pioneering technologist who helped shape the digital transformation of the motion picture industry, passed away last month on April 12 ...
29/05/2026
Paramount+ will be the English-language U.S. home for Barclays Women's Super...
29/05/2026
Further strengthening its virtualisation strategy to fully support broadcasters ...
29/05/2026
Swiss broadcaster Canal Alpha has deployed Harmonic's award-winning, software-based XOS Advanced Media Processor to modernize playout operations across cant...
29/05/2026
PTZOptics will showcase a new generation of intelligent video workflows at InfoComm 2026, June 17-19, Las Vegas. Visitors to booth N8227 will see how PTZOptics ...
The give-and-go between cinematographers Todd Banhazl and Mihai Malaimare Jr. on the HBO series Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty has been as impressive a display as Kareem and Magic running a pick and roll. Playing to the strengths of multiple formats, the two cinematographers helped transport viewers back in time to the genesis of the showtime Lakers of the 1980s. It took a concerted effort to craft the look of Winning Time, with the story on the screen matched by the tenacity and teamwork behind the camera.
