
Based on Patricia Highsmith's bestselling Tom Ripley novels, Netflix's eight-episode limited series Ripley stars Andrew Scott as the eponymous antihero, a grifter scraping by in early 1960s New York. When Tom is hired by a wealthy man to travel to Italy and convince his vagabond son, Dickie (Johnny Flynn), to return home, he takes his first step into a complex life of deceit, fraud and murder.
The series was written and directed by Steven Zaillian, who partnered with cinematographer Robert Elswit, ASC for all eight episodes. Elswit's primary lenses for the production were Panavision VA primes, supplemented with select Primo 70 and Ultra Speed focal lengths as well as Primo 70 and prototype VA zooms. Here, in his own words, the cinematographer details the creative collaborations that brought Ripley to the screen.
I'd worked with Steve Zaillian a few years earlier on the pilot of his series The Night Of. I knew from that experience that Steve has very specific ideas about the lighting design and overall pictorial style of his shows. Very much like a cinematographer, Steve believes that the lighting of a movie, the way the spaces and characters are lit, is a way of making a direct connection to the emotions of an audience. When he told me that he wanted to shoot Ripley in black-and-white, I knew he had very different ideas about the nature of the character and story in his version of Highsmith's novel.
When I came on the show, both Steve and our production designer, David Gropman, had already spent months scouting and photographing locations throughout Italy, and theyd created a vast collection of black-and-white images not only of the locations but also the work of many Italian photojournalists that Steve felt were evocative of the era. The pictures became a great reference tool for thinking about shooting in monochrome.
In Steve's script, Toms actual talent initially seems to be simply that of a con man. A cold and calculating sociopath who's able to manipulate and exploit, to hide his emotions and play any role. But soon after Tom arrives in Europe and is exposed to the life and culture, language, food, architecture, and especially the music and art of Italian culture, it changes him in unexpected ways. It's Toms introduction to the work of the 17th-century Italian painter Caravaggio that makes a particularly strong emotional impact on him.
Caravaggio appears nowhere in the Highsmith novel. The inclusion of his art and then the painter as an actual character in Ripley is a pure Steve invention. Toms initial response to the painter's work is reinforced as he learns more about the painter's life. He begins to identify with him as he learns of the many parallel events in their two lives. As Tom travels through Italy to avoid the police, he seeks out Caravaggio's paintings wherever he is. His obsession and identification with the painter becomes one of the central themes in the second half of the story and it's Caravaggio's depiction of characters and spaces with a strong emphasis of contrasting light and dark that could also be seen as a metaphor for the narrative drama in Ripley.
The specific style of Caravaggio's painting, chiaroscuro, refers to the use of strong contrasts between light and dark that direct the eye and also strongly affect the overall composition of his paintings. This creates an underlying sense of drama and tension that we see in much of Caravaggio's work. It's this lighting style, emphasizing the contrast between light and dark, that is particularly well suited to black-and-white cinematography. We see examples of it in early cinema, especially in the great German expressionist films of the silent era. It's a lighting style that becomes associated with the American film noir movies of the '30s and '40s.
From the very beginning, Steve wanted this style of lighting, along with strong graphic compositions, to become the unique way we see the world in Ripley. With the sets, locations, costumes, weather, time of day and lighting, we tried to emphasize strong contrast between light and dark. For me, this meant the use of harder light sources throughout with the resulting stronger shadows and emphasis on texture that, in color, could seem theatrical and unrealistic, but in black-and-white becomes dramatic and somehow more truthful.
We had a 160-day schedule with an almost endless number of locations in various cities and lots of nights. Because of the large amount of VFX work and the 4K delivery requirement, we decided the best production camera for us was the Alexa LF. Steve was promised a black-and-white release, but there was no thought of using a camera without a color filter array. The advantage of using a camera without a filter array is that you pick up extra stop and supposedly there's finer gradations in the mid tones but also, no filter means a sharper image. The digital image is already too sharp, so that's the last thing I wanted.
The images were recoded as color files, but all the on-set monitors were black-and-white. I used a black-and-white LUT that I thought looked like a slightly more contrasty version of the old Kodak 5231. It's what I looked at and lit to in the DIT tent. We got two sets of dallies each day, one in color and the other in black-and-white; we never looked at the color files, and Steve edited the show with the black-and-white Avid files.
Not needing to deal with color allowed our wonderful DIT, Marco Coradin, to each day download a very accurate black-and-white version of what would be the final look of the show. I just made sure we were always exposing to hold the sky or whatever highlight detail I hoped to retain, but that wouldn't be visible in the dailies. We worked at ISO 800 for almost everything except the nights, which we shot at 160
Most recent headlines
09/11/2025
Dalet today announced a transformative leap forward for media operations: Agentic Artificial Intelligence (AI) that unifies the Dalet ecosystem under one natura...
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
16/09/2025
SVG All-Stars: Leigh Michaud, Manager, Remote Operations, ESPNThe UConn grad rose from ESPN's mailroom to become one of its most valuable ops leadersBy Bran...
16/09/2025
Live From IBC 2025: Friday's Latest From Halls 1-4, Outdoor Exhibits in Amst...
16/09/2025
Live From IBC 2025: Saturday's Latest From Halls 5-7 in Amsterdam By SVG Staff
Friday, September 12, 2025 - 17:00
Print This Story
The SVG Europe and ...
16/09/2025
Live From IBC 2025: Sunday's Latest From Halls 8-10 in Amsterdam By SVG Staff
Saturday, September 13, 2025 - 17:00
Print This Story
The SVG Europe and...
16/09/2025
Live From IBC 2025: Monday's Latest From Halls 11-14 in Amsterdam By SVG Staff
Sunday, September 14, 2025 - 17:00
Print This Story
The SVG Europe and ...
16/09/2025
Amazon Prime Video Picks Up Four Hours of Early-Round Masters Coverage in 2026By Jason Dachman, Editorial Director, U.S.
Tuesday, September 16, 2025 - 10:15 a...
16/09/2025
VERSANT Inks Deal for League One Volleyball as Women's Sports Rights Slate G...
16/09/2025
ESPN VP, Corporate Communications, Katina Arnold Named SVP, Disney Advertising C...
16/09/2025
IBC 2025 in Review: SVG Europe's Full Collection of Video Interviews From th...
16/09/2025
Hace una d cada, la m sica latina representaba apenas el 8% de las reproducciones globales en Spotify. Hoy, constituye m s de una cuarta parte (27%) de toda la ...
16/09/2025
A decade ago, Latin music made up just 8% of global Spotify streams. Today, it a...
16/09/2025
Spotify is expanding our video lineup with a new partnership with Zoo 55, part of ITV Studios. For the first time, acclaimed content from ITV Studios is landing...
16/09/2025
At DSEI 2025, James Dunne of L3Harris Maritime UK chaired a panel on aligning the supply chain to the warfighter, where leaders discussed modernising support fo...
16/09/2025
Calrec has strengthened its collaboration with audio metering expert RTW by integrating RTW's new TMxCore metering platform across its full range of Argo IP...
16/09/2025
College Football Scores Top Telecast in August with 16M+ Viewers on FOX, Followe...
16/09/2025
Collaboration marks the first SSP integration of Gracenote IDs, enabling show-le...
16/09/2025
AMSTERDAM The organizers of IBC2025 are reporting that 43,858 visitors from more than 170 countries attended the event, which had more than 1,300 exhibitors and...
16/09/2025
Wooden Camera announces the release of its new Accessory Collection for the FUJIFILM GFX ETERNA 55. The highlights of this collection include vital power soluti...
16/09/2025
Anton/Bauer, a leading manufacturer of mobile power solutions for broadcast and cinematic equipment, has announced the launch of Anton/Bauer Fleet Management, a...
16/09/2025
Teradek, a leading provider of video transmission and live production solutions, today announced the launch of Prism Jetpack, a groundbreaking 5G video contribu...
16/09/2025
Astera, the leader in wireless LED lighting solutions, announces the ultra-versatile SolaBulb. Building on the success of the Astera bulb family, SolaBulb intro...
16/09/2025
As the world gathered at TED2025 to explore the provocative theme "Humanity Reimagined", Clear-Com , supported by NETGEAR networking infrastructure, delivered f...
16/09/2025
Bitfocus' Buttons platform celebrated as a catalyst for AV and broadcast convergence
Bitfocus has been named winner of the IABM Impact Award Pro AV Chan...
16/09/2025
Record entries and outstanding innovation celebrated at IBC2025 as the MediaTech community honors its leading people, projects and organizations
IABM announced...
16/09/2025
Harmonic (NASDAQ: HLIT) today announced that SKY Perfect JSAT Corporation (SJC), a leading satellite operator and pay-TV provider in Japan, has partnered with H...
16/09/2025
Telestream congratulates Sky Group, which has been awarded the prestigious IBC Innovation Award for Content Distribution for its MediaMesh platform on Sunday, S...
16/09/2025
Leading space solutions company will use optical ground stations to deliver faster, more secure data from space
Luxembourg, September 15, 2025 - SES, a leading...
16/09/2025
NOVI, Mich. ENCO has unveiled Raptor, a cloud-based live streaming captioning encoder that injects the speed, power and reliability of real-time AI capabilities...
16/09/2025
NEW YORK Comcast NBCUniversal and NBCUniversal Local have announced that a total of $2.5 million has been awarded in 2025 to 69 nonprofit organizations servicin...
16/09/2025
AMSTERDAM Martin Euredjian has joined Atomos as director of advanced imaging and will lead innovation for advanced display technology....
16/09/2025
AMSTERDAM Calrec introduced a 48-faced Argo M and showcased its largest Argo software updates at the recently concluded IBC2025....
16/09/2025
AMSTERDAM Lawo introduced its HOME Audio Shuffler app, a replacement for a traditional baseband audio matrix within an IP-based Dynamic Media Facility, during t...
16/09/2025
CBS is reporting that the 77TH Emmy Awards hosted by Nate Bargatze on Sunday Sept. 14 was seen by more than 7.42 million viewers on the CBS Television Network a...
16/09/2025
Back to All News
Meet the Adversaries That Will Clash in Rulers of Fortune, a S...
16/09/2025
Back to All News
Would You Take 30 Million Baht from a Dead Persons Account? E...
16/09/2025
Back to All News
Netflix Unveils the Official Trailer and Poster for She Walks ...
16/09/2025
Comscore Unveils The Scoreboard: An Interactive Destination Surfacing Consumer B...
15/09/2025
Steve Zahn, Winona Ryder, Ethan Hawke, and Janeane Garofalo star in Ben Stiller&...
15/09/2025
Global K-Pop sensation aespa is redefining what it means to be rich with the r...
15/09/2025
Every day, millions of people around the world turn to Spotify to enjoy the audi...
15/09/2025
After months of intensive planning and implementation, Brembo SGL Carbon Ceramic...
15/09/2025
A U.S. Marine launches a Javelin shoulder-fired anti-tank missile during a training exercise. (Photo credit: U.S. Marine Corps)...
15/09/2025
AMSTERDAM TV Tech has named its Best of Show Awards winners for IBC2025, which wraps up today. Entrants were judged by a panel of industry experts on the criter...
15/09/2025
Unique sports content orchestration platform builds momentum among SES's cus...
15/09/2025
Back to All News
Over 41 Million Global Viewers On Netflix Watch Terence Crawfo...
15/09/2025
Paris, France - September 15, 2025 -- Space42 (ADX: SPACE42), the UAE-based AI-p...
15/09/2025
Back to All News
The Great Flood' Teaser Trailer Previews A Gripping Struggle for Survival
Entertainment
15 September 2025
GlobalSouth Korea
Link copi...
15/09/2025
Back to All News
From Hardship to Hope: Typhoon Family' Presents a Tale of...