
--
From Amazon Studios, Late Night, directed by Nisha Ganatra from a screenplay by Mindy Kaling, follows late-night talk show host Katherine Newbury (Emma Thompson) teams up with new writer, Molly Patel (Kaling), to help revitalize the program and her career. The comedy feature, which had its premiere at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, was shot by cinematographer Matthew Clark (Pitch Perfect 3, Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates) with the VariCam 35 camera.
Clark got involved with Late Nightthrough Ganatra, whom he had worked with on several projects since they both attended NYU Tisch School of the Arts years before. For Clark, one of the toughest tasks in shooting comedy is to make it look and feel natural for the audience while allowing the space for them to laugh. The visuals has to have some depth to them, but you need to let the actors work things out on screen, he explains. That was a big part for this film knowing the way Nisha likes to work. She's visual but she's also very actor oriented, so one of the things I wanted to do was make our technical footprint as small as possible to give the actors room to work and to find those comic moments.
For Late Night, Clark describes the look as heightened naturalism. He created a look book that contained images from still photographers Gregory Crewdson's artificial reality to Robert Frank's super naturalism images. He also worked with Light Iron colorists Corinne Bogdanowicz in Los Angeles and Sean Dunckley in New York to develop the look during prep. There were three distinct kind of looks we wanted, describes Clark. One was for Catherine's home, which was more elegant with warm tones. The television studio needed to be crisp and clean with more neutral tones and for the writers' room office, the look was more chaotic and business-like with blue or cooler tones.
Late Nightwas shot with the VariCam 35 with a small crew in a short 25-day schedule. During prep, Clark, gaffer Ken Shibata and key grip Tommy Kerwick, Jr. decided that if they went with a traditional lighting and grip package, there would not be enough man power to complete the days since they would be shooting sometimes three to four locations on the same day.
We didn't have the money to put up condors three blocks away with four generators, so we went with the idea of going with the VariCam because of its native 5000 ISO, explains Clark. The camera allowed us to move fast and have a good base when we moved out to those night exteriors and even the night interiors. For example, working with a China ball, we could light an entire room. It's a valuable resource to have if you need to shoot that way and in this instance we did. We were able to get that base and still have time to make it better on top of that, as well as allow for motion in and out of the light.
With the VariCam 35, Clark captured 4K 12-bit 444 AVC Intra files in V-log. With Bogdanowicz, he developed a basic 709 LUT. For any night exterior or interior, Clark utilized the VariCam's native 5000 ISO and for daytime sequences, he captured at native 800 ISO. For lenses, he used 70s era Superspeeds and Ultraspeeds from Panavision, which he feels added warmth and took some of the digital edge off. My ACs, Pedro Corcega and Adriana Brunetto-Lipman, were so on it, explains Clark. When you're shooting with a 100mm lens and you're on your fourth location of the day, people can get pretty tired, but they were always on top of things. Clark occasionally made use of an 11 - 1 Primo zoom, which delivered a similar look to his primes.
Clark and Shibata cut generators out of their lighting package and went with smaller instruments that they could plug into a wall socket or run off a portable Putt-Putt. They mainly lit with small LED lights and an ARRI M18 1.8K open faced lamp. We did it as lo-fi as possible, explains Clark. We had one day where we had a 4K and that was because we had a big window outside this house, and I wanted to light it from outside at night with no lights inside.
Perhaps the most challenging location to light was the writers' room office set, since they were several stories up and there were two half walls that were windows.
Whenever we wanted to have light come from one side, explains Clark, we put up ND 3 and ND 6 hard gels that we'd either stack on one side and then allow the light to come in clean from the other side. It gives you that contrast so instead of getting two sides with a lot of light, you can expose for the outside, open up, and the light is coming in from one side of the building giving you your key light. When we turned around and looked towards those windows then you could move the hard gels to the other side.
For shooting New York City night exteriors, Clark used a China ball for walk-and-talks. New York street lamps used to be orange sodium vapor but now they're changing everything out for these LED street lights that are super bright white and they're hard, reveals Clark. There's no romance about them. That was hard because they would sometimes overpower the 5000 ISO sensitivity and you'd have to figure out how to get something up on that light or when they walk under, you had to swing something out over them. We often picked streets based on the street lights they were going to walk under because we really couldn't fix that in the middle of the night.
At 5000, you see everything so it's about shaping what you see, continues Clark. You can shoot 5000 ISO at night under a street light, so your ratios have to be there. You still have to light it, but you don't have to pull out big instruments to give you a good exposure. It's more about figuring out where you need to be and then shape that exposure.
Proper pre-planning with post made the color grade more effe
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
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...
02/05/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
01/05/2026
January 5 2026, 18:30 (PST) NBCUniversal's Peacock to Be First Streamer to ...
02/04/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
02/04/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
02/04/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
02/04/2026
Student Spotlight: Al-Fadl Salem The Danish singer recently performed for the queen of Denmark.
April 1, 2026
By
Editorial Staff
Image by Junia Morrow
Wh...
02/04/2026
Taku Hirano's Career Is Defined by Identity Whether he's performing, composing, teaching, or developing instruments, the do-it-all percussionist sees ...
01/04/2026
As sports media organization continue to seek out new ways to streamline their p...
01/04/2026
The SVG GFX Forum hit New York City earlier this month for a day packed with sessions focused on the creative strategy and technology behind today's cutting...
01/04/2026
This year, Spotify celebrates the five-year anniversary of EQUAL, our global pro...
01/04/2026
Analogue-style tape splicing in the digital domain
In this era of digital recording and multiple layers of Undo, it seems that the fading art of tape splici...
01/04/2026
Latest release introduces new Orbita Engine
Zero G's latest release marks the start of a new series of libraries, as well as introducing an all-new engi...
01/04/2026
Until now, one format has largely been left behind
Warm Audio's extensive product range includes modern-day recreations of all manner of sought-after s...
01/04/2026
A piano with glass vessels for strings!
The Crow Hill Company's recently released Gong Piano offered a refreshing new take on piano libraries, harnessin...
01/04/2026
Remote Streaming Studio Condenser
Aim Audio have just revealed their latest creation, the ESSENCE RS Remote Streaming Studio Condenser, which becomes the wo...
01/04/2026
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF) is pleased to announce that the ca...
01/04/2026
Bilbao, April 1st, 2026 - AgileTV, a leading provider of end-to-end TV technolog...
01/04/2026
Green Hippo is excited to announce the launch of its new Hippotizer Media Server training courses at Pixel Academy, a purpose built AV learning hub combining ha...
01/04/2026
TAG Video Systems, a global leader in IP-native broadcast monitoring, multiviewing, and quality control, today announced a collaboration with Oracle Cloud Infra...
01/04/2026
Professional Wireless Systems (PWS), a leading provider of wireless audio solutions and RF management, was on site at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, wher...
01/04/2026
AgileTV, a leading provider of end-to-end TV technology solutions, has deployed next , the new IPTV platform of the Austrian telco LIWEST, marking the first st...
01/04/2026
LTN, a leader in fully managed IP video transport, and Ateme, a global leader in video compression and delivery solutions, today announced a collaboration integ...
01/04/2026
Adobe Unveils Powerful New Innovations for Creative Pros in Adobe Illustrator
Deepa Subramaniam April 1, 2026
0 Comments
I'm excited to share that...
01/04/2026
Boland Communications Introduces QD4K315HDR10 QD-OLED Series Monitors for Live P...
01/04/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/04/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/04/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/04/2026
Mediagenix Showcases Semantic Intelligence-Powered Title Management, Schedule Op...
01/04/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/04/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/04/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/04/2026
Victoria Mon t Brings the Multi-Hyphenate Mindset to Career Jam 2026 The Grammy-winning singer, songwriter, and producer shared how versatility and self-inves...
01/04/2026
UKTV today announces that Jonathan Newman has formally stepped into the role of ...
01/04/2026
A New Season of Expression: Save 30% On Ivory 3There are moments in music when everything changes-when new ideas break through and redefine what's possible....
01/04/2026
Wuppertal April 1, 2026
Binghamton University Strengthens Student Run Producti...
01/04/2026
Back to All News
A Demon Falls for a Human in Long Vacation: Netflix Greenlight...
01/04/2026
Back to All News
All WWE Is Now Live Only on Netflix in Italy
Entertainment
01 April 2026
GlobalItaly
Link copied to clipboard
ALL WWE IS NOW LIVE
ON NET...
01/04/2026
Harmonic's Media Processing Solutions Maximize Bandwidth Efficiency for Terrestrial Broadcast Delivery SAN JOSE, Calif. - April 1, 2026 - Harmonic (NASDAQ: ...
01/04/2026
Rugby fans won't miss a moment of the action this spring, with full Women...
01/04/2026
T Bluey ag teacht go RT ! Beginning on Monday 6 April 2026, Bluey will be available as Gaeilge on RT KIDSjr and RT Player. Children will be able to connect w...
01/04/2026
January 4 2026, 18:00 (PST) DOLBY AND DOUYIN EMPOWER THE NEXT GENERATON OF CREATORS WITH DOLBY VISION
Douyin Users Can Now Create And Share Videos With Stun...
31/03/2026
MeyerPro delivered the LED production for the Microsoft Ignite 2025 keynote at Chase Center in San Francisco, using more than 2,700 ROE Visual panels across mul...
31/03/2026
The Media Coding Industry Forum (MC-IF) is expanding membership outreach in 2026...
31/03/2026
ViewLift and MyOutdoorTV (MOTV) have announced the launch of ViewLift Conversational AI Search on the MyOutdoorTV platform. The feature enables natural language...
31/03/2026
The Atlanta Braves and Gray Media have announced a multi-year agreement to simul...
31/03/2026
Gravity Media has delivered broadcast services for TAB Golden Slipper Day at Rosehill Gardens on March 21 and will now cover The Star Championships at Royal Ran...
31/03/2026
Synamedia has announced that Mileto Tecnologia, a Brazilian pay-TV operator, has selected the Synamedia Go platform for its OTT expansion. Mileto is also deploy...
31/03/2026
KMH Integration will attend NAB Show in Las Vegas with a focus on what the company calls AV Casting - an approach built on the idea that professional AV and bro...