
--
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 ...
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...
26/03/2026
Wayne, N.J., March 26, 2026 Phantom High-Speed announces the latest product li...
25/03/2026
Live match directors Sarah Cheadle (Sky Sports), Rob Levi (TNT Sports), and Andrew Swift (BBC Sport) sit down with the Premier League's Rachel Nightingale t...
25/03/2026
The senior from Upstate New York is manning the mic while also interning for the athletic department's sports-information team
In the live-sports-video ind...
25/03/2026
Synamedia has announced ContentArmor Edge Watermarking, a server-side solution t...
25/03/2026
SES has announced meoSphere, a medium Earth orbit (MEO) satellite network targeted for operation by 2030. The first phase will pair SES-developed software-defin...
25/03/2026
TVU Networks is working with Reuters on a phased migration from satellite to a c...
25/03/2026
Nielsen has announced three senior appointments. Seth Ladetsky has been named Head of Global Sports. Trevor Fellows will lead Nielsen's advertiser and agenc...
25/03/2026
Anoki and Amagi have launched In-Scene Ads powered by Anoki ContextIQ across Amagi's portfolio of in-content ad formats for Free Ad-supported Streaming TV (...
25/03/2026
Arkona Technologies will announce a series of enhancements to its BLADE//runner platform at NAB 2026 (Booth C.1808). The updates focus on usability and workflow...
25/03/2026
Daktronics has installed two tower displays and a video wall in the Lexus Club at Petco Park in San Diego ahead of the 2026 season.
Continuing to improve the ...
25/03/2026
MultiDyne Video & Fiber Optic Systems is celebrating its 50th anniversary as NAB Show 2026 approaches. The company was founded in 1976 by Vincent Jachetta, an N...
25/03/2026
IPC, a provider of integrated communication solutions, will make its NAB 2026 de...
25/03/2026
Live production categories were led by NBC, FOX, and ESPN's NFL coverage...
25/03/2026
The Atlanta Braves and Spectrum have announced a multiyear distribution agreemen...
25/03/2026
(L-R) Charlie Tyrell and Daniel Roher attend The AI Doc: Or How I Became An Apocaloptimist Premiere during the 2026 Sundance Film Festival at The Ray Theatre ...
25/03/2026
Directed By, Spotify's documentary-style series that pulls back the curtain ...
25/03/2026
BTS is so back., This week, the global pop superstars took the stage at New York City's Pier 17 for their first U.S. performance in four years.
Part of Spo...
25/03/2026
How you listen can shape what you hear. That's the idea behind the new Spotify Listening Lounge, an acoustic space at our London headquarters purpose-built ...
25/03/2026
Tape effects taken to the extreme
The latest release from New York-based developer Iconic Instruments is said to accurately recreate the saturation and comp...
25/03/2026
Launched alongside new Vocal Phrases bundle
Sonuscore's latest release has been designed specifically for composers working on fantasy TV, film and game...
25/03/2026
Latest update now live
The latest version of Steinberg's post-production-focused DAW has just arrived, and comes packed with new dialogue editing, sound...
25/03/2026
Rohde & Schwarz joins FormFactor's MeasureOne partner program FormFactor and Rohde & Schwarz advance their partnership for on-wafer RF component character...
25/03/2026
L3Harris Technologies and RFTEQ Pty Ltd signed a memorandum of understanding to ...
25/03/2026
L3Harris delivers combat-ready Torpedo Tube Launch and Recovery system, which deploys and retrieves Iver4 900 autonomous underwater vehicles through submarine t...
25/03/2026
The company expands leadership team under Chief Revenue Officer Amilcar Perez
S...
25/03/2026
Winter Olympic Games Opening Ceremony features in top 10 programmes of the month...
25/03/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
25/03/2026
Providing wide view timing visibility across the entire production chain...
25/03/2026
Continuing development drives advances in security, availability, access and connectivity...
25/03/2026
Caudalie, the renowned French cosmetics brand, has unveiled a state-of-the-art 200-seat auditorium at its new headquarters in the historic Marais district of ce...
25/03/2026
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, today announced expanded integration with Adobe Premiere, Adobe Media Encoder (AME), and Frame.io, d...
25/03/2026
Marshall Electronics is expanding its lineup of high-performance POV cameras designed for broadcast, live production and professional AV applications with the d...
25/03/2026
OOONA, a global provider of professional management and production tools for the media localization industry, announced today that it has been awarded the TPN G...
25/03/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
25/03/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
25/03/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
25/03/2026
SipRadius, specialists in secure, low-latency media transport, will drive innovation and interoperability still further with the launch of the SipMX Alliance at...
25/03/2026
QuickLink, a leading provider of award-winning video production and remote contribution solutions, will showcase its award-winning StudioPro ecosystem at The 2...
25/03/2026
Alfalite, the only European manufacturer of LED screens, will once again be present at NAB Show, the leading global event for the broadcast, media and entertain...
25/03/2026
PC, a leading provider of integrated communication solutions, will make its NAB 2026 Show debut in Booth C 3341. The company will highlight the newly branded On...
25/03/2026
Open video transport network simplifies satellite transition with new partnerships and global reach as spectrum auction nears
LTN will demonstrate how its purp...
25/03/2026
Test & measurement innovator, Leader Electronics, will present the full range of Leader, PHABRIX and LeaderPhabrix T&M solutions at the NAB Show, which takes pl...
25/03/2026
MNC Software, a global leader in network management and operational support systems tailored to the broadcast and media industry, today announced the appointmen...
25/03/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
25/03/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...