On Sept. 20, 2016, This Is Us premiered on NBC, introducing viewers to the cross-generational story of the Pearson family. Over the course of six seasons and a storyline that spans as many decades, Jack and Rebecca Pearson (played by Milo Ventimiglia and Mandy Moore, respectively) and their children Kate, Kevin and Randall (played as adults by Chrissy Metz, Justin Hartley and Sterling K. Brown) have captured viewers' hearts and become part of their lives as if they were an extension of the audience's own families.
Created by Dan Fogelman, the series came to an emotionally charged end on May 24, closing a significant chapter in the annals of network television and in the lives and careers of everyone involved in bringing the show to life. Cinematographer Yasu Tanida has been with This Is Us since Season 1, having joined when the show was ordered to series following production of the pilot episode, shot by Brett Pawlak. As Tanida prepared for Season 1, he worked closely with Panavision to select his optics package, and This Is Us ended up becoming the first television series to use custom optics in this case a set of modified Primos.
Panavision caught up with Tanida just before the final episode aired and just as the cinematographer was finishing his prep for a new pilot to reflect on his work over the past six years.
From left: Cinematographer Yasu Tanida, director-producer Ken Olin and series creator Dan Fogelman.
Panavision: How did you come to be involved in This Is Us?
Yasu Tanida: I shot the pilot for Pitch, directed by Paris Barclay. Dan Fogelman created the show with co-writer Rick Singer. It was about the first female baseball player in the Major Leagues, and it followed her first week playing for the San Diego Padres. I had a great time filming it, and that's where I met Dan. He and I are similar in that we both love baseball and are both pretty laid back, so our temperaments get along.
Soon after, Dan asked me if I wanted to do a different series. He had two pilots picked up to series in the fall of 2016, and if I was interested, I could interview for the job. I saw the pilot for This Is Us and was blown away by how interesting and creative it was. I then interviewed with John Requa and Glenn Ficarra, who were the directors for the pilot, and I was lucky enough to be hired.
As you began your work on Season 1, how did you approach building on the foundation that had been established in the pilot episode, shot by Brett Pawlak? What elements did you want to preserve, and where did you see opportunities to evolve or expand upon the visual language?
Tanida: From my perspective as a DP, This Is Us was a great show to join after the pilot because the big reveal was the fact the story took place in two different eras, modern day and the 1970s. Essentially, episode 2 was the beginning of showing those different time periods and opening up what those two worlds would feel like.
In respecting the approach to Brett's work, I stuck with not shooting the time periods any differently. To this day, even when we go into the future or episode 617, when we go into Rebecca's dream state we apply the same thinking. This helps with editing by allowing the show to cut between eras seamlessly. We also preserved the shooting style of keeping every era handheld and consistent in coverage.
The one change we made when we were starting episode 2 was to choose different lenses. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to create an image that took the digital edge off the screen. There was going to be old-age makeup for Mandy Moore starting in episode 2, so I was running that idea by Guy McVicker [who now serves as technical marketing manager at Panavision Woodland Hills], and we ended up customizing Primos.
What drew you to the Primos as the foundation of your lens package?
Tanida: I've been using Panavision Primos for most of my career, and hands-down the main reason is because of how the lenses render faces, which doesn't get mentioned much. There's something about the Primos that takes a human face and puts what I see with my own eyes onto the screen actually, it takes what I see with my eyes and improves on it. The lenses have a way of bringing out the oval shape of a human face and giving it depth on a two-dimensional plane. There are discussions about lens flares, changes of the focus plane, and all the personalities of these lenses, but the simplest reason is that a Primo renders a human face better than any lens out there.
What led to the decision to modify the Primos, and how did you land on the specific modifications you ended up using?
Tanida: I wanted a new look to soften the digital image, and at the same, Panavision had been developing a system to customize lenses that would look consistent from lens to lens. We decided to do a makeup test with some modified Primos. Guy showed me several focal lengths with three levels of modification: medium, heavy and extreme. I remember putting on the extreme 50mm, and it was pretty magical when I looked at Mandy Moore through the monitor. It softened the creases of the makeup without ruining the mids of the image, and it affected the highlights and shadows in an extreme way by glowing the highlights and lifting up the shadows.
We ended up shooting a lot of tests over several weeks with all levels of modification, also testing them at different high ISOs. I then took the camera tests to colorist Tom Forletta at Technicolor Hollywood, and I asked him to take all three modification levels and bring the image back to a normal level, as if the modification hadn't been applied. The medium and even the heavy could be taken out with modern color-correcting tools, but when Tom tried to take out the extreme look at ISO 1280, something in the image remained there was still a soft glow in the highlights,
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On Sept. 20, 2016, This Is Us premiered on NBC, introducing viewers to the cross-generational story of the Pearson family. Over the course of six seasons and a storyline that spans as many decades, Jack and Rebecca Pearson (played by Milo Ventimiglia and Mandy Moore, respectively) and their children Kate, Kevin and Randall (played as adults by Chrissy Metz, Justin Hartley and Sterling K. Brown) have captured viewers' hearts and become part of their lives as if they were an extension of the audience's own families.
