What are we going to talk about today? cinematographer Anastas Michos, ASC, GSC asks almost immediately after answering his phone. It's late July when Panavision connects with Michos, and though the vast majority of productions had ground to a halt back in March due to COVID-19, the cinematographer has managed to keep busy while also taking all necessary precautions to stay healthy and safe. After doing some shooting around New York City for a documentary about the pandemic directed by fellow ASC member Ellen Kuras, Michos lifted anchor and has recently been sailing along the East Coast. Isolating socially became let me go commune with nature,' just to put a different spin on it, he shares.
The cinematographer also just had the romantic comedy The Kissing Booth 2 director Vince Marcello's sequel to his 2018 feature The Kissing Booth, which also had Michos behind the camera premier on Netflix, with the debut of another feature, director David Prior's supernatural thriller The Empty Man, on the docket for later this year. And that is what we're going to talk about today.
Though light years apart in both style and subject matter, the two movies are inextricably linked for the cinematographer due to the fact that both were predominantly shot in and around Cape Town, South Africa. Michos photographed The Empty Man in late 2016, and he describes the movie as a very dark supernatural thriller adapted from the Boom! Studios comic book. I do believe that those of us who are totally immersed in our work pick up the story's emotional vibes, and when it's a dark subject matter, it affects you. Towards the end of that show, I bumped into [The Kissing Booth] producer Michele Weisler in Cape Town. We went out for dinner, I asked, What are you doing?' and she said, Oh, this little, sweet teen comedy.' I thought, Right now, that would be so much fun,' so I said, That's great are you looking for a DP?'
Weisler then introduced Michos to Marcello, who was prepping the first Kissing Booth, with principal photography slated to begin in January 2017. We got along great, Michos recalls. He's witty, he's smart, he had a vision for his film and pitched it in a way that was so appealing. Based on the book by Beth Reekles, The Kissing Booth followed Elle Evans (Joey King) through her junior year of high school and the awkward realization that she was in love with Noah Flynn (Jacob Elordi), the older brother of her lifelong best friend, Lee (Joel Courtney) and that the feeling was mutual. Released on Netflix in May 2018, the movie quickly became a sensation, and it wasn't long before a sequel was in the works.
In fact, Netflix greenlit two sequels, with The Kissing Booth 3 shot in secret right on the heels of The Kissing Booth 2. The third movie, slated to debut in 2021, was finally announced two days after the second premiered and quickly rocketed to first place in Netflix's Top 10 in the U.S. Today ranking.
The Kissing Booth 2 picks up the story with Elle and Lee beginning their senior year, and with Noah now on the other side of the country as a freshman at Harvard. Principal photography on the movie began in February 2019, with Michos and Marcello reuniting on location in Cape Town. Though set in and around Los Angeles, each Kissing Booth movie has spent only a few days actually shooting in the City of Angels, relying instead on South Africa to serve as a convincing stand-in. Part of the sell is that Cape Town is as far south of the equator as L.A. is north of it, Michos notes. So in terms of climate, it's similar.
The illusion is further sold with a shallow depth of field that keeps the backgrounds soft while simultaneously bringing the audience into Elle's headspace. We wanted to keep the film intimate and let the background be pretty and drop away, Michos says. We used Primos, which are wonderfully sharp, and I had a little bit of glass in front of them just to take the edge off. We shot wide open all the time, even if we had to ND down, so we could really get the full effect of the softness in the background, with the bokeh being soft and round. The background became L.A. because there wasn't anything in focus that wasn't L.A. It was all in the viewer's head.
Indeed, in depicting Los Angeles, the filmmakers sought to present what Michos calls a heightened version that speaks to a collective mental image of the city. Everything that we were doing is a fantasy there is no high school that is necessarily as opulent, people don't necessarily live in those huge houses. To make that work, we wanted it to be bright, glossy, poppy and friendly, and to keep the mythology of Los Angeles working so that the global audience's idea of L.A. was satisfied. So everybody has beautiful rim light, they have a soft cheek light that is the world that we're portraying.
One of Cape Town's bigger challenges, when it comes to a movie that takes place in the States, is the fact that cars drive on the opposite side of the road. For one particular day exterior when the production wasn't able to stop traffic, Michos shares, I pitched an old trick to Vincent, and he was thrilled, so we asked wardrobe and the art department to print everything backwards all the signs, all the logos, all the license plates as if they were in a mirror. Then we just reverted the image, and nobody was the wiser for it. It worked out well, but it was weird doing it, and it was weird in coverage to remember that if they're exiting frame right, they're actually exiting frame left.
The Kissing Booth movies are all framed for a 2:1 release, and for the sequels, Michos opted to shoot with Panavision's Millennium DXL2 camera system, which he had used on the series Ambitions after wrapping the firs
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
06/09/2026
June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
06/07/2026
Long-developed relationships and informal access, three production models, and c...
06/07/2026
The deal follows Lumine's recent acquisition of Synamedia's video-networ...
06/07/2026
This former SportsCenter producer is shaping local-team studio coverage to surro...
06/07/2026
IMS Productions and FOX Sports deployed more than 100 cameras, 32 onboard feeds,...
06/07/2026
Lumine Group Inc. has announced the completion of its acquisition of the Video Network Business from Synamedia. The business will operate as a standalone compan...
06/07/2026
NASCAR has announced a content and commercial partnership with Motorsport Network, a motorsports and automotive media platform, to distribute NASCAR original co...
06/07/2026
Versant Media Group has announced a definitive agreement to acquire Full Swing, a sports technology company, from Bruin Capital and a group of minority investor...
06/07/2026
DAZN has announced global broadcast rights to 3ICE, a professional hockey format featuring three skaters and a goalkeeper per side, with no power plays or offsi...
06/07/2026
Bundle gains 100 new synths & more
Synth Anthology 5 the largest and most feature-packed edition of UVI's hardware synth emulation bundle, bringing toge...
06/07/2026
Available now via free firmware update
MOTU have just announced that three of their popular audio interfaces now boast official Milan Certification. The 16A...
06/07/2026
Rohde & Schwarz completes Hunter Preliminary Design Review for the Integrated Co...
06/07/2026
The R&S IMAGER from Rohde & Schwarz uses millimeter wave imaging to inspect the ...
06/07/2026
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
06/07/2026
Digital Domain Appoints Industry Veteran Patrick Davenport as Executive Vice Pre...
06/07/2026
Gravity Media USA appoints Brittney Boston as Head of Business Development
Brie Clayton July 6, 2026
0 Comments
The strategic new appointment supports...
06/07/2026
Remote Editing Without Cloud Storage in Resolve
Michael Cioni July 6, 2026
0 Comments
This is a step-by-step guide that demonstrates how to setup your...
06/07/2026
Automatic Caption Translation in Adobe Premiere Pro
Colin Smith July 6, 2026
0 Comments
Here I showcase the innovative automatic caption translation f...
06/07/2026
Flavor's First Ever Managing Director Neal Cohen Retires; Longstanding Execu...
06/07/2026
How Adam Rosenwach Pivoted from Music to Medtech Without Missing a Beat What do the rehearsal room and the boardroom have in common? More than you might think...
06/07/2026
Zhongyi Optics unveils the Dreamy Zone T1 FF Cine Lens Series on Indiegogo with ...
06/07/2026
Techtel debuts insyght: making ST 2110 media discovery easy
intellisphereinsyght2026
6 July Written By Suzanne Costello
Sydney, Australia - 06 July 2026 T...
06/07/2026
Monday 6 July 2026
Sky agrees to acquire ITV Media & Entertainment, creating a ...
06/07/2026
Fresh from his World Cup heroics with Cabo Verde, Roberto Pico' Lopes will join the RT panel for Argentina v Egypt tomorrow and for the England v Norway q...
06/07/2026
Nations have long invested in domestic infrastructure to advance their economies, protect and use their data, and take advantage of technology opportunities in ...
06/07/2026
Every year, the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) reveals where thousands of AI researchers have decided to put their work.
This year's ...
06/07/2026
A death can be unsuspicious, but it has to be explained
What happened to Ke...
05/07/2026
We've gone to another level of integrating the graphics into the set architecture' - Zac Fields, SVP, Graphic Technology and Integration, FOX Sports...
05/07/2026
Browser-based and desktop apps available
Digital Sunset Studios have been busy working on an interesting project: a free software tool that provides compute...
04/07/2026
When Canada qualified for the FIFA World Cup 2026, OneSoccer knew this wasn'...
04/07/2026
Celebrates company's 80th anniversary
Rhodes have recently revealed that they will be producing a limited run of electric pianos in celebration of their...
04/07/2026
Blackmagic Design Cameras Empower Youth Broadcasting Program
Brie Clayton July 3, 2026
0 Comments
Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pro and Blackmagi...
04/07/2026
iZotope Joins Boris FX
Boris Yamnitsky July 3, 2026
0 Comments
iZotope, the team behind RX and Ozone, is joining Boris FX. A letter from founder Boris...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
03/07/2026
New bundle & three Single Packs
Continuing to expand their already sizeable orchestral collection, VSL's latest release introduces three new Single Pack...
03/07/2026
Venue installs new ATC-equipped control room
LSO St Luke's, a unique music venue that also serves as the home of the London Symphony Orchestra, have rec...
03/07/2026
Caden Pearson appointed new Commissioning Editor for NITV
3 July, 2026
Media releases
National Indigenous Television (NITV) has strengthened its commitment...
03/07/2026
1 February 2023
SHARE Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email
Munich, Germany, 1st February 2023: Cinegy GmbH, the premier provider of software technology for digit...
03/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
03/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
03/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
03/07/2026
Death Star
Andy Marken July 2, 2026
0 Comments
Look, I can't get involved. I've got work to do. It's not that I like the Empire; I hate i...
03/07/2026
Berklee's New Visual Identity: Honoring Our History, Building for What's...
03/07/2026
Scripps Research scientists awarded $2M to advance global disease surveillance Two Gates Foundation grants will expand wastewater surveillance and AI-driven dis...
03/07/2026
Joan Pulupa joins Scripps Research faculty to study the organization of DNA in brain cells and its links to neurodegeneration Using smell-sensing neurons and ad...
02/07/2026
Entering her senior year, this hometown girl is paving a career in live sports production gaining experience in replay and audio and as a TD
In the live-sports...
02/07/2026
In-venue and creative video staffers at the professional and collegiate level ha...
What are we going to talk about today? cinematographer Anastas Michos, ASC, GSC asks almost immediately after answering his phone. It's late July when Panavision connects with Michos, and though the vast majority of productions had ground to a halt back in March due to COVID-19, the cinematographer has managed to keep busy while also taking all necessary precautions to stay healthy and safe. After doing some shooting around New York City for a documentary about the pandemic directed by fellow ASC member Ellen Kuras, Michos lifted anchor and has recently been sailing along the East Coast. Isolating socially became let me go commune with nature,' just to put a different spin on it, he shares.
