
After years of shooting television dramas like Snowfall and Empire, cinematographer Tommy Maddox-Upshaw, ASC longed for a project that explored the mysterious and fantastic realms of science fiction, as he was a longtime fan of the genre. In the fall of 2020, he met with writer-producer Alex Kurtzman about the series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, and the two immediately hit it off. But, instead of Star Trek, the job that came out of the meeting was a passion project Kurtzman and writer Jenny Lumet had been developing based on Walter Tevis' 1963 sci-fi novel, The Man Who Fell to Earth, which had been previously adapted into the acclaimed 1976 film directed by Nicolas Roeg, shot by Anthony B. Richmond, ASC, BSC, and starring the iconic David Bowie.
Maddox-Upshaw connected with Kurtzman and Lumet's take on the material and their choice to make the lead characters Faraday (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Justin Falls (Naomie Harris) both Black. I thought that Alex and Jenny did a great job of writing and putting these Black people in the sci-fi space in quite a beautiful way that followed in the steps of Bowie, who was a very worldly person, the cinematographer says.
When the series was greenlit in December 2020, Maddox-Upshaw and Kurtzman began planning the look of the show via Zoom meetings. They didn't want to duplicate or re-invent the visual style of the 1976 film, and their references often veered far from classic sci-fi films and series. Instead, they found inspiration in more realistic works, such as cinematographer Joshua James Richards' portraiture in Nomadland, the mixed-source lighting James Laxton, ASC employed in Moonlight, the desert palette Adrian Biddle, BSC accentuated in Thelma & Louise, and Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC's outdoor compositions in No Country for Old Men. The aesthetic of these films better matched the grounded style Kurtzman and Maddox-Upshaw envisioned for The Man Who Fell to Earth. The show is not straight sci-fi, Maddox-Upshaw says. It's more like a dramatic show in the sci-fi space.
To achieve this naturalistic look, Maddox-Upshaw decided to go with a large-format image, but one that would be rougher, reflecting the gritty New Mexico desert where Faraday and Falls first meet each other. So he asked for advice from his contacts at Panavision, with whom he's had a strong working relationship since 2004, his final year as an MFA film student at the American Film Institute. Panavision graciously donated me a camera for my thesis film, and that was a game changer, he remembers. Subsequently, they helped me on my early music videos and different things of that nature. Panavisions also been very supportive on my international work outside of the U.S.
Panavision's senior vice president of client relations and business development, David Dodson, connected Maddox-Upshaw with Dan Sasaki, senior vice president of optical engineering and lens strategy, and Guy McVicker, director of technical marketing, who shared that they were in the process of creating a prototype series of large-format spherical primes that might fit Maddox-Upshaw's needs. There was a progression from late 2020 to early 2021, where Dan and Guy got a recipe that I liked for the lenses, Maddox-Upshaw says. I tested it out until probably February, and then Dan started making the lenses, and Panavision had two sets of them shipped out to London.
While The Man Who Fell to Earth is set primarily in the United States, the production was shot in the United Kingdom and Spain. In fact, though both Maddox-Upshaw and Kurtzman live in Los Angeles, because of the coronavirus pandemic we had never met physically until we got to London, Maddox-Upshaw says. Yet their virtual collaboration over Zoom had created such a strong bond between the two filmmakers that when Kurtzman had to briefly return to the U.S. for a family commitment, he asked Maddox-Upshaw to scout locations in Spain on his own. Alex didnt have to do that at all, the cinematographer reflects. But because we had been connected in terms of what we liked aesthetically and what we knew the story to be emotionally, he let me scout without him, just sending a few pictures back at times. That was a big testament in terms of our friendship on a first-time collaboration. It really gave me confidence moving forward.
Spain's Tabernas Desert once the heartland for many spaghetti westerns in the 1960s and '70s doubled for Los Alamos, N.M., where the alien Faraday crashes and encounters Justin Falls, a brilliant physicist who has fallen from grace in her field. The spherical prototypes were Maddox-Upshaw's go-to optics for these scenes. Pairing the lenses with Panavised Sony Venice large-format cameras, he leaned into the spherical primes' individual and deliberately imperfect characteristics to express the strangeness of a being from another planet arriving in the American southwest. He found the 50mm prototype worked particularly well with close-ups. Because of the large format, it's like a 35 or a 38mm lens in the 6K space, he notes. And it was such a beautiful lens. It just starts to want to bend, and it rounds the faces so nicely.
Maddox-Upshaw appreciated how the prototypes brought out the beauty of the actors' skin tones and the desert's hues. Besides rounding out the image a little bit more in terms of the field of the lens itself, I also love that the color temperature of the lenses rolled a little bit warm, he says. They liked warm flares, they liked warm lighting. I prefer it that way. It helps me not to be as heavy-handed in the LUT and the lighting. I try not to have one aspect of my image-making do all the heavy lifting, because then I can manipulate it so different aspects are doing different things.
When shooting establishing and wide shots, Madd
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
07/10/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, today announced the latest Long-Term Supported (LTS) release of Dalet Flex. Build...
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...
23/07/2026
Download Now!
To receive a short case study showcasing Vivid Broadcast's audio setup, please enter the following details:
--
First Name* First Name ...
23/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
23/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
23/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
23/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
23/07/2026
Witbe brings its AI-native testing and monitoring infrastructure to Amsterdam: demonstrations on real devices, a peer-reviewed technical paper in the conference...
23/07/2026
Quickplay, Caretta Research, Evergent, and Yospace have announced that the renowned IBC Pride Happy Hour will once again bring the vibe and fun back to IBC on F...
23/07/2026
At IBC2026, Interra Systems will present this year's focus: operational AI at scale for QC, monitoring, and captioning workflows. The industry has moved pas...
23/07/2026
Illusionfx is finally coming!
Alex Perea July 23, 2026
0 Comments
The new website is now live to mark the occasion.
Since the last update, feedback h...
23/07/2026
Evergent (5.A86) will showcase its Agentic Revenue Orchestration Platform for streaming services, sports leagues, pay-TV operators at IBC2026 (RAI Amsterdam, 11...
23/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
23/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
23/07/2026
David Dvir, 2D founder (left), Sundeep Reddy (center), and Jean-Marc Bouchut (right), both of Zeiss...
23/07/2026
Screen Australia announces new national documentary accelerator program 23 July 2026
Screen Australia has today announced the Above the Line Documentary Accel...
23/07/2026
RT Commercial has today announced Centra as the official food partner once again of The Traitors Ireland, coming to RT One and RT Player later this year.
Ce...
23/07/2026
RT Commercial today announced Honda as sponsor of Today with David McCullagh RT Radio 1, weekdays 9am 11am.
Broadcasting directly after Morning Ireland in ...
23/07/2026
RT News is pleased to announce Barry Gallagher has been assigned as the new journalist covering news from Cork, Kerry and the wider Southern region
Working al...
23/07/2026
Lock in and load up the cloud. GFN Thursday brings fresh updates and new adventu...
22/07/2026
Among other tweaks to coverage, the broadcaster added announce positions in the ...
22/07/2026
The Australian Sports Technologies Network (ASTN) has reported a sharp acceleration in Australia's sportstech sector, with revenue growth rising from 10% in...
22/07/2026
From a retrofitted broadcast bus to packed Match Day Live! events, Bennett detai...
22/07/2026
TMRW Sports has named Brendan Donohue as President, Flag Football, where he will lead the company's professional flag football business in partnership with ...
22/07/2026
Stephen Arnold Music (SAM) designed and produced soundtracks for nine projection...
22/07/2026
Harmonic has announced a $25,000 donation to Global Empowerment Mission (GEM) fo...
22/07/2026
Telemundo has announced it has acquired from UC3 exclusive U.S. Spanish-language...
22/07/2026
The Rest Is Football, hosted by Gary Lineker, Alan Shearer, and Micah Richards, ...
22/07/2026
Sports Studio has announced a partnership with TheSoul Group to distribute Free ...
22/07/2026
Daktronics has concluded its 2026 High School Video Summit, a two-day hybrid event combining virtual sessions with hands-on host school visits across the countr...
22/07/2026
FOR-A America will exhibit at the MMCA Show in Pensacola, Florida (July 21-24), marking the company's first appearance at the house of worship AV event. FOR...
22/07/2026
The New York Yankees have selected Lumen Technologies (NYSE: LUMN) to connect Ya...
22/07/2026
Calrec will exhibit at IBC 2026 (Stand 8.C47) with demonstrations of its IP-native audio ecosystem built around the Argo console range, and will announce two ne...
22/07/2026
Solid State Logic has announced the appointment of Algam EKO as its distributor for SSL large format consoles in Italy, covering the Live, Broadcast, and Studio...
22/07/2026
FloSports has announced the launch of the FloSports Channel, a free ad-supported streaming channel premiering on Prime Video in the U.S. on July 21. The channel...
22/07/2026
Banana Ball TV (BTV), the broadcast operation of the Savannah Bananas, has insta...
22/07/2026
SiriusXM and Audacy have announced an agreement bringing 42 Audacy sports, news, and talk stations from 29 U.S. markets to SiriusXM. Twenty-three Audacy sports ...
22/07/2026
The collaboration produced more than 500 short-form videos across four cities th...
22/07/2026
At 2,600 sq. ft., the new home of digital content houses a main studio, podcast space, and an auxiliary control room
NFL franchises are accelerating their prod...
22/07/2026
Library now available in Engine Player
Another of Eduardo Tarilonte's popular sample libraries has just been moved over to Engine Audio's Engine Pla...
22/07/2026
All-in-one mic & DSP interface overhauled
Cloudvocal have just refreshed the design of their all-in-one mic, audio interface and DSP processor, introducing ...
22/07/2026
The final boss of the lost dual-op-amp circuit
Electro-Harmonix have just introduced the Deluxe Big Muff Pi 2, which they say offers their latest take on t...
22/07/2026
eds3_5_jq(document).ready(function($) { $(#eds_sliderM519).chameleonSlider_2_1({ content_source:......
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Proven managed IP solution helps broadcasters confidently navigate the future of broadcast distribution
LTN announces it has completed successful satellite-to-...
22/07/2026
Today, Chaos announced V-Ray 7, update 4, eliminating the need for asset conversions and tool switching, which slow down media and entertainment pipelines. Arti...