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 ...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
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...
13/05/2026
New Adobe Premiere Color Grading Mode Accelerated on NVIDIA GPUs
Joel Pennington May 13, 2026
0 Comments
New NVIDIA RTX-accelerated features streamlin...
13/05/2026
Grass Valley announced that dB Broadcast has delivered new IP-based outside broadcast (OB) trucks for Cloudbass, featuring Grass Valley LDX 100 Series cameras a...
13/05/2026
Ikegami will exhibit the latest additions to its wide range of broadcast production cameras, control units, viewfinders and monitors on stand 5D3-1 at Broadcast...
13/05/2026
FISE, working with the founding members of the XR Sports Alliance (XRSA), Accedo, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and HBS, have collaborated to develop an immersive...
13/05/2026
Canon Unveils New EOS R6 V Full-Frame EOS Camera and RF20-50mm F4 L IS USM PZ Bu...
13/05/2026
Boston Conservatory at Berklee Honors Beth Morrison and Moses Pendleton at Comme...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Creative software developer Foundry today announced the latest developments on Nuke Stage. A purpose-built application for end-to-end virtual production and in-...
13/05/2026
A definitive portrait of one of Ireland's most influential musicians
New TV documentary airs Monday 18 May on RT One and RT Player at 9.35pm
Watch the...
13/05/2026
Agentic AI is changing the way users get work done. Following the success of OpenClaw, the community is embracing new open source agentic frameworks. The latest...
13/05/2026
Reinforcement-learning agents - AI systems that learn by trial and error - can c...
12/05/2026
Beyond the Hype: A Strategic Post-Hoc Analysis of NAB 2026 If NAB Show 2026 had an underlying theme, it was a quiet, industry-wide pivot from the high-energy sp...
12/05/2026
Guntermann and Drunck (G&D), a Panoptec Technologies Group company, and CT Square, led by Chandresh Shah, have announced a joint venture to distribute G&D and V...
12/05/2026
With 30 days until the start of the FIFA World Cup 2026, Telemundo, the exclusive Spanish-language home of the tournament in the United States, has announced th...
12/05/2026
The NHL has announced the return of Stanley Pup for its third consecutive year, a 90-minute special featuring adoptable rescue dogs competing on a miniature rin...
12/05/2026
NBCUniversal presented its 2026 Upfront to advertisers at Radio City Music Hall, detailing upcoming programming across NBC, Peacock, Bravo, and Versant properti...
12/05/2026
FOX Sports has announced funding for the Fandom and Social Connection Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Publ...
12/05/2026
TNDV and Live Media, both divisions of Live Media Group, supported live broadcast coverage around NCAA Final Four weekend in Indianapolis, including the March M...
12/05/2026
The European Football Alliance (EFA) has announced a content distribution agreement with Fubo Sports Network, the free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channel ...
12/05/2026
For the first time, Spanish-speaking fans in the U.S. will have two separate tel...
12/05/2026
CP Communications led a comprehensive spectrum management initiative on behalf of Churchill Downs during Kentucky Derby week, coordinating RF assets across the ...
12/05/2026
LiveU has announced a strategic partnership with DRONERESPONDERS, a 501(c)3 non-...
12/05/2026
Open Broadcast Systems has announced that BMC TV, a specialist in IP transport of broadcast content, has selected the Open Broadcast Systems 5G Flyaway solution...
12/05/2026
NEP Europe, part of NEP Group, has announced it will deliver broadcast solutions...
12/05/2026
Grass Valley has announced continued collaboration with Ravensbourne University ...
12/05/2026
Stats Perform has announced the launch of Opta Pulse, an AI-assisted video creation and distribution platform for leagues, rights holders, and broadcasters. The...
12/05/2026
FOX Sports has announced a collaboration with Sesame Workshop to integrate Sesame Street characters into FOX Sports' FIFA World Cup 2026 programming. Conten...
12/05/2026
To date, NHL Productions has produced 19 broadcasts with commentary in American Sign Language
NHL in ASL (American Sign Language) may be just one show, but the...
12/05/2026
Google's Brian Albert: creators, athletes, highlights, nostalgia, second-scr...
12/05/2026
A still from Past Lives by Celine Song, an official selection of the Premieres program at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. (Courtesy of Sundance Institute | p...
12/05/2026
Spotify is where fans and artists come together, turning discovery into somethin...
12/05/2026
Features patented Marco-MMC clocking technology
Black Lion Audio's latest release combines the company's expertise in clocking with their renowned p...
12/05/2026
New Track Panel, sequencer upgrades & more
Following their recent public beta release, Reason Studios have announced the full release of Reason 14. With the...
12/05/2026
One month to go! SBS reveals expansive FIFA World Cup 2026 lineup beyond the pi...
12/05/2026
Rohde & Schwarz presents its advanced solutions for power electronics testing at...
12/05/2026
aconnic AG (ISIN: DE000A0LBKW6), Munich, has developed a modified fund raising p...
12/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/05/2026
Tyrell Corporation, specialists in high-end live sports and entertainment broadcasts, was tasked with delivering compelling broadcast coverage of premier equest...
12/05/2026
Registration is now open for IBC2026 as the global media, entertainment and technology community prepares to converge on the RAI Amsterdam from 11 14 September ...
12/05/2026
Ross Video, a global leader in live video production technology, will present its latest innovations and integrated production workflows at BroadcastAsia 2026, ...
12/05/2026
500 selected leaders from around the world across start-ups, corporates, and venture capital. Over 50bn in assets under management among attending investors, a...
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.
