While The Acolyte Set in a universe that is now well known to film and television fans around the world, it is one of the most unique titles in the war of stars franchise. Not only does it explore a side of the galaxy never seen on screen before, but it also features some of the most intricate battle scenes ever, inspired by the Wuxia Films of the past.
In conversation with Awards Radar on Zoom, cameraman Chris Teaguewho worked on the first, second, fourth and fifth episodes of the series, said: “It’s a very difficult balancing act to find something that feels fresh, but at the same time also feels like it’s part of this very large, well-established universe. We started with what interested us most about the series. war of stars World. The first three films were the ones that I loved the most from an aesthetic point of view. I saw them when I was very young and they stuck with me. When I researched and rewatched those films, I felt like there was so much to draw from. Leslye Headlandthe creator of the show, was the same. One of the things she always asked rhetorically was: “What would George Lucas do? How would George approach this scene?” I think what she was saying was that we strive for elegant simplicity in our approach. The camera only moves when it wants to say something, when it wants to express an emotion or create a certain sense of drama, highlight a point in the story or something like that. That’s how we approached it.
We wanted something that felt classic and was very similar in terms of the storyline. We started looking at all the Wuxia ’70s films like Come Drink with Me and Lady Snowblood. We noticed that the photography was straightforward and very much there to support the incredible choreography of these actors. It’s a fun challenge because you can do so much with the camera. You can move the camera so quickly and in so many different ways. It’s very easy to be tempted to dazzle the audience with a lot of fancy camera work. But we wanted the choreography to speak for itself and the camera to only step in to underline or highlight certain moments. To me, that’s what it feels like when you do that. Camera work has a more immediate and powerful impact on the audience when its power is used sparingly.”
In a discussion with showrunner/director Leslye Headland about the look of the series, Teague explained that it was intimidating “to go into a show of such incredible scale. I was incredibly grateful to be there with Leslye because she and I share a visual language. The conversations about the big picture of the show were fun and generated a lot of great ideas. It was a great process where we would just sit down and talk and she would throw references at us. I would go back and look at the references and bring things back to her. I would pull out images and clips and we would start refining things. We started with this very broad overall idea of what the show should look and feel like. My job was to dig deeper and get very specific about what that meant in terms of camera movements, lighting and color palette. I brought those things to Leslye, who responded and responded. The result was this presentation document that we presented to the entire crew and it was very effective. We sat down with all the heads of department, the cameramen and most of the team and explained our ideas for the visual approach to the show. This impressed the crew, motivated them and made everyone feel like we were all working together on the same show.”
By developing a look that distinguishes the series from others war of stars For titles that were larger and used more CGI, collaboration between the cinematography and production design departments was key to creating a more classic feel for the show that would evoke the look of the original trilogy:
“Our production designer, Kevin Jenkinswas absolutely drawn to that idea. It felt like that was the right thing for the show. It’s challenging at times, especially the forest setting where we shoot almost two episodes. We had to imagine a working space where we could create the feeling that these characters are traveling for miles through an ever-changing landscape. It became an incredible team effort with me on lighting design and Kevin on set design. We made it as modular as possible so we could have one room to shoot in and transform it into another. Our green department also did an incredible amount of work moving live plants from room to room to create different levels of density or different types of shapes. We have these incredible mangrove-inspired gigantic sequoia trees in many rooms. They’re all peppered with lots of live plants of different species and leaf shapes. We’re constantly re-imagining the place as we’re shooting.”
The development not only of the action but also of the camera choreography of the show Wuxia-inspired fight scenes could have been a challenge, but the cinematographer explains that they were “fortunate to be able to work with this incredible team, which includes Chris Cowanour action designer, Mark Gintherour stunt coordinator and our entire fight choreography team. The conversations were about figuring out how to characterize each of these fight scenes so that they feel dynamic and distinct. A great example is the fight between Mae (Amanda Stenberg) and Jecki (Daphne Keen), and Chris Cowan had the idea that it should be like a man-on-man brawl. And we tried to keep the camera as close to the ground as possible. So we roll them along the ground and they get thrown from place to place and into trees on different levels of Kelnacca (Joonas Suotamo) shelter. That shaped this scene, but so much about Wuxia Movies are about pacing: how we move within a fight sequence from something rapid-fire and relentless to these pauses where the characters separate and face each other. You can check in to see where they are emotionally and then it starts again. There’s something almost musical about the pacing of the choreography and the camera work moving with the actors. It moves in one direction, left to right or in and out. But we often pause with our characters and stand static with them when the camera isn’t moving. There’s a visual rhythm, very inspired by Wuxia films.”
During our audio conversation (see below), we also talked about the challenges of determining the look of each of the series’ locations, Teague’s collaboration with director Alex Garcia Lopez on episodes four and five, and the visual representation of the different lightsabers each Padawan and Jedi would have in the pivotal battle of episode five.
You can listen to my entire conversation with Chris below and stream the first six episodes of The Acolyte on Disney+ today:
(Some of the quotes in this article have been edited for length and clarity)
