“I’m Obsessed With Never Doing the Same Thing”: ‘Severance’ Cinematographer Jessica Lee Gagné on the Challenges of Directing “Chikhai Bardo” – Collider

Editor’s note: The below interview contains spoilers for Severance Season 2 Episode 7.Apple TV+’s Severance has no shortage of twists and turns, but Season 2’s latest episode just got one step closer to answering some of the show’s biggest mysteries to date. While Mark (Adam Scott) lies comatose as a consequence of his decision to reintegrate his severed memories, he flashes back to various memories of the time when he first met his wife, Gemma (Dichen Lachman), as well as their subsequent struggles with fertility. At the same time, we’re finally made privy to exactly where Gemma has been inside Lumon all this while, being experimented on via several different rooms (and, apparently, several different severed personalities) by the creepy Dr. Mauer (Robby Benson), with her whereabouts monitored by an all-too-watchful nurse (Sandra Bernhard). While we may have more of a sense of what Cold Harbor is, we’re still no closer to figuring out how Mark ‚Äî or his innie ‚Äî is going to be able to save Gemma from Lumon’s clutches, especially when she only remembers being Ms. Casey after attempting to escape to the severed floor.Ahead of the premiere of “Chikhai Bardo,” Collider had the opportunity to speak with Severance cinematographer Jessica Lee Gagn√©, who makes her directorial debut with the series’ latest episode. Over the course of the interview, which you can read below, Gagn√© discusses why she initially had some apprehension about both joining Severance and directing “Chikhai Bardo” ‚Äî and what proved to be the turning point for each decision ‚Äî as well as the challenges and blessings that emerged over the course of making the episode. She also explains why the flashback scenes were shot on film, her surprising connection to Mark and Gemma’s house, her visual influence for the seasonal montage sequence, and more.Collider: I read that you initially had some apprehension about joining Severance; when you read the pilot, you weren’t really sure what you could do with it. What was the turning point that convinced you? Was it getting to work with Ben [Stiller] again? Was that only part of it? JESSICA LEE GAGN√â: It was a very, very clear moment. For me, the reason I was… I love Dan [Erickson]’s writing, don’t get me wrong, it really wasn’t him. I was really thinking from a cinematographer mindset. That’s my story in general, with me and Severance. I think I’ve been close-minded for a very long time in my life, and then certain things happened, and this show has really helped me open up my mind because I had definitely been burying parts of myself. I feel like I went through my own version of what Mark’s lived in my own life, which is weird. But the moment when I got excited about doing Severance is when I found this book called Office by Lars Tunbjork.The office aesthetic, in the past… I don’t think I had ever really liked what anyone had ever done. So, because I had never seen anything that I thought was visually interesting, I wasn’t intrigued by… And I like to be able to craft, and I felt like I would be limited, not being able to design lighting in every scene or design something new, because I’m obsessed with never doing the same thing. And so, this was like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Four people sitting at some desks with some white hallways? I don’t know.” I feel like that’s every cinematographer’s nightmare. And then that book opened up my mind to the beauty of the office and what it could be. From that, I just kept finding more and more visuals that were just so interesting, and I really leaned in. For me, that was the spark, that specific moment.It feels like this is a show unlike anything that we’ve seen before. In terms of even creating that specific language for the show, aside from that book, when you were thinking about what Lumon was going to look like, did you have one personal “aha” moment that then became a defining aspect of Severance?GAGN√â: Yeah. I’m a psycho when it comes to locations. I’m every production designer’s worst nightmare, but Jeremy Hindle and I actually work really well together, and we have very similar tastes, so that made it easy. But I’ll walk into a location and if it’s not the right one, I feel it, and I say, “It’s not this one. We can shoot here if you want, but it’s not this one. There’s better.” It’s like a thing inside of me. And Bell Labs… before Jeremy was hired, we were looking for preliminary locations. The location manager who was on the project at the time knew that this was going to be the most challenging location to find. Because I know locations very well, as a cinematographer, you’re like, “Well, that’s my canvas, so I’m going to make sure we have a good canvas.” So I got very involved and looked at all the options, and nothing was good, and I started getting worried.So I went on the internet and I started to look at abandoned malls in America because I was like, “I feel like there’s something with an abandoned mall that we could do.” I went deep, very Severance fan-style, ended up on some blog, and I found pictures of Bell Labs, and it was abandoned, and there were trees that had been planted that were part of the decor, and I was like, “Oh no, this location, it’s just going to be derelict, and we won’t be allowed to shoot in it, but it’s so perfect.” I googled it on Google Maps and saw the overview of it and sent that to Ben, and he was like, “Whoa.” Because when you see what it looks like from above, I was just like, “This is insane. This place is crazy.” And it was an ex-pharmaceutical tech kind of company. I was like, “What the hell? We have to at least go.”I sent it to the location manager, and he was on it right away and came back and said, “Oh, this thing’s been renovated, and it’s open.” So we went, and when we showed up there, it was just mind-blowing because it defined so many things. It was a gift that the universe was giving us, this perfect location that we never thought [of], and it was in New Jersey.How early did the conversation start about you directing an episode of Severance? You’ve been with the show from the beginning, but was that something that was being tossed around? Did you volunteer yourself? GAGN√â: No, I didn’t. It was not my idea, and I was not wanting to do it at first, but Severance has pushed me to do all of the things I didn’t want to do ‚Äî and understand that where there’s fear, you have to lean into that. So I was afraid of directing. I went into film school wanting to be a director, and then in film school, [you’re] not necessarily having support, and being afraid, and not having any models. I’m from Quebec, and it’s not like, “Oh, you’re obviously going to make it in the film industry.” It wasn’t obvious. I started getting work when I was in school as a cinematographer and on small things. And then, I held onto that because a lot of people wanted to work with me, and I was really good at the visual stuff, and I soon became categorized as the visual one, and I was like, “Well, this is fine. I actually love making visuals.”So I went into that tunnel vision, but I forgot about what I really wanted. And then, when Season 2 came around, I was like, “Oh, do I really want to work again? I did the whole first season.” I wasn’t sure about coming back for a second season, and then Ben came around with the idea of me directing, and I had to consider it. I read the synopsis for [Episode] 7, and I felt a huge connection with it, and I was like, “Oh, I feel like I’m supposed to do this episode.” And then there was the realization: “There will never be a safer place for me to make anything than this. I know everyone. I know the cast, the writers, Ben.” Everyone who was around me believed in me and supported me, and that’s what really allowed me to do it.I wanted to get insight into how you filmed the flashback scenes in this episode because, visually, they look so different. GAGN√â: I’m not the type of person who pushes to shoot on film to just shoot on film. I love the medium and I think it’s a privilege to work with it. This was a very contained thing in Severance, but the idea was: what will give you the most immediate natural feeling of nostalgia? What will evoke that warm emotion within people of memories? There is no better medium than that. So it was an obvious choice, but it’s not a simple thing to deal with. But I think it’s what made it easy to shoot memories without having to slap on an aesthetic.There was no hard, “Oh, we’re going to intentionally do everything differently because it’s the flashbacks.” No, it kind of happened and evolved naturally, and the idea was just to keep it much simpler than the rest of Severance and for it to just have levity and warmth and lightness and spontaneity, which are all things that are lost in the world that Mark sees now. That’s how it came about ‚Äî because more than just the film thing, there’s also how they were shot very, very simply. The sound design, in the end, is almost like analog if you listen to it, because Severance is such a big, full intense soundscape, and then when you go to this, they’re just these simple life moments that are not heightened in any way.There’s that montage sequence of Mark and Gemma’s relationship, which, within the flashbacks, is very striking on its own. Did you have any particular visual influences when you were approaching the construction of filming that whole sequence of the passing seasons as their relationship evolves?GAGN√â: It’s funny. I lived in the house. It was the house I was living in, and I lived in it without knowing it was going to be in the show ‚Äî and then, in speaking with a production designer about what I wanted the house to feel like, he was like, “You realize you’re describing your house, and we’re going to be shooting in your house, right?” But it was a rental, it wasn’t mine, so it was this whole thing, but it had amazing owners, and this house was a true gem.We knew that the challenge with Severance was how much is in it narratively, [and] I was so afraid of missing the mark of having to tell this love story with very limited scenes and also having to tell the story that tells the story within the entire show. The bill was huge. There’s a huge concept in this episode about time, which is in the background, in the end. It’s how the episode’s constructed. It’s an exploration of what time is as well. But I lived in the house, and I needed to shoot things that showed the passage of time, or else this was going to be flat. So the gaffer lent me his Bolex and I shot time-lapses in the house. We’d be shooting Severance, and in the morning, I’d be popping off frames for my time-lapse. I actually left the camera there while there was snow falling, snow melting, and because I lived in the house, I could do that.A lot of those extra moments, I let Ben go off and shoot them while we were doing other scenes. While we’d be working on lighting or whatever, he would go off and shoot some stuff with them outside in the flowers and all these things. It became a big, big side project collage thing that I knew was going to become handy. I didn’t know how, at the point and at the time. If I was going to give you one super important visual reference, the essence, I work a lot with photographers, and Rinko Kawauchi, a Japanese photographer, is what I wanted to evoke. In that scene where there’s cherry blossoms behind them, there’s this huge cherry blossom tree beside the house, and that’s that whole light pastel feeling. That all came from her style of photography.This will look good on Lumon’s balance sheet.I noticed that you are credited as both director and DP on this episode, so I did want to ask about striking a balance between wearing both hats. Was that a challenge that you were excited about, getting to play both of those roles?GAGN√â: There was another DP helping me with the film unit. I knew where I could draw the line in terms of like, “Okay, this is going to hurt me as a director,” and I never wanted that to happen. Originally, I did look for a DP to come in to do the whole thing, but I couldn’t find the right person. I’m going to be really picky, and for me, having helped other DP’s come and work on the show, I see what it’s like to have to guide them and to have to explain a lot. There’s a lot of respect, I think, for the visuals of this show from cinematographers. And I just knew that if it couldn’t be one of the other two cinematographers [on Severance], it didn’t make sense. If it was going to be a new person, I knew what I was going to have to go through, and I couldn’t spend my time making sure another DP got it.I knew the crew so well, and I was able to be around and prep the locations and everything with the time that I needed. I would have to switch in gears when it was prep. “Okay, this is DP hat, this is a director hat.” But on set, I did live a very interesting experience, and where I felt it the most was Gemma’s suite and on the testing floor, because there, I was obviously both, and I had to literally be speaking as a director, and with actors post-replay. We’re rehearsing, I’m with them, we’re discussing, and then I would switch energy or go to another part of my brain and be the DP. I would put on my other headset, so I had context for the actors, and then I’d have a headset for the crew. We’re a big crew, so I have to talk to many, many people at the same time to make sure that everything moves. I’d be switching that headset on and off, and then that’s who I was in that moment.The only thing that I felt was very difficult was when we were shooting these scenes, at one point, I felt like everything was moving very fast and that I wasn’t having the time to take things in ‚Äî and I realized it was because I wasn’t having conversations with a cinematographer. Everyone has their style and approach to things, but when I work with directors, we’re going to watch the rehearsal and then discuss how we’ll shoot it together. And I didn’t have anyone to have that conversation with, because I would go in already having a good idea of what I was going to do, but there was no bounceback. There was no one validating my choices. I turned to the script supervisor, Sam Evoy, and I was like, “I’m going to start talking to you like you’re my cinematographer,” because she had my shot list and was able to move through it with me. Usually, with Ben, I’ll be the one like, “Okay, okay, we have this, we have that, we have that. Are you trying to do this or not?” He knows that there’s another person who has his back, making sure, and I didn’t have that. Sam became that for me, and it was really useful, and she actually completed me in a really nice way.You just mentioned how you had a pretty strong idea of how you wanted to approach the episode, but was there anything that was a really big risk, or a bold choice that you made in this episode that you’d never made before ‚Äî whether it was a shot, filming a scene, or changing your approach after you’d already decided to do it one way?GAGN√â: I mean, it’s the whole episode. I got to work with Mark Friedman, one of the writers, and he and I, we had a really beautiful process that was very much ours. We both love some of the more out-there concepts of consciousness, and we’re not afraid of those things, and I am not afraid of exploring those things in the camerawork. Because we worked together in terms of the order of scenes and there was an open dialogue there, we were able to constantly… The prep that needed to go into this episode was pretty big and pretty long, but because I was around, I could be part of that process with him.The thing I remembered and kept in my heart the whole time ‚Äî because I had to fight for it sometimes, because this was a scary episode for people to be like, “What are you doing?” [Mark] wanted it to feel like a whirlwind, and I was like, “Okay, I’m going to run with that.” And I kept that and held onto it. The circular idea came from that, and spirals, and how things are stored and patterns are made within time. That’s what allowed me to get there with him, but a lot of the stuff we shot… I can tell you one moment, but overall, having to commit to the order of scenes was one of the big, big challenges, because that was such a huge commitment. We did, in the end, shift some stuff, but it is pretty close to the original order. When you get to the edit, sometimes the pacing wants something different. Sometimes you’re almost revealing too much, and then you have to take away to strip it down to make it more interesting or make it more captivating, and that’s that other phase of creation. But overall, the idea of the transitions within this piece made it extremely risky because sometimes, I didn’t have a backup plan. There was no end of the scene if it wasn’t falling through a couch, which, to me, sounds horrible, but I was like, “Crap, I have to show how you fall into your subconscious.”I wanted people to feel things in this episode, and the craziest, most complicated art… I really had Ben’s support in doing this. He was like, “Well, as long as you shoot it in camera, I think it’s fine.” He doesn’t like things that are too VFX-driven, and I wanted to do something that would go from Ms. Casey and Mark and then into the cables and show the room below them, so that was all shot in camera, and it was very challenging to do. There are stitches, but still. And then the shower scene, coming out from him, that sequence going from the miscarriage all the way to the guys at the computers down there, that was a ginormous risk. I had no other… It was [either] that, or cut it.There is a lot, narratively, going on in this episode. Some people’s first instinct might be to look at this and feel like it is contained ‚Äî and to a point, it is, but there’s still a lot that’s driving the story forward, especially with the reveal of Gemma, and Mark in the middle of this reintegration process. Given where this episode takes place in the season, do you feel like that story opportunity really allowed you to embrace more surrealness so that you could play with that nonlinear aspect of memory?GAGN√â: For sure. Because of his state and that moment where it happens, yeah, and I think that’s why this episode is here. Mark is journeying, and going into the subconscious, [and] we are allowed to break the timelines. I think there is a way of coming outside of time. Time is linear within our personal experience, but when you step out of it, when you go out of your body, you have access to all of these things, and they’re all happening at once. What’s interesting about the episode is that I was able to connect certain memories and emotions. Mark’s going through a specific emotion, and Gemma’s also going through this specific emotion, and what happens where these things interlace? But yeah, that opened the door.New episodes of Severance Season 2 premiere Fridays on Apple TV+.Your comment has not been savedWe want to hear from you! Share your opinions in the thread below and remember to keep it respectful.Your comment has not been savedour classmate get over 4500 in a month doing this task home and she give me to try the potential with this is unbelievable I was also try and collecting 7550 in this month every one can get this w0rk by follow hereùêñ¬≠¬≠¬≠¬≠¬≠ùêñ¬≠¬≠¬≠¬≠¬≠ùêñ.ùêñ¬≠¬≠¬≠¬≠ùêé¬≠¬≠ùêë¬≠¬≠¬≠¬≠ùêä¬≠¬≠¬≠¬≠¬≠¬≠¬≠ùüî¬≠¬≠¬≠¬≠ùüé.¬≠¬≠¬≠¬≠ùêǬ≠¬≠¬≠¬≠¬≠¬≠ùêé¬≠¬≠ùêå”The work is mysterious and important.”They also discuss freezing while filming the ORTBO episode and how Irving’s firing impacts MDR.’Severance’ dropped several clues about Helly’s secret from the beginning!They also discuss what Milchick really thinks about Miss Huang and why Cobel feels betrayed by Lumon.The phrase not only references the events of the episode but could foreshadow several twists.”You will see the world again, and the world will see you.”

Source: https://collider.com/severance-season-2-episode-7-director-jessica-lee-gagne/