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When House of Cards debuted in 2013 with two episodes helmed by Oscar-nominated director David Fincher, it was as notable for its cinematic production values as it was for ushering in a new era of streaming television. Fincher helped establish a distinctive visual style that deepens the storytelling and the way in which the world of politics is portrayed in the series.
Through subsequent seasons, the show’s directors — including series star Robin Wright — and production designers have honored that visual language while also carefully evolving it. Decider sat down with season four’s primary director of photography, Pete Konczal, to find out what it was like collaborating with Wright as a director, working in Fincher’s style, and finding ways to put his own stamp on the season.
DECIDER: How would you define the look that David Fincher created for the series?
PETE KONCZAL: I’d say it’s very classical, really. I know when he was crafting the show he was going back and looking a lot at Gordon Willis’ work from the 70’s. All the President’s Men was very valuable. He doesn’t like Steadicam and a camera that’s too fussy. You’ll see a lot of master shots and over-the-shoulders. In many ways, the style is to have the camera be invisible, but there’s always the choice of a point of view, so the scene is always given to somebody and pivots off of them. When we look at a scene, we’ll say that’s a Francis scene, that’s a Claire scene, and we’ll craft a master that favors them. The other characters will come to that person. So say there’s a scene in the Oval Office, and someone’s coming to Francis. We may start over his shoulder and you see the other person from far away. We don’t really get close in on them until they come close to Francis. So point of view is very integral in crafting the scene.
How would you describe the very specific lighting scheme? How does that help your storytelling?
The whole thing with House of Cards and the reason I gravitated towards it so much is that it doesn’t look lit. Again, I think this goes back to Gordon Willis, whether it’s The Godfather or All the President’s Men or any of his work with Woody Allen. The lighting never really calls attention to itself. We try to create an environment where the light is very invisible. In terms of character building, they can exist in this light and these spaces, they can go wherever we want. We can manipulate their moving in and out of light or dark areas and give them a certain impression. We’re getting to manipulate certain feelings with the audience.
The show has a cool hue to it that reflects the calculating nature of the characters.
Right. The idea is that it’s supposed to be cold Washington. So we use a lot of cool tones. It often feels very cloudy outside the windows. One thing I tried to bring to the show this season was mixing color temperatures a lot, so we would have a contrast of maybe warmer practicals to cooler light. Or we would have a lot of locations that would have fluorescent lighting, and I would put cyan on those lights to give it a dirtier feel. I thought we could stay within the palette but maybe evolve a little further. So I think you’ll feel these cyan tones, and as Francis and these other people evolve, the dirty politics and corruption, the color of the light feels even dirtier this year. It’s still kind of subtle, but it’s a little bit of a shift. We’re trying to put our mark on the show a little bit, and this year for me it was, “Well, how do we sneak in a little more color range?” It’s something I’ve seen and loved so much in Fincher’s work.
Especially with Fincher’s Zodiac, different segments of the movie had different looks depending on which character you were following.
Yeah, exactly. He’s so brilliant with that. There’s a character this year named Conway, played by Joel Kinnaman. We were often shooting him in back hallways or finding him making his mark, but you’re seeing the behind-the-scenes of the world that he exists in. We’d shoot him in cooler light or in a world where the light was dirtier. That worked well for his character. Francis is often in this world where it’s the Oval Office, it’s the White House residence, there’s a lot warm tones in those areas. But Conway was in a world where he’s trying to get there. There is a meeting between them in a backroom at the Democratic National Convention. It’s a situation where Conway and Francis meet and, in a sense, Conway is able to have a feeling of his light and presence and the color we established for him. Francis is brought into this world, and from a cinematography standpoint, we were able to use that to have Francis in a situation where he’s a little uncomfortable and Conway’s trying to manipulate him. Using that color pallette is something that’s a lot of fun. It is certainly there throughout the season.
The person who directs the pilot very much establishes the visual style for the show. Four seasons later, how does that get carried through, and how does it evolve?
I find myself often going back to those first two episodes and how the show was crafted. We’re always trying to honor that. We’re trying to keep a very classic style of shooting and one thing everyone will talk about is we rarely pan or tilt the camera. I came in more a single camera person, then really grew to love this idea of two cameras. It’s like a ballet. They’re moving in certain ways by the gravity of the characters pulling them.
There are other layers, too. For example, when you meet Remy Danton in the first season, he comes to see Francis and there’s a great exchange between them. Remy was looking down at Francis and Francis was looking up at Remy, and you’ll see Francis’ POV, so you’re looking into the camera literally tilted up at Remy, and we look down at Francis from Remy’s point of view. We often try to answer those point of views in the coverage.
To what extent are you aware that you’re shooting for television screens and smaller devices, as opposed to for cinema?
To me it really feels like we’re crafting a movie. Almost every episode feels like a film, and I think that’s another difference in House of Cards. That’s why people gravitate to shows like this. It’s been a revolution in television. Even though the shows are so different, people often talk about House of Cards or Game of Thrones at the same time, or even Boardwalk Empire. At all times, each episode feels like a movie, so I don’t ever feel like we’re shooting for the small screen, even though we are.
What was it was like with Robin Wright as a director on four episodes this season?
Robin is so smart. She’s obviously spent a lot of time with Fincher across the seasons, and I first got to work with her on the two episodes she directed last season. It’s so great with her since she comes from such a strong acting background. First, she looks for where these character are coming from. What’s most important for her in the scene is where the actors are going, what’s emotionally driving them. I can remember doing a scene last year with the characters Yates and Baldwin and she said to Kim Dickens, “You know what’s most important in the scene is at this point you just think he’s full of shit, and that’s what really driving you.” That completely changed the dynamic of the scene and her body language, how close she wants to get to him or how far she wants to get from him. Eventually she shuts the door behind him and locks it. So all her decisions are coming from that place.
Robin is really digging in with the actors. Some directors will come in and say, “I think these shots are cool and I want the camera here and here.” What she’ll try to work out ahead of time is where the actors are going to be emotionally. She’s challenging Kevin Spacey and Michael Kelly, or this year Neve Campbell and Ellen Burstyn, she’s digging in from a place of, “What will this scene mean?” Robin and I will always say to each other when we’re getting into the coverage, “Whose scene is it?” Is it Francis’ scene? Is it Claire’s? Is it Claire’s mom’s scene? And that will determine where we place the camera.
When she’s directing a scene that she’s also acting in, does she need to lean on you in a different way?
Yeah. The only time we have video playback on the show is when Robin’s directing. For myself and Gary Jay, the camera operator, we have a very close working relationship with her. It’s sort of a little family thing. There may be moments where Robin comes back and says, “How’d you guys feel about that?” And we may talk about wanting to do another take. Knowing how much range that Robin can give for Claire, we’ll watch it and discuss whether we want something different emotionally from Claire. She does a brilliant job of being aware of whether she needs to do another take or felt she did her job. It’s very hard to balance when you’re the director. You’re going in front of the camera and you’re not getting to watch it live. But she just seems to have this great awareness.
It there a different process when you’re working with Robin, since she’s also an actress on the show, compared to other directors?
Every director is different. We have time to prep with the directors, and in almost every case they’re saying, “What are my limits? What card is House of Cards not playing?” In some ways Robin understands the language of the show so much since she’s been there, and a lot of directors come in and say, “How much can I push the boundaries of this?” If something feels very egregious or not like the show, we’ll say something. But every director comes in with certain things they gravitate to, and we try to accommodate them as much as possible. We want them to ride the edge of the visual language.
How have you seen Robin’s directing evolve from last season to this season?
She’s exploring. There’s a shot we did in episode four this year; I think it’s a four minute scene. When we were prepping, we just decided to play it all in one shot. It played entirely in a silhouette against a window and it was really cool. It was this moment where you could see her evolving her craft and saying, “Okay, I just need one shot for this.” And it was so powerful. The camera operators and Robin and myself all looked at each other, and we’re like, “We don’t need to go in and cover anything. It’s just so perfect, let’s leave it. Let’s just make a strong choice about it.”
In some ways Robin got the hardest episodes to direct this year. Something really big happens in episode four and really flips the show upside down. I remember saying to her, “Wow, you’re really going to have your hands full as a director,” and that turned into us prepping it like crazy. She just embraced every part of that.
Robin directed episodes three and four and episodes nine and ten. When we were looking at the scope of it, I remember saying, “Okay, you had this huge thing in episode four and now you have this huge thing in nine and ten. It’s probably going to be the biggest scenes that have been shot for this show, and we’re going to have to figure it out.” You get 10, possibly 11 days to shoot an episode. Something with the scope of the Democratic National Convention, on short notice, and you’re acting at the same time, it’s huge. You see her grow from all her episodes and by the time we got to these scenes, it was really hard to pull that off. You’re never going to get 10,000 or so people to fill that arena, so you have to do it with less people, there was less time, you’re just trying to make it look big. But you give yourself one goal. And our goal was, “We want everything we do to have that energy that the convention has.” I think she was pretty brilliant.
What is creator Beau Willimon’s role on a day-by-day basis?
Beau is really great. He is deeply involved in the show. He’s with the writers every day nurturing the scripts, and then he’s on set as much as possible. He has a background in politics and worked with Howard Dean as a speechwriter. So he’s moderating the reality of how the politics of the show need to be and what the story arc needs to be. But at the same time, he’s very trusting of us in terms of crafting the show. Everything is really thought out by Beau. “Is this going to work?” “Does this make sense?” “Are we staying true to how the political system works and staying within this drama?” The plausibility of the politics is another reason why the show works so well, and Beau is there every second for that.
He’s also watching the dramatic arc of the show. He may call me at the end of the day and we talk about how scenes worked, how the point of view worked in the story arc of the season. There’s this feeling of how an episode plays out in the season as a whole.
What’s the atmosphere like on set?
In general, the show is so serious, but behind the scenes, it’s so funny. There are so many goofy things that happen. Michael Kelly is sort of the lifeline of the show. He goofs around with everybody. Kevin does too and so does Robin; we’ll try to prank each other.
My first day of shooting, I was totally nervous, like, “Oh my God, oh my God, House of Cards.” I’m doing a scene with Mahershala, who plays Remy, and Michael Kelly, who plays Doug Stamper, has to wear this nude underwear for the next scene we’re going to film, where he breaks his arm in the bathroom. I don’t know him or anything, and I’m shooting the scene with Mahershala and Michael just comes in front of the camera, drops his bathrobe and he’s only wearing this nude underwear and he’s shaking in front of the camera for Mahershala and then he goes and streaks through the Oval Office. It just broke all the tension. That’s just the way it is.
Kevin is constantly joking around. We were shooting something this year, and Kevin was going to do a tribute to Carol Burnett on one of the late night shows. He was going to read this letter in Jimmy Stewart’s voice, and all day he was doing these Jimmy Stewart impressions and they were just absolute gems. He was doing his lines as Francis Underwood but in Jimmy Stewart’s voice. He’ll break out of Francis and do something funny while we’re shooting, and Robin’s the same way. It’s a very playful set and it’s very much a family kind of thing where Robin and Kevin love the crew very much and Michael, too. Michael Kelly, again I can’t say enough about him, the amount he jokes around with the crew. He is the exact opposite of Doug Stamper, and then he’ll just break into Stamper and somebody who’s so ruthless. It’s incredible to see that transition, but boy, he’s an incredibly warm human being.
What are your final thoughts on Season Four?
It’s a great season. There’s a lot of setup in Season Three with Francis getting to the White House and dealing with that. In Season Four, just a lot of shit happens, a lot of shit goes wrong and Francis gets challenged. There are people who come back from the past and I think in many ways it beckons back to Season One. I think a lot of the stuff people fell in love with from that first season is going to be back in Season Four.
[You can watch all four seasons of House Of Cards on Netflix]
