You may not initially see a similarity between the Netflix dramedy miniseries Sirens and Jonathan Demme’s 1991 horror staple The Silence of the Lambs, but it’s there.
Specifically, the facial close-up shot utilized in conversations between Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) and Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) was inspiring to Emmy-winning cinematographer Gregory Middleton when shooting Sirens. Middleton referenced and somewhat replicated the shot when shooting the miniseries in order to make viewers feel allured by certain characters within the project.
Such a feeling does come across when Middleton’s camera is focused on Michaela Kell (Julianne Moore), a luxurious boss who’s employed Simone DeWitt (Milly Alcock) in her company. Shots of Kell in a conversation feel ensnaring, as if she is pulling the audience into an entranced state of being.
It’s an impressive camera technique, and Middleton recently spoke with Immersive via Zoom to talk about photographing Sirens and creating that sense of entrapment.
[This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.]
How did you become involved with this project?
I was brought to this project initially by Nicole Kassell, the director of the first two episodes. I’ve worked with Nicole before on Watchmen, and we met actually on a TV show called The Killing way back in 2012. We’ve done a lot of work together in the past… She had been hired to direct the first two episodes and she contacted me and asked me if I’d be interested and at least if I wanted to read it and talk about it. That’s how it begins, and then the process from there goes to having a meeting with the showrunner, Molly Metzler, and the producers from LuckyChap and everything like that. That’s how I got involved.
You said you were invited to read the material and get a feel of it?
If Nicole is gonna do something, I don’t need to read it necessarily to tell if it’s something I wanna do. It’s more like an initial starting point of a discussion, of, “Okay, how would we approach this? What is the way to photograph this? What’s the way to use the photography in a way to tell a story?” And also, as a director, (the starting point is) beginning to digest it and figure out how to tell the story visually. So (the starting point is) just sort of that conversation, because you don’t always have the same or the right ideas sometimes. Sometimes it’s too daunting…
What about this story stood out to you in those early stages when you were coming onboard?
The first talks I had with Nikki, one of the first things was the unusual mix of tones. I found the scripts really quite funny. Another reason why the script comes up in the first meeting process is to see how you respond to it. If I read it and go, “I haven’t worked on this”… (we’re looking for) something about it that really draws you in. In this case, it really excited me because I found it both hilarious and extremely moving, and I like that kind of combination of tones sometimes. It was deeply moving between what’s happening between the two sisters. It had a lot of mystery to it, it was a real page-turner in terms of guessing where things were going, but at its core it had a real interesting comedy in a way which makes light of things, but without making light of people. The script had a real good heart to it.
It’s commenting on by use of the myth of sirens… how people behave and why they behave that way and why these things are, but without making fun of them in a way from the outside. It’s like trying to understand how people tick inside, and that’s something I’m very interested in, and I feel very passionately about in terms of drama. What stories can offer in that way is really intriguing and makes it more entertaining. One point of view of comedy is making fun of people in a way which is not making fun of ourselves, that we can all be like this, (and) it feels a bit off. This felt very grounded in that way. I found it genuinely hilarious but also very moving.
What stood out to you from a cinematography perspective? Was there something that, when you were learning all of this about the project, you knew instantly, “The camera has to do this”?
One of the ideas that came up initially was this idea of the siren’s call, or this concept of people describing, “I was powerless. I couldn’t help myself”… People often use that phrase when they’re describing somebody being inspired to do something by somebody, or whatever it would be when they said they just can’t stop themselves. And (we were discussing) just what that experience would be like, and what point of view the story is taking in that, and how we would visually do that and how we might give the audience the experience of being under this seduction…
One of the (techniques) I suggested, which is something which Nikki and I (had) experimented with before, and also has been used in many films before, most famously more in The Silence of the Lambs… is that interview with Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling. The camera’s also between them; they’re looking almost directly at the camera. It puts you in the feeling of being under someone’s gaze, and so we thought maybe there’s moments in the story like that.
There’s certainly moments in the script where time kind of stops and Molly (has) written things in there where someone wakes up and (the character is) somewhere else. Where did the last two hours go? Which is kind of like being in a bit of a daze, being a bit mesmerized. So with those cues in the script, we thought, “Well, there’s a chance to maybe put this (feeling) in a couple more different ways, and maybe this is the technique to do it.” In the middle of a scene, we could suddenly be right between the characters, and the character’s looking directly at the camera… and in this case, (it) also means they’re looking at the audience. The audience suddenly feels their gaze, and if you’re looking at Julianne Moore, who’s magnetic in the least of times, staring at you going, “Hey, why don’t you do this with me?,” who would not say yes? You end up in that situation of trying to introduce that feeling to the audience a little bit.
It’s being slightly comedic in tones, but the feeling of being under that gaze, and then you see someone sort of willfully being under that gaze, it is a two-part thing. It takes two to tango. It’s kind of like in a magic trick, a magician. There’s a contract, right? You’re there to be fooled. In the same way, when someone says, “Oh, I really couldn’t help myself,” it’s like, “Really?” It’s not really a magic power, it’s more like you are willing to give agency to this feeling and not really think about the consequences, in a way. People do that to themselves. So trying to find the technique to do that (was a focus), and that was the first big idea that came up. I thought that (technique) could be an interesting way to (create that feeling), and make it also unique and make it something that’s unique to the story and could pop up occasionally, and the audience would sort of get clued into this concept, and hopefully make a new understanding of it.
There are so many ways in which you convey to us what the character is feeling, or an inner perspective, just by a really rigid close-up of them, or a really slow push-in.
In a scene of drama, just because there’s lines being spoken doesn’t mean a scene is from the point of view of the people speaking… one thing I find fascinating about filmmaking and camerawork is guiding the audience in where we should be, where our attention is, and we’re sort of guiding the audience though a story.
There’s a moment in the last episode when after Simone has had a bit of a meltdown and she’s been fired, she’s sitting in the back of a car and they’re stopping at the guest house to pick up the rest of the family. She’s sitting in the back, and she’s in a catatonic state, and we’ve seen her in this state before in episode two. So we know she’s retreating internally into her previous trauma, and her sister can tell, but no one else knows what’s really going on. She’s sitting there in the middle of the scene, and we’re sort of quietly next to her on her face while she’s listening to them all talk about the current situation, and the more that’s going on you can see it’s more and more internally upsetting, but she’s masking it all… but the whole scene’s kind of shot from the perspective of watching her reaction or non-reaction… to the current situation, and everyone discussing what’s going on. Now, the dialogue is about, “Oh, she’s been fired. What’s happened?” and all this stuff she’s trying to forget, and she’s just in this catatonic state, and she lets this little tear out.
By being that close to her, you sort of get this sense of just because someone’s catatonic, (that) doesn’t mean there’s nothing going on inside. It also gives you the feeling of that’s what really has driven her to this point. That’s a point of where you want the audience’s attention to be. If we’re watching them yell, we’re forgetting about Simone, but the whole thing is, “No, we need to remember, (this situation) is really affecting this person”… That’s more of where the point of view would be. I think that’s what you’re noticing… (A character’s) reaction to something, maybe that’s what the scene is really about.
Even though we’re not in that character’s point of view, there’s a lot of reaction moments where we’re just watching reactions happen in real time.
This is the kind of story (where) I’d say there is a fish-out-of-water element. When Devon (Meghann Fahy) arrives, she is the only person that sees this place as a bit crazy. The people are behaving in a way where she’s like, “This is not a healthy lifestyle as it seems to be,” and these people are all out of touch in some way. There is a lot of gaze and watching anybody, not just out of judgement, but out of, what the hell is going on? Why is everybody dressed this way? This just doesn’t seem like rich people. This seems like rich people are really out to lunch.
In that case, we get to share that experience with somebody. By being on a character having these reactions, (the audience does) get to laugh along with somebody. That’s a big part of it too, sometimes.
What would you say is the most challenging aspect of shooting this?
One of the more challenging aspects of this is mixing the location and the studio work, because the mansion that the project and story is set in, we shot exteriors in Long Island, and a real house on a cliff with different stairs, and we built the entire set on stage. It’s always difficult doing that sometimes when you’ve got the entire story there, because you are beholden to the weather at the time, and the weather’s gotta translate between the two things. You’ve got to go in and out of the doors, and that can be quite tricky sometimes for a lot of characters. In this particular case, usually you have things that can help you, like windows have blinds or things like that, to sort of help with the transition between looking out at a giant photograph backing looking like a location exterior from the inside of the set.
But in this case, because the whole nature of the design of the place and what it was meant to be, there’s really nowhere to hide. It’s a bright, open-area place, so you’re seeing everything all the time, which means you’re seeing outside, and you can’t hide the fact. Making that stuff match and making it look like it continuously and making the mix between locations and sets hopelessly seamless for the audience was a bit of a technical challenge, and definitely difficult at times, because we didn’t always get the best weather on the location. We don’t have the luxury of the schedule to wait for weather, so we hope for the best and prepare for the worst.
Now that Sirens is released on Netflix, how does it feel?
It feels very gratifying that at least some people are watching it. I started doing small arthouse movies in the beginning of my career, like most cinematographers; you start with whatever you can, and seeing a film at a film festival, seeing it with an audience is incredibly gratifying. You sort of get a sense for how people respond to the ideas and the things you’re attempting to do.
Theater, you get an immediate response. You’re an actor in theater, there’s an audience there, you can tell when they’re quiet, when they’re hushed, when they hold their breath, (and) you can sort of get that sense. But film and TV… you get some things in the press, maybe your friends have seen it, but getting some response, which means you can tell an audience spent the time to watch it. And then you see if the ideas you had translated, if they are moved by it, and what they saw and felt about it.
That’s very gratifying. I’m so grateful that it’s had some response and people are watching it, enjoying it and they’re talking about it, and they’re embracing it… There’s a big twist at the end of this show; to some people it’s a twist, but it also makes a lot of sense, and it’s very grounded in a very real type thing. A lot of people I know have seen situations like that before, and that seems very real, even though the show feels kind of off (and) it seems slightly hyper-real in some way.
It’s very gratifying to listen to people have some conversations about it and hopefully had a good time.
Sirens is streaming at Netflix.
