Griselda cinematographer, Armando Salas, ASC, has earned another Emmy nomination for his substantially stylish work. Salas shot all six episodes of the Netflix miniseries, based on the true crime story of cartel boss Griselda Blanco (Sofía Vergara). The cinematographer is nominated for the episode “Middle Management,” in which Griselda literally and symbolically sets the cartel world ablaze.
Salas, who was previously nominated for Ozark, helps create a world defined by intense contrast and violence that comes and goes with swift unfairness. The cinematographer paints a beautiful, ugly picture. Recently, Salas spoke with Immersive about shooting “Middle Management” and making the series both brutal and entertaining.
In “Middle Management,” there’s a scene with Griselda giving a speech, Harry Nilsson playing, and a pile of cocaine burning. Do you ask your VFX supervisor, “Hey, when cocaine burns, how does that affect the light?”
Not in that regard. We wanted a huge fire. They had been stealing from all the Ochoa shipments. At that point in the story, you’d think she’s using it as leverage to get her slice of the pie in the Miami drug scene that was taken. Instead, she goes after all of it. We wanted a huge fire because this was the moment that she changed. She’s not just a small business owner, an entrepreneur making her way in this man’s world. Now, she’s the godmother.
A lot of work went into making sure the fire was safe. We had to recreate all of the art department’s bales of cocaine with metal bales of cocaine, which special effects created for us so that we wouldn’t actually burn any toxic fumes. Also, we could turn the gas off and reset the shot without having to replace the entire mount. Maybe just a few things on the periphery and cleaning up some of the charm marks. Most of that scene was shot practically. Very little CG.
They’re cleaning up the hoses, because there are gas hoses going into the pool, so those have to be erased. Then the overhead shot had to be recreated because the downdraft of the drone would create a safety hazard. For that shot, I had to put the giant lights in the pool in a circle to recreate the intensity in the color of the light in every direction. Those were then replaced with fire in post.
What’s your relationship with drone photography these days? How’d you get it so cinematic there?
For me, I don’t get seduced by technology and tools. It’s important that you visualize what you want, but the vision of the director is how you’re going to bring that to screen. It’s how you’re going to capture it, how you’re going to light it, and then you pick the tools. You stay on top of the tool available to bring that vision to life.
One of the things that happens with technology sometimes is you get seduced by the technology. Now you have this really great, amazing drone that can do semicircles and flybys, but the question is, is that appropriate? If you were just designing this in your mind’s eye, what is the shot? The shot was a very simple pull away, straight up, making the pool and the fire smaller. Like the army, there were just little points of paint on the canvas.
You used new monitors for the show, right?
Yeah. We had an HDR workflow and we were viewing HDR on set. SmallHD built three new monitors for us that weren’t available yet on the shelves. There were many of the exposure tools that I wanted to have available. Again, that’s just about using the tools to achieve what I wanted.
I felt there was something lacking in displays for on-set viewing in HDR. We have these amazing displays for post-color in a studio, and we needed to bring that in a smaller form with on set exposure. That’s what they provided. Now they’re readily available, but at the time, it was hard to get.
How satisfying was the result on set?
It’s always satisfying to get all the pieces of the puzzle. I mean, that’s one of a thousand things that we’re working out in pre-production and laying the groundwork to have a successful shoot. As you’re going, if you prepped enough, you feel confident in deviating from your plan here and there.
For example?
The director comes to you at breakfast in the morning and says, “I know we were doing it this way, but I had this amazing idea of how we want to start the scene.” Maybe it would require the camera being on the back of the pickup truck and revealing the army and everyone gathered around Griselda. Together, the director and I kind of massaged it to choreograph an opening to that scene. It is better. And so, it’s part preparation, part inspiration. If you’re really prepared, you have room to explore.
The show looks great, especially the contrast between fire and very inviting colors, like green. Strong contrast. What is your relationship as a cinematographer with the color green and its role in the show?
It’s incredibly important. We created essentially two looks, one for the late ’70s and one for the early ’80s. “Middle Management” is essentially the transition. It was opening up the palette a little bit, so there’s more blue and more green. Prior to that episode, our greens are essentially a combination of olive and mustard. It’s a limited two-tone palette.
And then in that episode, as she’s coming into her own, the palette opens up a bit. We’re feeling more of the blues and greens. Our art department and the greens department did a massive greens job on that location to bring in all the lush tropical greens that you would find in south Florida.
It gave us a nice counterpoint to the fire. There are multiple fires in that episode. So, we had the blues and greens of the Palm beach estate, the warm sunset of Rivi (Martín Rodríguez) on the west coast, talking to her in the desert, which is essentially the same color as the fire. He’s the fire in their relationship and telling her to keep going, to keep fighting. There are so many layers of storytelling in that episode.
We have multiple scenes in the middle where there’s a rainstorm, as she’s having to navigate which way she’s going. It’s very textural, very layered. Because the palette opens up for the first time, there’s also a visual impact that happens in chapter four.
The shot of Rivi on the phone in the California desert, it looks straight off a paperback crime novel cover. How’d you achieve that heightened effect without blue or green screen?
So we didn’t have the time to go to that far outside the zone to shoot essentially what was half a page. We had three scenes of Rivi in the desert with three different times a day. The request was to shoot at blue screen, but I was adamantly against blue screen. Art department and I came up with the idea of just making a forced-perspective desert landscape that was about 50 feet deep.
We scoured Los Angeles for a sky painted old-school, like, canvas sky backing with just interesting clouds. We separated the backing from our desert landscape, which has a slight elevation to it, to put the horizon at the right level. Essentially there was a trench that we could line with sky panels, so that we could light the sky separate from the ground.
And so, that gave us the ability to do an intense sunset. It gave us the ability to do a washed out, dusty day look. It gave us the ability to do dust, but it was all interactive. I could use atmosphere on the set. We were shooting real reflections on the glass at the hotel, too. The effects just had to do a little bit of cleanup to the horizon instead of having to recreate and replace every background, which I think would’ve lost some of the magic and the interaction with the light.
Everyone was excited to shoot that scene. I think when you show up to a blue screen set, the starting point is it’s dead. You have to use all your resources just to bring it to life. And here, you’re starting from something that’s fun, vibrant, and people are emotionally responding to it.
Like you’ve said, you all never used the word “operatic” during the making of Griselda, but you did want to get close to it, right?
Very early on, one of the most important things [director] Andres Baiz said was that the show is very bleak at times. There’s a lot of suffering, destruction, and death. But he didn’t want a bleak show. He wanted a fun, energetic feeling from this woman’s journey to find agency in her life, to deal with the obstacles thrown at her mostly by men, and how she uses her wits to navigate.
Of course, there’s a downfall. The downfall comes when she becomes paranoid and essentially starts acting like the men that she despises. So, the contrast throughout, visually, is always what I was percolating on. There’s the grit versus glamor, splashes of saturated colors and an overall desaturated palette, and bleakness and darkness versus vibrancy and light.
There wasn’t necessarily a formula, but it was always trying to find the right balance through her arc, through the given arc of any episode through a scene. What is the right mix of those ingredients? That defines the look of the show.
Griselda is available to stream on Netflix.
