The Bear cinematographer, Emmy-nominated Andrew Wehde, calls “Forks” his favorite episode. It’s an undeniable half-hour of impeccable storytelling. From the writing staff, director Christopher Storer, Wehde, and all involved, including actor Ebon Moss-Bachrach, “Forks” is a shining example of authentic character growth. Ritchie discovers a newfound potential in himself that moves anyone who’s rooted for the struggling character since the beginning.
For “Forks,” Wehde is nominated for Outstanding Cinematography For A Single-Camera Series (Half-Hour) at The Emmy Awards. Recently, the director of photography spoke with Immersive Media about the episode and how he wanted to depict Ritchie’s growth.
Congratulations on the nomination for a great episode of The Bear.
Thank you.
Like a lot of people, I had a good cry after that episode.
It’s my favorite. I’m glad that’s the one we went with and we got the nom. It’s so funny because Ebon, who plays Richie, texted me yesterday about it. He’s like, “For all those people who love the Faks, finally we get some love for forks.”
What makes this your favorite episode?
The lovely part of The Bear and as a fan, I’m sure you see it too, is every episode is kind of shot differently in different themes and tones we choose. “Forks” is an episode that is visually done in a way that feels very much like a lot of my heroes, like Michael Mann and a lot of the dark city work he’s done. It is a moment for me to play around in that space in Chicago.
Telling a very singular story isn’t something that our show does a lot, because it’s very crosscut and so many things going in so many different ways. These singular character episodes are really fun, like season three with Tina and season two with Richie and Marcus. You’re on that train and telling this very straightforward, almost more simple approach story because you’re not jumping all over the place.
But yeah, thematically, it’s dark and it’s in the city. It’s at night, it’s urban, and his storyline is just so fun in it. I just love it, but that restaurant we shoot in is incredible and beautiful, too. It’s hard to argue with that episode.
“Forks” is such a huge transformation for Richie. How did you want to visually express his growth?
It’s funny, because it’s a very cool toned episode. Our show is very much in that cool tone, kind of shadow world anyways, with a lot of the warmth coming from The Bear’s restaurant in general and the warmth of the city’s brownstones and wood tones, things like that. For us, this was a time to put Richie in the blue world that Carmy is always in when he’s in the kitchen. It’s always cool or bluer. Richie really is front of house, so it’s with The Bear in mind and the way that we designed that restaurant, it’s warm versus cool. So, this was us putting Richie into that cool world. It didn’t change much from how we shot it. It just really was the way we graded it in color later on.
After Richie’s evolution in “Forks,” how did that change how you approached him as a character and shot that performance?
We did, yeah. The approach was we went into that space with him for the first time handheld. We wanted to just bring him in from the perspective of The Bear. Once he landed and became a part of that restaurant, we went into more solid movements under a specific order. Things became rigid because that’s where he’s working.
We opened it back up once he realized what he was doing was beneficial to him. Once he kind of flipped, we kind of brought The Bear back. Here’s the life that he has now. We brought that level of energy through both camera and lens movement. We didn’t really change the color tone, but it was an arc with the way the camera explored with him.
The restaurant is almost futuristic. How was it lighting it and moving around in that space? It is so distinctive.
It is. It’s something that I take some pride in with these restaurants. Ever is a multimillion dollar restaurant that was designed meticulously and lit meticulously from a design point, for the want to be a three star Michelin restaurant. So when you go in and explore the space, you need to, from my perspective, to embrace, acknowledge, and respect that space. You need to respect their design, their lighting, what it means, why they did it, and how they chose it.
We really didn’t light in there. Obviously, the dining space is much darker than the kitchen space, but they do that on purpose. You have those big light walls, that light from the kitchen kind of glows and lights the dining room. The biggest challenge there is to control your levels of how these LEDs are responding to the camera, whether they’re going green or magenta, those little things.
Outside of that, it’s really just being done in the color grade. I do a lot of on-set color. I’m doing a lot of fine-tuning both of my shadows and my highlight control. I’m doing a lot of fine-tuning and individual color channels, trying to make a really, really strong negative on-set at that moment.
Since you didn’t light much in there, what did you appreciate about Ever’s lighting and sense of space?
The fun of it was really just how do I make this place look really intimidating and really big, out of his world. It’s like he’s in Dune going down the hallways, like he’s in some battleship from Star Wars when he is in the kitchen. It really started having this sci-fi feeling. We started pushing bluer and bluer and allowing the highlights and the hotness of the lights to play off of that.
It worked great, because it offsets when he leaves that location, we go much darker. We go into the naturalism, the city and the urban nights. One of my favorite shots is the slow push-in when he gets in his car and lights a cigarette. It’s a beautiful dolly shot that ends in a nice medium on him, his reflections of what’s happening to him. Also, those same moments when he is in the car with the phone calls and the trains going by in the background, his time of reflection is my favorite part of that film.
Check back soon for more from our interview with Andrew Wehde.
