{"id":10313,"date":"2020-08-05T14:09:06","date_gmt":"2020-08-05T21:09:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.icgmagazine.com\/web\/?p=10313"},"modified":"2021-05-30T17:50:18","modified_gmt":"2021-05-31T00:50:18","slug":"power-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.icgmagazine.com\/web\/power-play\/","title":{"rendered":"Power Play"},"content":{"rendered":"

Katori Hall’s new STARZ series, based on her empowerment of Black women in the Delta, reinvents film noir for a new generation.<\/span><\/p>\n

by Valentina Valentini \/\u00a0<\/span>Photos by Jessica Miglio, SMPSP \/ STARZ (unless otherwise noted)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

In the first episode of P-Valley<\/em> \u2013\u00a0a new drama on STARZ that follows strip-club dancers in the Mississippi Delta\u00a0\u2013 we meet Autumn Night (Elarica Johnson), a young woman who is escaping a turbulent past. Autumn is pulling herself up by her bootstraps \u2013 or, in this case, her platform heels \u2013\u00a0to begin a new life. And while she doesn\u2019t have a plan, per se<\/em>, her quick wit and determination indicate better times are ahead.<\/p>\n

P-Valley<\/em> Creator\/Showrunner Katori Hall shares a few character traits with Autumn Night \u2013 strength, ingenuity, creativity in survival. But unlike the character she created, this newcomer to television doesn\u2019t do anything on the fly. When Hall\u2019s theatrical production, Pussy Valley<\/em>, which ran at Mixed Blood Theatre in Minneapolis in 2015, was to be made into a series, Hall immersed herself in the language of cinema \u2013\u00a0editing, cinematography and production design. Then she hired a team of filmmakers whose approach to visual storytelling would help illuminate the complexity of characters in P-Valley<\/em> \u2013\u00a0a group of diverse people of color whose problems outside their beloved strip club, The Pynk, are only matched by the many power plays inside the venue.<\/p>\n

Hall\u2019s alternating directors of photography were a study in contrasts. Nancy Schreiber, ASC, started as a gaffer in New York City in the 1980s, shooting dozens of music videos, including Black artists like Aretha Franklin and Kool Moe Dee, while Richard Vialet, a younger Black filmmaker, born in the Virgin Islands, has shot indie features and music videos, including 9 Rides\u00a0<\/em>for\u00a0Oscar-winner Matthew Cherry. The diverse camera crew included more than 50 percent women and people of color (and other departments, like longtime Key Grip Ray Brown\u2019s team, were equally inclusive).<\/p>\n

Production Designer Jeffrey Pratt Gordon, a veteran of John Waters\u2019 Baltimore-set films, was in sync with his showrunner, down to the color of a character\u2019s toothbrush. All of the eight episodes had a woman directing, with five of those being women of color. They shot at Tyler Perry Studios in Atlanta.<\/p>\n

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To adapt her 2015 play, first-time showrunner Katori Hall (above) hired a diverse production team that included more than 50 percent women and people of color. Hall outside “The Pynk” set with Director Kimberly Pierce (left) and Co-Executive Producer Patrik-Ian Polk (rear with headphones).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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While inclusivity was built into the fabric of P-Valley<\/em>,<\/strong> so was the directive to tell the story from the perspective of the young women who call The Pynk home. \u201cDuring our interview, Katori had questions about how to avoid the male gaze,\u201d Vialet recounts. \u201cShe wanted to avoid exploitation, and I completely agreed. I also did not want to exploit the way the dancers looked on camera, but at the same time, I didn\u2019t want to treat what we were seeing on stage with kid gloves. These dancers are proud and powerful, and I felt the photography should support that.\u201d Adds Schreiber: \u201cInside that club, we wanted to show these women in an element of power. Yes, we also shot the audience POV of the dancing, but it was never overtly sexual. We wanted the dancing to be shown in all its athleticism and its beauty; again, the power these women had when they were on stage needed to be shown in exact opposition to the challenging lives they had off stage.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the goals for the P-Valley<\/em> team was to create a new kind of cinematic noir<\/em>. Hall gravitated to the noir<\/em> genre growing up, citing black-and-white films like The Maltese Falcon<\/em> and Sunset Boulevard <\/em>as influences. And while the contrast of light and dark has always intrigued her, the male-centric focus of the genre and the stereotypical roles (think porter or housemaid) given to Black characters did not.<\/p>\n

\u201cDark shadows tend to have a negative connotation,\u201d Hall shares, \u201cso I was interested in flipping the use of darkness on its head to embrace sharp contrast and shadow as a space of freedom. Black folks\u2019 stories have rarely been treated with that elevated aesthetic, so I wanted to show that heightened visual story.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hall says gritty or potentially dangerous worlds, like that found in her Mississippi Delta location, often end up looking like those in documentaries. She wanted P-Valley <\/em>to be more like classic Hollywood cinema and impressed upon her team that with every scene that there should be a flow. She called the look for the show \u201cDelta Noir,\u201d and urged her team to embrace bold colors and dark shadows, like those in modern neo-noir<\/em> films Drive<\/em>, Zodiac<\/em>, Devil in a Blue Dress<\/em>, and No Country for Old Men<\/em>. \u201cThe visual divide is a reflection of the grit of the world that the women are living in and the magic of the stage,\u201d Hall adds. \u201cI wanted lots of color, and I also wanted to see the tropes of noir<\/em> through the eyes of women, where they\u2019re the detectives\/hunters, and the men are being hunted.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"\"
Hall’s urging to Directors of Photography Nancy Schreiber, ASC and Richard Vialet to create “Delta Noir,” was meant to express the visual divide between the dancers’ real lives, and the magic of the stage. \u201cI wanted to see the tropes of noir through the eyes of women, where they\u2019re the detectives\/hunters, and the men are being hunted,” Hall shares. \/ Photo by Tina Rowden<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

A-camera\/Steadicam Operator Dave Chameides, SOC, with<\/strong> whom Schreiber has worked for decades and whom she praises for his versatility and incredible instincts when shooting movement and dance, says, \u201cWe tried not to shoot a TV show, which can be so formulaic. We never defaulted to a specific way of shooting. A lot of scenes played in one shot, and we were given full license to not shoot coverage if it served the story. Our amazing script supervisor, Amber Harley, was a huge asset in supporting these decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n

B-camera operator Janice Min, whose operating credits include the Emmy-winning House of Cards<\/em>, says, \u201cthe show is about female empowerment, their sensuality and struggles as a family that comes together at The Pynk, and also with the familial ties they have outside the club. Within the greater overall vision Katori, Nancy and Richard had, I aimed to make my frames portray this dichotomy of strength and vulnerability, and to create a fluidity in their sensuality,\u00a0power and kinship they share off and on the stage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hall worked closely with Episode 1 Director Karena Evans, known for her expressive Drake music videos. From the many visual cues Hall included in her script, Evans created a 130-page look-book that became a show bible. \u201cIn our very first conversation,\u201d Evans recalls, \u201cKatori explained how Delta Noir takes the organizing principles of traditional film noir<\/em> and does a twerk on them. Somehow, I knew exactly what she meant, and could easily see the world she was envisioning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Evans says that because Delta Noir is specific to Mississippi strip-club culture, she explored deep shadow play and high contrast, where characters moved in and out of pockets of light. Green was used sparingly (owing to Hall\u2019s aversion), while pink and blue not only fit the club\u2019s name but also enhanced the reflectivity and luminosity of Black skin tones. \u201cI talked with Richard and Nancy about not using hard light for Black actors and using a lot of diffusion,\u201d Hall adds. \u201cI think there is this myth that to see Black people, particularly in dark places, you need to hit them with a lot of light. And we embraced the fact that it\u2019s okay for Black people to be in dark spaces; it\u2019s okay for them to step in and out of light, in and out of shadows. And that became a kind of a rule.\u201d<\/p>\n

For a scene in Episode 2, when the character Lil Murda (J. Alphonse Nicholson) is in the back of Uncle Clifford\u2019s (Nicco Annan\u2019s) car at night, Hall didn\u2019t want to see Lil Murda\u2019s face until after his voice was heard and he moved forward. \u201cYou\u2019re doing Black people a disservice when you overexpose them,\u201d Schreiber recalls, citing Bradford Young, ASC\u2019s advice from years ago. \u201cThe range of skin tones of our actors was so nuanced and diverse. It was important to show that beautiful range of depth and tone when photographing our cast.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlso, there has been a tendency to over-powder actors in film and television,\u201d she adds, \u201cbut our embracing of natural shine brought out wonderful tonal variations. Plus, P-Valley <\/em>is set in the hot South, where people are sweating, and no one has air conditioning.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Schreiber references advice from Bradley Young, ASC, years earlier, that “you’re doing Black people a disservice when you overexpose them. It was important to show that beautiful range of depth [in skin] tones when photographing our cast.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Chief Lighting Technician Jon Ladd was instrumental<\/strong> in providing Vialet and Schreiber a vast array of lighting color options. But because Hall\u2019s mandate for the club was both sleek and gritty, Ladd\u2019s challenge was sourcing state-of-the-art lighting while maintaining the weathered look of the club\u2019s stage-lighting instruments. \u201cThis was a 1950s southern juke joint turned stylishly gritty strip club,\u201d Ladd explains. \u201cWe knew RGBA LED\u2019s were needed to design our colors and for quick access, but we had to figure out how to camouflage them on camera so they would appear as old, shabby fixtures.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schreiber and Vialet provided a show-and-tell of fixtures to the producers before ordering those units, \u201cso that Katori would know we were staying close to the reality of Uncle Clifford\u2019s economic situation,\u201d adds Schreiber. Ladd\u2019s team hid Astera AX10s in empty Par-can housings and used ETC Source Four Series 2 Lustr ellipsoidals\u00a0\u2013 since ellipsoidals have been used in theaters and music venues since they originated in the 1930s. They sprinkled these lights around the club, many to zone-light the stage, with the AX10\u2019s 45-degree diffusion disks for front light, ETC Lustr 2s for backlight. For the main-stage pole, they used the Lustrs as front light to make a dancer pop out. When it came to architectural points of interest, Ladd used Lustr 2s, which also helped control light on the patrons without having to place grip gear in the ceiling.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t use any moving light effects in the club other than a spotlight in the final episode,\u201d Ladd continues. \u201cKatori, Nancy, Richard, and I agreed that we didn\u2019t want the TV audience to ask themselves, \u2018Where did this rundown strip club get all those fancy lights?\u2019 We did rig four moving lights in the ceiling for use as stationary lights that we could adjust without having to bring ladders and lifts in or having to clear the extras off the floor. This meant they had to be hidden from camera, so we used the smallest moving lights on the market \u2013 two ROBE Robin Pointes and two Clay Paky Sharpys \u2013 strategically placed in the ceiling, one each on either side of the stage.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Production Designer Jeffrey Pratt Gordon, a Georgia local, says The Pynk’s exterior had to feel like it\u2019d been there for generations. “Maybe it began its life as a cotton mill warehouse,” he offers. “There\u2019s a large cotton motif in this story, and I wanted, in a subtle way, to reference that history, which, of course, can\u2019t be viewed without the context of slavery.\u201d Photo by Eliza Morse<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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The Pynk is the epicenter of P-Valley<\/em>, and its interior was<\/strong> built entirely on stage. Finding a building that worked for the outside of the club proved difficult. Production Designer Gordon knew he wanted \u201ca building that felt like it was on the wrong side of the tracks, deep in the Mississippi Delta,\u201d but he drove around for weeks with Location Scout Ekundayo Donegan before finding a crumbling, mold-infested, out-of-code structure on the Tyler Perry Studios backlot, which was set to be demolished within weeks.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe most important thing for me was to build a sense of history into the place and a backstory of the characters who owned the building beforehand,\u201d relates Gordon, a Georgia local. “It needed to feel like it\u2019d been there for generations. The design had to resonate with the South\u2019s history; maybe it began its life as a cotton mill warehouse. There\u2019s a large cotton motif in this story, and I wanted, in a subtle way, to reference that history, which, of course, can\u2019t be viewed without the context of slavery.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gordon says a strip club is a complex environment that begs such questions as: \u201cWho holds the power? Who is in control? Who surrenders?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBackstage is where we get to pull back the curtain and find out who the women are,\u201d he adds. \u201cIt\u2019s raw and not presented for show. It\u2019s also a place of sisterhood, a reflection of self, love, and arguments; a place to face one\u2019s true reality. The main floor, in contrast, offers fantasy \u2013 lights, smoke, mirrors. It\u2019s a place for hope and acceptance, a place to be lost for just a little while.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Vialet (above) says Hall wanted to avoid “the male gaze, which meant not exploiting the way the dancers looked on camera. At the same time, I didn\u2019t want to treat what we were seeing on stage with kid gloves. These dancers are proud and powerful, and I felt the photography should support that.\u201d \/ Photo by Kyle Kaplan<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mirrors, of course, are a camera team\u2019s nightmare, but Gordon says he relished the day he got to show Chameides how he built the eight stage mirrors on gimbals that could swivel in any direction. Gordon says he builds with the utmost awareness of the needs of the camera department, designing a Plexiglass floor that could be put in to capture specialty shots from underneath the stage looking up at the dancers.<\/p>\n

Inside The Pynk, Schreiber and Vialet used a trio of ALEXA MINIs, paired with vintage Panavision lenses, customized with the anti-flare coating removed because \u201cwe wanted to get flares and broken imagery, keeping it less sterile and polished overall,\u201d says Vialet. \u201cBut the flares also helped to push the fantasy that Uncle Clifford and these dancers are selling.\u201d<\/p>\n

The lenses were PV Standard Primes de-coated to varying degrees (subtle, medium and extreme). Schreiber and Vialet were interested in the soft feel of the vintage glass, and also the unique aberrations typical of the no-coats. \u201cDue to the nature of the de-coating and the fact that some of them were done decades ago, there was a range of distinct personalities among the no-coats,\u201d describes A-Camera 1st AC Alan Newcomb. \u201cGuy McVicker and Ye Woo Kim at Panavision helped us to supplement our no-coat lineup with Ultra Speed primes and heavily detuned Primo zooms to cover us in situations where the characteristics of the no-coats went in a direction that wasn\u2019t working for the scene, whether it was to achieve a cleaner look where the no-coats were too intense, like windows in the frame, or to provide more intense flaring, particularly with the Ultra Speeds.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"\"
Because Hall\u2019s mandate for The Pynk was both sleek and gritty, Chief Lighting Technician Jon Ladd’s challenge was sourcing state-of-the-art lighting while maintaining the weathered look of the club\u2019s stage-lighting instruments. \u201cWe knew RGBA LED\u2019s were needed to design our colors and for quick access,” he explains, “but we had to camouflage them so they would appear as old, shabby fixtures.\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

There is a mysterious beginning to Autumn Night\u2019s tale, <\/strong>depicted through flashbacks that are peppered throughout each episode. Schreiber and Vialet wanted to make sure these scenes felt different from those inside The Pynk, so they structured a cool palette and utilized a hefty arsenal of eclectic glass, including Spot and Strip diopters as filtration, sometimes paired with a Lensbaby.<\/p>\n

For the first flashback in Episode 1, where Autumn is trying to escape a violent man, Schreiber used a broken diopter McVicker had found, which she combined with a #1 White ProMist filter, smoke and slow motion to keep the violence mysterious. During a flashback in Vialet\u2019s Episode 2, where Autumn is sifting through a suitcase in the aftermath of a flood, he had Newcomb use a Strip diopter to create a broken, fractured feel. \u201cWith memory, we are often struggling to recall details; other times we are trying desperately to forget,\u201d Vialet adds. \u201cThat\u2019s what we were going for with the flashback scenes.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Paradise Room, a place for high-end clients deep inside The Pynk, was another example of visual free-thinking. Gordon had talked with Hall about the cotton motif and its history for Blacks in the South, so he designed a wallpaper that would tell that story.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt it was important, no matter how much the audience clues in,\u201d the designer states. \u201cSomething like that can also give the actors visual cues.\u201d The wallpaper featured Mississippi riverboats, cotton blooms, plantation houses, masters on horses, and other slave-era iconography. Initially, Gordon put strippers in the fields as silhouettes instead of slaves, but then ended up transforming them into giant silhouettes of Black strippers on top of the toile wallpaper. \u201cIt was the idea of power and control,\u201d he continues. \u201cThe toile wallpaper recedes into the background while the silhouettes of the dancers are on top.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gordon worked with Ladd to create a storm cloud on the ceiling with Astera tubes that could change the mood depending on the scene, as well as Antebellum-era-style lighting all around. He collaborated with Set Decorator Javed Noorullah to design a sitting area for the patrons that looked like a glowing cloud of cotton, for which they used a translucent chair body covered in fluffy cotton, with Ladd building-in lights that could change color. While Hall desired to keep the room blue, Vialet was worried about a tip into muddiness and a tendency to look too much like blacklight. As a counter, he put hints of orange glow behind Gordon\u2019s plantation columns in the corners of the room for contrast.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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Episode 1 Director Karena Evans (above left with Nancy Schreiber, ASC, right), who is known for her expressive Drake music videos, created a 130-page look-book that incorporated many visual cues in Hall’s script and became a show bible. \/ Photo by Kyle Kaplan<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Historically, women\u2019s bodies in the media have been<\/strong> hyper-sexualized, all the more so with Black women. The Pynk is, of course, a strip club and sexuality is its stock and trade; but Hall, Schreiber and Vialet wanted to push up against the idea that the imagery of the dancers\u2019 bodies had to be strictly sexual. Pole dancing is extremely rigorous, with dancers bruising, falling, slipping, and enduring skin burns from the metal in a typical workday, and P-Valley<\/em> does a tremendous job of showing that hard reality.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe story is written from a woman\u2019s experience,\u201d Hall concludes, \u201cso at the center of the narrative there is the journey of a woman who [frames the show through a] female gaze.\u201d That meant Hall did not want the camera to linger on bodies; it could \u201cappreciate and love up on a woman\u2019s body,\u201d as she describes, but there was never a gratuitous frame or a cut-up body. The camera would see each woman\u2019s form as a whole entity, integrated with the character\u2019s POV, and therefore her experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe women in our series are embraced for their strength, dignity and empowerment as they work the floor and poles,\u201d Schreiber says. \u201cThese are not the androgynous ultra-skinny models in advertising. These are real women with beautifully defined muscles and curves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schreiber remembers the first time they filmed Mercedes (Brandee Evans), the OG stripper at The Pynk: \u201cThe entire crew held their breath as\u00a0she climbed the pole, twisting and turning her body to the ceiling, then dramatically dropping\u00a0to the ground into the splits. An audible gasp could be heard from club-patron extras and crew alike, even over the loud music. I doubt Production was happy about her pushing the limits \u2013 we did have body doubles to ensure the safety of our main cast. Brandee, of course, has been a dancer for years and\u00a0had been rehearsing\u00a0on the pole for months before production ever began. She was more than capable of handling such athletic maneuvers; and like everyone connected with this ground-breaking show, it was inspiring to see her in action.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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Hall,\u00a0Schreiber and Vialet pushed up against the idea that the dancers\u2019 bodies had to be seen in only a sexual context.\u00a0“[These characters] are embraced for their strength, dignity and empowerment as they work the floor and poles,\u201d Schreiber concludes. \u201cThey’re real women with beautifully defined muscles and curves.\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Local 600 Camera Team : P-Valley<\/strong><\/p>\n

Directors of Photography: Nancy Schreiber, ASC, Richard Vialet<\/p>\n

A-Camera\/Steadicam Operator: Dave Chameides, SOC<\/p>\n

A-Camera 1st<\/sup> AC: Alan Newcomb<\/p>\n

A-Camera 2nd<\/sup> AC: Callie Moore<\/p>\n

B-Camera Operator: Janice Min<\/p>\n

B-Camera 1st<\/sup> AC: Brian DeCroce<\/p>\n

B-Camera 2nd<\/sup> AC: Nubia Rahim<\/p>\n

DIT: Chris Ratledge<\/p>\n

Loader: Erin Strickland<\/p>\n

Utility: Chandra Sudtelgte<\/p>\n

Still Photographers: Jessica Miglio, SMPSP, Tina Rowden, Erika Doss, Eliza Morse, Kyle Kaplan<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Katori Hall’s new STARZ series, based on her empowerment of Black women in the Delta, reinvents film noir for a new generation. by Valentina Valentini \/\u00a0Photos by Jessica Miglio, SMPSP \/ STARZ (unless otherwise noted)   In the first episode of P-Valley \u2013\u00a0a new drama on STARZ that follows strip-club dancers in the Mississippi Delta\u00a0\u2013 we meet Autumn Night (Elarica Johnson), a young woman who is escaping a turbulent past. Autumn is pulling herself up by her bootstraps \u2013 or, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10348,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nPower Play - ICG Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.icgmagazine.com\/web\/power-play\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Power Play - ICG Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Katori Hall’s new STARZ series, based on her empowerment of Black women in the Delta, reinvents film noir for a new generation. by Valentina Valentini \/\u00a0Photos by Jessica Miglio, SMPSP \/ STARZ (unless otherwise noted)   In the first episode of P-Valley \u2013\u00a0a new drama on STARZ that follows strip-club dancers in the Mississippi Delta\u00a0\u2013 we meet Autumn Night (Elarica Johnson), a young woman who is escaping a turbulent past. 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