People on the internet are going crazy about HBO’s new series ‘Euphoria’.
Not because Zendaya was a part of it (but that’s one), but people are drooling about the crazy aesthetic of its cinematography—its color palette, tones, camera shots, and how it was shot on film.
THE GIST
Euphoria is an American drama television series that follows the story of high school students and their dramatic experiences as they navigate their lives through their identity, trauma, drugs, and friendship.
APPROACH
The team wanted to achieve an emotional realism approach. Not just realism, but they want to do it with overflowing emotions. They wanted to establish hopes and dreams that characters in the film can also achieve.
PROCESS
They want this show wherein the colors will stand out. Most of the times, the team uses primary colors but relying on the orange and blue ones during night scenes. They focused more on the blue with a mixture of violet—the color of the sky, the sun that contrasts when it comes to backlighting, and streetlights.
Aside from the amazing lighting process and colors that caught the viewers’ attention, Euphoria is also being praised by its camera works.
Euphoria is made up of camera shots in whip pans and endless smooth transitions. They also made long tracking shots to establish a chaotic environment and for people to truly savor the scenes and its color.
WHAT PEOPLE DON’T KNOW
As you go on with the series, you will notice the change in aesthetics. They tried a different approach on how they can capture more emotions by shooting from digital to film using Kodak Ektachrome.
Well we all know that Kodak 35mm films are only used for photography, right? But Kodak converted parts to make it possible to have this shoot in cinematography style.
Kodak Ektachrome is a slide film stock existed for nearly 80 years and was introduced ‘kodachrome’ on the past years. It has been available for quite some time in motion films in 8mm and 16mm formats.
The challenge began as the cinematographer, Marcell Rev, wanted to achieve the colors he pitched. Sam Levinson, director of Euphoria, had to reach out to Kodak before using the Ektachrome in achieving their aesthetic goal.
Kodak Ektachrome provides grainy contrast, a color palette that produces vibrant skintones, and more of a yellow and blue color.
Now, we can say that this has been the year where Kodak Ektachrome was reborn—through Euphoria.
This has been one of the goals achieved by the cinematographer and the director—reviving a specific film that brought life and emotions to this project, achieving visual tones with great impact on its viewers.
