"The Life of Chuck" and a breakdown of covering a film set as a unit photographer
About a year and a half ago I had the opportunity to work on the new feature film “The Life of Chuck.” Being a horror fan I was excited by the opportunity to work on a film based on a Stephen King short story and directed by Mike Flanagan, even though the story was more “Stand by Me” and “The Shawshank Redemption” then “IT” or “Carrie.”
My first 3 days on set gave me a wealth of material to photograph as the main focus on those days was a public dance sequence involving adult Chuck, played by Tom Hiddleston.
The sequence was filmed throughout the week close to noon to help keep the lighting consistent day to day. I’ll be honest and say that I probably overshot this sequence on my first day. Hiddleston was really throwing himself into this dance sequence and it was infectious among the crew and large group of extras we had surrounding him. With all that it’s hard not to get swept up in the moment and just tell myself “shoot first and pick out selects later.”
As much I love having a large open action scene to photograph on set, the visibly “big” moments aren’t the only place my attention has to be on set. Relatively quieter scenes can have just as much if not more importance then the visual “bang-bang” of a dance number.
“Behind the scenes” photos are another core requirement when working as a unit still photographer. While giving people a view behind the curtain of the show, they also serve an important documentary function.
On my last week on set I was able to capture photos of the director working with his young son Cody, who briefly plays Chuck in the film for the part about the character’s early childhood.
Getting a photo of the director working with any of his children on set should be a no-brainer for any first year photo student paying attention, but it was doubly important months after the the movie had wrapped when Mike Flanagan was quoted in multiple interviews saying one of his motivations in making this film was for his son.
WE LOVE A GOOD IN CAMERA EFFECT
The second week of shooting I spent two days on set working overnights in a suburban neighborhood in Baldwin County, Alabama. The scene takes place at night right before the end of the world. The power goes out in the neighborhood, replaced with a glowing animation coming from every window in the neighborhood houses showing Hiddleston’s Chuck and thanking him for “39 Great Years.”
Almost every production these days has some level of CGI augmentation taking place at least a few scenes, usually with blue or green screens set up across the set. While “Life of Chuck” has CGI in it at some points, for this scene the filmmakers went all practical and placed large plasma screen TVs in the windows of the neighborhood homes. The TVs were vertically propped up on wooden stands and play a loop as actor Chiwetel Ejiofor runs to the home of his ex-wife, played by Karen Gillan.
Shooting unit stills I’m always excited when a visual effect is live on set as I will have more production stills to turn in for future promotion. Call me old school, but I got a kick out of vertical video being one of the final harbingers of the apocalypse.
Speaking of “in camera,” one of the great things about this job is that you get to lean on the lighting design of the director of photography. Our D.P. Eben Bolter, ASC and BSC, helped create images that were beautiful. To stay close to the fidelity of the colors in the scene I would usually manual set the color temperature to what ever settings he chose for the cinema cameras. While there is a lot more that goes into the look of a film image then CT, this at least keeps it in the ball park and prevents any colors from getting accidentally averaged out by auto white balance.
One of the joys of being on a film set is being able to work with and meet a variety of creative people, both in front of and behind the camera. As I stated earlier, being a horror fan and being able to work on project from Mike Flanagan and Stephen King felt like Christmas came early that year. Even though it’s not a horror movie, it was one of the better projects I’ve worked on over the years and it produced a wonderful film.
I’ve worked with a variety of well known talent throughout the years, but this was also the first project where I had some bragging rights when it comes to my 10 year old step daughter. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great to have pictures of people like Robert De Niro and Nicolas Cage from multiple projects but my step daughter doesn’t have any real reference point for those actors. She does know who the hell Loki, Nebula and Luke Skywalker are though. If you had gone back in time and told Star Wars obsessed me that I would day get to take photos of Mark Hamill, I wouldn’t have believed you.
Two people I unexpectedly ran into during my first week were Eric Vespe and Scott Wampler, longtime film bloggers and podcast host of The Kingcast. The director had them on set a few days partially as a media set visit, but he also recorded some voice work were they can be head on the radio early in the movie along with throwing them in as background extras in one shot. I’ve been reading their film criticism since my college year on different sites over the past 20 years and was a regular listener of The Kingcast. I didn’t recognize them at first but after overhearing them talk the light bulb went off in my head. I chatted with them over one of our lunch breaks and also made sure to frame a still shot to make sure you could you can see them in the background while Hiddleston’s Chuck was grabbing a coffee on a park bench.
Sadly, Scott Wampler would unexpectedly pass away about 6 months after filming. Flanagan would go on to dedicate the film to Wampler in the credits and the shot of them in the background would run with his final story on their set visit that ran in Fangoria right before the film’s release.
The first release of images came around the time the film made it’s premiere at The Toronto International Film Festival in 2024 as a part of a first look feature in Vanity Fair.
Their was also a flurry of different photos that ended up on different social media accounts tied to the film, so it was always personally exciting for me whenever I opened up my Instagram account and found new images posted from the film’s account.
While I got my image on the official poster for the film, the cherry on top for me involved the same design ending up on the promotional tie in release of the Stephen King short story the movie was based on.
I was really happy with my work on the film and enjoyed seeing the completed film almost a year and half later in theaters (of course my opinion is a bit biased on this). Being a life long movie nerd, it was exciting when I worked on my first film set almost a decade and half ago. That excitement and love of film has stayed with me almost every time I’ve started on a new project over the years and I can’t wait till I get the opportunity to work on a new film production in the future.
