We Need to Talk About Emmy #23: Ante Cheng takes us across the seasons and generations of 'Pachinko'
How do you visually transport audiences across three decades while maintaining narrative cohesion? Ante Cheng, whose breathtaking cinematography on 'Pachinko' Season 2 earned him an Emmy nomination, joins us to unravel this complex creative puzzle. Fresh off his recognition for the season's opening chapter, Ante discusses the ambitious leap from an already celebrated first season and the artistic freedom that showrunner Soo Hugh and new directors afforded him.
Beyond the technical mastery, Ante opens up about navigating the beautiful complexity of multilingual filmmaking, where crew collaboration becomes a cultural dance that ultimately enriches the storytelling. As we wrap up, Ante shares his enthusiasm for potentially exploring Season 3's untold stories.
Transcript
You are listening to the Winnie Tutor Hot Oscar podcast and this is our conversation with Auntie Cheng, Emmy nominated cinematographer.
Speaker B:Of Pachinko, coming from season one, season two, like Su really wanted to elevate all aspects to build on top of what we did in season one and not just repeat it.
Speaker B:And I think, you know, it's such a hard task, such an abstract and throughout prep, throughout shoot, I think we were able to pull it off and happy to take that challenge again if there's one more season.
Speaker A:To just jump right into the middle of it.
Speaker A:On the first season of Pachinko, the the first half was handled by the director cinematographer duo of Cogonada and Florian Hofmeister, while you and longtime collaborator Justin Chon were responsible for the back half.
Speaker A:But here on season two, you, I believe we can say that you stepped up as lead DP once again shooting half and half, but this time with Sofia Nelfani.
Speaker A:How did that transition, plus additional control, but also the liability that comes with it as well, change your experience working on the series?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B: Back in the pandemic of: Speaker B:And also at the same time, like thankful for Su Hue the showrunner and Florian the lead dp who gave us the creative freedom to do what we feel is right for our block, our stories, characters take, you know, a big change in their lives.
Speaker B:And so during the second season, yeah, sue invited me back and I think Justin was unavailable.
Speaker B:He was on the another Apple show that just came out, Chief of War.
Speaker B:And so this season we had whole new directors.
Speaker A:Yeah, because you shot episodes in Season 2 directed by both Leon Vellam and Lee Sangill.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:So with that in mind, what goes into maintaining visual continuity even though as we know there is a difference in directing features and tv, but still across different directorial styles, while of course allowing these directors voice to come through.
Speaker B:Yeah, I think, you know, every director has their sensibility and their preferred style.
Speaker B:And I think because this show, you know, we have two, three timelines spanning across decades from the, you know, this season, the 40s, during the war, the 50s rebuild and the end of the 80s, you know, at the height of the Japanese economic boom.
Speaker B:So there's a lot of elements that we can play with.
Speaker B:One major part of the visual language was we built three different sets of lenses for each storyline.
Speaker B:So the late 80s was on paint and vision anamorphics, you know, T series tuned by Dan Sasaki working with him.
Speaker B:Panavision also supported us for many of my projects.
Speaker B:I pitched them, you know, what the show, the second season was going for.
Speaker B:And then they were able to tune those lenses to our liking and to what's suitable for the show.
Speaker B:And at the time Alexa 35 just came out.
Speaker B:So we tested it and really like the leap in the technology.
Speaker B:So that was our main camera.
Speaker B:We tested several aspect ratios.
Speaker B:We landed two by one.
Speaker B:You know, we call it the tatami aspect ratio, which is different than season one.
Speaker B:And so the lenses definitely played a big part of on the camera side, you know, the T series anamorphics for the 80s storyline.
Speaker B:And then for the 50s we have the Panavision V8.
Speaker B:They're spherical and there were new, new designs at the time and same thing like we quite aggressively tuned by then at television.
Speaker B:And during the 40s, during the war, I also have working with Alex at Zero Optic, we rehoused Leica lenses, the steel lenses from the 50s.
Speaker B:So which, you know, there are some, you know, I've done all my personal work on those original like us that came out with the M3 and I thought they were just going to be very, very fitting for that part of a story where we're telling.
Speaker B:So yeah, so these three sets of lenses contributed a lot to the visuals.
Speaker B:You know, I think that's we cross cut between timelines.
Speaker B:The audience will feel something's changing, but they can't quite pinpoint what that is.
Speaker B:And that's the effect we want to go for.
Speaker B:You know, like orient the audience where they are in the story, but not like be so distracting.
Speaker B:And you know, of course the sets and the costumes by Ruth, the production designer, who's also nominated and costume designer did a great job.
Speaker B:You know, like the visuals will speak for itself.
Speaker B:The sets, the costumes, the all the cats.
Speaker B:So we didn't change up our color.
Speaker B:Like we used the same show a lot that was developed for the show.
Speaker B:And you know, obviously as the decades went on, there's a lot more lighting options available.
Speaker B:So in the 40s it's still mostly artificially recreating natural light and gas lamps, incubation.
Speaker B:But in the 80s we have everything.
Speaker B:We have the neon lights, we have fluorescent, we have just, you know, it's Tokyo in the 80s.
Speaker B:You have everything you can think of.
Speaker A:On a complete side note, correct me if I'm wrong, but the tatami style comes or stems from Ozu.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:We have to fact check that Not.
Speaker B:Not too sure, but I think, you know, I think it was first created by Soreto and then Venture uses it more recently.
Speaker B:And, you know, it happens to be the Japanese tatamis.
Speaker B:They are two by one meters, which, you know, we thought was fitting with the show.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker B:You know, because a lot of the architecture are based on that.
Speaker B:And then again, knowing that, you know, it's going to be viewed on mostly on tv, so we're not having too much black bars in the top and bottom.
Speaker A:Sure.
Speaker A:Of course, you have to take it into consideration.
Speaker A:And we are talking on the back of your Emmy nomination for season two.
Speaker A:And sure, you decide which episode to submit for Emmy consideration, but still.
Speaker A:And I know this is a big question, but how do you put being recognized for this particular episode, dealing with such profound historical trauma, into perspective?
Speaker B:Yeah, it was a surprise for me when I received the news, which for me came out of nowhere and very grateful for my work to be recognized by the Academy and my peers.
Speaker B:And, you know, I think it's a testament to how much heart and, you know, hard work my team, the entire team and I put into the show.
Speaker B:And it's definitely, you know, the cinematography does not stand on without great production design, which also very happy to see Ruth and Eric and their team to be recognized because they have so much on their plate.
Speaker B:You know, it's almost like we all look back and think, we made three shows in one.
Speaker B:We have, you know, it's three different decades.
Speaker B:They're just full on storylines.
Speaker B:And also, to start this season, the first two months, we're filming Toronto in the middle of winter.
Speaker B:So we built.
Speaker B:Ruth and her team built a lot of interior sets that we were able to shoot interior and exterior scenes in them because we built up to almost like a village.
Speaker B:Like, all the interior sets face each other.
Speaker B:So you can have actors entering and exiting the sets.
Speaker B:The camera can follow, can leave the windows and doors open and shoot into a lot of depth.
Speaker B:And I think with, you know, to be period accurate, they were smaller.
Speaker B:They were living in humble, smaller spaces.
Speaker B:So having all those, know, deep line of sights really helped to have the richness of the world.
Speaker B:And then the next section, you know, spring.
Speaker B:Here in Toronto, we build a massive backlog.
Speaker B:Pretty much the town in the 40s and 50s.
Speaker B:Again, they existed in one big backlog where many of the exterior things take place there.
Speaker B:And also we're trying to find other, you know, in other stages, we had new pachinko parlor and love, like the residences, the apartment, the bank, you know, they were all Just these phenomenal sets.
Speaker B:So you can just, you know, everything walked into a stage.
Speaker B:It's mind blowing.
Speaker B:Like you told me, you just transported across time and space and also finding little locations here to play in Toronto, to play as Japan, which is, you know, it's a lot of challenge to dress and recreate that then as well.
Speaker B:Approaching the summer, we went back to South Korea to film more exteriors, like mainly the.
Speaker B:The rice field which.
Speaker B:The rice field surrounding by mountains which you cannot find here in Toronto.
Speaker B:And that was a challenge on its own as well.
Speaker B:So felt like we did three separate projects that end ended up, you know, intercut between all of them.
Speaker B:It has to cut seamlessly and.
Speaker B:Yeah, and that's just how much work and care that went into the show.
Speaker B:And at the same time we had to operate trilingually or most of the Canadian crew, you know, and we will communicate in English, but it's a Korean story set in Japan.
Speaker B:The scripts were written in English.
Speaker B:Most of the dialogue was in Korean, Japanese.
Speaker B:We also have a full on Korean crew that we're trying to prep.
Speaker B:And also, you know, Sanyo, the director of the last three episodes is the most fluent in Japanese, then in Korean, then English.
Speaker B:So we had great translators.
Speaker B:I think it adds to the complexity of the show.
Speaker B:And you know, I told him, you know, I can try to learn some Japanese, but for him it's gonna be way quicker.
Speaker B:And he learns his English, which got a lot better as we made the show.
Speaker B:We could understand each other.
Speaker B:We had our own little language.
Speaker B:And I think it just shows like cinema is quite universal.
Speaker B:Like there's stuff that doesn't really require like spoken language that, you know, this is a frame.
Speaker B:The light, the emotions, they always show without the need for language.
Speaker A:Yeah, I believe we can say that this is the epitome or the pinnacle of multi generational cultural filmmaking.
Speaker A:Yeah, it's beautiful.
Speaker A:And earlier on in our conversation you mentioned, of course, working with Justin previously on feature films as well.
Speaker A:And yeah, after doing television like Here, Pachinko and the latest Marvel's Ironheart.
Speaker A:At the same time you have multiple feature films coming up.
Speaker A:One very soon, about a month from now is Bingley's preparation for the Next Life.
Speaker A:I absolutely cannot wait.
Speaker A:And then by any Means, directed by Elegance Breton, starring Mark Wahlberg, Giancarlo Esposito.
Speaker A:So what I'd like to ask is how do you go from one medium to the other?
Speaker B:Yeah, I feel very fortunate to know, be able to coming out of like indies, the feature world and then being Able to do a series and being back, has been able to do back and forth from features, series, you know, one after the other.
Speaker B:So I really feel fortunate in that aspect.
Speaker B:And, you know, for features, for me it's more pure.
Speaker B:You know, you have one script, one director, one dp, so you are able to focus more and you can put a lot more energy into it and not.
Speaker B:Not burn off.
Speaker B:Because that's something I have learned to like, really pace myself on series because, you know, it took us eight months to film eight episodes.
Speaker B:If you go like all in, you wouldn't.
Speaker B:Your body wouldn't last that long for a series.
Speaker B:And then for series, as you mentioned, we have multiple directors, multiple scripts.
Speaker B:And I think the upside of that, you know, multiple directors, multiple scripts, you have the Showrunner have multiple DPs, so there's more communication that needs to happen together on the same page at the same time.
Speaker B:I think the upsides, you can tell a much longer story, you know, you have eight hours of time to.
Speaker B:To tell, you know, a much larger story with multiple character lines, multiple characters and storylines like we have in the show.
Speaker B:And everything's all fleshed out.
Speaker B:So, yeah, I think I, I enjoy both.
Speaker B:And then I hope to be able to continue, you know, to do both.
Speaker B:Like, variety is always what I enjoy.
Speaker B:And yeah, it has been a really good journey for me.
Speaker B:Love to hear that.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:To circle back to pachinko for one final question.
Speaker A:What we know is that it was planned to be three seasons and the third season hasn't been officially ordered yet.
Speaker A:Nothing has been announced, however, not in a bleeding or desperate type of way, rather, in the hope that it happens.
Speaker A:And similar to one of my earlier questions, but with a twist going from a second to a possible third season, what's an aspect of your visual approach you'd definitely want to carry over and maybe one or more you'd love to incorporate?
Speaker B:Yeah, we're all hoping to come back for third season because these two storylines are designed to converge, you know, like, there's still so much of story to tell and it's all leading up at least two seasons, all leading up to it.
Speaker B:It'll be nice to complete the story and, you know, that's, I guess, you know, it's out of our control and we can hope the show can be watched and recognized by more people and hopefully it will happen.
Speaker B:And I think, yeah, I think it will be.
Speaker B:Be looking forward to how to elevate it for another season because, you know, coming from season one, season two, like sue really wanted to elevate all aspects to build on top of what we did in season one, not just repeat it.
Speaker B:And I think, you know, it's such a hard task, such an abstract.
Speaker B:And throughout prep, throughout shoot, I think we were able to pull it off and happy to take that challenge again if there's one more season.
Speaker B:And I think it's also, you know, like I said, it took us, at least me.
Speaker B:It took me 16 months to make these 16 episodes.
Speaker B:And it's much longer for sue and the writers and the production designs and the cast.
Speaker B:You know, it's became.
Speaker B:Just these two seasons, became so much of our life, our recent lives, and.
Speaker B:Yeah, so I think it would be great to be.
Speaker B:To have the chance to finish, to complete the story at the same time, you know, we made a lot of great friends, great memories, and the show, you know, the work speaks for itself, and that's what we always will have.
Speaker A:Well, Antti, once again, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker A:Congrats on the nomination.
Speaker A:Fingers crossed for a possible season three.
Speaker B:Thank you.
