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We Need to Talk About Emmy #26: Mattias Nyberg on the subjectivity of 'The Girlfriend'
Cinematographer Mattias Nyberg joins us to discuss his work on episodes 1-3 of 'The Girlfriend,' directed by Robin Wright. Mattias reveals what drew him to the project - the opportunity to collaborate with Wright, whose directorial vision he'd long admired - and how they developed a visual language that serves the story's emotional core.
Our conversation explores Mattias's tailored approach to capturing the dual perspectives of Laura and Cherry, deliberately avoiding neutral shots to position viewers within each character's distinct emotional landscape. He discusses the technical challenges of shooting in constrictive yet stunning locations, from London's Sanderson house to a Spanish villa, where spatial limitations sparked creative innovation in camera movement and staging.
Mattias delves into specific visual choices, particularly the hospital sequences where he introduced warm colors into typically sterile environments to enhance emotional complexity. His reflections on using extended shot lengths to build tension and deepen feeling demonstrate the delicate balance between technical precision and emotional storytelling.
Transcript
You are listening to the we need to Talk With Asker podcast, and this is our conversation with Matthias Naiberg, cinematographer of the Girlfriend.
Speaker B:We didn't want to have shots that she couldn't really, as a character, see, apart from establishers and things like that, we didn't want us to.
Speaker B:We're trying to make sure it felt like you were with her and experiencing the scene with her, because that was quite important.
Speaker B:Because when you then flip the perspective and you see the same scene from Cherry's perspective, it needs to be enough of a difference visually to distinguish between the two.
Speaker A:You shall, of course.
Speaker A:The first three episodes of the Girlfriend for Amazon, what were the selling points that made you want to board this project?
Speaker B:Well, it was one big, massive selling point, which was Robin Wright directing and starring.
Speaker B:And I was immediately hooked because I've been watching her on screen most of my adult life.
Speaker B:And then I've also been admiring her directing her first feature.
Speaker B:And her directing on Ozark I thought was amazing.
Speaker B:So I was just instantly interested.
Speaker A:And, yeah, with her directing all three episodes, also serving as showrunner and star simultaneously, an actor's perspective sure can add something valuable to a cinematographer's approach as well.
Speaker A:But when that actor is also directing and serving as the showrunner, holding everything together and with that, experiencing all three roles at once, how does that concentrated vision shape the two of you's collaboration?
Speaker B:What was really wonderful about it was obviously Chris Robin, as we say, she was directing, she was in front of camera, and she was part of shaping the story and the scripts and showrunning was that it gave us a lot of freedom and latitude to decide on what the show should look like and how it should feel.
Speaker B:And her acting side was really interesting and fascinating to me to feed into emotion and the camera's emotional and how actors responded to certain camera setups and how she felt about, you know, the distance from camera, closeness, everything like that was really, really interesting to me and really opened a new way of thinking for me about how to, you know, approach my cinematography.
Speaker A:How does the feedback of an actor who also directs compare to an actor who might be interested in cinematography, might be keen on the technical aspects as well, but doesn't direct.
Speaker B:And well, I suppose the key difference is that she has to make a decision as a director as well, that what we're doing is going to work for her later on down the line in the edit and.
Speaker B:Whereas if she was acting and interested in cinematography, she would probably be, you know, an active.
Speaker B:You get that quite a few times.
Speaker B:The actors Come up and say, well, you know, what's this lens and what's it do?
Speaker B:And I find that brilliant because I love talking about that and also because I love working with actors and explaining to them what we're trying to do to make them feel comfortable and etc.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:So that's the key difference, I think, is sort of that she had to look at what we were doing, respond to it in the moment, and then go, right, that's it, we're moving on.
Speaker B:And she was sort of flipping between judging her own performances, judging the rest of the cast performances, and also looking that she was happy with the shot.
Speaker B:And it's an incredible, really impressive thing to see happen in front of you because there's a lot of responsibility, you know, a lot to sort of emotional, nuanced, technical things such as, like, how will this work in the edit?
Speaker B:And things like that.
Speaker B:So there was.
Speaker B:It was a project that I really developed on in terms of.
Speaker B:I feel like, as a.
Speaker B:As a true cinematographer, where I felt I could.
Speaker B:And I had to take a lot more responsibility for what we were doing because I wanted to take a lot of pressure off her as much as I could in terms of.
Speaker B:We obviously, we talked a lot in pre production, we discussed what we wanted, we looked at the scripts, we broke them down, and we came up with a visual style that we want to adhere to.
Speaker B:And it was a style that was kind of.
Speaker B:We described it.
Speaker B:We want to shoot a film, it's going to be divided into six parts, but we want to shoot it as a film.
Speaker B:And so on the day on the floor, I felt it was much, a lot of my responsibility to sort of make sure we kept that on track without having to bother her with too many questions until we started shooting.
Speaker B:And then she would come and look at it properly and then we'd sort of.
Speaker B:We'd discuss any sort of adjustments, tweaks, but usually it was quite straightforward.
Speaker B:It's like, yep, that's what we discussed.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:She was looking in the performances and then she was very.
Speaker B:She's so like, if she's got it, she's got it.
Speaker B:She's not going to go again.
Speaker B:And then we just moved on.
Speaker B:So, yeah, it was really rewarding for me.
Speaker A:And since I brought it up, the technical element, I'm sure this primarily goes on, I don't know, case by case basis, but for you as a cinematographer, in a more of a general way, where do the technical side of it and the performance, the emotion part meet?
Speaker A:Is it at a point in Pre production, like structuring a scene, or is it when the camera starts rolling?
Speaker B:I think it's both.
Speaker B:Like, you sit in pre production and you read a scene, you break it down and you start seeing the way the scene looks in your head.
Speaker B:And the way my head seems to work is that I kind of instantly start seeing camera angles and camera movements or if there's no movement, you know, that sort of thing that comes to me when I read a script where I feel like, ah, this is how it feels and this is how I feel the scene should sort of develop cinematographically.
Speaker B:And then I bring that to the director and then we.
Speaker B:We discuss.
Speaker B:And they might say, no, actually, I see it this way.
Speaker B:And like, oh, maybe you're right.
Speaker B:And so it's a constant sort of evolvement.
Speaker B:You then arrive on the floor and then you set it up the way you think it should happen.
Speaker B:Then obviously there's a blocking with the actors.
Speaker B:And in this instance it was very straightforward because the way we've planned out the scenes, the actors were really happy with.
Speaker B:And so we didn't have to do a lot of big adjustments.
Speaker B:But sometimes that happens and that's totally fine.
Speaker B:But then as soon as you start to put the actors and the actors when they actually.
Speaker B:When you go for a take, you might see something in them that makes you want to change something in terms of there's a body language thing you pick up on, or there's something in their eyes and you sort of.
Speaker B:So it's a mixture of rigorous planning and then also being reactive on the day to be open to new ideas, but trying to keep those ideas within the visual language that you've developed so it doesn't get too messy, I suppose so.
Speaker A:Incredibly fascinating.
Speaker A:And to talk about the series itself in detail, it is structured around these dual perspectives, with entire scenes playing out from both Laura of the mother's point of view and then replaying from Cherries or vice versa, creating these unreliable narrators.
Speaker A:So when you're shooting from each character's viewpoint, what actually constitutes or counts as, so to say, standard coverage?
Speaker B:What we really tried to avoid was shots that felt too neutral, because we are very clearly in someone's perspective, in someone's pov.
Speaker B:So what we wanted to do was to construct shots that felt that you were really with the character.
Speaker B:So for instance, in Laura's perspective, we didn't want to have shots that she couldn't really, as a character.
Speaker B:See, apart from establishers and things like that, we didn't want to sort of we're trying to make sure it felt like you were with her and experiencing the scene with her, because that was quite important.
Speaker B:Because when you then flip the perspective and you see the same scene from Cherry's perspective, it needs to be enough of a difference visually to distinguish between the two, because otherwise he's just rerunning the scene twice with some slight difference in dialogue.
Speaker B:And it was important then to see the scene again, but from Cherry's point of view, because that's how those misunderstandings and the sort of the slightly different dialogue.
Speaker B:What did you say that, you know, what did she say?
Speaker B:Did she mean that?
Speaker B:And, you know.
Speaker B:And so we came upon a language where we were shot whoever's perspective, their close ups were shot in a certain way, at least in the beginning, particularly with Laura, we kept to that for quite a long time.
Speaker B:But then with Cherry, as soon as she meets Daniel, we had to be a bit more flexible because there's also that massive romance part to her story.
Speaker B:And it's a whirlwind romance.
Speaker B:And it's.
Speaker B:Then we had to do a lot more two shots more two sort of profile shots, but we're both seeing both of them together in the same frame and giving them the same weight.
Speaker B:So there was rules that we had to sort of slightly bend every now and then.
Speaker B:But we tried to make sure that we didn't shoot a too much coverage.
Speaker B:But also we didn't want to do shots, for instance, like matching reverse shots, because in my head and in Robin's head, it meant that we were giving equal weight to two characters.
Speaker B:And that is, we were in a neutral perspective.
Speaker B:And we tried to be subjected as much as possible without it being like a wacky sort of head camera or anything like that, you know, and the way we wanted to shoot the show, going back to that, we want to shoot it as a film.
Speaker B:And when I talk about films, I think, you know, films like the Graduate, for instance, it has incredible camera movement, camera blocking.
Speaker B:Lots of things are shot in one sort of setup, but lots of things are changing coming to camera, going back from camera.
Speaker B:And we try to incorporate some of that into making this show.
Speaker B:It is, obviously it's a TV show.
Speaker B:It needs to have a certain pace to it in the modern setting in terms of bringing people in to watch it.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:But yeah, that's what we're trying to keep the camera language elegant and avoiding too many different angles or if we change the angle, we did it in the movement rather than trying to cut around too much.
Speaker B:And I think that Worked pretty well.
Speaker B:And my favorite out of the episodes I shot is episode three, where there's been all this sort of introduction, there's been this romance, we've been to Spain.
Speaker B:And then in episode three, I don't think there's a spoiler anymore that obviously something really horrible happens.
Speaker B:But it felt like the.
Speaker B:The pacing of the edit was kind of slowing down and it really played out the way we set up the camera.
Speaker B:They didn't.
Speaker B:The cutting became more in tune with the camera, which.
Speaker B:So I really enjoyed episode three for selfish reasons.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:But it makes sense because during those moments in those times, time pretty much stops for the family and the characters.
Speaker A:But we'll get to that.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And at its core, this is sort of a love triangle between a mother, son and his girlfriend.
Speaker A:Unexpected, yet not at all unusual in how possessive maternal love can be.
Speaker A:And all the other aspects that might come into play.
Speaker A:And there is both physical and emotional proximity constantly shifting between these characters throughout the story.
Speaker A:The series.
Speaker A:You've already talked about some of the rules you had set for yourselves, but.
Speaker A:But what were the sort of visual principles you established for lancing the characters closeness to one another, being the mother and son relationship, the girlfriend boyfriend relationship, and I have to say the obsession mother and girlfriend share with each other.
Speaker A:While of course maintaining those distinct subjective perspectives you mentioned as well.
Speaker B:Well, one of the things that we used quite a lot, which isn't that unique, but it was very effective for us was we used long slow zooms.
Speaker B:So to sort of put pressure on.
Speaker B:We used to pay for Laura's perspective quite a lot in episode one, when Cherry comes for dinner, we use them for her sort of staring at a cherry.
Speaker B:And we used them quite a lot in episode two as well.
Speaker B:It was kind of to give that little bit of thriller element to it.
Speaker B:And I really like a well timed, well hidden zoom.
Speaker B:I don't like, you know, crash zooms or things like that, but a zoom hidden in camera movement I find very effective.
Speaker B:And it kind of gives a sort of a certain tension to everything.
Speaker B:So we.
Speaker B:That was part of the camera language in terms of the thriller and also the POVs when the more pronounced POVs when they were looking at each other, they were resumed towards them in each direction sort of, you know.
Speaker B:But yeah, it was really important to seeing Daniel in two shots with either his mother or with Cherry and that they were framed in such a way that they were both about love.
Speaker B:And there's something that's.
Speaker B:Laura's relationship with her son is not healthy.
Speaker B:It's ordering on the Oedipal, but it's coming out of, obviously, a sort of an untreated trauma from having lost her daughter early on in childhood.
Speaker B:And that this grief sort of transferred onto Daniel as an obsession that he had to be protected and he had to have a perfect life and really no one could be good enough for him.
Speaker B:Which is obviously what sparks this Cherry thing.
Speaker B:But, yeah, it was important that we.
Speaker B:The very beginning of episode one, there's quite a lot of.
Speaker B:He attacks her in the pool, they wrestle, they hug, they sit in the sauna.
Speaker B:Her foot is placed just a little bit too close to his, you know, his groin and the sauna.
Speaker B:And we don't focus in on that, but we see it because it's just slightly inappropriate.
Speaker B:It's inappropriate, but it's not.
Speaker B:And then we want to make sure that we could see those.
Speaker B:And then we frame the first time you see Cherry and Daniel.
Speaker B:It's got similar elements to it.
Speaker B:And so we just want to sort of build a tension already without going into sort of really graphic details.
Speaker A:And in much of the series taking place in these luxurious spaces, whether that be the Sanderson house in London or the yacht and the villa in Spain, shooting on location.
Speaker A:And correct me if I'm wrong, because I don't know to what extent where the sats built and not built in those environments where you can't move vaults or control everything.
Speaker A:How do those practical constraints shape your visual approach?
Speaker B:Yeah, this was all on location.
Speaker B:I think for block, the later blocks, the later episodes, they built a couple of small sets.
Speaker B:Like, I think if it's a hotel room or things like that.
Speaker B:But everything was on location.
Speaker B:And the Sanderson House, which is a, you know, an amazing house in a very affluent part of London, is worth millions and millions and millions of pounds.
Speaker B:But it was, on a practical basis, it was a nightmare because it's very tall, it has no access to the side of townhouses, so you.
Speaker B:There's no access to get equipment or crew around the side to get into the garden or anything like that.
Speaker B:And so everything had to go through the house.
Speaker B:You know, we had to carry cranes through the house, we had to winch cranes down into the swimming pool.
Speaker B:It created a lot of problems that we had to find solutions for.
Speaker B:And that I find obviously very interesting.
Speaker B:I like the challenge.
Speaker B:And it's an amazing crew, amazing gaffers and riggers and camera operators and grips who came up with lots of solutions.
Speaker B:Because, for instance, a very simple thing is like, again, I come back to the dinner scene in episode one, because it's one of the longest scenes or run of scenes in both perspectives and they have several time jumps in them.
Speaker B:And because of the height of the building, there was.
Speaker B:We couldn't get a crane that was big enough to put things over, like fly swatters to control the sun or things like that, because any crane of that size would have blocked off the entire road and the neighbors would have been incredibly unhappy.
Speaker B:So we had to study the sun path.
Speaker B:I had to work with Gaffer in the first AD And Robin, and.
Speaker B:And everyone has been.
Speaker B:Work at very exact timings of day when we could shoot what element of which scene.
Speaker B:So it became incredibly technical and broken down into its very small parts.
Speaker B:And on top of that, you had the complexity of the two different perspectives, had to be shot on different days.
Speaker B:And so there was a load of challenges, but it was very rewarding to work it out, I suppose.
Speaker B:I like.
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:It's kind of.
Speaker B:It's like a puzzle when you have to sort of.
Speaker B:You stare at.
Speaker B:And you go, how the hell am I gonna work this out?
Speaker B:And then you start putting.
Speaker B:Cut the pieces down.
Speaker B:And you go, right, okay, well, now I've got some sort of.
Speaker B:It's not just a complete mess.
Speaker B:Now I've got some sort of framework to start hanging everything on.
Speaker B:And, yeah, this sort of is what has worked out quite well.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:But, yeah, the same in Spain, the villa, an amazing villa, was built on a settlement that's been there for over a thousand years and is right up in the mountains and again, very inaccessible with anything other than just small cars.
Speaker B:Very similar problems there.
Speaker B:And then any cinematographer who's listening to this will sympathise with shooting on the open sea, with not only being on the boat, but then having people on paddle boards and two different camera boats and cranes and underwater kit and the current being incredibly strong.
Speaker B:So when you line something up and you look down on the monitor, you look up, look down on the monitor again, everything has sort of drifted apart because the current took one boat the other way.
Speaker B:And so, you know, it would have been nice to have had a couple more studio bits.
Speaker B:But, yeah, it was great fun.
Speaker B:But, yeah, very challenging.
Speaker A:And then episode three, the hospital sequences, specifically, what we are pretty used to in that setting is how.
Speaker A:In terms of light and colors, how cold and sterile they are.
Speaker A:And you're seeing it and almost smelling it as well, pretty much.
Speaker A:But yet you bring fairly warm colors into what should be, or usually something wholly different.
Speaker A:How did you land on.
Speaker A:And then achieve that contrast.
Speaker B:Well, the hospital is a location which is out of Laura's control.
Speaker B:So almost all the other locations she's chosen, she has control over her house, gallery, the villa in Spain.
Speaker B:They're all her picks, obviously.
Speaker B:Then she is having to rush to this sort of.
Speaker B:It's a regional hospital, we're saying it somewhere in Wales.
Speaker B:And there was a sort of a natural contrast for it to happen anyway.
Speaker B:But what I wanted to do was I wanted to have it a really quite stark feel.
Speaker B:But I wanted to hint, and again I had to.
Speaker B:I wanted to hint at sort of a more beautiful outside, but they can't get to.
Speaker B:And the sun, the sort of implied sun was there to help with also.
Speaker B:There's a lot of time jumps in the script.
Speaker B:Some of them went out of the edit, but there was a lot of time jumps and I needed something to helped signify a little bit.
Speaker B:Some of that.
Speaker B:Some of that we didn't really bother signifying because it was quite obvious.
Speaker B:But.
Speaker B:And so, yeah, the hospital scenes are, I think, my favorite weirdly, in terms of.
Speaker B:I really enjoy the way we blocked those scenes for camera and they really work for me and they sort of.
Speaker B:They're part of our visual style.
Speaker B:The performances are so good because scenes like this can be so easily overdone, overacted, over emphasized close ups everywhere, everyone's tears flowing.
Speaker B:And what I really enjoyed with what we were doing is we were quite a few of those scenes in there, like when she's saying goodbye to Daniel at the very end.
Speaker B:It was sort of designed as one shot.
Speaker B:It ended up being two shots.
Speaker B:And a lot of the scenes in hospital have that.
Speaker B:And for me it gives.
Speaker B:Adds more grief because we have to study this shot for longer.
Speaker B:And it's a bit like when you're trying to build tension in a thriller, which, you know, we were doing earlier on.
Speaker B:I contest that tensions build by holding shots.
Speaker B:So the moment you cut away, you're sort of blocked releasing that tension.
Speaker B:It's like you're inflating this balloon slowly and slowly and everyone's watching.
Speaker B:Is it going to burst?
Speaker B:Is it going to burst?
Speaker B:And so that's for me how.
Speaker B:And so the same with the grief and them not knowing what's going to happen.
Speaker B:I want wanted to hold on the shot.
Speaker B:So I wanted much fewer shots in the hospital so that they couldn't cut away too much.
Speaker B:And luckily Robin agreed with me.
Speaker B:And, you know, I'm incredibly proud of all the things we shot.
Speaker B:But for me, those are the most creative, satisfying scenes.
Speaker B:I suppose there's something Florian Hofmeister mentioned in your interview with him about making the complicated look simple, et cetera, and vice versa.
Speaker B:And I sort of feel that these scenes were about that.
Speaker B:It's like taking really banal settings and making it special, I suppose I have to agree.
Speaker A:Matthias, thank you so, so much for your time and for this lovely conversation.
Speaker A:This was a pleasure.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker B:Yeah, this has really been a wonderful conversation.
Speaker B:I hope I have a project in the future that is, you know, gives me calls to come back because I really enjoyed talking about this because it was technical and much more sort of a conversation by Chris creativity, which I really, really enjoyed.
Speaker B:Thank you for that.
