Cinematographer Stephan Pehrsson, BSC on collaboration and inspiration

For Stephan Pehrsson, BSC, cinematography has always been an act of communicating with his collaborators, understanding and being open to their ideas, and recognizing where experience can help guide next steps. Pehrsson’s credits include the series SAS Rogue Heroes and Utopia, and he’s recently enjoyed a string of collaborations with gaffer Chris Stones, on projects such as the Black Mirror episode “Demon 79” — which earned Pehrsson a BAFTA Award — and the holiday feature Your Christmas or Mine 2, both of which worked with Panalux for their lighting packages. In the first-person account that follows, Pehrsson reflects on those collaborations with Stone and his overall approach to filmmaking. 

I still approach filmmaking in the same way: What’s the best way to tell the story? What genre is it, and how do we achieve that genre? The more projects you do, you recognize, ‘Oh, there’s a shortcut here,’ or, ‘We can do it this way,’ or, ‘There’s a smarter way to do this.’ Sometimes, it’s the other way: ‘I’ve tried that, it doesn’t work,’ or, ‘I’ve done that before, let’s try a different route.’ You also try to accommodate the director and make sure that they’re happy, whatever it is that they’re trying to achieve. 

Recently, I’ve been using ShotDeck a lot because it’s quite an easy way to explain to a director or production designer that you like this kind of mood or feeling. Of course, you also research the subject matter. If it’s historical, then you spend time looking at the art of the time, and pictures and newsreels and whatever you can get your hands on, to give you a sense of what the period and the era’s lighting and colors looked like. That all feeds into how you approach it. 

For instance, with ‘Demon 79,’ it was all browns and oranges and that kind of thing. A lot of that came from design, but also it was my memory of what ’70s films like Mean Streets looked like, those kinds of New York films from the ’70s. Plus, we had all the British horror films of the ’70s that we watched, looking at how they were lit and the way the film stock picked up the color. That very much fed into how we wanted to approach our style and look. 

For SAS: Rogue Heroes, we were watching war movies like Kelly’s Heroes and The Guns of Navarone, which had the feeling we wanted to invoke but with a slightly more modern sensibility. We probably moved the camera a bit more than they would have in the ’70s, but the colors and the tones were very much taken from the look of those films. 

Lighting evolves with the new kit and new technology that comes out, but I think my style — not that it is a style — is about being quick and light on your feet. I like to light the room and spend time on a good pre-rig to be as efficient as I can between setups. You want to have something you can move in and out of quickly. 

Chris Stones, the gaffer I’ve been working a lot with recently, has a great relationship with Panalux. On Your Christmas or Mine 2, we needed a big, soft light all around this vast alpine set, which was supposed to be in the Austrian Alps with a fantastic view over the mountains. They created this huge Translight outside floor-to-ceiling windows, so it’s quite a challenge for any lighting department to keep that looking natural and even. We used Panalux Sonaras, banding them together to be one big source for our ‘daylight.’ We had a restaurant scene in a hotel in Austria with the same view as our set. When we got back to England, we realized we had missed some shots, so we went into our set, turned all the lights off inside and just had the Sonaras on outside the windows, and it matched perfectly with the lighting we had in Austria. It was quite remarkable. 

I like to keep people involved and make sure they are masters of their own domain. Chris will look after the lighting package, and when we’re rigging a set, I’ll ask him, ‘What’s your idea? What would you want to do here?’ We look at that together, and he comes up with a plan. Often, I operate one of the cameras on set, so I’m not able to look at what the other camera’s doing. Chris is great for looking over my shoulder and checking that everything still balances and looks good and is consistent with what we’ve been trying to achieve. I like it to be as collaborative as possible. I find that you get the best out of people when they are allowed to offer ideas and be part of the process. 

Photos courtesy of Stephan Pehrsson, BSC.