Gavin Smith CSC Captures the Magic of Henson Group’s Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock!

What led you to cinematography?

I grew up on a country farm. My mother worked in a local hospital and my father worked in Toronto, but they wanted us to grow up in the country either because they saw it as safer or that it would give us a better upbringing. My father was a bit of an amateur photographer, and I one day picked up his camera and fell in love with it. I took it apart, started playing with it, and taking my own pictures.

The first job that I had was at the local photomat. Cameras became part of my upbringing from a very young age. When I was 16 years old, I had a dark room to use. In high school, we had this great class called “Filmmaking” where each person had to present an idea. Of the ideas they choose four to make film projects of and at the end of the year those were screened at the local theater. My idea was one of the chosen projects and that was my first foray into filmmaking.

From there, I went on to Art College and concentrated on photography and filmmaking. After graduating, I had a lot of friends that were in bands and in music, so I jumped into shooting music videos for them. Slowly, that developed into longer format work and commercials. There was no looking back from there.

How did you get involved with this Fraggle Rock?

I was working out West in Canada, in Calgary on another show called Wynonna Earp, for Sci-Fi channel. During that time Fraggle Rock was searching around for a large studio space and the only one they could find was in Calgary. They were interested in working with me because I knew the local crews and everything. When my agent told me about it, and I thought–that sounds super fun! I was a huge fan of The Muppet Show and Fraggle Rock when I was a kid, and I'd always wanted to work with the Henson Group.

Little did I know that this was going to be a much bigger show than I had originally anticipated. We ended up building these massive sets. We had one three-story set with a waterfall. Plus the sets were all built six feet off the ground to make space for the puppeteers. Sometimes when we were shooting, we'd have up to about 50 monitors underneath the set and up to 30 puppeteers working at the same time. It was a super challenging project. I thought I would be doing something fun and small as an in-between project, but it ended up being much bigger. I just really, really adored the project and all the people at the Henson Group.

What were some of the challenges in prepping for Fraggle Rock?

On Fraggle Rock, we were working puppets that are only the length of your arm, which is quite small. Then we also had giant Gorgs, which are about three times the size of a human, and finally tiny little puppets called Doozers, which are only a few inches tall. Somehow we had to come up with a camera system that would be able to fit through tiny little tunnels and go underwater.

For the first season of the show, I ended up shooting with a RED camera because the Komodo was a very small camera that we could fit through tight little angles and mount it to some of the Doozer vehicles. At that time, I was also looking for very close focus lenses.

The shooting went well during the first season, but within the Hensen group is a really strong focus that all of the puppets, no matter what situation they were in, always had to be shown their true color. Color is a recognition factor. Psychologically, kids recognize colors almost before they recognize anything else, so the color is associated with who the character is. It became a bit of a challenge while working in the RED color space. It doesn’t have quite as natural a color space as working with ARRI.

Finally, after putting in a lot of work with the DIT and the colorist, we decided that for the second season we would go with ARRI LF. I really love the LF because the large format really makes very small things, like our puppets, look more three-dimensional. You get this beautiful macro effect to everything. Moving into the second season, I now needed to find the right lenses to complete my camera package. 

How did you choose ZEISS Supreme Primes?

During production for the first season, we worked out a way to shoot the Doozers that didn’t need tiny cameras. So, for the second season, we were able to shoot on the ARRI LF Mini and it seemed like the Supremes were the perfect lens to pair with that. I had used them previously on a show called Ginny and Georgia on Netflix and I just really fell in love with that combination. It has a very natural tone. The lenses don't do anything weird, there's almost a nice bit of softness. They're a very un-clinical lens and that works so well in the large format.

The color space you’re working is also just so much better. It was able to remain very true to the way the puppets looked, even in mixed lighting. That was the main reason why I switched camera packages.

What do you look for when testing lenses?

Some of the main tests that I have are for the way a lens flares because I tend to put a lot of in-camera lighting into a show. We even did that a lot in Fraggle Rock – the little Doozer vehicles have lights that shine right at camera and create beautiful natural flares. I look very closely at how that looks on different types of sensors.

Another thing I look at is how the lenses show or hide little imperfections. It's very different photographing a puppet’s face from a person. The puppet has to stay true its color and you also don't want it to be too clinical, revealing the fuzz or any mistakes on them. I used the lenses in combination with a series of the diffusion effects filters, in order to slightly soften the lens without adding too much diffusion.

Every project has different reasons for its camera tests. With Fraggle Rock, we wanted to remain as neutral and true to the color as possible. That was the starting point. Every puppet has a different color and different hair color. That became a real learning curve for me, re-jigging the way I approached the photography from the outset.

What did you find surprising or new working with puppets and puppeteers?

For one thing, it is different because you can never look below the waist of the puppets. I came in a little bit naively, thinking we can just shoot on a crane and push through sets, etc. But I quickly became aware that there are a lot of restrictions because you can never see below the puppets. If you do, you're going to see the puppeteer underneath. So, the camera always had to be slightly tilted up, keeping the horizon riding a very strict line. All the time, you had to watch out for the puppeteers’ heads coming into shot. It's very challenging for the camera operators.

We used a Techno crane the entire time, because when you telescope out over the puppeteers, they need room to walk underneath. You can't use a Steadicam because a Steadicam operator would bump into the puppeteers who are working from all sorts of different angles.

We also had to do live compositing. We would shoot our Giants on one stage against a blue screen and shoot the puppets on their stage, all live. We couldn't do it separately because we were working with different eyelines and interactive dialog. It was a mix of very old-school and new-school technique at the same time. It is way more complicated than I ever thought and that was just absolutely fascinating.

I was blown away by the puppeteers themselves. They’ve made a career doing this. Some of our puppeteers are in their 70s and worked on the first seasons of Sesame Street. Their skills are incredible–sometimes they held two puppets instead of one, while recording their voice live to set, and working from a reference monitor. And of course– what the monitor shows is flipped from their point of view, but they're still nailing eyelines and moving back and forth. It's almost like riding a unicycle, juggling balls, and performing at the same time. I could not believe what they could do. I gave it a try myself, and it messed me right up. (Laughs) 

Did the size of the puppets affect the focal length choices you made?

Absolutely. We were shooting LF and LF looks nice in a slightly wider angle. You get a very nice three-dimensional quality to it. But a lot of the time we were very close to the subject. The go-to lens was often a 35mm or 29mm, because it had a really attractive, rounded look to it. But because that's a pretty wide angle, the camera had to be tilted up quite a bit. That meant we had a lot of stuff at the top of the set in our field of view. As such, the soft boxes can't come down as low as usual.

Everything was always moving including set pieces. The whole dance of it became the most fun part. And working with the puppeteers was really working with a whole bunch of nerds, just like camera nerds. Everyone's a filmmaker and everybody actively participates in this dance, particularly between the puppeteers, the camera operators, and everybody that's working the lighting board. Even though not every scene had a musical number, it almost was treated like choreography for every given scene.

Tell us about filming the musical numbers.

The music was amazing. Essentially, we would run through it just like you would any rehearsal. John Tertaglia, our main puppeteer, created the choreography for it all. Then we'd practice and rehearse with the techno crane moving through different sequences.

What was your approach to lighting?

I had to use lights that had a lot of control over the color space. We used a lot of very large soft boxes. When you look at Fraggle Rock, you don’t expect a big elaborate setup, but it could be quite a large setup. For example, in the studio we had a 20 by 40 soft box that we would drop down and adjust the colors so as to remain neutral on the puppets in the foreground. Meanwhile the background was lit with other theatrical-colored lights that we all had on a big lighting board and could change as we went. In the show, the lights all switch and change in the background during the many musical numbers.

Everything was set up a lot like a giant stage play but using soft boxes. If you light the puppets with too much hard light, you can see the stitching and every little flaw on them. You had to use very soft light on the puppets and nothing too frontal. It was all lit a little bit more overhead because it helped the puppets look three-dimensional. I learned a lot in the first season, and I know I'm much happier with the second season as far as how it looks. But it was a big learning curve, like I said. 

Are there any specific scenes or moments from the season that you feel exemplify shooting with ZEISS Supreme Prime lenses?

One of the biggest things for me was the close focus. When you are really in close on the LF with the ZEISS Supremes, it made working with the little Doozer puppets absolutely beautiful. Those sets are scaled way down compared to the Fragles’ sets. I loved the way they looked really, really close up. Usually, when you film a face, you shoot it around anywhere from a T4 down to a T2. When working with the Doozers, you had to shoot from T8 to T11 because you needed as much depth of field as possible shooting that close to the puppet. Otherwise, it would go out of focus quickly. But the result still looks like a shallow depth of field because you're in that macro world. It was like changing a macro shot to mimic what it would look like as if you were shooting a real-sized human.

The Supremes are beautiful lenses. A lot of other lenses, when you stop them way down like that, get clinical and too sharp looking. But the roundedness of these lenses at such a high stop is what really sold me on them. They still maintain that beautiful natural color tone. It has a nice warmth. You're not fighting greens and you’re not fighting when you get down to that tight stop. I love them. They look fantastic. I'm still using them on my current show.

What was the post-production process like on this show?

Because it posted during the strike, I was able to be there for all the color grading. Usually, I'm on another show by then. For Fraggle Rock, they tried to get the look set as quickly as possible before they do any of the compositing. It is one of those shows that aims to be very true to what we shot on set, rather than a product of color correction. When we were in color, we focused on isolating certain colors or puppets in the background, to push them to their true color.

It was very interesting, almost like working with stage lighting on a theatrical stage instead of working on a live-action movie. It was really challenging and interesting–a different way to work.

What do you look for in the projects you take on?

I just love great writing. Fraggle Rock has amazing writing. It's a really contemporized, wonderful show. I really love shows that have themes that turn problems into something positive. That's a real emphasis of mine. It dictates what I'll work on.