Few people on earth are more enthusiastic about their job than cinematographer Greg Middleton. This was the third time I’ve had the opportunity to speak with Greg (we previously connected for Watchmen, and for an article I wrote on his first movie, Kissed) and Greg’s joy in creating unique visions within genres that can sometimes tend to be static was readily apparent.
Greg had some unique challenges in the making of Moon Knight, from helping the audience follow a character with multiple personalities to making us take a talking hippo seriously. In our conversation, Greg and I delve deep into this one-of-a-kind Marvel series that is brave enough to bind both its real-world and superhero elements to an emotional story that deals with such serious issues as trauma, dissociative identity disorder, and PTSD.
Awards Daily: Moon Knight is not the prototypical Marvel show, I think one could argue. How did you become involved, and was its lack of convention part of the appeal?
Greg Middleton: What’s interesting is most of the time you get hired by people you have worked with before directly, or referred to them by people you have worked with before. In this case, it’s one of the few calls I’ve gotten mostly because of the work I’d done previously. I think the Watchmen series brought my work to Marvel’s attention. I think I’d been floating around in their group of people before a little bit, but this seemed like a particularly good match for the kind of work they’d seen on the Watchmen and the sort of mind-bending trip part that would be part of the Moon Knight experience.
So, I got to be part of the pool of people that Mohamed Diab, the director, was asked to interview. The first step for me was the creative executive, Grant Curtis. Because you don’t get to read or see any of these things before, the first experience of knowing the material, they will pitch it to you in a Zoom meeting. Grant pitched to me the concept for what they were going to do with the character. I was somewhat familiar with the comic. I’d done a bit of research once I heard I was going to have this meeting, and tons of research after that. They sent me a few more materials after Grant pitched me. The first step was to make sure I responded to the concept and the idea. I got very excited and very nervous about the possibilities of what it could be. Then the next interview was with Mohamed, and some of the other Marvel people, head of production and Grant. They basically just watched Mohamed and me go through ideas and talk about it. I’d gone through his pitch document of things and we discussed ideas then and it was a bit of a process.
Awards Daily: I talked to Oscar Isaac about this a little bit, because Moon Knight isn’t a cornerstone type of character for Marvel, it probably gave you more liberties and places you could go.
Greg Middleton: There’s a number of things about that. One of the things that excited me is that he’s not really been adapted to live action before. The second part, there’s been a lot of exploration of madness in the character – specifically, DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder). And as they began to lean into that creatively with the project, especially with Oscar’s involvement and the writers to make the first part of the story Steven’s point of view, there was a real chance to make the filmmaking style be impacted by that aspect… That’s very exciting from a cinematography standpoint. How you film it is as important as the dialogue in terms of the point of view and keeping the reality questionable for the character while retaining a specific point of view. That was something that Mohamed was very big on. He’s an incredibly talented filmmaker. He’s very committed to the concept of trying to connect things together, storywise and character-wise, but also in the filming. Trying to connect things within shots, and also letting things play, and let the audience go on this journey. If we keep the point of view of the camera with the character, then we’ll have this subjective experience for what the audience will go through that will be similar to the character. Steven is all disoriented at the beginning of one, it’s like a horror movie – he’s being haunted. The audience feels that, and is full of questions as to what’s going on. The wonderful combination of Oscar adapting Steven to make him English and make him a little bit funny but very sympathetic and also us living through the disorientation of him, and then shifting that later, so in that in episode three, we end up with this situation where we’re kind of doing the same thing with Marc. There could be this third personality. And then we did this very complex thing in episode five which is wrestling with early childhood trauma, and the question of what is real, and what is not.
I was so excited about blending all those things together in ways visually. When Mohamed and I were in prep, we were discussing putting things in the background. For example, there’s a lot of things in the fish tank in episode one. If you look carefully, all the things in the fish tank that we shot in the first week are major components. The barge is there, the gates of Osiris. So in the end if some of that could be a dream or reality. There’s a lot of things about how if you imagine something or have a dream, you pull things from reality. So the idea was “is this real or not” and Mohamed’s expression was “it must always be a question.” You had to leave this open door that either it is not real or it’s something that is sort of a real thing happening, but the elements within it are visually coming from the other parts of reality. That’s something that’s done in the comics. Having all those ideas in there and then having the idea of shifting genres from horror film to other things photographically was such an opportunity and such a complex thing. It was kind of daunting. It was exciting to tackle something like that where the filmmaking could really have a big impact on the journey of the audience and we could map that onto the character.
Awards Daily: At the end of episode one, the mirror in the bathroom scene, is really an astonishing reveal.
Greg Middleton: We had Marc appear in his apartment in a little round mirror in the bathroom once, like in a silhouette, which was the first indication of that. Then there’s the little moment earlier in the museum when he walks by, there’s a cabinet in the background with two panes of glass in it, as he pauses to hear the dog, he walks forward and the reflection doesn’t move. That reflection is clearly Marc now keeping an eye on Steven because he knows bad things are going to happen. So the big reveal in the bathroom was not going to be all one shot originally. As we talked about doing infinity mirrors and panning over, again this was early in prep, and Mohamed kept pushing “What if we did that instead of this, what if we went back and connected the two of them all the way through?” Now, of course, we’re looking at ourselves twice and that became a real brain tease. But his motivation was totally spot on because it would be very disorienting and we would have the same experience as him. Also you’d be wondering what the hell am I looking at, because I’m seeing infinity reflections, but the second reflection is not behaving the same way, which is Marc. And then the second time we see it’s clearly not Marc, he walks the other way a little bit. Then we go to the back mirror and he’s facing himself. What we ended up doing was figuring out a way to create the choreography within the scene so that Marc’s movements in the mirrors would also help the camera decide where to go next. As he walks away in the rear mirror, we would get a chance to pan over to the side and see him go to the door, then take us to the door so we can see the pounding of the jackal. Come back to him and have him in this two shot as Marc is pleading with Steven to let him take over. We planned all that out, between myself and the visual effects team, Sean Faden and Dan Akers.
There’s two ways to do mirror things. If you move the camera, the tricky part is you need to do the movement twice for both sides of the reflection. If we did that with a motion control, which would be one way to do that, we were hitting ourselves into a prerecorded move that Oscar would have to get his timing exactly right to perform. Knowing it was going to become a very high energy, emotional scene for the character of Steven, that’s kind of tough to make an actor be exactly here at this moment and then time it out that way. It would remove the idea that it would feel like we’re still experiencing this with Steven. We’re chasing Steven, we’re with him. It would feel kind of mechanical – that was the big fear. You can do mirror reflections where you don’t translate the camera too far and then you can bend the plate slightly. You can track him in the mirror slightly as long as you don’t move too far and break the perspective. The idea was to do a proper test, like a proof of concept. The set was still being built, we pulled the mirrors out, mapped them out, built an exact replica in terms of the distance, we didn’t have the whole set just the mirrors basically and we did a little test shoot. We had a stand-in to map it out. We had already roughly mapped out the moves, and I just operated a small handheld camera. We shot all the plates as well the same day. If they could track the plates well and if it would work as a concept, it would free up the timing to be with Oscar. We could just pick a great take with what we wanted to do. Then we would be able to do the elements separately without static and we’d still be able to track them in. There’s one slight shot that doesn’t quite work in the take that we used, but it’s pretty minor so it’s not really noticeable.
That test was successful and Dan tracked them in and we were like, hey, this is going to work. If we could get the lighting to match and stuff like that, it would work well. That really proved we could do it and allowed us to have the freedom where Marc would go by the lines and once Oscar knew that, he was like, that’s what Marc will do and he’ll figure that out in his head. We were shooting the Steven portion first. Then Mike (Hernandez), Oscar’s brother, who was acting the other part with him when he would be acting, would read the lines in an earpiece and Oscar as Steven could memorize where the lines would be. Once Oscar worked that out with Mike, that allowed Oscar to just focus on being Steven and to work the energy up in the takes, because it’s a very emotional scene. Steven goes from kind of comedic in a certain way to being genuinely terrified which is why it’s so moving. He really thinks he’s going to die. It took a lot of steps to get up there. I was so excited about the idea that people are wondering what am I looking at? It was a great concept and a great push by Mohamed to try and put it together in one scene and I’m glad we cracked it.
Awards Daily: You were talking about the sequence where Oscar basically goes back in time to when he was a child. When I was talking to Oscar he was saying I have to be in multiple places in my head all the time in this. He said it was the most challenging technical role of his career which isn’t hard to believe as you’re watching it. Not only that there’s a lot of effects in the show, really surreal effects: talking hippos, talking alligators, a featherless talking bird with the voice of F. Murray Abraham. It’s just crazy. Did you ever think to yourself how the hell is this going to work?
Greg Middleton: Oh yeah. I think there’s two sides to that question. Will it work is one thing. When we introduced Taweret, we knew that there was going to be this mystical element in the show, but to the audience it’s a pretty big shock. Again mirroring Steven and Marc’s journey, a talking hippo is a total freak out. Marc and Steven literally wake up in the end of episode four and are with each other in separate bodies. That’s already a mindbend for them and suddenly we have an animated character. The one worry is will the animated character pull the audience out too far? Will it become a weird thing like now I feel like I’m in a cartoon show? We have a talking hippo in essentially the emotional climax of the story. Are we mixing the genres too much? Are the genre elements too far apart? That’s kind of an exciting thing. Once we saw Antonia (Salib) perform, she was on set acting as Taweret, there was a real great energy to her. We thought, this is going to work. And of course Oscar could play off of her. The great thing about doing that with the actor on set is they do get to play the scene together and we could map it out. So the technical question of will it all work is similar to the bathroom mirror question. The key is to achieve it in a way that will still allow the way the scene is blocked and performed, and the way we do that is the same way we do it as if we just had more actors on set. Which is why we would have Antonia acting and we would have Karim playing the physical embodiment of Khonshu on set – F. Murray Abraham did the voice in post. But as far as figuring out the scenes we would have real actors on set, then we can map out our coverage and plan. Sometimes we would plan them more in advance or sometimes we would change a plan on the day.
Mohamed likes to be on a real set to make these decisions. We tried to work in the same way as if we were with real actors, which would hopefully lead to having real energy and not feel like a special effects sequence. Then expanding that concept out, it would be the same thing for Oscar when he would have to play both parts. The question we would have in the morning, myself and Oscar and Mohamed, would be who is driving the scene? Which performance, Steven or Marc or one of the other characters? Who’s running it, whose energy are we going for? Then Oscar would run the scene a couple of times with Mike and work out what he would want to do with both. He would do one and then “Mike, do what I do here” and then he’d put himself in the other mode and respond to that and make adjustments. We’d do that and then figure out which we had to shoot first. We’re also limited in terms of time. We can’t keep changing Oscar back and forth between Marc and Steven’s appearance. Also performance-wise for him, obviously he would prefer to do all one character at the same time and not go back and forth. He got better and better at it, but it’s much easier to do one at a time. So we would address the question of who we shoot first and then we would do any separate coverage with doubles. Every scene was quite a puzzle but we tried to make the process the same as if we were shooting a regular scene. That hopefully allowed the scenes to feel organic. You shouldn’t be thinking that we’re doing a trick, it should just feel like a scene.
Awards Daily: Moon Knight – the character Moon Knight – “the suit” so to speak, doesn’t come out that often. It’s like the shark in Jaws, it’s really chosen at specific moments. It doesn’t just feel like a guy in a suit punching people. Amidst effects and talking hippos there was an element of restraint with the selling point of the show.
Greg Middleton: Yeah, it comes down to what is the story of the show? In the end, it’s a story about self-acceptance. The story is really about Marc coming to terms with the trauma he experienced as a child and where Steven came from, and Steven discovering what he is in Marc’s life. He’s a partial person in some ways. It’s about self-reconciliation and self-acceptance. Moon Knight is in a weird way an interesting curse. In the end Moon Knight is a dark bargain that Marc has made with Khonshu to stay alive. It’s not a show about, hey, isn’t Moon Knight cool? You know what’s cool when he’s beating people up? When Marc and Steven are doing it by their own choice. When Marc has to do things for Khonshu, it’s kind of a horror story in its own way because he’s enslaved by Khonshu. By the end we cheer for Moon Knight, and Mr. Knight and Moon Knight flipping back and forth in the finale because the two of them have made a choice.
Marc went from being enslaved to deciding to go rescue Steven. Even Taweret says are you sure you want to go back to get Khonshu and he says we’ve got to do it. It’s the only way we can stop Ammit and now I’ve realized I can make this choice. consciously. I’m going to go there to save Layla instead of just being like I don’t know what to do. The first time, we see in episode five, he’s on his deathbed. He didn’t know what to do, he participated in this terrible thing, he tried to fight his boss about killing innocent people, he lost, he’s gonna die. He’s totally lost as a person. He doesn’t even know himself. He’s had childhood trauma, he’s suppressed. By the end of the story he’s making a conscious choice. One of my favorite moments is in episode six after they get out. Now they’re switching back and forth and Steven says hold on a second, if we’re gonna do this we’re gonna change some conditions of this bargain. We have to be able to get out of this in the end. Khonshu’s like, no way and Steven says well we’re just not going to do it then. In the end Steven was the bargainer. It just became conscious. Then seeing Moon Knight is a different thing. Our relationship to that character is different. In the same way that he lets him go at the end. He says I’m done, I’m not going to kill this guy for you, I relinquish these powers. Sadly he doesn’t realize there’s one more personality in him that Khonshu kept a hold of.
Awards Daily: It’s only June but I have to say one of the most jaw dropping scenes that I’ve seen all year is the asylum reveal. That cutover is just fabulous and a complete trip. Oscar had said that it was going to debut in episode five but they decided to move it up to episode four which sets up a perfect cliffhanger type of moment, thinking the episode is one thing but it’s another.
Greg Middleton: Oscar is right. I loved the original idea when it began with episode five because it was so shocking and then you had this complete journey. Also four was a much bigger episode, there was way more action in that script originally. There were sinkholes and horses and it was a huge travelog. But that stuff’s less connected to the actual story. What was important in part four was the relationship between Steven and Layla; Layla coming to appreciate Steven and Steven expressing himself, also Steven understanding that Marc did these things to protect him. It’s a part of the evolution of everything, but that didn’t need a whole episode to come.
That was Mohamed and the writers saying let’s keep trimming that. It’s super expensive and it’s kind of getting away from the plot and five might be too big anyway. Five has got a huge amount of stuff to do, so they shifted that reveal to episode four. Which worked because it did make for a great cliffhanger. Fans of the comic will immediately know the reference to one of the comic runs called Asylum. When we were discussing the scene I was talking to Justin and Aaron and Andrew Droz Palermo who was the DP for episode four about the bingo reveal which was something I had thought a lot about when it was supposed to be in five and trying to do it all in one shot. That kind of reveal is exactly what we’ve been trying to do throughout the rest of the show visually as well. It’s a super effective transition. It’s really brilliantly funny.
Awards Daily: I’m glad you mentioned Andrew, the other cinematographer who worked on the show. You did four of the episodes, he did two of the episodes, but I imagine you had to be on the same vibe as much as possible. Talk about working with him.
Greg Middleton: I started the show before him because I was doing the first episodes, and when I initially started at the beginning they decided they were going to split off two episodes to let another director team do them. I’ve worked this way before on Watchmen and Game of Thrones. Andrew’s a brilliant cinematographer and a super nice guy and we got along immediately and it’s a great asset to work with another DP. Especially as the show goes on, it gets more hectic in terms of the pace of new information being brought up. For sets that we would collaborate on, like the asylum for example, if he was shooting I would do tests with the lighting, or if I was shooting he would do the same. We could do things like that to help solve problems together. We worked with the same crew so we could compare notes on how things were going with the crew or new shot ideas. It was a really valuable collaboration. He contributed a huge amount to the show. I’m very lucky we hired somebody so brilliant. Sometimes two brains are better than one. Maybe I would have one way to solve a problem and he would have a different way and we could compare notes on those things and that could be really valuable.
Awards Daily: People thought Wandavision was this unique outlier when it comes to Marvel productions, but I think this is even a step beyond that. When you look back on the filming of it, and you see how it’s been received – critical reception has been strong, fan reception has been strong for those who were diehards and those who are new to the character. How do you feel about the fact that this was accepted considering the highwire act that was in play.
Greg Middleton: I’m incredibly grateful that people responded to it. It was a big swing in a couple of different ways. Andrew and I tried tactically and visually to push more contrast, use more darkness, different levels of color and contrast than I think most Marvel shows have used. We are in a different genre and we wanted to feel very different in every way. Marvel really let us do that. Andrew was a great partner in that. We both pushed and they were very happy with what we did. We did expand the palette which is something I was really interested in trying to do, because I think this character and material provided that opportunity, and I didn’t want to shy away from it. The thing I find most gratifying is the reason I got involved in the show is, it’s fun to have all the fantastic visual opportunities, but more than that, it’s a show about self-acceptance that embraced such a serious topic emotionally: the childhood trauma and DID elements of our story, and to make it very moving and very human, and to surprise people on this journey to make it very emotional, and as much as we have a talking hippo, [Laughs] very serious about that and very powerful.
I’m incredibly grateful that that became such a big part of our story – especially with Oscar and Ethan’s input, and Mohamed and the writers that embraced those themes to make this the climax of the show. In the end, the battle with a villain that’s going to get vanquished is one thing, but where a hero gets their strength from, which is what this is, and dealing with these complex issues is part of it, then I’m really proud of that. I’m really proud that it’s so emotional. I’m really proud of episode five. I’ve watched it myself and I forget that Oscar’s playing both parts. It could make me cry on set watching while we’re shooting and I can watch the show now, and those episodes can still tear me up. To do that in a genre show, and to hopefully have not just a sad story, but a story that would illuminate something about knowing yourself and overcoming serious obstacles, I’m immensely proud of that.
Awards Daily: Your lead actor was pretty good too.
Greg Middleton: None of this works without a mind-blowing performance from Oscar. That’s one of the exciting things when you’re on set as cinematographer. The moment you see Oscar flip between the two characters, which he did sparingly in the beginning but as he got better at it, he could do it on camera. We could do things like the scene in the desert in episode three where he walks away angry, he can’t figure out the map, rips the mirror off the truck walks out there and then it’s like okay you take over and it’s like “Alright thanks” and becomes Steven and it’s happening right in the scene, and it’s amazing. I’ve been a huge fan of Oscar as a performer for so long, ever since the first time I saw him in Drive.
He had this innate ability to make interesting choices to highlight the difference of characters to make Steven kind of more bumbling in some ways but also incredibly sympathetic, because if you really care about what he needs and what is missing in his life that’s a good motivation. Marc is a much more stoic character so it balanced out very well, because Marc is much more restrained and repressed. If he was the only character you’d be like, do I want to follow this guy around? That’s Oscar doing that highwire act. This is actually better because I can make him a bit more goofy but also it will be an easier way for the audience to have some sympathy and understanding for this character. His goals are much more apparent. Steven’s lonely, he wants to have a date, he has ambitions and dreams. Marc is trying to survive, I’m in this avatar, I hate everything in my life, I’m just trying to protect the people around me from this nightmare I’m in. That’s a very different journey and you can understand his goals but Steven’s goals are much more identifiable and human for everybody. That’s a combination of Oscar’s insight into those concepts and the writers pulling it off.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhIJPcRk0W4