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www.postmagazine.com 10 POST MAY 2017 BITS & PIECES NEWARK, NJ — One of the most honest portraits of teenage life, 13 Reasons Why is a Netflix series based on the 2007 young adult novel by Jay Asher and adapted by Brian Yorkey. Set in Northern California, the 13-episode series, star- ring Dylan Minnette and Katherine Langford, tells the story of a high school student, Hannah Baker, who kills herself after perceived humili- ation by friends and schoolmates. Two of the show's executive produc- ers include pop star Selena Gomez and Academy Award-winning writer/ director Tom McCarthy (Spotlight, Win Win), who directed the first two episodes of the series. McCarthy worked with cinema- tographer Andrij Parekh (Show Me a Hero, Blue Valentine) and Panasonic VariCam 35 cinema cameras (www. us.panasonic.com/varicam). During prep, Parekh tested the VariCam 35, Alexa 65 and the Sony F55. One of the main reasons he selected the VariCam 35 was due to the camera's native 5,000 ISO setting for lowlight shoot- ing. "The sensitivity in the VariCam is quite remarkable," reveals Parekh. "It was a very clean 5,000 ISO." Parekh and McCarthy re- watched a lot of teen movies from their youth and John Hughes' The Breakfast Club (1985), Gus Van Sant's Elephant (2003) and the TV series My So Called Life (1994) were big influences on the look of the se- ries. Regarding The Breakfast Club, Parekh liked the film's naturalistic look, as well as the subjective views for each character. For 13 Reasons Why, Parekh and McCarthy decided to create two different looks — one that depicts the present, or aftermath, and one that shows the past, leading up to Hannah's suicide. "The show is basically about a teen girl's suicide and shows the past and present," explains Parekh. "I wanted to separate them visually, but not make the visual differences too pronounced. It was something that I hoped the audience would feel and not be distracted by. To create these looks, we used anamorphic 2:1 lenses for the past and spherical lenses for the present." Parekh captured UHD (3849x2160) AVC Intra 4:4:4 files to ExpressP2 cards. "Most of our audience is probably going to watch the show on their iPhones or iPads, or maybe a television at home. The AVC Intra codec's resolution was perfect for broadcast, and it didn't require massive data storage." One of Parekh and McCarthy's big- gest challenges was the short amount of time they had to create the appro- priate style for the show. Since he was shooting only the pilot and second episode, Parekh had 12 or 13 days for each episode. (Cinematographer Ivan Strasburg, BSC shot the remainder of the series.) "It's always difficult when you're working with a new director and you don't have a shorthand yet to come up with a style that feels specific and organic to the material," explains Parekh. "Tom and I found it pretty quickly, through watching spe- cific films for the subject matter and because we both have similar tastes." During the shoot, Parekh used native 5,000 ISO mainly at night and was greatly impressed at the lack of noise. For day shooting, he shot at native 800 ISO. In terms of lighting, Parekh revealed that he lit with the same amount of light as with any camera but the crew didn't have to struggle when shooting on longer lenses. "With the anamor- phics, you're on a 2.2 on the Hawk for the 35,45,55 but then you jump to a 2.8 or 3.5 when you want to go to a 100mm or longer," he reveals. "It allowed for more long lens anamor- phic shooting at low light." 13 Reasons Why was posted in Los Angeles at Encore Hollywood and graded by colorist Laura Jans Fazio. Parekh was able to help grade the first two episodes. "Laura basically helped me set up the LUTs at the beginning, and then she came in and did the DI at the end," says Parekh. "The grade for me is always the polishing of the shoes and not nec- essarily creating a look. Netflix gave us Alexa emulation LUTs, which we doctored to create our own LUTs that Laura used. Our LUTs were put into the cameras ahead of time and I had all our monitors calibrated to each other. I also calibrated our monitors to Laura's monitor so we were all on the same playing field." 13 Reasons Why is currently streaming on www.netflix.com. DP PAREKH SHOOTS NETFLIX'S 13 REASONS WHY ON VARICAM 35 CAMERAS