PRODUCTION EUPHORIA
company. This season, Levinson wanted a more ‘objective look’ at the characters and American society as a whole, says Rév. “Our conversations were mostly technical, and we tried to choose our tools accordingly.” While the first two seasons had POV shots galore and were mainly told from Rue’s perspective (as the series’ narrator), Season 3 goes wider. There is a larger focus on the landscape, from the sandy south-west to the California coast. “We watched a lot of westerns from the fifties: mostly John Ford, Howard Hughes, classic westerns but also classic Hollywood,” Rév describes. “I’m referencing Hitchcock when he started making colour films like Vertigo and North by Northwest . They have an artifice but in a glamorous, EUPHORIA IS DIFFERENT FROM most of what is on television ”
Hollywood way. It was a glorious time in cinema with beautiful, striking colours.” In keeping with that theme, Rév worked with Kodak to create a bespoke film stock that would accentuate colours and skin tones, particularly during day scenes. “The key difference, technically, was that this season was written mostly for the daytime, which is the opposite to before. It was a nighttime show,” he says. “With night, you have many tools to make the mood of an image. You have a blank canvas, and you can put light wherever you want. With day, it’s different. You do the reverse.” Around three years prior to production, Rév contacted Vanessa Bendetti, head of Kodak’s motion picture arm. After testing available film stocks, something was still missing – so they created VERITA 200D, “a more vivid, flavourful stock,” says Rév. “It’s daylight-balanced and has a little more colour separation. It has nice details and skin tones as well as beautiful, creamy highlights. That gave us the baseline for how this season would look.” GIRLS ON FILM The biggest departure from previous seasons for Rév was not just the new stock. It was the decision to use a new format altogether. They shot on five- perforation 65mm film, which offers a ’significantly bigger negative and bigger resolution’, and adjusted Euphoria ’s
aspect ratio to 1:2.2. He filmed daytime interiors and exteriors with the 65mm VERITA stock on an ARRIFLEX 765; for night scenes, he used Kodak’s 35mm VISION3 500T stock with an ARRICAM LT camera. “We had a set of lenses made for us, specially by ARRI, for this shoot,” Rév adds, which he paired with the 765. The prototype glass offered sharpness and contrast, making the sunlight harsh at times, particularly when the plot called for it. He swapped between Panavision’s
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