PRODUCTION SEVERANCE
We hear from Severance DOP Jessica Lee Gagné on forming the hit show’s unique, surveillance-style perspective and making her directorial debut “ Severance is the kind of project where you get to show your chops ”
WORDS KATIE KASPERSON IMAGES APPLE TV+
S everance isn’t your typical office drama. Bringing new meaning to work-life balance, the series follows a group of Lumon macrodata refinement (MDR) employees who have undergone the controversial severance procedure, which creates two versions of consciousness. One is professional (‘innie’) and the other personal (‘outie’). These are completely distinct for severed employees, introducing both logistical and ethical dilemmas for the characters to navigate and for viewers to chew on. Shot by Jessica Lee Gagné, Severance builds a world – two, actually – uniquely its own. The office environment of Lumon is cold and sterile, cut off from society. The technology is dated, the walls are bright white, there’s glaring overhead
lighting. Everything is carefully company- approved. Outside, though, “we definitely have a more old-school, seventies style,” describes Gagné. The cars are vintage, the characters use phone booths and all live in Kier, PE, named for Lumon’s founder Kier Eagan. In both worlds, the elusive Lumon (we don’t quite know what they do) calls the shots. “There was this idea of surveillance and paranoia everywhere in the visuals,” Gagné explains. “They’re based in this idea of being watched. The surveillance of the MDR world is closer and wider. It has the feeling of a security camera, whereas in the outside world we did a lot more long lensing, seeing things from really far away," she continues, having used the Sony VENICE 2 and Panavision C Series glass to go long and wide. In both
cases, ‘there’s this looming presence, and that evokes a strange feeling’. STRANGER DANGER Season 2 picks up with its protagonists’ innies discovering who their outies really are. It’s a big moment, especially for Mark S (Adam Scott), who realises that his outie’s wife Gemma (Dichen Lachman) – who supposedly died two years prior – is not only alive, but works at Lumon under the name Ms Casey. What’s potentially even more disturbing: his innie didn’t recognise her. After dropping this bomb in the Season 1 finale, it takes Severance seven episodes to show us anything substantial about Mark and Gemma’s background. Gagné ultimately directed this episode, titled Chikhai Bardo , which treated the
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