No, really, they glow!

I was arguing with someone about The Crown---they said the show was critical of the monarchy,
and I said, as I blogged yesterday,
the words may be critical sometimes, but the royals themselves are filmed so they glow, which does rather soften the edges of any criticism.

I thought, this show is so beautifully done, there's gotta be an amazing cinematographer (team) and seriously big bucks (pounds) behind it. 

And of course there are.

Above: "Olivia Colman (centre) on the set of Churchill’s funeral; a cast of 300 and a crew of 250 produced just a few seconds of footage.

"The director of photography, Adriano Goldman, was keeping his eye on ... the puffs of water vapour that were helping create what he called “God’s light” – the gleaming shafts lancing down from the clerestory windows.

"This is the result of tremendous care enabled by a huge budget of £50m per season (or the cost of around six BBC dramas), and rising."

--via The Guardian article "Queen Olivia Colman, an epic budget and a cast of thousands: a year behind the scenes on The Crown"

Because I'm me, and I think this stuff (not only the stories we tell, but how we tell them) is fascinating––
(and maybe just a teensy bit because I wanted to prove my point––but I am open to being wrong too, because I want to be correct (Penny Cooper says)--not for the power, but for the pleasure of the pieces all slotting together--and when I find out I am wrong, I can make a course correction, which is all very fun and interesting... but in this case I knew I was right because YOU CAN SEE THEM GLOWING and that can't be an accident)
––I went googling for more about the cinematography...

And there it is: glow. From lead cinematographer/director of photography Adriano Goldman:

"I came up with the idea of using vintage lenses. We had... Glimmerglass filters, on the first two seasons...;
we use them just to add a little more glow in the highlights.
And then there’s the haze.

"I always felt that adding some atmosphere helped — or still helps — to make the look less naturalistic, a tiny bit more romantic and period-like, but not too much.

So the overall looks result from a combination of things we do on the camera side, along with the costumes, makeup and sets — it’s a huge team effort."

--from American Cinematographer, "Adriano Goldman, ASC, ABC, BSC discusses his Emmy-winning work behind the camera on the period Netflix drama."

I really noticed it in the first few episodes (after which I stopped watching), but in this fourth season, he's not using the vintage lenses. The glow comes from the lighting--I'd noticed the windows.

On lighting from outside, Goldman says:

"The attention I pay to highlights and windows is very important on this show.

There’s an overall lighting strategy I’ve been using from the beginning, which is my ‘realistic’ approach: lights come from outside in.

"The good thing about a big show like this is that we can afford very serious kinds of logistical challenges, like blocking roads in London just so I can position my lights outside a set. [Our sets] are usually on the second or third floor [of a location], so you need big machines.
It’s often two cherry pickers outside supporting a SoftSun... "

I do think this technical side of movie-making is fascinating, but it's a big reason I didn't make any more movies after my few little ones.

Movies are all about light, more than anything: light is your alphabet, you're writing with light––and that requires way more technical prowess than I was willing or able to gain.

Finally, Charlotte Higgins, author of the above Guardian article, says:

"The Crown is not the place to come if you are looking for a critique of the British monarchy. The world of The Crown is burnished, a brighter version of the real....
It is a curious experience, being drawn into the show as someone who objects to inherited privilege and the shameful trappings of empire.

"I’m no monarchist, but at times I have felt, over the past two or three years, that the Queen is the only thing holding this country together, even as the current prime minister attempts to manipulate the constitution for his own ends. The traditional royal virtues – dullness, stability – have their appeal, despite everything."

I'm no monarchist either. (And as an American, I don't feel strongly one way or the other about the British monarchy.) But after four years of a US president run amok, Queen Elizabeth's style of steadily keeping on keeping on does look good.