#jessica lee gagné

[dichenlachmandaily]

The Images of Severance: Ben Stiller on the Inhuman World of Lumon

Stiller, who directed six of the season’s nine episodes, and cinematographer Jessica Lee Gagné on creating the unsettling imagery inside Lumon, and breaking their own rules. 

Into the Black

Fired from Lumon, just after the audience has learned she is actually the wife Mark believed was dead, Ms. Casey is ushered into a black hallway where she’ll ascend the elevator one last time. The pitch-black hallway with its ominous red light has already appeared in the paintings Irving is doing at home—a hint at something future seasons of Severance might reveal.

Stiller: It’s a weird set. It was exciting also because it was a new set too. We talked a lot about the texture on the walls, having it feel like it matched the painting. It’s the most science fiction-y kind of set in the show, just the surreal nature of it. But it was really fun to get in there because you could see like there was just so much negative space. There were a lot of really fun angles to play with.

Gagné: We have a lot of moments where it kind of falls off to darkness in these hallways when they’re walking, like where are they going? It’s like the unknown of Lumon. And this specific component of the show narratively is one of the biggest unknowns, like, where is she going?… It seemed like the black in the underground Lumon world is referring to that unknown, and how much we really don’t know yet.

[gothicseverance]

The “fear of power” embodied in Gothic romance is a fear not only of supernatural powers but also of social forces so vast and impersonal that they seem to have supernatural strength.

—Perils of the Night

[sanjerina]

If there is any justice, John Turturro and cinematographer Jessica Lee Gagné both win Emmys for this episode. And hell, throw in one for Britt Lower, whose Helena/Helly scenes are some Tatiana Maslany shit.

It has been a MINUTE since I got invested in a piece of media with this level of unpredictable batshit WTF-ery —and yet I absolutely, completely trust that the creative team knows what they are doing and will take me on a harrowing, wonderful adventure 😱😍

Thinking about how this particular outdoor setting was still blindingly white for most of the episode. The frozen lake, the snowy forest, the mostly overcast sky. Black, white, blue. The severed employees still kept to a limited palette.

[juniorstargazergoke1991]

Severance (2022 — present)

1x05: The Grim Barbarity of Optics and Design

Director: Aoife McArdle

Cinematographyer: Jessica Lee Gagné

[shipoftheseusofficial]

This interview with the Severance DP (aka the cinematographer) back from season 1 is a cool little window into the shooting process. The show has such a unique and confident visual language, and you can tell it's the result of being super deliberate about the visual world they're trying to build and how it informs the story. She gets specific here about some of their inspirations for shooting the office scenes, and how different departments have to coordinate early on with the lighting and final color grade in mind to achieve the look they want...

[boardchairman-blog]

**Shots of the Episode**

Severance (2022)

Season 2, Episode 1: “Hello, Ms. Cobel” (2025) Director: Ben Stiller Cinematographer: Jessica Lee Gagné

[oscaryella]

Escape at Dannemora / 2018

Michael Tolkin publicó en 1988 The Player, novela negra ambientada en Los Ángeles sobre los resortes que mueven la industria cinematográfica. En 1992 escribió el guión y produjo la película, Robert Altman, pleno, fue el director. Un clásico.

Junto a Brett Johnson, fue guionista de  algunos capítulos de Ray Donovan, aquella serie sobre bostonianos en Los Ángeles que parecía menor de lo que terminó siendo, incluyendo un Jon Voight imparable e incontrolable. Johnson también escribió capítulos de la tan premiada como aburrida Mad Men.

En 2018 estrenaron Escape at Dannemora, basada en una historia real sobre una fuga ocurrida en Nueva York en 2015. Sorprende el tono sereno y sin que le tiemble la mano al dirigir de Ben Stiller. Otro, al igual que Jason Bateman, que sigue los pasos de Beat Takeshi, de la comedia al drama. En permanente contención, revelando de a poco, dejando trabajar a sus actores y edificando sobre ellos. Tejiendo.

Patricia Arquette arriba, en donde da gusto verla y no en las desgracias de pretensión e incoherencia tipo High Desert. Benicio del Toro sorprendiendo, actuando desde la normalidad y dejando el estereotipo. Paul Dano y David Morse aportan también al drama intimista que se vuelve creíble y resiste la tentación de desbordarse.

Jessica Lee Gagné fotografiando en claroscuros , conectando con el tono y manteniendo coherencia en espacios abiertos y cerrados, de día y de noche. El ojo hace al fotógrafo y el Instagram de Lee Gagné lo prueba en cuadrados. Director y Cinefotógrafa volvieron a reunirse en Severance, pero esa es otra historia.

[scenesandscreens]

Severance, Season One (2022)

Directed by Ben Stiller & Aoife McArdle, Cinematography by Jessica Lee Gagné & Matt Mitchell

[tv-moments]

Severance

Season 1, “Half Loop”

Director: Ben Stiller

DoP: Jessica Lee Gagné

[knuckldraugr]

Severance (1.01: Good News About Hell)

Directed by: Ben Stiller Cinematography by: Jessica Lee Gagné

[sesiondemadrugada]

Malgré la nuit (Philippe Grandrieux, 2015).

[gothicseverance]

“Live burial” is the name of a conventual punishment that is popular in Gothic novels, but it is also, as phenomenological criticism can make clear, a more general description of the novels’ physical ambience. The psychoanalytic application of “live burial” to the repression of the libido is inevitable in these particular tales, especially since it is sexual activity that literal live burial most often punishes.

—The Coherence of Gothic Conventions

[absencesrepetees]

severance: s1, ep 1-3 (ben stiller, 2022)

[juniorstargazergoke1991]

Severance (2022 — present)

2x04: Woe's Hollow

Director: Ben Stiller

Cinematographyer: Jessica Lee Gagné

[lifeisacinemahall]

'Severance': the dystopia of work-life balance

‘Severance’: the dystopia of work-life balance

What if Ben Stiller, the actor, the unanointed head of the Frat (some would say interchanging the ‘a’ and the ‘r’ would be mot juste) Pack figured out a way to cleave his brain to—in a life lived in parallel—go behind the camera to fill a directorial canvas of stunning, cerebral output? (Escape at Dannemora, anyone?) Oh wait, that sounds like something Stiller, the director, offers in one of…

[fuckyeahwomenfilmdirectors]

Hello. Me and my friends are trying to come up with a comprehensive list of women working in film. Do you have any suggestions for Directors of photography that are women?

If talking about women directors is my hobby, women cinematographers is like my side-side hobby. If this blog didn’t take so much of my time I’d make another one just dedicated to women cinematographers. I love them and they don’t get their due! Shout out to the women directors who hire women cinematographers, I especially love the collaborations of Claire Denis and Agnès Godard, Céline Sciamma and Crystel Fournier, Chloé Robichaud and Jessica Lee Gagné, Gia Coppola and Autumn Cheyanne Durald, and so many more I’m sure I’m forgetting.  

Check here and here for some terribly incomplete lists. There are way, way more out there:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Women_cinematographers_by_nationality

https://www.cinematographersxx.com/