Interview With ‘Westworld’ Cinematographer & Director Paul Cameron ASC
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to sit down with Paul Cameron ASC, Cinematographer and Director on HBO’s mind-bending series ‘Westworld’. Paul originally began the series as cinematographer on the pilot episode which earned an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Cinematography. He earned a second Emmy nomination for the season three episode “Parce Domine”. Paul then moved to the director’s chair to helm the season three episode “The Mother of Exiles”, and returned once again to direct the pivotal season four episode “Generation Loss”.
Outside of ‘Westworld’, Paul has collaborated with many accomplished directors including Tony Scott (Man on Fire, Déjà Vu), Michael Mann (Collateral), Neils Arden Oplev (Dead Man Down), Len Wiseman (Total Recall), and Dominic Sena (Swordfish, Gone in Sixty Seconds) among others.
Geektown: Before we get into talking about Westworld, do you just want to give a little background about how you ended up in the industry in the first place?
Paul: I grew up in New York City, and I lived with my brother in high school, and long story short, basically saw the Scorceses and Coppolas shooting on the streets, and Woody Allen, and other people. And my brother was an actor and off Broadway, so I spent a lot of time doing public theatre in Lafayette Street down there. And finally when the 6’7 guidance counsellor came up to me and said, “What are you going to do?” Ii was kind of like, “I’m going to go to film school.” And they were like, “Yeah, that’s funny, you know, what are you going to do with your life?” And I said, “No, no, I think I’m actually going to do that.”
And of course, there were only a few schools at the time, really, to look at, like the Columbias and NYUs and USCs and UCLA. And so I ended up going to SUNY Purchase outside of Manhattan, which was a great kind of dumping ground of arts and science misfits and a conglomeration of people that couldn’t afford private universities like myself.
And then I was just motivated. I knew, I walked up to camera crews in New York and I was like, “How do I get into Union, how do I do this?” And they were like, “Do you have anybody in your family? Forget about it kid, nobody’s in your family.” I’m like, “Okay, well bring beer down to this camera at 7:00 on Saturday morning, see this guy,” and so I just was very motivated trying to get in. There were no film schools really back then, it was a very, kind of, elite crowd…
But I got kicked out because we filmed the B-52s at a club I was bartending, we borrowed some equipment from the school and forgot to tell anyone, and they were like, “That’s great kid, but now you can’t go to school here anymore,” so we ended up going back and shooting a lot of rock and roll, and actually put the first TVs in the clubs basically in New York City, so we kind of started all that.
Geektown: That’s crazy, wow! So you’ve been at it quite a while! You’ve filmed a whole bunch of different things, and then you come to ‘Westworld’. You were DP on the pilot for it, so you were involved right at the very beginning. How did that come about, and how did you go about setting the kind of look for it with Jonathan [Nolan] and Lisa [Joy]?
Paul: Yeah, well, I think the first thing that happened with Westworld is I got a call early on from Jonathan Nolan and went in and met, and I realised, “Okay, I’m going to do it.” He wants to shoot on film, he had Nathan Crowley, who worked with his brother, Chris’s production designer, and they brought me in on a level of world-build, and that’s, from conceptualization to visualisation, when it was time to take that pilot script and talk about the possible arc that the series that it was going to go, and the methodology, how to do it.
And there were many sets that were in the park that were going to be filmed down in Moab in Utah, and it was like, okay, well, let’s just shoot all the stuff on stage here, and then we’ll just take this wall here with the porch, and we’ll just send that wall and the porch to Utah, when we go to Utah we’ll get those shots and we’ll get there.
So it was things of that nature, and at the very beginning with the methodology, then building it, Jonathan, Lisa, and Nathan Crowley. It was very exciting to have that voice as a director of photography, as a cinematographer, at that point of the project. Because usually, you get the call to come in and prep for two, three weeks of a show or something, you really don’t have… you’re not part of the worldbuilding, and in this case it was more than that.
Basically, the second season came up, and I didn’t have much participation then, as I was shooting Pirate Of The Caribbean, but I came back and I shot a bunch of the western stuff again, but because I love shooting with Jonathan. That was great. And then when the third season came around, Jonathan decided to direct an episode, the first episode I was going to shoot, and he said, “Great, let’s go scout some cities in Hong Kong and Singapore and a few other cities,” and there was obviously this kind of new futuristic arc in the series, so we kind of fell in love with Singapore for the show. And again, we were kind of worldbuilding, because we took one of the writers with us, and we discussed how to integrate the material with this new location, and they kind of came up with this idea of how to shoot Singapore for this kind of modern, futuristic city.
So that was great, and then I said, “Okay, great, do that,” and then Jonathan was like, “I’ve asked you before, why don’t you just direct an episode this time?” And I was doing episode four. So that was a great experience and included some work in Singapore as well, directing in Singapore as well as in Los Angeles. And then I came back on the fourth season, and just directed this last episode, four. But again, it’s close friends with Jonathan and Lucy, so it’s like, “Hey, come to New York, let’s hang out for five days and figure out how we’re going to shoot this here and how we’re going to integrate this into the story and the city in the series this season.” So it’s kind of crazy, it’s almost like being with somebody writing a book, or a series of books over time, or volumes or anthologies or something, or as you set up the material and you really get a chance to think about it. And, in my case, I jumped out first season, then came back and saw, “Oh wow, it’s developed into this.” But it’s this kind of continuation of worldbuilding that I really enjoy, I think that’s the key thing.
And then, obviously working on Westworld with the actors, it’s just the most daunting yet empowering experience. Ed Harris, and Tessa Thompson, and Aaron Paul, and Vincent Cassel, and Jeffrey Wright… So it’s been a great kind of worldbuilding experience.
Photo Credit: John P. Johnson
Geektown: Yeah, I mean, as you say, it changes so dramatically when you get into season three, and then with the latest season, the episode that you directed was “Generation Loss”. To be handed that episode particularly must have been a challenge. It is incredibly pivotal in the story arc because there are so many things that happen in there. You’re also dealing with all sorts of different timelines and locations. How is it managing that when you’re sat in the director’s chair with a timeline here, a timeline here, and a million different locations going on?
Paul: Fortunately, I’ve had a lot of experience as a cinematographer, so the scale of it is not the difficult part. It’s the getting of information. Because basically, it’s like, you’re supposed to start prepping a month, and then in this case they called me like a week later and said, “Hey, can you come shoot a few scenes for your episode?” And I’m like, “Well, is there a script?” “No.” “Is there an outline?” “No.” “Is there something that’s, give me an idea? A page to relate to and approach that in a way?” So they prepped me on it, and we jump in, and then you’re three weeks out and suddenly you got an outline, and you’re like, “Oh my God, this is not what I thought it was, this is an intense convergence of two timelines.” There’s a lot of responsibility with story there, and executing that story, certainly with Aaron Paul, Tessa Thompson in the episode.
So I had an idea kind of what the episode would be, and actually, the outline didn’t really reflect that. I started scouting, trying to put all that together, and then finally, I was a week out and then I got the script, and I realised half the locations don’t apply to that. So I have to go back out, and find additional locations. I think it’s that thing of, when you understand the material, whatever it is, and you read it through, in my case I’ll read it and I’ll see it in my head, and I’ll know what the emotional beats are. Of course, I don’t have the exact shots, but I can see the moment, I can feel what the reveal is, and really step into this idea that, at this moment, these four things are converging. And it’s intense, because, in Aaron Paul’s case it’s like, he jumps 23 years later, he’s almost 270 machinations of himself. To explain that to an actor is not like, “Oh hey, you walk in the door there, you hang a left and you sit in the chair and have a little dialogue,” it’s a little bigger discussion with the actors.
And of course, they want to know more, they want to know what’s coming up. And although I might have an idea, you’re not privileged to tell them what’s coming up, so they can be frustrated only knowing part of the arc of their character, or part of the storyline. And specifically Tessa’s like, “I really want to know where this is going so I can relate to him on a different level,” and I’m like, “I’d love to know where you’re going too.” But I don’t think those episodes are written yet, so it’s an extraordinary journey going on, because there’s a lot of trust with the actors. As a director, it’s wonderful, because you have this A-level cast, and you have this trust. You know a little bit, they know a little bit. I might not know some of the things that they were just given by another director, they share things with me. A lot of them are my friends now, so there’s a shorthand to the discussion.
But it’s a huge show, big scale, and when you show up to look at your list of actors that day and you have five, six top-level actors and three, four scenes with them, it can be pretty intense, but good.
Geektown: Yeah. It’s interesting you bring up the thing about the “not knowing” about where their characters are going because the things aren’t written. I mean, because it’s a complex show, that must be quite confusing for them, and I know that you shoot things out of order quite often as well. For a show like that, that must be completely head-mashing for the actors and everybody involved sometimes.
Paul: Yeah, it is. It’s extreme, but it’s, I’ll tell you, it’s, again, the level of the actor that comes on that show is extraordinary. So in my case, I’d say Aaron Paul’s arc and his transition there is so… We’ve got, where we go out and we actually blow up this quarry in the episode. He’s inside with Tessa Thompson, she’s trying to control him, and Harris and Thandiwe are shooting at each other outside. Thandiwe’s character meshes into the demolition system and blows herself up and Ed sky-high to save Aaron’s character, Caleb.
So we built the shed on location, there are a lot of tie in shots that I wanted to be able to swing around from Tessa and go right out the window and actually see Ed and Thandiwe in the explosion. So we built it there, then we rebuilt the shed and shot maybe, I think other directors came into do some other stuff, so like three weeks later I did more of the interiors with Tessa and Aaron. And then I pitched this idea of this kind of smaller version of the shed that’s actually a circular, just made out of the same material, but it’s circular and I have Peter Flinckenberg, the DP, outside of each window and we kind of move around Tessa and Aaron while Caleb discovers that he’s dead and it’s 23 years later.
Those are shot like six weeks apart. I mean, on a regular show, you come in, prep for two weeks and you shoot for two weeks, go to the airport, have a cappuccino, and go home. On Westworld it’s like, you shoot two days now, but oh wait, no, sorry, you’re not going to shoot for two weeks, and then, “No, no, hey, you’re going to shoot next week.” And you have to stay trained, you have to stay ready.
But in terms of acting and directing, we were very fortunate to have Aaron and Tessa, because they could go back into that moment in the shed three weeks apart times two, and finish that scene. And it’s the other part of that is that if you see it in the episode. It’s an intense five minutes with Aaron, where he’s really going through a lot as a performer. Jonathan was around when I was shooting some of the early scenes, and I think I did three takes, he was like “listen, how often are you going to ask them to go through this performance?” And I was like, “Well, probably about 12 times, considering I’m going to do it again onstage…” But I spoke with Aaron, and he said, “Listen, man, I trust you. I’ll go there when you need me to go there, and I will trust you. Just stay with me.” So when we’re shooting those scenes, I don’t even look at the monitor, I stand next to a camera and I walk around the track, and then sometimes I’m just like, “Just pick it up again, go back to 1 or go back to this line, let’s do it again, let’s get the energy right.” Almost interrupting them, but he knows that I know that I need him here. He’s already at this point during the performance. So it works out very well, and it’s, again, just fortunate. Tessa as well, she’s just an incredible actor. You give them the smallest direction and you just see it immediately. It’s just brilliant.
Geektown: Yeah. It is an incredible cast throughout that show, and it always looks so stunning. Some of the other locations you had on that, when Maeve and Caleb, during a flashback sequence, are going to blow up the remains of the computer system at the lighthouse. Where was that shot?
Paul: That was actually done in Cabo. So if you see in the series at times when the characters are walking around Hale’s City and you see these big monolithic white structures, which were shot in Cabo. And then we found this lighthouse which was up the coast from Cabo that’s in the episode. Strangely enough, after three months, this was my last day of filming and I was so excited to go to Cabo, and I was leaving Sunday morning, and I had a stunt rehearsal Sunday afternoon. Everything was already tech scouted and planned, two cranes, a drone, specific dolly platforms and shots of the sand, everything was laid out, and prepared.
I get to the airport and the producer’s like, “Hey, there’s a hurricane coming, so I don’t think we’re going to shoot your scene tomorrow.” And I was just, “Mark, just give me a handheld camera and any drone, anything, just let me shoot tomorrow, please, if you can,” because they wanted to use the assets and film the before the hurricane. I just looked at Peter Flinkenberg, the DP, and I said, “Look, Peter, it’s going to be a very small crew, if you’re up for it. I’m going to direct and handhold and operate myself.”
So of course that morning I get there, it’s 105 degrees at like 6:00 in the morning, and they give me the camera. Of course, it’s like a camera with a thousand-foot mag, it’s going to be 35mm film [laughs]. It’s the heaviest thing! But it was just amazing. You just know the shots when you cut it in your head, and we just, we ran around, I had a slider to move the camera with Peter a couple of times, handheld the rest of it. I used the drone as a crane. You just come up with the plan, and you execute it.
I didn’t want to give that location up. The production was like, “Okay, if we don’t shoot today, we’ll find you something nice in Northern California.” And I’m like, “No, this is really beautiful right now.” And so we shot that there, and then we did the actual blowing up of the Rehoboam computer system and an apartment structure in Los Angeles.
Geektown: Yes, because you don’t want to be blowing up Cabo!
Paul: You don’t want to blow up Cabo, yeah [laughs].
Geektown: So one of the other scenes, is that reveal towards the end, where Hale takes Caleb out and shows that she’s controlling the humans, and they’re essentially hosts at that point. How was that to do, because you have a tonne of extras, but then trying to sync them all to stop at once?
Paul: Well when it was time to do that, I realised there’s just no way, you know, 175 people are going to stop in their tracks when you shout “Stop.” So we accepted this idea that, yes, she’s stopping them, but they are still human, so they might just have a little extra movement when they’re stopping, and if there’s anything annoying, which I’m sure they’ve probably cleaned people stopping in post later, but you think like, “Oh, that be great, we have a little time to rehearse it and figure it out and see what’s up.”
Cut to shooting in New York City, by that time in the production I think that there were four directors that day working on the main unit, of which I was the last director, and I was promised, “Oh, you’ll get four hours.” I said “I’d like five hours to shoot that scene,” but “No, no, no, you’re going to get four hours to shoot that scene”. So I’m standing there and the other directors are filming, and suddenly I got three hours. Everything all the way to freezing, to Aaron getting back and Tessa starting everybody up, and the big reveal with the tower in the background, we now suddenly have two hours to shoot the scene. And you, again, it’s just like, okay, well, these are the shots I need, and the performance is the most important thing, the performance is the most important thing, the writing and the performance.
The show, fortunately, looks beautiful, and again, we really got to pick those moments and how to execute them. So because it was only two hours, there was no chance to work with the extras, and I was just like, “You know what?” I’m on the bullhorn telling them, “Everybody, just do your best.” And it was fabulous to watch 175 strangers actually want to do their best for you. Actually, like, a couple takes again, that’s all they did, with a crane shot and a couple of ground cameras. So I think I did two or three takes of that entire scene, and that was it.
I didn’t know because it wasn’t in the writing yet, but I was just like, “I know the tower’s going to be in New York, where’s the tower and Hale City going to be?” So I’m just, “Let’s just do one more take, and let’s just, at the very end, let’s just zoom up on the crane and tilt out east to the Hudson River… I don’t know.” And they said, “Oh, thank God you did that,” and they put in Hale City at the end, I didn’t know exactly geographically where it was going to go. And you finish your two hours and you’re, actually, in that case, John Conroy shot that scene with me, director of photography, and we lost the light, but it worked out.
But again, these actors are all so used to the appetite of Westworld, so they know, they can see, especially see me. They know the light’s going down, they know I need them to focus up, and that there’s no time for chit-chat or whatever, and they’re walking over to their mark ready to go, they’re not messing around. There’s a lot of that. It’s my first experience as a director out of multiple directors on a different day.
Geektown: That’s crazy! So out of the work you’ve done on Westworld, are there any particularly memorable moments that stand out to you?
Paul: Well, I think quite honestly, some of the moments that really stand out to me again were just filming the pilot with Jonathan. You know, at least my experience is when you’re filming something, you realise, “Oh, this is going to be something special.” We didn’t know at the pilot whether HBO was going to say yes to Jonathan to go do it. And while we were doing it we just feel like, I think they had already made the decision around, “We’ll just take up the series.” But it’s that, when you have a concept like Westworld, its this leap of faith where there’s a theme park and these loops… you sit there and you’re running these loops, and the train comes in, and the loop happens, and then you realise, “Oh my God, this is kind of a…” And I think it’s that just coupled with the writing and the material later, where you realise what Jonathan and Lisa are exploring, or obviously how we’re just in loops of our own world of who’s freer, the hosts or people? Are you better to be conscious or unconscious in a certain way? Who’s happier?
Then seeing moments like, I mean, Evan Rachel is one of my favourite actresses out there, and to be able to direct her, or watch her in the first episode where you get the feeling that she has some consciousness, watch her do that. Those are the highlights for me. And then when jumping forward a couple of seasons and actually directing those moments. And specifically in this episode four I just did, the moment where James Marsden comes into the restaurant, and she drops the lipstick, and it’s a repetitive loop like the can in the street from episode one. I had it roll over, and he picks it up. That was something I pitched. And then sitting there and directing that scene where they’re two different characters now, and there’s this familiarity thing, and this attraction, and how far do we play it. Just to watch these two play, and then to just sit there and laugh at that, it’s such a fabulous experience, you know.
When I shot that scene, they hadn’t written a lot of material after that, so a lot of things got restructured with James Marsden. So I was doing stuff with Marsden, where she saw a flash of him beating up the character, Peter, that was kind of in the background with Christina. And later, we restructured episodes two and three where you introduce James Marsden. So unfortunately when he picks up the lipstick, you’ve already seen him in the other two episodes, but it was a moment that was filmed for the audience to kind of see James Marsden for the first time. It’s a moment like that. I’ve always loved it as a cinematographer, and to have that as a director, I think those are the moments you, when everything is firing away, and you see an actor, and you’re watching the shot on a monitor through the camera and you see like “Oh my God, this is a really powerful moment, this is an incredibly powerful emotional moment,” that I think was ultimately the best moments for me.
Geektown: Yeah, It’s been an incredible show for four seasons.
Paul: Thank you.
Geektown: Has there been any talk about whether it may come back? Because the end of season four felt like it could serve as a series finale.
Paul: Well, if I told you, they’d shoot me [laughs], but I honestly I don’t know where things are at. You’ve got such an A-level group of characters and filmmakers that are part of this. The nature of this show is, I don’t know, we started the pilot 2014, so it’s eight years later and it’s four seasons. So between production and writing and actor availability, it’s taken a long time to get these four seasons. I think all I can safely say is the intention isn’t to wrap it up this year, I think they’d like to go a fifth season if it’s meant to be, and I don’t think they were trying to conveniently wrap it up with season four.
Geektown: Right, yeah. I mean, the end of the season does work as a series finale if that is what it turns out to be, but I would be very happy to see more.
Paul: Yeah. I’d like to do one more too, yeah.
Geektown: Yeah, And they set it up in an interesting way where you could go. You’ve had them in the park, you’ve had them out of the park, you’ve had the humans basically become the hosts, and the hosts take over. Where do you go from there?
Paul: Yeah, exactly.
Geektown: I know Jonathan and Lisa are off doing the Fallout tv series for Prime Video as well, which I’m also massively looking forward to.
Paul: Oh yeah, I just came off there. It’s funny, I just saw Jonathan and Lisa in New York and Jonathan was directing Fallout, and there are some COVID issues so Lisa jumped in, and I ended up just doing some of the big volume work that. We’ve actually kind of put together a whole new volume for Jonathan’s next show, Ancillary Justice. It’s kind of a bit of a ride this last year or so with the changes… But it was hard, I mean, I basically was watching Jonathan shoot with other cinematographers, and I’m so used to shooting for him that I was jealous [laughs]. But I’ll go back and I’ll shoot anything for Jon, and hopefully directing with him more too, because they’re very gracious people.
Geektown: Yeah. You’ve just done a film recently with Lisa as well.
Paul: Yeah, I did. I was director of photography on Lisa Joy’s Reminiscence, and actually, I really love this film. It’s Lisa’s first film, and she wrote it, and she got a decent budget of 35 million from Warner Brothers to do it. It was one of the first releases after the theatres started to open, and I think it took some critical hits that were very unfortunate toward Lisa that were pretty unfair, because it’s so hard, I mean, it’s somebody’s first film, her first film, and I really enjoyed the film, and Hugh Jackman was in it, Rebecca Ferguson is in it. Lisa’s so talented as well, and she’s a fabulous writer, fabulous director, and I’d shoot anything for her any time.
Geektown: So last couple of questions for you, and they’re the same ones we ask everybody, and they’re always TV-related. So the first question is, what TV shows are you watching at the moment or have you been watching recently?
Paul: Well, I recently just finished watching Ozark all the way through. I really love the work that Jason Bateman’s doing, as an actor and director and showrunner, and the other show they did, The Outsider, that they shot while they were making Ozark. So I’m kind of living in more dramatic shows as much as possible, I think ultimately I want to do some more directing in that world. And I really, really appreciate the writing on Ozark, very smart, very well-done.
Geektown: So lastly, if you had the opportunity to work on any TV show, can be something historical from the past, something that’s present day, or some sort of future genre which you maybe haven’t worked in yet, and it can’t be a show that you’ve already worked on, which would it be?
Paul: I tell you, if I had the opportunity to work on a show and it just so happened to be based on Wim Wenders’ American Friend, and had those characters, I think I would be very happy to do something like that. I love international thrillers. I mean, that’s a Patricia Highsmith-based film, she wrote the story, and she’s a fabulous writer, so I love the writing. I just like the challenge of international stories and the weaving of different cultures and worlds.
‘Westworld‘ can be found on Sky & streaming service NOW in the UK, and on HBO/HBO Max in the USA.
