Alan Caso’s value is clearest in the photography of Six Feet Under, where ordinary rooms help the domestic comedy work. We rate that restraint, though the programme sometimes gives its family too much time to brood.
Fi1m perspective
The funeral parlour in Six Feet Under (2001) is most convincing when it looks like somewhere people turn up for work. Alan Caso’s cinematography favours wide-angle, deep-focus compositions, desaturated colour and light that appears to come from natural sources. Those choices keep the rooms legible without making the family business look like a haunted house. We were relieved by that ordinariness, because it allowed us to enjoy the domestic comedy without the setting continually insisting on dread. This is the work we rate him for: careful photography that gives actors room to be funny.
Although Caso directed ‘Grinding the Corn’, a 2004 episode of Six Feet Under, his substantial contribution to the programme was as a director of photography. It would be a mistake to credit him alone with what works. Frederick Iannone and other cinematographers also contributed. Production designers Suzuki Ingerslev, Daniel Ross and Marcia Hinds helped make the parlour credible as somewhere a family could spend its days. The series sometimes indulges its brooding, but the rooms are at their most useful when they do not encourage it.
Before Six Feet Under, he worked as a camera and Steadicam operator, then as a director of photography on Tour of Duty in the late 1980s. His first feature as director of photography, 84 Charlie MoPic (1989), used a handheld style. On John Frankenheimer’s George Wallace (1997), his photography blended dramatic footage with archival material. Their collaboration continued with Reindeer Games (2000); his later television work included Into the West (2005). These changes of format and task matter more to our understanding of his work than the occasional directing credit.
His preference for simple light sources and a clear key light on an actor’s face is worth taking seriously. On Six Feet Under, that restraint helps the funeral parlour remain convincing through both grief and domestic comedy. We recommend starting there, allowing for the exhausting family company and the stretches when everyone has been given rather too long to brood.
Biography
Alan Caso is an American cinematographer and member of the American Society of Cinematographers. He served as director of photography on the HBO series Six Feet Under (2001–2005) and directed one episode of the series.
Caso’s other television credits as director of photography include Dexter (2006), The Americans (2013), Lie to Me (2009), The Rookie (2018) and Hawaii Five-0 (2010–2015). His feature work encompasses Reindeer Games (2000) and The Librarian: Quest for the Spear (2004). He received two Emmy nominations for his work on Six Feet Under and an ASC Outstanding Achievement Award for the miniseries George Wallace (1997). In 2018 he was awarded the ASC Career Achievement in Television Award.
