Michael Slovis makes space and shadow do useful dramatic work. We rate his willingness to hold a shot and let actors work, even when it makes his own contribution less conspicuous.
Fi1m perspective
In Breaking Bad (2008), there can be too much empty space around a person for comfort. Michael Slovis’s controlled compositions make us inspect the frame for danger before anybody on screen has identified it. We felt uneasy because those unoccupied areas gave us somewhere to expect trouble. That is the strongest reason to value his work: he can make a wide shot carry tension without asking an actor to announce it.
Slovis first directed an episode of Ed in 2004, then joined Breaking Bad as director of photography in its second series, in 2009. He also directed four episodes of Breaking Bad. His preference for wide shots lets surroundings express isolation, while his willingness to leave a scene relatively uncut gives performances time to develop. We rate that patience. It is worth distinguishing, though, between the cinematography our review singles out and the direction of an entire programme.
The images work partly because the rooms remain ordinary. Production designers Robb Wilson King and Mark S. Freeborn make the domestic spaces cramped and unglamorous, helping Walter White’s dissatisfaction make sense without making it admirable. Slovis’s shadows and selective highlights serve the story rather than turn each scene into an exhibition of lighting. That restraint is particularly welcome in a programme whose cleverness can sometimes become a nuisance.
After Breaking Bad, directing became his main focus, with work on Game of Thrones in 2015 and The Walking Dead in 2016. His habit is to fit an existing programme’s visual approach, then make small adjustments rather than insist on being noticed. The reservation is that this can make his direction difficult to distinguish from the work around it. We would not treat his name on an episode as a promise of the same impact as Breaking Bad. Start there for the framing; approach the later directing work expecting someone who wants the scene to succeed without drawing attention to himself.
Biography
Michael Slovis is an American cinematographer, television director and producer. He trained at the Rochester Institute of Technology and New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. After working for many years as a camera operator, he became a cinematographer in 1995 on feature films including Party Girl (1995).
In television, Slovis served as director of photography on the series Ed (2000), CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2000), Fringe (2008), Royal Pains (2009) and Breaking Bad (2008), where he shot from the second season onwards. He won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Cinematography for a One Hour Series for his work on CSI in 2006 and received further nominations for Breaking Bad.
Slovis has also directed episodes of Ed, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Breaking Bad, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and other series. He joined the American Society of Cinematographers in 2010.
