Behind the Scenes at NYPD Blue with
Brian J. Reynolds
By Bob Fisher

This article originally appeared a 1996 issue of Cuts magazine.

NYPD Blue is quickly becoming one of the most popular programs imported from the United States. The setting is a dingy police precinct and a variety of mainly downscale locales. The ensemble cast is led by Jimmy Smits and Dennis Franz, but the script frequently revolves around various other regulars.

NYPD Blue emerged three seasons ago amid much fanfare. The program was created by David Milch and Gregory Hoblit in conjunction with Steven Bochco. Bochco let it be known that he intended to bend, if not break, long-standing taboos. There’s nudity, and characters who don’t say gosh or darn when something goes wrong.

But NYPD Blue doesn’t titillate. The violence is never gratuitous, and usually the worst parts are discussed in the dialogue rather than seen on camera. The characters occasionally reveal their derrieres and other body parts, but it’s always natural and never vulgar. The broken taboos got a lot of publicity, but the program’s appeal is built on a foundation of good writing, acting and a visual ambiance which looks and feels authentic.

“We film the show from the point of view of another or third character,” says cinematographer Brian J. Reynolds. “It’s a very voyeuristic feeling. That affects everything, including the way we light and compose and how we move the camera. We look for creative angles instead of a master shot followed by some singles and close-ups. We also use a distinctive ‘flicking eye’ look (named by producer Greg Hoblit).”

There are NYPD Blue clones everywhere now, so this year, Reynolds has toned down use of the flicking eye, though camera movement is still very aggressive.

Reynolds came onto the show from Civil Wars, another Bochco series, eight episodes deep into the first season. He has earned an ASC Outstanding Achievement Award nomination for each of the past three seasons and an Emmy nomination in 1994.

“It was the writing and acting that appealed to me,” he says. “It’s always intriguing to walk on the set, watch a scene unfold during a rehearsal, knowing that I will be expected to add to the drama and hopefully enhance it. The kind of scripts that David (Milch) turns out are constantly challenging me and the actors to find new ways to perform. When I'm watching a rehearsal, I am constantly asking myself, ‘how am I going to photograph this scene? What can I do to enhance the performance of this woman, who supposedly had just been raped? What is it about the camera placement and the way I light that will enhance her performance and put it onto film the way it deserves to be treated?”

Reynolds is a self-made cinematographer. He grew up in Manhattan Beach on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Both of his parents worked in the aerospace industry, but Reynolds was making small movies with an 8 mm camera at the age of seven. After graduating from high school, he worked for a photo studio taking still pictures of inanimate objects for catalogs. Within a few years, he was a staff photographer at Mattel (the toy company). Reynolds was still taking pictures for catalogs, but now he was working with art directors who taught him how to direct the eye of the reader to points of interest.

The marketing manager asked him to shoot video storyboards used by an ad agency working on commercials for Mattel. Soon, he was filming spots for Mattel and other companies. His commercial work led to an opportunity to shoot the Jane Fonda exercise video, and that got him into the Los Angeles camera guild.

Reynolds’ first TV series was a program featuring Claymation (animation) characters. The pilot didn’t sell, but he caught director Robert Butler’s eye, and that resulted in an opportunity to film the first six episodes of Sisters. Butler introduced Reynolds to Hoblit, who hired him to shoot Civil Wars. He filmed two seasons and a feature called Guarding Tess before stepping into his current role at NYPD Blue.

NYPD Blue is primarily shot on sound stages at 20th Century Fox and on backlot streets at Fox, Warner Bros. and Paramount. Each week, Reynolds tries to design new visual interpretations to keep the standing sets looking fresh. Like most episodic TV, there’s a different director most weeks. That makes Reynolds and other department heads, including the production and costume designers, guardians of the consistency of the look.

“If you think back to Hill Street Blues, Steven Bochco has been breaking new ground on TV for more than a decade,” says Reynolds. “The inspiration comes from the top and it filters down. Hill Street was pretty controversial when it first came out. There is a constant push to take it to the next level. It’s okay to try something new. No one gets in your face if a scene is too dark. There are no mandates saying you can only shoot certain actors or actresses from a high 45 degree angle. We can experiment with low angle shots and longer lens if that’s what it takes.”

Reynolds says the camerawork is always driven by the actors. He notes that Franz and Smits bring a lot of subtleties to their performances. Part of his job is to give them some real space to work in. The sets are constructed with ceiling pieces on four walls like real locations. There are a lot of nuances in their interactions that aren’t in the script.

“It's that between-the-lines stuff that challenges us to find new ways to photograph them,” he says. “You take a very simple scene. Dennis is looking for a newspaper to take to the toilet. He looks around. The camera dips down and spots it on a desk. He points to Jimmy, who grabs it and hands it to him as he walks. Instead of a static shot, there’s a lot of interplay that tells you something about how they communicate, and it also engages the audience in the action.”

Reynolds has to be viscerally connected to the actors, and perpetually observant as each scene unfolds. There are little things the actors do when he comes in tight -- what he calls “the fishing pass.” Usually that means he lays back with a longer lens.

“If Dennis is tapping a pencil on a desk, we might go off his face and dip down to the pencil and up to Jimmy, down to a newspaper or telephone,” he says. “We’ll follow the cord up to Jimmy's face while he’s talking on the phone. There are a lot of little nuances that aren’t necessarily apparent until it’s edited. The overall impact is that the characters, the place and scene feel realistic, as if you are there.

“There are a lot of interesting things that happen with natural light in New York that I first noticed on Civil Wars,” he says. “We occasionally do some first and second unit there. I use that as an opportunity to watch how the light refracts off windows and comes down through the building canyons and hits the sidewalk. You can see people walking in and out of hot pools of refracted light. It's real subtle, but I've tried to use it when we shoot in California on the back lot. Obviously, we don't have skyscrapers. We create that look with stainless steel mirrors that are uneven. They create patterns of reflected light and shadows like the New York streets. It creates an ambiance that the actors respond to.”

Reynolds is very precise in his choice of words. He uses “subtle” a lot to make it clear that he’s not hammering the audience on the head with lighting technique. But, he noticed during visits to New York that there are places where steam comes up through vents in the street, and that it’s a little heavier in winter. So, he uses bits of steam to augment a setting, and if it’s supposed to be winter, it’s a little heavier.

A typical episode is filmed in eight 12-hour days. The show shoots in New York for about five days twice a year. They try to select locations that are unrecreatable in Los Angeles, a recognizable park or skyline or the subway, for instance. They try to film certain establishing scenes with all of the characters. Later, they’re augmented with second unit film from New York.

Reynolds believes that the opportunity to occasionally shoot in New York energizes the cast and key crew. When they return to the backlot, there’s a lot of motivation to recreate the quality and angles of light and mixed color temperatures that are characteristic of New York. Reynolds noticed during an early trip to New York that there are imperfections in the natural light. It isn't constant like a big soft box of light. There are hard shafts of light.

“If you took your meter and walked down the street in New York, you'd go from T-32 or 64 in the hottest shafts into open shadows which may be T-2.8,” he says. “I try to match that look with a lot of backlight and pools of uncontrolled light on the set, both inside and outside. We also mix color temperatures, using fluorescents in the background on exterior scenes and on sets. We don’t correct color temperatures. Some lights are green, and sometimes blue. We mix it with very warm tungsten light on stage. Sometimes, we do it on exteriors and correct the tungstens with maybe a quarter or half CTS, so it's very warm. We’ll mix that with blue HMI light. I have a lot of stills I took in New York. On the shadow side of the street, most shops have their signs or practical lights on during the daylight hours. There are a lot of mixed fluorescent and tungsten lights.”

Reynolds also noticed that if you walk the streets of Los Angeles, there's sunshine a lot of the time. By making subtle shifts in the quality of light, he tries to lull the audience into believing they are watching stories take place in New York.

“When we shoot a scene, we film from beginning to end from every angle,” he says. “We rarely shoot scenes in pieces. That gives the actors the ability to take a scene from start to finish. There’s a very high level of performance energy, and we try to match that photographically. We try to give the actors freedom of movement on the set so they can perform the entire scene without having to stop just because we have a C-stand cutter in the middle of the set, which only lets us pan so far. There’s not a lot of re-lighting going from wide shots to close-ups. It’s a challenge for all of us, including my gaffer, Steve Crawford, and my key grip, Bob Ivener. We want the light to look natural, so we are motivating from visible sources. We simulate indirect sunlight by bouncing very hot HMI light off the floor and mixing it with fluorescent green lights motivated by lamps on desks. It blends together. It keeps us away from the homogenized look you get from 3200 degree Kelvin lights. I believe psychologically we are conditioning the audience to believe this is a real place. That also comes from the way sets are constructed. We have layers of high gloss paint on the walls which gives us a great photographic texture.”

Primary colors are rarely used on sets or costumes. We try to stick to an established color palette which sometimes is made up of some very subtle hues. That is one of the main reasons why Reynolds is now opting to use the relatively low-contrast Eastman EXR 5287 film. Trying to control the color on the set can be a hard task sometimes. Even on daylight exteriors, the assistant directors make sure there are no red, white or other primary colored cars. That gives them the latitude to use bright color accents, such as Donna Abandando’s red sweater, to make a story point.

“If there’s a body on the street, and we use bright yellow plastic blankets to cover it, with red blood dripping on the wet pavement, the audience really sees those colors, and it makes a bigger dramatic impact, because we haven't been saturating them with colors for the entire show,” he says. This season some 70 percent of exteriors on the backlot have been shot in the same one block city street. The facades were left over from Hello, Dolly!. Reynolds says that the art department just keep repainting, revamping, redressing and discovering new ways to make them look different, such as putting a plywood barricade in front of recognizable facade.

“Since I’ve worked for Bochco, I have never had a call from the front office saying shoot them closer or wider or brighter, because they trust us, and that inspires us to push the envelope a little further,” he says. “We try to do something new every week to break through the barriers of conventional television cinematography and production design.”

Reynolds notes that any cinematographer shooting an episodic series is walking the tightrope to some extent. They have obligations to the producers to provide the coverage and maintain the look. The actors have expectations and preferences. Maybe someone doesn’t want to be shot in profile, or there is a big moment where they feel they need an extra close-up. Meanwhile, the director has a vision which needs to be served and a schedule to meet. Then, there is the desire to keep the crew happy, and to make a creative contribution.

Talking about lighting: “We made a decision to be kind to the actors, but that doesn’t mean they are always in completely flattering light,” Reynolds says. “Characters come in and out of light and into half light, where maybe you barely see part of their face. Maybe it’s a moody scene, and it’s not the most flattering picture of someone, but dramatically, it enhances the performance. The regular cast and most guest stars understand what we are trying to do. Sometimes you use light to help make someone the centerpiece of a scene. That’s never a problem, because there are no ego problems in our cast.”

Reynolds does his preliminary camera blocking with stand-ins, so the lighting is set when the actors are ready to run through a scene. That allows him to see what it looks like when they do a walk-through. Sometimes, it becomes obvious that just adjusting a mark by a couple of inches will put an actor in great light at exactly the right moment. Many times actors will subconsciously make small adjustments to find their best light.

There are greenbeds on most standing sets, however, almost all of the light comes from outside the set from motivated sources like windows. Reynolds occasionally uses tweenies on a set by screwing narrow plates to the beams in the squad room if someone needs to stop at particular position where he can't reach them with other light. This gives both the actors and the camera maximum freedom to move. It isn’t unusual for him to do a 320 degree pan shot in the squad room or somewhere else in the precinct house.

Mainly, he is shooting with a Panavision Gold II and the Primo 11:1 zoom lens, which is 275 mm on the long end. He typically works at the 100, 150, 200 and sometimes 275 focal lengths on the stage. Occasionally, with the longer lens, he’ll drop way back from the scene. Reynolds says that compresses the image and make it feel “more like New York -- more claustrophobic.” Other times, he’ll choose a very wide prime lens close-in to create a feeling of open space. For instance, he has used this tactic on a swing set of a big law office.

Reynolds uses little bounce boards that Bobby (Ivener) made; they call them “dealies”. Different ones have different surfaces. Some are real soft and others have more metallic surface. Instead of bringing C stands and silks in on close-ups, he uses the dealies to “grab a little fill light and put in the actors’ eyes.” It takes just a few seconds.

“You literally zoom in or change a lens, and use a “dealie” to grab a little eyelight to fill an actor’s face,” he says. “That's the only change from the master shot. Sometimes we don’t need to fill at all, since I started using the 5287 film. It gives us more room to manipulate contrast. You can usually get into the eyes without adding fill.”

Reynolds continues, “I made a decision early on in my career not to settle for doing what's safe and easy. I don’t feel obligated to shoot a wide master on every scene, or if I do, maybe the editor will only use it for a brief moment in the end of a scene. We let the audience know where they are with snippets of images. I always find depth in the shot. It can be as simple as moving the camera, so instead of having actors right up against the wall, there is a window or deep hallway or simply some activity in the background. We call it connective tissue. Sometimes one of the characters, Medavoy, Donna Abandando or Martinez, will just be walking in the background through a scene. That tells the audience they are headed for the coffee room. You can barely see them, but there’s a cut in the next scene, and Martinez is there. It's that simple and subtle.”

It isn’t unusual for Reynolds to shoot seven to eight (and sometimes ten) pages a day, using two cameras in tandem three to four days a week. He usually lights the set as though he was using two A cameras for additional coverage. There are scenes with six to eight characters, and all of them have some contribution to make. The second camera provides more varied coverage, and it also saves set up time.

“A lot of people ask if we do a lot of handheld camera work,” Reynolds says. “Our camera moves are almost always done with a sachler head on a dolly. I think the perception that we use a handheld camera came from very aggressive camera shots in earlier episodes during much of the first season. Gregory Hoblit refers to it as the Dektor Level (after TV commercial director Leslie Dektor). We have tapered off on aggressive camera movements considerably, because too many people found it a little distracting. A basic rule is that you don’t want to draw attention to the photography. I think it established the look and enhanced the illusion of reality on the earlier shows. The energy level of the camera is always related to the energy level of the scene. If there’s a screaming match or fight scene with a high energy level, that’s reflected in the movement of the camera.”

Camera pans are generally horizontal and are story-driven. Reynolds calls it dektoring into a scene. Maybe two people are talking, and suddenly they’re shouting. The camera movement also becomes more emotional.

“We put little hitches into the scene,” he explains, “just to give it a little more energy. Maybe someone throws a vase against a wall. Your eye is going to follow it as it smashes. Then, we follow the broken glass crashing to the floor. Then, whip back and see what this guy does. That's the concept of what we tried to do with the camera. We still do that to a certain degree. But we've also opened ourselves up to letting the camera sometimes just sit there, a little more quiet. We want both the visual and dramatic aspects of the show to keep emerging and exploring new territory. We’re not doing it for the sake of breaking new ground. We’re just trying to keep the audience interested.”

Reynolds says that he rates the 5287 film for an exposure index of 250 when he is shooting interiors and night exteriors. That makes it “a lot easier” for him to light by eye.

“I hardly ever use a light meter,” he says. “I rely on my eye and trust the fact that what I see is what I’ll record on film. If you are using a 500-speed film, and you are keying a scene at five foot-candles, and you turn a light on across the stage that puts out two and a half foot candles, it’s almost imperceptible to the eye, but the film is going to see it. It’s going to bring you up a stop in fill. With the 5287 film, I can have windows in a scene that are way overexposed. It will look exactly as it does in reality. You can be five, six or seven stops over-exposed in that bright window, and the under-exposure area on the dark side of the film will record details in the blacks level. That gives you more room to manipulate the image in the telecine suite. You can bring the black level down and raise the white level, so there are highlights. Even four or five stops overexposed, I still have details outside the windows and a lot of detail on the dark side of someone's skin.”

Reynolds opts for the Eastman EXR 5298 film for shooting daylight exteriors. He says the higher level of contrast helps to sell Los Angeles exteriors as a more gritty New York look. Don’t confuse gritty with grainy, he cautions. Reynolds generally shoots daylight exterior scenes with long 150 mm to 600 mm lenses with a Tiffen polarizer on the camera lens. That consumes a full two stops. He also usually shoots on the shadow side of the street because that helps to sell the New York look, too.

“I’m using grad ND 6 or 9 filters on the wider angle shots,” he says. “When you put that all together, and you’re shooting a TV show that has to stay on schedule, there is going to be a point where you’ll have to create daylight on the backlot at night, if you aren’t using an ultra-fast 500-speed film. Let's say I have a day to shoot a scene that fills two minutes of screen time. I can't come back tomorrow and shoot for another 20 minutes during magic hour. But, if I’m using a faster film with a lot of under-exposure latitude, I can start pulling the neutral density filters as it gets darker.”

Front-end lab work is being done at FotoKem, and telecine transfer and postproduction at Encore Video.

“Part of our look is imperfection,” Reynolds says. “We don’t want a homogeneously lit show. We have people coming in and out of shafts of light and play scenes in silhouette. People don't walk around with a 45 degree key light all day, especially New York City detectives. They're in dark buildings and gritty, dirty tenement hallways. Maybe there’s a bar with only one green fluorescent light over it. That’s the imperfection level that we strive for because it augments the reality of the show.”