Black Bird cinematographer Natalie Kingston

The Apple TV+ series Black Bird is cinematographer Natalie
Kingston's first experience shooting a television show. As the sole
DP for the 6-episode series, she enjoyed the ability to create the
look of Black Bird from scratch and maintain it throughout the
nearly 100 day shoot. Her hard work has paid off with an
Outstanding Cinematography Emmy nomination for the episode, “Hand
to Mouth.” Black Bird is based on a true story about Jimmy Keene,
who is sentenced to 10 years in a high-security prison on drug
dealing charges. He's given a chance of a fully commuted sentence
and a clean record if he can befriend and obtain a confession from
convicted serial killer and rapist Larry Hall. Acclaimed crime
writer Dennis Lehane wrote all the scripts for Black Bird, and he
allowed the actors and crew some creative freedom with their lines
and storytelling. With multiple directors, Natalie was responsible
for maintaining the integrity of the visual language in Black Bird.
She chose to keep the camera work visceral, grounded and
non-judgemental, with only purposeful camera movement. On other
projects, she had always operated the camera as well, but because
of the scope and hours of material to shoot, Natalie found it was
more efficient for her to step back and allow the camera operators
to handle the bulk of the camera work. It was a completely new way
of working to stay behind the monitor, but it became a
collaborative effort with the rest of the camera crew. Natalie grew
up in Louisiana, making up her own home movies with her parent's
camcorder and checking out children's stage play books from the
library. She knew she definitely wanted to do something in the
movies. Cinematography specifically became her passion because she
enjoyed being on set and in charge of making someone think and feel
a certain way. After college, she got a job at a local TV station,
where she created her own documentary show, learning how to shoot,
edit and build the fundamentals of telling a story. After that,
Natalie began working on small local productions to pay the bills,
building up to documentary films and features in Louisiana. Find
Natalie Kingston: www.nataliekingston.com Instagram:
@nataliekingston Black Bird is currently on AppleTV+ Sponsored by
Hot Rod Cameras: www.hotrodcameras.com Sponsored by ARRI:
https://www.arri.com/en The Cinematography Podcast website:
www.camnoir.com YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/c/TheCinematographyPodcast Facebook:
@cinepod Instagram: @thecinepod Twitter: @ShortEndz