Dana Gonzales, ASC, director and cinematographer of Fargo and Legion, on creatively rich television, moving into directing, and more

Dana Gonzales, ASC loves pushing himself to use creative lighting,
lenses and camera moves to transport the audience into the story.
While working on the mind-bendingly surreal television series
Legion and the cinematic, character-driven crime stories of the
series Fargo, Dana found a true creative home with producer and
showrunner Noah Hawley. With Hawley, Dana has been able to explore
how to create and maintain an image that challenges himself and
makes an audience feel differently than they've ever felt before.
Audiences today are more sophisticated and crave good visuals and
storytelling. Dana sees many of today's television series leading
the way in artistic expression, which is why huge actors and
directors are getting involved. Writers can tell a 10-hour story,
fully developing characters and plot, while the director and camera
crew can build a world with a strong visual foundation to hold it
up. Dana finds today's TV is certainly still challenging- shooting
on tight schedules requires staying sharp all the time, and strong
visionary showrunners and producers keep everyone motivated. For
season four of the FX series Fargo, Dana shot three of the episodes
and directed four, including the season finale. Being involved with
Fargo since season one helped Dana confidently bring a point of
view to the story. He thinks one of the most important aspects of
directing is offering an interesting perspective that makes the
most of the story, characters and tone. Working with
cinematographers Erik Messerschmidt and Pete Konczal, they changed
the look of the show to a small degree, using different lenses and
framing, and departed from a strict adherence to the visual LUT of
the first seasons. They instead decided on a Kodachrome look, which
was also the first color film used in season four's time period.
The biggest challenge of season 4 was shooting the tornado
sequence- partly shot in black and white as a callback to The
Wizard of Oz, the complex storylines leading up to and in the
aftermath of the tornado all had to seamlessly weave together. As a
kid, Dana grew up in L.A. He was always naturally attracted to
cameras and began taking photos at a young age. He found jobs on
film sets as a driver, set PA, loader and camera assistant, and
worked his way up while shooting small side projects. Just working
on low budget movies, where Dana was able to be bold and
experiment, served as his film school. He maintains the philosophy
that every single job needs to be an artistic statement better than
the last one, with each script informing his approach differently.
After several years working on features and television, Dana moved
into directing, where he feels you're even more the author of a
show than as a cinematographer. He continues to enjoy working as
both a cinematographer and as a director. Dana loved working on the
series Legion, where producer Noah Hawley gave him the freedom to
be extremely bold and experimental. For Legion, Hawley wanted
surreal, elevated images with beautiful and dramatic lighting, that
both embraced and reimagined the comic book/graphic novel look. If
they tried something and it didn't work visually, they would simply
reshoot it. Even though they had access to a visual effects team,
Dana chose to build most practical effects in camera, such as
stacking several filters onto the lens to create a super surreal
look for some scenes, knowing he would be satisfied with the
results instead of leaving it up to post production or visual
effects to create his vision. You can see season four of Fargo on
FX and on Hulu. Find Dana Gonzales: https://www.danagonzales.com/
Instagram: @dana_gonzales_asc Find out even more about this
episode, with extensive show notes and links:
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