Interview: Cinematographer Zachary Galler on ‘Lessons in Chemistry’

Cinematographer Zach Galler has worked on projects from The Girlfriend Experience to Dr. Death, but just recently earned his first Emmy nomination for his camerawork on Lessons and Chemistry. Over the phone, Galler chatted with us about Little Miss Hastings, the episode he episode he’s nominated for. He shared everything that went into the opening shot and how, through some old-school style tricks, the show’s team made it look like one long shot. Galler talked about what unexpectedly didn’t happen while shooting the show and also talked about working with Brie Larson and Lewis Pullman.

Ayla Ruby: Congratulations first of all on the nomination. It’s huge and very deserved.

Zach Galler: Thank you very much.

Ayla Ruby: What can you share about it? What does it mean to you? And anything you want to share about all of that?

Zach Galler:I’m just thrilled and so excited and honored to be nominated. I really had an amazing time making the show and felt like creatively it was just a really special project and the people that I’ve worked with were really special, and it really is just a testament to how good the crew is in LA and how good everyone that worked on the show was. I’m really just so happy and honored to be nominated along with truly some of my cinematographer heroes, and I just am so happy.

Ayla Ruby: That’s wonderful. So the show is wonderful and I’d love to know what appealed to it for you and how you got on the project and how you knew it was special.

Zach Galler: I got brought in by a producer and knew that the project was special just when I could see how people were reacting to the book and knew that people really liked the story. A lot of times I won’t read a book that a script is based on, just so that I don’t… Because I’m going to have to shoot the script. I don’t want to end up being disappointed. So I didn’t read the book before we shot, but just judging from everybody’s reaction to the book and how many were just so in love with it, I knew that the characters were going to be great. And sure enough, once we started reading scripts, they were great. And yeah, it was wonderful to have such a well-developed idiosyncratic character that was a really great lens to look at all the different things that the show examines, from human relationships and loss to history, what happened in the United States ’50s.

Ayla Ruby: Was there anything that was really important to you to make sure that came through with the work and with how you were shooting it?

Zach Galler: I think planning out how we were going to make the show, something that was really important was to not look back on the past with a particular nostalgia. The goal, I think, for Sarah Adina Smith and I, in the pilot was to not have people look at the past with rose colored glasses, but have them experience everything that was going on with these characters in a contemporary way. And we wanted the camera to just lure the viewer in right away and just drop them into the world so that they could just get into it and start being entertained.

Ayla Ruby: I’m glad you mentioned her too, because I’m curious about the collaboration process and I think you worked with her in one and two, right?

Zach Galler: This was our first time working together and we met in the production office for the first time. And just sometimes you get really lucky with the director and she’s one of them, and we just had such a wonderful collaboration and felt like we had worked together for years on day one, basically. She was so great with the actors and gave the camera the freedom to move around. And her and I just collaborated really well together. And she just had such a good sense of the story and we had built these wonderful sets, our production designer Ken Smith had planned out these wonderful sets that shot so beautifully. And yes really, nomination is a testament to how good all the other people I was working with are.

Ayla Ruby: It almost feels like from the very first opening, I don’t know if it’s one shot or couple of shots of the show, we’re going through all this process to get to Elizabeth as she’s on this cooking show stage, and I’d love if you could talk about how crafting that opening, because that’s amazing.

Zach Galler: It was really fun to craft the opening shot. It hopefully looks like a oner or one shot.

Ayla Ruby: It does, but I wasn’t sure.

Zach Galler: We did one stitch in camera, which happens when you go from outside the building to the inside the building, and we just did it with a cross, like a very simple old school style technique, that somehow made it work. And I think it’s just a great way to immediately bring the viewer into the characters world, because we immediately show that we’re in the 1950s in LA and going into a TV studio. And I think it was a great way to introduce the character for people who hadn’t read the books, and then also a way to honor the character right away for the people that had read the books and didn’t necessarily know what to expect from the show. And I think just the sets are so beautiful and Chad gave us the freedom to really put the camera anywhere. And she designed really with camera in mind so that we could do these long shots and not have to cut to show off this world that we were creating.

Ayla Ruby: As a viewer. It just immediately grabbed my attention and made me invested and made me want to watch. So that was just really cool.

Zach Galler: I’m so glad. Thank you.

Ayla Ruby: You mentioned that the shot’s in the 1950s, but also through the episode you’ve got multiple time periods. How did that work as far as shooting it for you? Was there any different way of indicating the back in time versus the, I guess, present of the 1950s?

Zach Galler: We didn’t delineate things too much in camera between the two time periods. We tried to have the TV show within the show feel a little glossier and embellished, and we shot multiple camera formats in the TV show in the show. We had some old tube cameras-

Ayla Ruby: The cooking show you mean?

Zach Galler: Yeah.

Ayla Ruby: Yeah.

Zach Galler: We tried to have that feel separate and have that feel like… I think, viewers today watch so many different things on so many different formats, whether it’s on their phone or TV or on their computer. And I think there’s something about jumping between the formats within the show, jumping between the black and white tube cameras and then the other, seeing the show on other TVs, that hopefully resonated in a modern way with viewers when they were watching and drew them in, as you said. But for the different time periods, we didn’t want to delay too much in camera and did most of that just with hair and makeup, with wardrobe and costume.

Ayla Ruby: Cool. So was there anything with this episode or even with the four that you did that was really, really difficult to pull off?

Zach Galler: It’s funny. The show itself was really fun to shoot. Again, because we were just sort of freed up from a lot of limitations that you usually might have just because of the way the sets were built and how good the crew was. But we had been planning to shoot tons and tons of really in depth food photography. The first versions of the script had a lot more almost molecular level discussion of food. Like Elizabeth’s talking about the Maillard reaction, we want to show the Maillard reaction, or different food related chemistry stuff. And we were trying to figure out how to actually show that, and it was proving very difficult.

And we had been talking, we engaged with some real tabletop specialists, like when you watch food commercials and it’s like a bowl of cereal being filled and it’s super slow-mo. And you read about it and they’re actually like, “Oh, that was blue. And we had to use all kinds of wires and strings.” We were thinking about doing food stuff at a very high level that TV schedule and budget just would never allow for, so trying to figure out how to do that stuff. Well, we were still planning while we started shooting, and then after we started shooting, we realized that the chemistry between the characters was so good and them acting together, Brie and Lewis acting together was so good that we didn’t need to do any of that extra stuff to help the story along. So it was kind of a happy accident that we hadn’t shot all that stuff and figured out this really complicated technical things, because we found that we didn’t need it, just because the performances were so strong and they were telling the story without any extra help from the camera.

Ayla Ruby: That’s part of, I think, the magic of the show as a viewer of watching, it’s a ton of fun.

Zach Galler: Yeah.

Ayla Ruby: So I think I read in maybe it was Variety that you talked about the actors and how they helped with all of that. Can you talk about how the collaboration process worked?

Zach Galler: No, for my process I really like to start with thinking about how I could serve the actors the best and I want to give actors and the director the most space to move around. And the more freedom I could give actors instead of having to put down a ton of marks and say, “Sorry, you have to stand right here, or your light won’t be good.” That’s always my goal, is to try and give them freedom to work and stay out of their way. And I think Sarah and I tried to let the actors drive the blocking and drive where the camera was going to go. And I hope that we helped contribute to just how good their performances were. They always came in so prepared. And they’re both technically great actors, just really in control of the space and the environment, and just their performances were so nuanced and just really incredible to watch every day.

Ayla Ruby: That’s awesome. So this is everything that we see on screen, is just really beautiful. Do you have a favorite moment or something that you’re really proud that you were able to accomplish just professionally, technically, anything that…?

Zach Galler: Really, yeah, I would go back to that opening shot, I think was such a cool collaboration between so many different departments on set. It’s really like everybody had to be on it for that whole shot, and just through the ADs, the entire camera department, grips and electrics, who moved the camera and lit it, and then you get to see the beautiful set unfolding and then the beautiful period costumes that Mirren Gordon-Crozier designed. I feel like that particular shot… One of my favorite things about filmmaking is just the collaboration between so many different people who are all creative, doing their creative thing together, if that makes sense. Everybody’s very specialized, but you get all these specialized people working together on the same problem. And it’s the best when that happens and you find this very specific solution to everything. And it’s how, I think, the best stuff gets made. So I think that was the thing that I was the most proud of and enjoyed creating the most.

Ayla Ruby: That’s awesome. We’re just about at time, but is there anything else you want people to know about the project or your work?

Zach Galler: Just grateful that as many people watched it as did, and so honored to be talking to you and have an Emmy nomination.

Ayla Ruby: Well, thank you. I really appreciate it.

Zach Galler: Thank you very much. Thanks for talking to me.

Note: This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.