Vox Populi - Rome

This miniseries became a huge task for cinematographers Alik Sakharov, Maco Ponecorvo and Martin Kenzie. The major pressure was to make everything look realistic. Which is exactly what shut the show down after the first three episodes. They were “Too Pristine” according to HBO standards. Therefore the problem fell to the cinematographers.
One issue that was dealt with rather well would be the backgrounds, extras and scenery. In order to fix this, first they had to make it look old, used and decayed. They examined old ruins in rome to find out how to make the textures look and feel like Rome. They actually shot many outdoor scenes right on the hillsides of rome and its neighboring cities. In order to make the extras and scenery fit into the setting, they keep most of the inside shots of a building out of focus. In other words, the focused the camera on who ever was speaking and fading everything in the background as to make it feel and seem not important. They used one big light directly over the buildings to help bring color to the faces and little lights positioned in windows to give off the effect of sunlight penetrating the windows.
Something else they needed to distinguish was the differences between the rich and the poor. In order to due this they used a mixture of lighting and costume effects. If they were shooting in a poor area, they used very few lights and mostly candles with dirty clothing and unclean buildings. This helped to make the feeling of “dirt poor” become reality. In order to bring the rich to light, they used extravagantly bright colors and mostly daylight shots with clean buildings. They used bright lights as well to make the effect of being rich and almost godly come to life. Something that you can grasp.
They also used cranes to help with the shooting of battles. Take the battle in the opening scene. The cinematographer wanted to throw the audience into the mix right away and therefore used cameramen to shoot most of it. This way the viewer was right in the mix. He focused two cameras on fictional characters to bring out the importance of each. His many goal was the reality of it. He even went so far as to tell the cameramen that it didn't matter if they were catching each other in the shots, they would edited them out later.
Another effect that the cinematographer used to his advantage would be smoke and dust. He used these to element not only to help keep everything looking realistic, but to also help direct the focus of the camera from one to another. During the Senate shots, he lets the smoke from the candles give a shadow on some characters, while others on in direct sunlight the entire time. This hints on the importance of certain characters. Take for example Caesar. He was usually shot in with a mixture of bright light and smoke. His day shots were usually very bright it the focus always on him. The smoke and dust also helped to make other scenes look like it actually happened and was real. The fight scene used allot of dust to make it seem like the soldiers were truly fighting and smoke was used regularly in buildings of concern.
All in all, the mixture of lighting, smoke, dust and perfect costuming made this miniseries a great hit. All elements played off of each other rather well. The show went from being “too pristine” to actually fitting into its time period.