page_title: El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie
section_title: Cinematography
hierarchical_section_title: El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie / Production / Principal photography / Cinematography
caption_attribution_description: English: ARRI Rental ALEXA 65 65 mm Digital Camera
context_page_description: El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie is a 2019 American neo-Western crime thriller film that serves as a sequel and epilogue to the television series Breaking Bad, which followed chemistry teacher Walter White partnering with a former student Jesse Pinkman to become kingpins in the production of crystal meth. Series creator Vince Gilligan wrote, directed, and produced the film, while Aaron Paul reprised his role as Jesse Pinkman. The plot follows Pinkman and the events that immediately follow the series finale. Several actors involved in the television series reprise their roles, including Jesse Plemons, Robert Forster, Charles Baker, Matt Jones, Jonathan Banks, Krysten Ritter, and Bryan Cranston. El Camino was also one of Forster's final film appearances, as he died on the day of its release.
  Gilligan first began considering the story of El Camino during the filming of the final season of Breaking Bad. Gilligan approached Paul with the idea in 2017, near the tenth anniversary of Breaking Bad, and filming began in secret in New Mexico in November 2018, lasting nearly 50 days. The project remained unconfirmed until August 2019, when Netflix released a trailer.
context_section_description: The film was shot at a 2.39 widescreen aspect ratio using the Arri Alexa 65 camera to capture the work in a cinematic manner. Gilligan and cinematographer Marshall Adams primarily chose this camera for its quality in low-light filming, which the film heavily featured. This meant the film would be shot digitally, as opposed to the 35 mm movie film used on Breaking Bad. The Alexa 65 would be used in conjunction with Arri Prime DNA lenses, which Adams said helped control depth of field by maintaining color contrast and balance. The film's color palette would be graded with DaVinci Resolve; Adams did not let Breaking Bad dictate which colors he used and opted to make a palette specific to the film. To help receive dailies, production used FotoKem, who did the same work on both Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. The crew delivered footage with requested color changes to FotoKem members that were on-site, who then applied the changes to get the dailies out fairly quickly.
  Gilligan wanted the film's cinematography to maintain the naturalistic look used on Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul while also expanding it. Adams specified this as the "realistic, practical-driven looks for night exteriors and low-light interiors that embraced all the colors and looks of Albuquerque, New Mexico" that he used on Saul. Production designer Judy Rhee noted that Gilligan took advantage of his lens and wider aspect ratio to create a more visually luxurious experience, letting the wide vista shots help meet the film's plot beats rather than using more economic options commonly used for television. Adams agreed with this opinion, citing as an example the vast and empty space of the Painted Desert underscoring Jesse's sense of loneliness in Todd's captivity.
  Adams saw the film as a way to pay homage to original Breaking Bad cinematographer Michael Slovis. Though Adams took over as director of photography during the third season of Better Call Saul, he previously filmed pick-ups with Slovis during the end of Breaking Bad's fourth season and served as cinematographer during the show's fifth season premiere. For the film, Adams took great lengths to match Slovis' lensing from the series while modifying it for the film's digital format and larger aspect ratio. He specified the opening of Jesse driving out of the compound as one scene that he updated from the series using this approach. Due to its near-seamless visual transition from the same scene in "Felina", Adams likened this sequence in the film to a "direct cut" to the last time the audience saw Jesse on Breaking Bad. He applied the same principle for other scenes that used locations from the series, such as the compound and the vacuum store.
  In order to distinguish the flashback scenes from the ones set in the present, Gilligan decided against using different color saturation. He instead chose to have flashbacks filmed in a "handheld" look while having the present-day scenes more anchored and locked-down. This was inspired by the fact that much of Breaking Bad was filmed handheld. As the Alexa 65 camera would be too large to carry while filming, Gilligan achieved the "wiggling" effect by placing the camera on top of a truck airbag that could be inflated and deflated easily between two plastic plates.
caption: The Arri Alexa 65 was chosen to film El Camino due to its quality in capturing low-light.
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