In April 2017, Netflix revealed it had reached 100 million subscribers, boosting revenue to new heights – the company later announced $2.785 billion for its second quarter.

This success is attributable to the broad range of content Netflix is now serving up – a varied menu offering new seasons of original series, comedy specials, documentaries, kids programming and no fewer than nine full-length features. This latter group includes the live-action adaptation of Death Note, the popular manga/anime series, from Blair Witch director Adam Wingard.

The supernatural horror, shot during June 2016 in Vancouver by cinematographer David Tattersall BSC, was one of the first to use the 4K Panasonic VariCam 35 (now renamed VariCam Pure), with Codex providing the smooth-running workflow.

Death Note follows high-school student Light Turner, who comes into possession of a notebook enabling him to kill any person just by scribing their name within its pages. Light converses with Ryuk, the demonic god of death, who created the tome, and decides to use his new capability to kill criminals and other wrongdoers, becoming an infamous serial killer. But, a wily gumshoe is on his trail, determined to end the reign of terror.

“Adam wanted a decidedly gritty, grimy look, and to really ramp-up the terror surrounding the appearance of Ryuk.” remarks Tattersall BSC, “The R-rated result is a bit different for sure, with plenty of blood-curdling moments, which kids should really love.”

DIT Mitch Bax on-set in Vancouver

With Netflix insisting on a 4K shoot and finish, Tattersall tested a range of Netflix-certified cameras for the production, including Sony F65, ARRI Alexa 65, Reds and the then recently-released Panasonic VariCam 35.

“All of the 4K cameras produce great images, but after side-by-side tests we selected the Panasonic Varicam 35. It has a soft, realistic creaminess to the image, whereas the others are more graphic, with harder contrast. I have to say that we ended-up falling in love with the look of the VariCam 35, and used it for 95% of the show.”

(In order to shoot certain scenes from tight corners, Tattersall was granted a special dispensation from Netflix to use an Alexa Mini.)

While dark and disturbing imagery from movies such as David Fincher’s Se7en and Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining proved inspirational, the overall look for Death Note came from the selected locations in some of the Vancouver’s more shabby and dilapidated districts – with Tattersall creating adding green and blue illumination to the existing sodium vapour lighting.

Death Note was framed with widescreen, with a 2.39:1 extraction in mind. For a more edgy visual result, Tattersall worked with DIT Mitch Bax during pre-production to create a series of LUTs, which were applied non-destructively on-set to the Panasonic VRAW, and also to perform on-set grading. You can read more about Bax and his work using the Codex-enabled workflow here

Tattersall and Wingard also decided to imbue the imagery with an ultra-shallow depth-of-field, using either darkness or bokeh to envelop the characters. This saw the cinematographer pairing the Varicam 35 with Zeiss Master Prime spherical lenses, typically shooting at T2.2.

The Varicam 35 offers two ISO ratings, but Tattersall explains that the mainstay of the production was shot at 800 rather than 5,000 ISO. “Although we were shooting quite a lot at night or on stage in low light levels, the 800 ISO rating better supported our decision to have a narrow depth-of-field.”

Taking a less-is-more approach to heighten the dramatic tension, the audience is given brief glimpses of Ryuk – such as a silhouette, a finger or red eyes emerging from the darkness. However, Tattersall took things even further by also introducing what he calls, “some funky, far-out photography”.

“When Ryuk appears, I suggested to Adam that we really mess around with the image by leaning or rolling the camera over to one side or the other,” he says.

Accordingly, by fitting the camera with a P+S Skater Scope, Tattersall could pivot the lens block and rotate the picture, sometimes a full 360-degrees, often getting to within half an inch of the ground. On other occasions, a Lensbaby was used to change the axis of the focal plane, giving selective focus and blurring. He also employed the age-old trick of smearing Vaseline on the lenses to deliver a disturbing aesthetic.

Of course, Tattersall is highly-aware that since shooting Death Note, the VariCam 35 has undergone significant reengineering – courtesy of further collaboration between Panasonic and Codex – to deliver a new, more compact all-in-one camera and 4K recoding module, now available as the Varicam Pure.

“The original Varicam 35 is quite physically long, which proved a little tricky, especially when shooting on handheld, or in awkward corners,” he says. “But you can forgive that because of the quality of the image. I really liked the colour sensitivity and smoothness of contrast it produced. Since we shot Death Note, Panasonic has released the much smaller Varicam Pure, with improved Codex 4K recording and workflow capabilities, and I can’t want for the opportunity to get my hands on to it.”