CBS’s Cold Case Watching The Detectives: The Forensics of Flashbacks

Television is where Mark Pellington grew up as a director, first making promos for MTV when it blasted onto the air, then segueing into directing music videos – his most famous is Pearl Jam’s " Jeremy "- then helming commercials for Gatorade and ADD cures. Grab the remote, and you’ll find Pellington’s features, the thrillers Arlington Road and The Mothman Prophecies, on cable. But with the exception of one episode of Homicide, he had never done a primetime episodic until this pilot season. Pellington is a driven polymath, not likely to sit on the sidelines of any film format. So after a reading eight scripts and taking a cycle of meetings this year, he found himself responding to Meredith Stiehm’s script for Cold Case and decided to throw himself into the foot-race of eight-day shoots and four-day edits with the extra challenge of making a series that wasn’t just another cop show.

Pellington’s attention was snagged by the complex, flawed female cop lead. Cold Case had a psychological angle he felt he could mine, but it was the element of flashbacks illuminating the original crime that he really thought he could work.

"I like mysteries," says Pellington. "I like psychological themes because there’s darkness and you can explore abstract themes. The idea of being able to go into a period and literally use the film stock so stylistically in the flashbacks was appealing. I said,‘Great, so I’ll be able to be in the 70s for 1 / 4 of the show,’ and that’s kind of cool."

Pilot season is like a triathlon for a producer/director. It’s also the most creative part of television- defining a look, hiring creatives and actors, and then finally culminating in selling the network. Finding himself on a new playing field, Pellington felt he’d get the visual look he’d imagined more easily with a DP he had an existing shorthand with and so he brought in Tom Richmond ( Slums of Beverly Hills, Killing Zoe), who’d shot music videos with him, including " Jeremy." It was a security blanket as the two had a working relationship, but it was also a gamble as Richmond hadn’t done episodic before. That was a plus in Pellington’s view. He says he knew that Richmond would get what he was trying to do with the flashback sequences, which he felt should use techniques that contrasted with the more traditional show footage.

"If I was going to be a little bit rock-and-roll in this show, or if I was going to do stuff that was slightly unorthodox, I knew that I needed a DP that would get it," Pellington says. From his videos through Mothman Prophecies, Pellington has established himself as a stylist born of the information age, layering data, symbols, feedback, and modes of perception together to create riveting film images.

For the subsequent episodes, Pellington brought in another DP with chops in music video and commercials, Eric Schmidt, who shot the Flaming Lips video " Do You Realize? " and several Gatorade spots with him. "I thought he’d be able to bring an enthusiasm," says Pellington, "a vitality and a fresh perspective from the world of video and commercials to these narrative flashbacks instead of saying,‘Just shoot the negative and come up with some gimmick in post.’ You cannot rely on color correction to be your look, you’ve got to have something coming out of the box that’s different. You can do a lot in film-to-tape but you can’t use it as a crutch."

Unable to resist getting as close to the frame as possible, Pellington almost always gets his hands on the camera except on features.

"Sometimes I just like to pick the camera up because I need to get in there and feel the scenes and sometimes I’m just bored. I wouldn’t do it for a really complicated, elaborate dolly move. I’m not confident of my skills on the wheels but on commercials I operate all the time because I’m just finding frames and cutting it my head." The flashback scenes in Cold Case are where this series diverges from other cop series, bringing to life the memories of crimes that have been gathering dust in police department file cabinets.

Pellington grabbed the camera to operate for a particularly confrontational sequence where detective Lilly Rush ( Kathryn Morris) questions a suspect in a parking lot. And for a key scene in the pilot that flashes back to moments after a murder, he also shouldered a camera and told a gaffer to get right into the face of his actor with a sun gun. Shot on 16mm Ektachrome 7239 160 daylight reversal stock at night, the scene evokes the highly stylized imagery of memory. "I convinced them to shoot the Vision2 stock," says Pellington, who likes the stock’s blacks. "It gave us great malleability for the series and means that anything we do for flashbacks, be it Super 8, 35, infrared, [or] reversal, will look more unique."

DP Eric Schmidt shot his flashbacks with Pellington using Vision2, pushed one stop under incredibly low-light situations. Other flashbacks for an episode directed by Paris Barclay, set in the 80s, were shot on Ektachrome 5285 100 daylight stock pushed two stops to 400 ASA and overexposed a stop-and-a-half to two-thirds, with much of the footage shot at 60 or 120 fps.

"We worked pretty closely with the colorist at R!ot, Gino Panaro," says Pellington. "We added contrast and cooled it off a bit and shot the flashbacks with more lurid color so that it feels like a documentary shot in the 70s."

Among the discoveries Pellington made in editing the pilot was an important one about rhythm. "Probably my pacing was construed to be a little bit slow, frankly, for TV. The murder at the end of the pilot was slightly slower and a little creepier in my original cut. But when three shots were lost and two little things were tightened, the feeling of it- where I put the camera, the way it was lit- was retained. That’s a certain kind of speed aesthetic that Jerry Bruckheimer and Jonathan Littman get."

Pellington has opted not to make TV his day job, but remains with the series as a consulting producer. "My role is to talk to every director about what their ideas are for the design of every show and just keep quality control." After directing some spots this fall, Pellington will be attaching talent to two films he’s been working on. "They’re more independent-minded, still probably able to attract talent, but not big huge star action movies or big romantic comedy things," he says.

Before the TV experience, Pellington had figured it would take him 55 days to shoot one of his pictures. Now he’s gotten the schedule down to 38 days. "The TV thing’s been good," Pellington says, "I can still make something look good and with less time and a smaller machine."

Executive Producers: Jerry Bruckheimer, Jonathan Littman, Meredith Stiehm

Producer: Perry Husman

DPs: Tom Richmond (pilot); Eric Schmidt (series)

Offline Editor (s): Conrad Gonzalez (pilot); Michael Ruscio, Maja Vrvioo (series)

Post-production: R!ot / Santa Monica

Dailies Colorist: Frank Berrios

Color Correction: Gino Panaro

Postproduction Supervisor: Elle Gereau