CNN: Parts Unknown: Anthony Bourdain: Puglia

What is great and also scary about PUAB episodes, is the Director/DP/Editor “buy.in” to our looks, film “mood” and cinematography. When we put together the gear list for this Puglia episode, we talked a lot about Sergio Leone films… spaghetti westerns, and different looks of this little understood region of Italy with stark and beautiful landscapes, a barely concealed tradition of paganism and tarantism. We decided on matted anamorphic with Panavision lenses, and with much trepidation, shot much of the show looking for zooms (in and out) and a continual nuanced drift that would make the audience second guess our “less than obvious” framing.

The shooting was inspired by each location and the edit was fantastic: our decisions to create a constantly moving piece, where the entire episode felt never stagnant, but in constant motion to find what an “other” that is not happening in the frame, but is lurking somewhere on the edges or just outside of them. It was another great episode and given some of the star power (Francis Ford Coppola among others), the show became another epic piece of creative Tony magic..