POV Perspectives: DOP Jomo Fray on capturing Nickel Boys

By Oliver Webb

 (Images: 2024 Amazon Content Services LLC.)

Shot from both the first- and third person perspectives, DOP Jomo Fray’s immersive imagery brings to life RaMell Ross’ adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s award-winning 2019 novel. Back in 2018, Fray was at a Sundance screening of RaMell Ross’ first film, Hale County This Morning, This Evening.

“I remember sitting there after the movie had finished,” he begins. “I was profoundly moved, and trying to process what I had just seen. Flash forward to four years later and I was hell-bent on getting into the room where RaMell was working on a narrative project. Even just to talk to the person who had made Hale County. When I heard he wasn’t just the director but also the cinematographer, I became even more interested in understanding how he’d crafted those images. That was my way in, and from that first meeting, it almost feels like RaMell and I have been in an unending conversation.”

Fray and Ross stopped using the term ‘point of view’ when it came to their early discussions about the look of Nickel Boys. “We started talking about what we had coined a ‘sentient image’,” explains Fray. “Ideally, we wanted an image that felt inextricably tied to a human body in the present tense, that almost seemed like the camera was an organ inside the body. We were trying to create an image that felt immersive, pulling the audience inside of not only the bodies, but the very consciousness of Elwood and Turner. “When the camera goes through the space and pans, or looks at certain items or things in the space, that was our attempt to visualise how your mind creates meaning and how you form understanding and associations inside your own space. In the case of this story, these are two Black boys navigating an often-hostile environment and thinking about the American Jim Crow South that they live in.”

Ross and Fray got up close and personal with the actors to create an ultra-immersive visual journey

The film continually shifts between the perspectives of Elwood and Turner throughout. Fray and Ross also decided early on in the process that they wanted to shoot every scene as a oner because it would enable the actors to go through the entirety of that scene’s emotions. “We never gave actors any marks, and we knew that we were going to cut in post,” adds Fray. “It meant whatever apparatus we were using with the camera, we had to sustain for the entire movement of the scene. We had to do lots of camera tests to figure out the systems, not only for them to work, but to make sure they felt evocative and emotionally tied to whatever Elwood or Turner were going through from moment to moment.”

For Fray, the process of thinking about cinematography in a different way was a true joy. “There are moments when the camera appears to hug Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor. That’s actually me, RaMell or the camera operator Sam Ellison physically hugging that person, and I think something happens to you when you are creating that kind of image. How do you imbue the camera with that very consciousness of Elwood? Then suddenly, the person you’re looking at in front of you isn’t Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, but your own grandmother. When you’re having physical interactions with the actor, at some point the lines start blurring between the actor and your scene partner. That was an interesting aspect of shooting from both of their perspectives in this movie.”

The capturing of Nickel Boys involved unlearning everything Fray had previously known about cinematography. “It was a totally different level of thinking about vulnerability and connection,” he says. “The process fundamentally asked me and every other crew member to unlearn everything we thought we knew about cinema. RaMell said he was interested in capturing images of Black life that he’s not seen elsewhere before. It ultimately meant rethinking how we used our tools. I’m so grateful to our crew and camera team – every single one of these artists proved to be such aggressive problem solvers, both in throwing out the book on how we normally do things and in taking on the challenge of what RaMell was asking for. I also think this speaks volumes about RaMell’s leadership. He’s fun to problem solve with and gets super excited about seeing the solutions.”

Fray and Ross looked at Lady in the Lake as a visual reference, which was one of the first films to employ a full POV perspective. “Besides that, we didn’t watch any other films that employed POV,” admits Fray. “We were primarily inspired by films that had left strong emotional impressions on us. Ida was a major reference, as were The Tree of Life, Hard to Be a God and Tarkovsky’s Mirror. Honestly, RaMell’s Hale County was also a big inspiration point. We wanted to drill down on the language and what made it so special, and then to modify that so we could scale it into this new narrative space.”

The story’s setting is based on the Dozier School for Boys in Florida, so the production team were very conscious of the fact that they were making a movie about real people who lost their lives there. As well as incorporating archival footage into the film, clips from the 1958 film The Defiant Ones are also featured. “RaMell, alongside our archival producer and our producer and co-writer Joslyn Barnes, had been mining archival footage for three or four years before we even got started on production. By the time the script came to me, almost all the archival assets we see in the movie had already been written into the script, each scene having a hyperlink that would take you to the exact clip used in the edit. The movie felt very free-floating, almost like jazz, but we forget that jazz isn’t defined by improvisation. First and foremost, jazz is music – it’s part of a practice that is heavily regimented and patterned but has moments of improvisation within it. Nickel Boys emulates this, in that RaMell and I meticulously planned our shot list beforehand to orchestrate the elements we wanted to see in the order we wanted to see them.”

The film was shot over roughly 30 days, with a few days lost due to Covid-19. Fray opted to shoot with the Sony VENICE and Panavision VA lenses, custom designed and built by Dan Sasaki at Panavision. Only one shot in the entire film actually depicts Elwood and Turner together, which required lots of planning. “The shot is simultaneously complicated and deceptively simple,” explains Fray.

“Since prep, RaMell had been talking about wanting to capture this single image in which we see Elwood and Turner at the same time; he wanted it to be in a reflection. RaMell, production designer Nora Mendis and I were doing a location scout in New Orleans. We were standing outside of this old train station, the three of us looked up and there’s a glass portico. We looked at each other and realised that’s the location we had been searching for. The shot consists of a few composite elements pulled together. To start with, we put the camera on a remote head on a dolly and hung it above the actors. We moved through the space, capturing their performance from above, then from there we brought the camera down to eye level and shot into the portico itself. We worked with The Artery VFX studio to help achieve the shot, and they were incredible collaborators.”

“Working with RaMell was truly a dream,” concludes Fray. “He’s such a brilliant leader and director that showing up to work was a joy. You’re sure to be inspired in every single interaction and you will be asked for the impossible. The set had this energy where everyone felt like they were doing something they had never seen before, no matter how many years they’d worked in filmmaking. There was a real excitement and joy in the air because of that.”

*This article originally appeared in January's edition of Definition Magazine.