‘Fallout’ cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh on leaning into the Western genre for the video game adaptation [Exclusive Video Interview]

When acclaimed cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh was first approached about working on the Prime Video series “Fallout,” his first step was to look at the source material: the blockbuster video game on which the Amazon series is based.

“I looked at some of the play-throughs of the game and made some assumptions about the [show] looking sort of treated and gamey,” Dryburgh tells Gold Derby in an exclusive video interview as part of our Meet the Experts: Cinematographers panel. “I even pulled a whole bunch of visuals from Pinterest to support the idea.”

But when Dryburgh met with director and executive producer Jonathan Nolan, most of his initial research was tossed aside.

“Jonah said, ‘Yeah, those are all very interesting, but, no, we’re not doing it like that,’” Dryburgh says. “His tastes are much more straightforward in terms of screen storytelling. And if you take a look at ‘Westworld’ as an example [which Nolan created with Lisa Joy], it’s a very clean look. It leans into the idea of the Western a bit, but visually it’s clean and well-photographed. And that’s ultimately what we did with ‘Fallout.’”

Created by Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner, “Fallout” is largely set in 2296, 200 years after a nuclear war wiped out most of humanity. Those who survived the war live in underground bunkers, or Vaults, including Lucy (Ella Purnell), who goes on a quest to rescue her father (Kyle MacLachlan) after a raid on their home base. Along the way, Lucy encounters numerous unsavory survivors, including the Ghoul (Walton Goggins), a disfigured bounty hunter who has roamed the Earth since the bombs fell in 2077. Back then, the Ghoul was known as Cooper Howard, a Hollywood actor best known for appearing in several Westerns.

Across its eight-episode first season “Fallout” travels back and forth through time, showing the origins of the franchise’s infamous Vaults and the events that directly led to World War. But the series opens at the end of the world, in Los Angeles on the day the bombs fell.

“The opening takes place somewhere in the Hollywood Hills from the looks of things when the bombs drop, but we shot that in upstate New York, in a postmodern house,” Dryburgh says of the gripping opening sequence. But other than adding Los Angeles landmarks in the distance through visual effects, so much of the bombing sequence was done in the camera, including the flash of light that signifies the end. “We had a huge rack of Creamsource panel lights on a big rack – like 12 of them, bam. It was really blasting,” Dryburgh says. “Then the special effects department did a whole gag with air cannons and debris to create the shockwave that appears behind them.”

Dryburgh has been a cinematographer for years, earning an Oscar nomination for Jane Campion’s “The Piano” in 1993 and an Emmy nomination for “Boardwalk Empire.” With “Fallout,” despite the show being set within a retrofuture alternate universe, he tried to pull from classical action movies and Westerns when creating the visual palette – and, by doing so, remained faithful to the video game even if all that Pinterest research was deemed unnecessary. “That sort of supports the world that has been created,” he says of the stylized action scenes and overall approach. “This sort of 50s-era, Futurism is inherently in the game and we really celebrated it in the series.

All episodes of “Fallout” are streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

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