“Breaking Bad,” Vince Gilligan’s tale of an Albuquerque chemistry-teacher-turned-methamphetamine-cook, helped define the new Golden Age of television not simply on the strength of its terrifyingly compelling characters, but with its visual audacity.
At a moment when TV was claiming its place in the artistic pantheon, “Breaking Bad” developed a clear visual language, juxtaposing the orange of the New Mexico desert, the blue of the Southwestern sky and the show’s exceptionally pure meth, the yellow and green of Walter White’s (Bryan Cranston) meth-cooking outfits and deep chemical greens to striking effect. And the show helped a group of directors, including Michelle MacLaren, become just as famous as their counterparts in film.
That was a significant legacy for “Better Call Saul,” the prequel to “Breaking Bad” that premiered Sunday night, to inherit. But from the very first moments of “Better Call Saul,” which follows the rise of Walter White’s lawyer Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk) to his role as 1-800 king of the Albuquerque legal scene, it was clear that Gilligan and his co-creator Peter Gould, aren’t intimidated by the prospect of matching their previous achievements.
The black-and-white short movie that kicked off the new series was a stunning departure from the “Breaking Bad” style. Watching the formerly cocky Saul hiding behind a moustache and a job at a Cinn-a-bon set the stakes for the episode that followed: Every step of Saul’s rise will be shadowed by what we know of his eventual destination.
At the Television Critics Association Press Tour in January, I asked Gilligan and Gould how they planned to distinguish their two series from each other.
One thing that was critical was the role of the camera in shaping the atmosphere.
Gilligan directed the pilot episodes of both shows, “so we were able to sit down and really talk about what’s the same, what’s different. One of the things that we talked about was ‘Breaking Bad’ had a handheld camera,” Gould said. “There was always a little bit of motion to it. If you were on our set, you would have seen usually the two camera operators with these big film cameras on their shoulders. This show the camera tends to be, not always, but it tends to be more static and locked down, so it changes the feeling of it. Sometimes you almost feel like (Saul) is struggling against the corners of the frame.”
When he was shooting the “Breaking Bad” pilot, Gilligan said, “I was thinking of William Friedkin and the way he shot ‘The French Connection,’ that news gathering handheld that Peter spoke of, not the caffeinated (stuff), but the old Korean War combat photographers, the old newsreel guys who didn’t have the ability to carry a camera with them, so they held it as still as they humanly could and yet it still breathed. But I was thinking of Friedkin. I was thinking of Sergio Leone a lot.”
Another influence was Bernardo Bertolucci, particularly his 1970 political assassination movie “The Conformist.” Gilligan said he particularly loved the way that movie tends to catch characters when they are alone in corners, a choice that increases the film’s sense of paranoia.
Gould and Gilligan have style books, full of shot compositions they love and inspiring images. And much like in “Breaking Bad,” they’re thinking about a color palette, too. Because Saul is spending his time in offices and garages, they don’t have the bright blue of Walt’s incredibly pure product as an anchor.
“We try to think of ways to use color in this show that maybe has a slightly different theme to it or different elements,” Gould said, suggesting they were still searching, “really everything coming out of (Saul’s) character, really, his point of view and how he sees the world.”
But doing everything well doesn’t necessarily mean starting from scratch every time.
“It’s very hard to reinvent the wheel,” Gilligan said. “There’s only so many places you can put a camera because, really, at the end of the day, this” – and with that, Gilligan framed his face with his hands – “is all that really matters when you’re telling a story about people.”
