クマの映像技術の背後にある5つの重要な視覚的参照点

For four seasons, The Bear has taken the adage “if you can’t handle the heat, get out of the kitchen” to psychological extremes. Rarely can the inventive, disciplined head chef Carmy Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) handle his demons, but he’d never leave the only place he can prove himself. The hit restaurant drama stars White, Ayo Edebiri, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, and a fleet of character actors and famous guest stars in the ongoing saga of Michelin star ambitions, Italian beef sandwiches, and fallout from the terminally dysfunctional Berzatto clan.

The show’s creator (and frequently, director) Christopher Storer blesses his characters with his own film obsession – Cousin Richie (Moss-Bachrach) is a vocal devotee of Ridley Scott and William Friedkin. But The Bear distinguishes itself with a frenetic, information-overload visual style with clear, expressive cinematic influences. Emmy-winning cinematographer Drew Wehde has shot every episode of The Bear apart from the pilot, and has worked with Christopher Storer for years on comedy specials for Bo Burnham, Ramy Youssef, and Jerrod Carmichael before the show took off. 

“It’s funny, if someone told me four years ago that I get to make a TV show and it’s gonna be Michael Mann versus Scorsese versus Tony Scott, I’d be like, how is this possible?” Wehde tells AnOther, fresh off the third wave of Emmy nominations for The Bear. 

From Martin Scorsese to Chef’s Table, here, The Bear cinematographer Drew Wehde unpacks five of the biggest influences on the series’ visual design. 

Tony Scott (Man on Fire, Deja Vu, Unstoppable)

“Every morning, Tony [Scott] spent an hour with his director of photography and his assistant director, and they walked through the whole day. That was the only time that DP got to speak to Tony like that. Chris [Storer] and I have a very similar thing. It’s like, ‘Here’s the day. This is what we’re doing. Take care of it.’ It leaves a lot of responsibility to deliver for him.

“Tony made crazy looking stuff. It’s all about experimentation. So many people are afraid to experiment in a real situation. That’s what we took from Tony: why are we not [experimenting]? We don’t need to play this safe. Tony is our spirit animal, you can see it a lot in the really long zoom lenses, the really tight stuff. That’s all Tony.”

Michael Mann (Thief, Heat, Collateral)

“Stealing is one thing, but being inspired by people is inevitable within our business. Thief specifically, pieces of Heat – these are visual storytelling elements that we feel no one has really done since Michael Mann did it, and no one previously. Mann is the punch. It’s very obvious, when we [use] a little bit of a wider lens and close-ups, you know it’s Mann. When the colour washes, you know it’s Mann. The way we move the camera and follow people through space, it’s Mann. He’s a very visceral filmmaker, and everything he does, from how he marries music, visuals, sound effects, it’s an experience that no one really does.” 

Martin Scorsese (Goodfellas, Casino, Mean Streets)

“Scorsese is [in] a lot of our hard light, the top-down lighting – that really hot light above. And then it’s that tracking, having somebody take you from one room to another room. Casino and Goodfellas has this thing where it’s like, let’s not just cut to the room, let’s let someone take us there. Let’s experience that moment, that breath, those steps, following them. Marty’s really important. No one else does Marty, no one else does Michael Mann, no one else does Tony Scott. If you combine the three, it makes something really interesting. And I think that’s The Bear.”

Steven Soderbergh (Out of Sight, Ocean’s Eleven, The Knick)

“Soderbergh was somebody that Chris and I have talked about for a decade now. We would watch Ocean’s Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen back to back and call each other like, why does no one talk about these? Obviously, that was when he was shooting on film, but Behind the Candelabra, The Knick – he’s creating choices immediately on set. He’s definitive on what he needs, not over-shooting or over-complicating, editing on his way home, editing at night. We’ve been fortunate to know people who work on his crew, so we’ve gotten a lot of insight into his process. I think our workflow is designed how Steven works. Because of that, a lot of his traits rub off on what we do.

“He’s not following rules. He shoots every scene in the way that’s best for that moment. The key to Steven is simple storytelling. Don’t overthink it. I can talk forever about him, but it’s also hard for me to pinpoint, because I feel like every scene we do has Steven’s influence. We never actually say it, but we just do it.”

Read our guide to the films of Steven Soderbergh here. 

Chef’s Table

“Part of our food [footage] feels individual to us. It is a little bit rawer. But in seasons three and four, you start to see a little bit of Chef’s Table coming into it. But again, we’re shooting big zooms and going super close into them. We want to see the actors do things. So the camera is up to their face, to their hand, placing it on the food. How can we connect all of that? Adam Bricker, who shoots Chef’s Table, is one of my dear friends and super talented. I don’t know how he does it.

“Looking back, one of the first things Chris and I ever did was actually a documentary for Thomas Keller at The French Laundry, and we kind of shot it like Chef’s Table, but it was docu-style. It’s more like the sushi documentary [Jiro Dreams of Sushi], where I was following these chefs through kitchens. It was almost like watching art happening. It wasn’t technical, it was more observational. We liked the idea, so we brought this over and continued it 12 years later.”

The Bear season four is streaming on Disney+ now. 

For four seasons, The Bear has taken the adage “if you can’t handle the heat, get out of the kitchen” to psychological extremes. Rarely can the inventive, disciplined head chef Carmy Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) handle his demons, but he’d never leave the only place he can prove himself. The hit restaurant drama stars White, Ayo Edebiri, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, and a fleet of character actors and famous guest stars in the ongoing saga of Michelin star ambitions, Italian beef sandwiches, and fallout from the terminally dysfunctional Berzatto clan.

The show’s creator (and frequently, director) Christopher Storer blesses his characters with his own film obsession – Cousin Richie (Moss-Bachrach) is a vocal devotee of Ridley Scott and William Friedkin. But The Bear distinguishes itself with a frenetic, information-overload visual style with clear, expressive cinematic influences. Emmy-winning cinematographer Drew Wehde has shot every episode of The Bear apart from the pilot, and has worked with Christopher Storer for years on comedy specials for Bo Burnham, Ramy Youssef, and Jerrod Carmichael before the show took off. 

“It’s funny, if someone told me four years ago that I get to make a TV show and it’s gonna be Michael Mann versus Scorsese versus Tony Scott, I’d be like, how is this possible?” Wehde tells AnOther, fresh off the third wave of Emmy nominations for The Bear. 

From Martin Scorsese to Chef’s Table, here, The Bear cinematographer Drew Wehde unpacks five of the biggest influences on the series’ visual design. 

Tony Scott (Man on Fire, Deja Vu, Unstoppable)

“Every morning, Tony [Scott] spent an hour with his director of photography and his assistant director, and they walked through the whole day. That was the only time that DP got to speak to Tony like that. Chris [Storer] and I have a very similar thing. It’s like, ‘Here’s the day. This is what we’re doing. Take care of it.’ It leaves a lot of responsibility to deliver for him.

“Tony made crazy looking stuff. It’s all about experimentation. So many people are afraid to experiment in a real situation. That’s what we took from Tony: why are we not [experimenting]? We don’t need to play this safe. Tony is our spirit animal, you can see it a lot in the really long zoom lenses, the really tight stuff. That’s all Tony.”

Michael Mann (Thief, Heat, Collateral)

“Stealing is one thing, but being inspired by people is inevitable within our business. Thief specifically, pieces of Heat – these are visual storytelling elements that we feel no one has really done since Michael Mann did it, and no one previously. Mann is the punch. It’s very obvious, when we [use] a little bit of a wider lens and close-ups, you know it’s Mann. When the colour washes, you know it’s Mann. The way we move the camera and follow people through space, it’s Mann. He’s a very visceral filmmaker, and everything he does, from how he marries music, visuals, sound effects, it’s an experience that no one really does.” 

Martin Scorsese (Goodfellas, Casino, Mean Streets)

“Scorsese is [in] a lot of our hard light, the top-down lighting – that really hot light above. And then it’s that tracking, having somebody take you from one room to another room. Casino and Goodfellas has this thing where it’s like, let’s not just cut to the room, let’s let someone take us there. Let’s experience that moment, that breath, those steps, following them. Marty’s really important. No one else does Marty, no one else does Michael Mann, no one else does Tony Scott. If you combine the three, it makes something really interesting. And I think that’s The Bear.”

Steven Soderbergh (Out of Sight, Ocean’s Eleven, The Knick)

“Soderbergh was somebody that Chris and I have talked about for a decade now. We would watch Ocean’s Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen back to back and call each other like, why does no one talk about these? Obviously, that was when he was shooting on film, but Behind the Candelabra, The Knick – he’s creating choices immediately on set. He’s definitive on what he needs, not over-shooting or over-complicating, editing on his way home, editing at night. We’ve been fortunate to know people who work on his crew, so we’ve gotten a lot of insight into his process. I think our workflow is designed how Steven works. Because of that, a lot of his traits rub off on what we do.

“He’s not following rules. He shoots every scene in the way that’s best for that moment. The key to Steven is simple storytelling. Don’t overthink it. I can talk forever about him, but it’s also hard for me to pinpoint, because I feel like every scene we do has Steven’s influence. We never actually say it, but we just do it.”

Read our guide to the films of Steven Soderbergh here. 

Chef’s Table

“Part of our food [footage] feels individual to us. It is a little bit rawer. But in seasons three and four, you start to see a little bit of Chef’s Table coming into it. But again, we’re shooting big zooms and going super close into them. We want to see the actors do things. So the camera is up to their face, to their hand, placing it on the food. How can we connect all of that? Adam Bricker, who shoots Chef’s Table, is one of my dear friends and super talented. I don’t know how he does it.

“Looking back, one of the first things Chris and I ever did was actually a documentary for Thomas Keller at The French Laundry, and we kind of shot it like Chef’s Table, but it was docu-style. It’s more like the sushi documentary [Jiro Dreams of Sushi], where I was following these chefs through kitchens. It was almost like watching art happening. It wasn’t technical, it was more observational. We liked the idea, so we brought this over and continued it 12 years later.”

The Bear season four is streaming on Disney+ now.