Over the summer, I finally watched The Wire. I tried to watch it in college, and also caught a little of later seasons when it was on in the mid 2000s, but had never gotten into it. The Sopranos—which I’ve written about here on the site—has always been my favorite show, and I watched that in full 2014-15, also after having dabbled beforehand.
Knowing the concerns of creator David Simon through his recent work (The Deuce, Show Me a Hero) helped prepare me to experience The Wire—a thoughtful, intricate weave of societal themes; ensemble storytelling; and real weight to the lives of the characters, their actions, and the greater world they inhabit.
In short, The Wire is brilliant. Rather than feeling removed, it achieves a societal examination—how political institutions, economics, and human nature intertwine in modern America—through realism. Baltimore is the said and actual setting, and the wide-ranging cast of professionals and local residents brings the city to life. Over 5 seasons, with a slightly different thematic focus in each, The Wire achieves its thesis and completes its compelling narrative.
I always admired The Sopranos for its classic cinematography. Its compositions, medium-to-wide focal lengths, and overall filmic look match with my sensibility, and its camera movement while stylistic and with flare, was more understated to my untrained eye. The Wire, with a much more alive camera and longer focal lengths, expanded my palette—the best cinematography is that which fits the style of the narrative. The show led me to appreciate a visual style different than what I gravitate toward, but one that I ended up very much appreciating and admiring.
Visually, The Wire immerses you into the city of Baltimore and the drama of its world and institutions. The on-location approach is a boon for the show’s success. Everything from downtown cityscapes to the streets of the neighborhoods pop with an authenticity that simply would not exist with more stage use (though there is some), or subbing in another city. The show plays like a documentary of real people and events.
The camera is a key element. On conversational scenes, where important plot details—and personality quirks—emerge, the camera will slide on a dolly, favoring long focal lengths (they compress the image and allow the camera to be farther away, observant). The sense of movement, even down to light “operating” (camera operator moving the camera) on close-ups, builds the world’s tension and creates a cohesive visual experience. The compositions have depth and dimensionality. When the action speeds up in other scenes, with a handheld camera, it signals both significance and a visceral experience to the viewer.
The Wire was shot on film, and the show no doubt benefits from film’s inherent saturation and grain. Digital likely could have achieved this too today, but the film look of The Wire makes the show feel timeless.
An influence on the show’s visual approach was producer Robert F. Colesberry, who also played a character in the show and tragically died between the second and third seasons. As David Simon notes in an excellent blog post about the conversion of The Wire to widescreen HD for streaming, “It was Bob who created the visual template for The Corner and The Wire both, and having died suddenly after the latter drama’s second season, it is Bob who is remembered wistfully every time we begin to construct the visuals for some fresh narrative world.”
The creators shot the show in the “4:3,” standard definition format (square image, what most TVs were at the time). Filming the show in a square allowed the filmmakers to create the aforementioned visual language of camera movement and coverage. As Simon notes, the creators had considered shooting 16:9 (horizontal widescreen, now standard for television), but 4:3 ultimately became the medium.
The Wire in 4:3 (left) and 16:9 (right). Image via Reddit.
Simon explains,
“Bob set about to work with 4:3 as the given. And while we were filming in 35mm and could have ostensibly ‘protected’ ourselves by adopting wider shot composition…the problem with doing so is obvious: If you compose a shot for a wider 16:9 screen, then you are, by definition, failing to optimize the composition of the 4:3 image. Choose to serve one construct and at times you must impair the other…Bob further embraced the 4:3 limitation by favoring gentle camera movements and a combination of track shots and hand-held work, implying a documentarian construct. If we weren’t going to be panoramic and omniscient in 4:3, then we were going to approach scenes with a camera that was intelligent and observant, but intimate. Crane shots didn’t often help, and anticipating a movement or a line of dialogue often revealed the filmmaking artifice. Better to have the camera react and acquire, coming late on a line now and then. Better to have the camera in the flow of a housing-project courtyard or squad room, calling less attention to itself as it nonetheless acquired the tale.”
Thus, a “constraint” of the show became the very tool that enabled its bold and rich visual world. I watched The Wire in its now 16:9 format, and, due to the strength of the raw material and a transfer supervised by Simon and others, it is still fantastic. The documentary feeling holds up in the wider world of pristine HD.
The lighting of the show’s cinematography also contributes to its unique visual architecture. Cinematographer Uta Briesewitz helmed The Wire as Director of Photography for the first four years of the show—Eagle Egilsson shot 7 epiosdes in 2004, and Russell Lee Fine was the main DP for the next four years, with some episodes shot by Dave Insley. Having only 4 different cinematographers for a 5-season show, 2 of whom shot a majority of it, helps give the show a consistent look.
Image via Imgur.
Image via @OnePerfectShot (Twitter).
The lighting is moody and expressive, but never draws too much attention to itself, achieving a perfect balance between looking “too lit” or plain. It feels grounded to the reality of the world in Baltimore
Briesewitz has a background as a painter that precedes cinematography, which helped her “[learn] attention to detail and to trust my intuition, both of which strongly apply in my work as a cinematographer.” This artistic sensibility combined with the realistic nature of The Wire’s material and production process. Briesewitz reflects:
“One of the things that I love about my profession is that it puts me in environments and situations that I would never experience as a tourist or just a normal onlooker…The Wire explored the dark side of Baltimore where people were trapped in a vicious cycle of drug abuse and violent crime. We had situations where we’d be at a location and a S.W.A.T. team was two blocks away cleaning up a crime scene, or we would have to stop shooting for a while because there was a sniper on a roof.”
This production environment likely introduced natural constraints that helped augment the look of the show. Real locations incentivize faster shooting and allow less added light and modification. The production, filmed in the early 2000s, made use of the orange street lights and other available fixtures and natural mood-generating moments in the city’s landscape. In a fantastic article on the show’s production, producer Joe Chappelle describes the approach to lighting:
“‘We're not afraid to let people go into shadow, we seldom have edge lights or give the ladies a beauty light. You know all the things you're supposed to do, well we usually don't…The look of the show is 'real'...‘You walk into a room and it's a harsh, fluorescent light. If it goes a little green, it goes a little green. The downlights [background] on some of The Wire's sets are pretty much 'practicals' - of course they're re-tubed but on sets like the Police station or (Police) headquarters that's the (florescent lighting) look we're going for.”
Briesewitz also details this approach in a conversation with HDProGuide, “…As a DP I constantly observe light, how it moves, how it changes, how it differs from one city or country to the next. What makes places unique, where do you find interesting lighting?…I observed how Baltimore at night is bathed in an orange sodium vapor glow. It was important to me that the show looked truthful to the real environment.”
The results are astounding, but also subtle and of the story. In The Wire, the lighting always looks both artistic and appropriate.
The known appeal of The Wire is its writing—David Simon* spent years as a reporter in Baltimore and Ed Burns was a police officer and teacher in the city—and how that writing, from Simon, Burns, and others, constructs a world. But the visuals of this show are what pull you in and immerse you, taking you through its five seasons. You emerge from the experience contemplating the show’s themes and its characters, and what both mean for our contemporary society. The Wire’s visual language aids in achieving those revelations.
- JG
* linked interview contains spoilers.