Adapted from Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, RaMell Ross’s Nickel Boys reinvents what it means to film first person POV for film in a sorrowful impactful tale of two young Black men. Offscreen Central had the opportunity to talk to cinematographer Jomo Fray about the meticulous approach to capturing the POV of Elwood and Turner, emphasizing the importance of the camera’s gaze, the technical challenges of portraying childhood perspective, and the film’s intent to evoke empathy and immerse viewers in the characters’ emotional journeys.

Jillian Chilingerian: Hi. It’s so nice to meet you.
Jomo Fray: Wonderful to meet you.
Jillian Chilingerian: I am excited to talk to you about this film. I loved your work on All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt. There’s just nothing that is like this experience of watching Nickel Boys. I want to learn so much about how this came together and the technique. What were the initial conversations you had coming on to this project through this POV, but from a very different approach that I feel like we haven’t seen in film a lot? Usually POV is close-ups, and we are on the minds we’re feeling every sense of these characters.
Jomo Fray: No, absolutely. When I heard RaMell was going to be doing this, I loved Hale County so much precisely because it gave me so many of the feelings that I’m hearing you describe as well, where it felt there was something just so expansive about that documentary. At the end of the movie, I found myself just totally in silence, in awe of the cinema that I saw in front of me and how specifically RaMell had found a way to photograph Hale County and the photograph the ideas that he was unpacking in that movie. For Nickel Boys, sight unseen, I wanted to do it. I wanted to be a part of it in any way, shape, or form, just to get to know and understand the mind that is RaMell Ross. Our first conversations and thinking through POV, you know, I spent a lot of time sitting down and thinking very metaphysically about the image, really talking about the nature of images, of image making, of point of view. Even the term point of view was a shorthand we used oftentimes with crew members and other people to get people to be able to envision quickly.

The way RaMell and I spoke about it is we never use that term. We always called it a sentient image, we always wanted an image that felt connected to a real human body, an image that had real stakes to it, an image that could be in danger and had to navigate that. So often cinema can be shot from outside of the scene so there’s a natural level of alienation as the viewer of the mediation between whatever’s happening the camera and you in the audience seeing what was happening. We wanted to immerse the audience inside of the scene, inside of the story. We wanted it to not just be us showing the Jim Crow South, but to invite the audience into thinking, well, where would my gaze go if I’m a young black boy and I’m walking down the sidewalk and a white couple comes toward me, and I got off of the sidewalk and I get back onto it, where did my eyes go? Do my eyes make eye contact with them? Does it look down on my shoes? Do I look somewhere else? How do I emotionally navigate something like the Jim Crow South? That gets to the heart of it, where I think that POV, we weren’t really that interested in how people see, but we were interested in how it felt to see, and I think that that was the thing that we always kind of would push ourselves to try to create in the image of, how do you create this image, in a way in which it feels like how it would feel like to be Elwood at this moment, rather than looking around the room of like, what does Elwood see? I think that that was maybe a little less interesting to us, which made for an interesting, exciting, and kind experience because it meant thinking about the image as a cinematographer in a completely and fundamentally different way.

Jillian Chilingerian: I love that you touch on that because I think as an audience member, it’s inviting in on seeing and learning the eyes of Elwood, and just like the black experience overall, that it’s something that, like, I feel like a lot of media always tries to do, but it never clues you in and what you bring up with this gaze. If you’re shooting POV, it can move in a very technical manner, but this is like something with the gaze. The scene where he’s with his grandmother, and he looks away when she talks about how there’s a problem with the lawyer. You can feel in those moments too, with the gaze of he’s thinking, he’s processing, and he’s taking it in. It is so fascinating to see it from the other ways, and how our gaze can inform us as the viewer that we don’t need to be seeing his mind, but it’s where he’s looking. We are experiencing so much of Elwood through the world that he sees, versus staring at him,
Jomo Fray: Absolutely, that was also one of how you just needed to rethink. I think the shooting of this movie necessitated a different level of vulnerability that I’ve maybe experienced in the past in shooting. I think that imbuing an image with the vulnerability of the camera is always an important thing for me, but this movie took that concept a bit further, where it was so much of looking at Brandon and Ethan and trying to channel their pathos into the camera and the operation. There’s a real way where you’re being invited into the scene with these actors, and a new way for me as a cinematographer when there’s the moment that you’re talking about when Hattie comes to visit Elwood, where does the image drift you? Where does it not drift to? There was a moment when we were first shooting that scene when Hattie was about to deliver some hard news. My gaze as Elwood drifts away a little bit, the cameras gaze just away, and she hits the table and says, Elwood, look at me. I think RaMell and I truly saw what the power of this way of shooting was the camera was inside the scene, which meant that the camera wasn’t just seeing it from a different perspective.

The camera is implicated and has to react and respond to actions that are happening inside of the screen, whether it is scripted or not scripted. It wasn’t scripted for Hattie to say, Elwood, look at me. As Elwood, I had to turn back and I had to look at my grandmother saying, no, you need to look me in the eye when I’m about to tell you something that I know is going to disappoint you. We had so many incredible department heads and other people on the set, for example, our production designer Nora Mendis, every day had to make almost every single set of this movie, 360 degrees. It had to be in the way RaMell and I were speaking about it. We were incredibly disciplined and rigorous in our shot listing of what we’ll see and in what order we’ll see it, but we also still wanted to capture an aspect of ineffability. We wanted it to feel and so oftentimes we would do different camera movements every single take to just really allow the camera to be able to feel inspired in the moment, which is an aspect of this type of shooting, the camera can never know more than the image knows at the moment. RaMell and I would always speak about this where, traditionally, cinema sets up a shot of the ground, and then you see a glass come into frame and it shatters. This camera language needs to be you hear the shattering of glass, and you turn, and you look, you’re always behind every action and it’s imperceptibly behind it because it isn’t that it smashes and then the camera says something, and then it turns, but it’s that it’s always a second behind actions or emotions and. Nora would take us through each space every day and be like, okay, here are 10 items in the room, 10 interesting places. Maybe you’ll see three of them. Maybe you’ll see two, maybe you’ll see none of them. Maybe you’ll see 10 of them in the shot, but these are spaces in the room that I particularly added a lot of detail to. During the take, the camera would feel it out and go with the moment and be inside the scene with the actors, knowing that there were these base camps within the space that you could come and settle on and interact with and also maybe interact with none of them because it was about not meeting the gaze of someone else.

Jillian Chilingerian: You can tell how the environment and these characters inform so much of how the camera movement is because it’s so textured, and we get to connect so much with these amazing performances. We see two different perspectives from Elwood and Turner. Even, like, the first time we saw Elwood, I was like, gasp, because it’s like, we know him, and then we see what he finally looks like. How is it to create that visual language for both of these boys who are going through the same experience, but Elwood has a little bit more curiosity and I think empathy left in him? Turner is more like the realist out of this relationship.
Jomo Fray: Absolutely, RaMell and I would always talk about in prep that we thought about both Elwood and Turner as if they were born today. We could see them being artists or filmmakers. I think that the way we thought about them as people, is that they had a natural photographic inclination, like they saw the world beautifully. That was one of our guiding principles and they have different world views. As you’re saying, It’s spot on. I think Elwood’s passion is so easy for him and Turner is someone who has just had a life that has necessitated a certain amount of jadedness. This is again where Brandon and Ethan’s performances were so much a part of how the camera moved as them was that we would take cues from them. We would take cues on how I would watch how Brandon was reacting inside of the scene when he was acting. I would watch how Ethan was moving his body, where his eyes were going and I would also play off of what they’re bringing to the character and, try to channel that into the camera. There was a real way in which I feel like we were all just kind of umbilically tied, even in the instances where I wasn’t operating or it was a camera attached to Brandon. In those instances, it was fun, because I would show them the monitor, and they’re like, Okay, I can see him. They’re like, okay, maybe for this part of the scene, I’ll open up a little bit of my shoulder to bring him in, but then when I’m feeling a little more claustrophobic, I’ll turn my shoulder in so it closes the frame down. That’s that’s exciting and again, there were just these ways in which I think operating, we were doing more acting than we do normally.

As actors, they were also doing more operating than they do normally. All of those conversations were always fundamentally anchored into a conversation of emotions. Daveed Diggs and I would talk about what he should do with the camera, but those things were always emotional conversations of like, okay, well, how do you feel in this moment? Maybe you close it up a little bit. Maybe you open up the frame. It was never this person needs to hit this mark. Can you do this? We had no marks for anyone across the entire movie. It was the incredible work of our first AC Kelly Riley, whose every single take would be different. We were shooting full frame, large format, oftentimes wide open and we didn’t drop focus once when we were shooting. We also gave her a lot of power there to be, like, I never told her where to put the focus. I would say, look at the image while we’re shooting it, and go where you see the cinema. If the cinema looks like it’s on that tree branch, like, go there. Worst comes to worst is we do another take, if it’s not right, and we talk about it, and we say, oh, maybe let’s do this instead of that, but I wanted her to trust in her instincts, because I think her instincts are cinematic.

Jillian Chilingerian: Everything feels organic with how it plays so much to the story. I think that’s why it’s so effective for the viewer. Some of my favorite moments in the film are a lot of Elwood’s childhood. I love the warm tones with the hands, and in this scene with the sheet in the bed. What was that experience of trying to capture a child’s perspective? I love that we get to see him progress as he grows and that the camera captures that.
Jomo Fray: Honestly that was some of the most technically challenging stuff of the movie. It was talking to RaMell about what are some of the aspects of childhood that we want to capture. A big one is perspective and by perspective, I almost mean the volume of space is that when you’re small, the world looms large. There is a large scope and scale to everything and so trying to capture that feeling is incredibly difficult, like in the case of the shot of Hattie above us with the sheet that took so long to figure out. This is one of the images we’re most excited to shoot and when we got there, it was so difficult, because whether it was RaMell operating he was like, I can’t do this you need to jump in. I started operating and it was like, this looks like it’s from the perspective of a grown man, just because of how my neck moves, my perspective with the body is when we set it up on the bed and we’re shooting, it’s like, it looks a foot and a half away. We need to take the legs off of the bed and we take the legs off of the bed, and it’s like, you still look too close. Then it’s like, oh, let’s put the mattress on the floor and it’s like, okay, but now it’s looking off. It needs to feel bigger and it’s like, okay, let’s put a wider lens. Let’s put Hattie up on apple boxes. Let’s put the bed on the ground, and, like, put these things together. It genuinely was for a lot of Elwood as a young boy, a lot of trial and error, because we had good plan A’s, plan B, and plan C’s, but it truly was a thing that you needed to see to believe. It needed to feel like the perspective it needed to feel, not just where they are in space, but their age and the size of their body and how they’re taking in and interacting with the world, where their gaze is going, which will naturally be different than the gaze of an adult who has now been in the world for a long period. There’s a natural wonderment to a child’s gaze, that was the difficulty of unlearning so many things that you’re taught to learn, both as an adult, but also as a filmmaker and as an artist, to undo those things, to try to truly see or feel it differently. It’s a lot of technical tricks throughout that to pull out those aspects of volume and wonderment.

Jillian Chilingerian: Thank you so much for this very informative conversation. Like I said I was sitting watching the movie, and I was like, how did they do that? It’s something I’ve never really seen before, and hearing about it from you, I love how it’s so organic, and this relationship between you and RaMell with the intention and detailing to pull off something so emotional to walk us through this experience that I don’t think as a lot of people have ever thought about how would themselves be in that situation.
Jomo Fray: Thank you, Jillian, thank you so much. Truly, it was such an incredible experience to try and think of a different type of cinema.

Nickel Boys is playing in select theaters in Los Angeles and New York.
The film will expand in January.