The Social Reckoning: Behind the scenes with Jeff Cronenweth

The Social Reckoning cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth talks about revisiting the Facebook story, reuniting with Aaron Sorkin and creating a fresh visual identity for the new sequel.

Sixteen years after The Social Network dissected the origins of Facebook, Aaron Sorkin returns to Silicon Valley with The Social Reckoning, this time contemplating the fallout of the 2021 Facebook Files leak and the whistleblower at the centre of the story, Frances Haugen.

Described by Sorkin as “more of a story set in the same universe” than a direct sequel, the film revisits familiar territory through a different lens, with Jeremy Strong taking on the role of Mark Zuckerberg alongside Mikey Madison, Jeremy Allen White, Bill Burr, Betty Gilpin and Billy Magnussen.

Returning behind the camera is cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth, whose other credits include Fight Club, Gone Girl and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and whose work on the original film helped define its moody, precise look. Revisiting the story years on presented the team with a new challenge, he says: telling a story whose broad strokes were already known to audiences.

“Anybody can go back and research it, or have followed it; so you’d already know about it,” he says. “But to have it presented through Aaron’s vocabulary, the way that he constructs words, and the way that he has actors deliver them, is just such an adventure.”

“A different world and a different guy”

The passage of time also called for a different portrayal of Zuckerberg himself, and while Cronenweth admits he was initially disappointed to learn that Jesse Eisenberg wouldn’t be reprising the role, he came to realise that recasting was a good move. “When you really think about it, it’s 15 years later. This guy went from being a student in a dorm to one of the biggest companies in the world,” he explains. “He’s been in front of Congress 30 times by now, he’s been sued 10,000 times. It’s a different world and a different guy. And Jeremy Strong gave a matured performance that I think the world needed. That was super exciting.”

While Cronenweth and Sorkin have tucked in a few Easter eggs for returning viewers, The Social Reckoning inhabits a very different visual world to its predecessor. Gone are the wood-panelled dorm rooms, polished campus corridors and old Boston buildings illuminated by the glow of sodium-vapour lights. In their place is San Francisco’s tech world: a landscape of glass and steel that demanded its own, more modern presentation.

Capturing a dialogue-heavy story

Capturing the action was a RED V-Raptor package, including the V-Raptor XL, paired with ARRI’s spherical DNA LF lenses. “I’m so comfortable with this camera, I’ve used it a lot,” comments Cronenweth. “I love the way it mitigates colour and I love the tools built into it. It was an obvious choice for me.”

Sorkin wanted the camera to be dynamic, says Cronenweth, “which is great because often with dialogue-heavy stories, you get stuck, because how much can you move when someone is talking about the same thing?”

Sometimes dealing with up to eight pages of dialogue in a scene, they knew they had to get creative to keep the camera alive. “At different times – and for different reasons – when there was tension or awkwardness in the scene and people were starting to establish relationships, we took certain approaches to the camera movement.

“Other times, when it was a fluid situation, the camera movements became more fluid as well. If you watch it, you’ll see there is quite a bit of camera movement and energy motivated by the performances,” he adds. “That was a key thing Fincher brought to The Social Network. But in all of his movies he has this style of letting the actors motivate the movement as much as possible.”

Lighting and locations

On the lighting front, with varied environments to contend with, including hotel rooms, apartments and Facebook HQ, plus a variety of location work that saw Vancouver standing in for San Francisco (and Puerto Rico at one point), the team deployed a mix of LEDs and practical sources.

“It was a combination of Astera Titan Tubes, ARRI SkyPanel S60s and S30s, and some soft boxes that we created,” comments Cronenweth. “Whenever possible, I try to work with production designer Jon Hutman and get a lot of sources into the environment – oftentimes too many to start with – and then turn off what seems like an overpopulation. When you’re doing a newsroom at night and it’s semi-closed down, some desk lights are left on, some off, giving you pools of light. Then it gives you places to motivate light from that needs to carry broader areas in the frame.”

Recreating the congressional hearing

For Cronenweth, one of the most challenging parts of the story to shoot was the congressional hearing, during which Zuckerberg testifies in front of the US Senate in Washington, DC. Shot in a university building, the crew built in some practical hard lights and let that motivate most of the source on him. “I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that there were about 45 pages of dialogue that took place in this room – and there’s a lot of tension and movement in there,” he shares. “So keeping that believable, but keeping the drama in there in terms of light and light direction, was a challenge.

“We also wanted to keep the characters mysterious sometimes, in terms of their emotions, by contrast. Flares and atmosphere were part of that too. It was a tiered amphitheatre with rows ascending up, and whenever we tried to do moves in there, it was very laborious. You need a lot of effort from the grips and removal of seats from the art department, and you get stuck with a crane arm there for hours just to get some movement. So we had to be very creative about when and where and how we utilised that room and the tools in it.”

The crew behind The Social Reckoning

Reflecting on the project, Cronenweth describes it as an enjoyable experience, which he credits to the team and the quality of the writing. “I just loved Aaron’s script and I loved the cast that he put together,” he concludes. “I used a crew that I’d used on Tron, so there were a lot of familiar faces there, plus we had our producer Stuart Besser, as well as Aaron and Jon Hutman, the production designer. We’d all done projects together before, and so it was very comfortable and family-oriented.

“I also got to use a great partner of mine, the camera operator Łukasz Bielan – and it was fun to take on that challenge of keeping that camera moving as much as possible when motivated, especially during the rapid-fire dialogue that’s traditionally in Aaron Sorkin scripts. It was just a really great experience. It was really nice moviemaking.”

The Social Reckoning is in cinemas now.

 

This article appears in the October/November issue of Definition

INTERVIEW: OLIVER WEBB. WORDS: NICOLA FOLEY. IMAGES: LEAH GALLO © SONY PICTURES.