How cinematographer Polly Morgan made Legion into art

For a cinematographer like Polly Morgan, a show like Legion is the stuff of dreams. Culturess talked to her about crafting those dazzling, trippy visuals.

At a time when most superhero stories are meant to blend in, conceived as cogs in a larger universe or franchise rather than standalone creations, Legion stands apart by standing out. FX’s mind-bending drama technically belongs in the X-Men franchise, following the powerful mutant son of Professor X, but stylistically, it draws more inspiration from the work of Stanley Kubrick and David Lynch than from comic books. Its vivid, off-kilter imagery immerses viewers in a waking nightmare where nothing can be trusted, including reality itself.

In season 2, the show came into its own, thanks in large part to the addition of Polly Morgan as a director of photography alongside regular Noah Hawley collaborator Dana Gonzalez. Born in London, Morgan worked her way up the ranks of the camera department to become the youngest member of the American Society of Cinematographers in 2018. Her credits range from music videos and commercials to art house films like The Truth About Emanuel.

Legion provides a rich canvas for Morgan, and she embraces it, conjuring dreamscapes steeped in both dystopian dread and understated melancholy. Evidently, Hawley was impressed, enlisting her to shoot his upcoming movie Lucy in the Sky starring Natalie Portman.

With the third and final season of Legion premiering tonight, Morgan took time out of her busy schedule to speak with Culturess about her growing up around art, using camera lenses to tell a story, and finding an emotional through line in a nonlinear narrative.

I read in another interview that you have been interested in cinematography since you were a kid. What was it that drew you to that particular art form?

My grandfather was an artist, and my mom also did art. When I was a teenager, a film crew came to our farmhouse that I grew up in and used it as a base camp, and it was the first time that I was made aware of the camera and how films were made… [Cinematography] seemed like a perfect mix of my art background and my love of film. As I got older, I realized that I wasn’t going to be an artist, but I loved photography and I loved movies, and it just kind of all came together.

When you were interested in art, were you interested in painting?

Yeah, I always used to draw, and when I was at school, I studied art history. The whole idea of art, whether art itself or the history, was fascinating to me. I love the old Renaissance masters, and I love the impressionists, like Van Gogh and Monet and Manet and Cezanne. It was a passion of mine, and I just would get lost in the images – the colors and the texture of different works.

How do you think your background in art has influenced your style as a cinematographer?

When I think of the paintings that I like, that really drew me to them, they were the Flemish paintings where you have characters in front of windows and they are lit by natural light. I think my work is based in naturalism and [isn’t] really stylized, and that comes from the Flemish works of art that I loved. Then, like I said, the impressionist artists, their use of big brushstrokes and oil and texture, inspired me to try and create an image that’s full of depth.

That’s one of the reasons I love film: the texture the film grain provides. The current project I’m shooting is going to shoot on film. I love shooting through objects and shooting through glass and using atmosphere on set, just to really infuse the image with texture and give it that painterly feel. I think that helps the viewer to connect with [the image] and have an emotional reaction. It has a 3D quality, which feels real and true to life.

Which movie are you shooting now?

I am shooting the sequel to a movie called A Quiet Place.

Oh, cool. So, you were talking about naturalism. How did you get involved with Legion? What about it appealed to you, because it’s very much not based in naturalism?

I was a great fan of Fargo and of Noah Hawley, and I remember watching the first season of Legion. I think the thing that appealed to me was that it was inspired by all different types of art forms, that being more modern art and pop art and expressionistic art. I loved the strong visual palette and the bold colors and the fact that the story was expressed in such a strong visual way.

[My agent] sent me the script for the second season and asked if I would like to go and meet the producers. Of course, having watched the first season and loving it, I did, and they offered me the job. So, I went in and shot the second and third seasons with Dana Gonzalez, who had shot the first season up in Calgary. The second season was shot in Los Angeles, so they were looking for somebody based there to work alongside Dana. I was lucky enough to get the job.

How did you approach working on a project like Legion that already had a strong visual sensibility?

Ultimately, everything always comes down to the script and what story you’re telling. Although Legion is a continuing story, each season is different from the last. Each season is set in a different environment, so it allows you to explore [the show] in a unique way… I spoke to Dana about the kind of things he was looking for and the visual language we were going to establish.

Also, in TV, each episode is directed by a different director. So, you talk about the basic guidelines for the visual approach for that season and you take it from there… I was never asked to copy Dana’s work. Each different episode was really up to the individual style of the director and how they wanted to approach the script. We would just take their lead and execute it for them.

You mentioned that each season has a different angle. What was the starting point or baseline for season 2?

During season 2, we really used lenses as a way to tell the story. All of the different periods of time and mental spaces were going to be achieved by using different aspect ratios. We decided to express whether we were in [Division 3] and in the present day with a 16:9 aspect ratio. Then, any time we were in a flashback or flash-forward, or a mental space or astral plane, we could take the viewer there with different aspect ratios, either widescreen 2.40 or the old 4:3 aspect ratio. I think the number of different lenses we used was something crazy, like 52 different types of lens sets.

Do you find it challenging to work with different directors? Or is it easy for you to adjust to different styles?

One thing about Legion is that each script is so dense, and it’s very complex material, even to watch the show. It’s kind of a brain teaser, because you have to unravel it within your mind; it’s not a linear story. So, the directors almost had to lean on Dana and myself, because the material is so dense… The directors that come in to work on the show are chosen for being very visual filmmakers, so it’s exciting to collaborate with minds that put focus on the images. Legion is an intellectual expression of the story, rather than a story told in a more traditional sense.

As a cinematographer, working with different directors is part of my job. I’m always working with different personalities, different types of filmmakers, and you sort of have to mold yourself to who they are and how they want to handle the story.

What preparation did you do before shooting?

Like most TV shows, you get a period of prep and a period to shoot each episode. So, you have a week and a half – nine days – to prep an episode and nine days to shoot it. It’s a normal prep. Unlike most shows, the scripts are so dense and complex that it takes a bit of time just to try and figure out what’s happening within the episode. It’s a fun collaboration between the different departments of production design, who build the sets, and special effects and visual effects to figure out how you’re going to pull off what’s on the page.

Do you get to see the sets in advance of when you arrive on set?

Yeah. If the sets are being built, you work with the designer and you see the plans ahead of time, and then you can visit the stage and weigh in if there are any requirements you need for camera or for lighting. If it’s not a build, then you would location scout with the director and try to find a location that fits the story or what’s required in the script.

You’ve talked about how Legion is nonlinear. How did you manage to ground the show in a coherent emotional narrative while maintaining its ambiguity?

Ultimately, Legion is a love story between David and Syd. So, that relationship grounds the show and helps the viewer have a common thread through all the different astral planes or flashbacks or flash-forwards. [In addition to] the core relationship of David and Syd, the other relationships ground the show in the emotional connections the characters have with each other.

On the flip side, how are you able to create energy in scenes where nothing appears to be going on, like when characters are just talking to each other?

Cinematography is always a response to the script and the story you’re telling. It really depends on what the subtext is. If it’s a conversation between David and Syd, we always tried to photograph it more traditionally and ground the viewer in their emotional connection. Whereas if it’s Farouk and David having a conversation, it’s about the power struggle between those characters. You infuse the imagery with the subtext. You try to look deeper than the conversation and find out what’s happening within the relationship and express that in a visual way.

I wanted to ask you about a couple of specific shots. There was the one in “Chapter 10” where David and Division 3 go to the desert to meet Farouk but he isn’t there. The camera starts by looking at the characters from overhead and then sort of drifts down to behind the fortune teller booth. I was wondering how you achieved that shot.

It was all about how to photograph the action in a dynamic way, and high-angle shots are a theme within the show itself. We wanted a feeling of energy and movement as the armored vehicles arrived and the soldiers and the D3 crew rushed out, and we chose to photograph that dramatically from a high angle.

Then, we wanted to keep the viewer guessing what they were running toward and what they would find and keep that feeling of anticipation. We chose to lead the characters, using the same set-ups as the high angle, and reveal the fortune teller booth in the foreground and then cut to Syd’s point of view afterward. We did it all in one graceful shot, as we spent all day in the desert and were running out of time. Sometimes limitations result in more exciting choices.

Another sequence that stood out to me was later when Ptonomy is in the computer. How did you approach lighting that sequence?

That sequence was a way of showing the past, of how D3 was created. We talked about the concept of what it would be like to be within a computer and the idea of a digital realm, and we decided it would be expressed with ones and zeroes. We wanted to make it a place that was nondescript, not grounded in reality. So, we created a dark space and surrounded it with ones and zeroes that we designed to be transparent within the set walls.

Then, I wanted to create this feeling of moving light surrounding [Ptonomy]. So, we added a bit of atmosphere and smoke into the set, and I designed a sort of chasing pattern of lights that kept the energy going around him, making him fall into periods of light and dark.

Lately, there’s been conversation about the fact that when TV shows are filmed, they look different from how someone might see them when they’re actually being watched, because of the resolution of TV screens. How do you adjust for that as a cinematographer?

Basically, it’s difficult because people are watching films and television on a variety of viewing platforms. They’re watching on their iPhones, on TVs, on computers, they’re streaming them, they’re watching by broadcast. So, it’s a challenging thing to make a production look good on all different platforms because it’s really going to depend on so many factors.

When we do the final color for the finished episodes, we grade on 4K monitors, which are optimized for streaming services such as Amazon. So, when people stream Legion, they’re more likely to see it as it was originally conceived. But sadly, when it is broadcast on TV by FX, the resolution drops down to, I think, 720p, so it’s not being seeing in its optimal state, just because of the restrictions that the cable provides.

That makes sense. The last sequence I wanted to talk about was “Chapter 12,” the one that takes place in Syd’s subconscious. It’s a little different from the rest of the season, with softer lighting and starker compositions. How did you approach that episode?

Again, it’s about what’s happening in the script and the story. This [episode] was more based on reality; it’s the history of Syd’s life and her childhood. So, instead of the bold colors and expressionistic lighting of the D3 world and David’s mind, it’s Syd’s world, which inherently is more feminine and softer.

The way I chose to photograph that was I separated the different periods of Syd’s life – her life as a baby, her life as a young girl, her life as a teenager, and as the Syd that we know – and I chose different lenses to basically represent those different periods. When she was a baby and a very young girl, I used really old vintage lenses from the 1960s, and when she was a teenager, I used slightly newer lenses from the ‘70s. Then, I used anamorphic lenses to illustrate her in the more astral plane location of the igloo.

Along with the lenses, I used color filters to give it a more vintage look. I used a more brown-gold filter for her childhood and then a more yellow filter as a teenager, and then I shot the image without filter when she was an adult.

Do you have a favorite episode that you worked on?

I love them all because they’re so unique, and that’s an exciting thing of working on a show like Legion. But I think what resonates with me is “Chapter 12” with Syd because I felt it was a more emotional story and one that I was really able to visually accentuate through the lighting and camerawork.

What can viewers expect from season 3 in terms of the visual style?

Season 3 is the final season of Legion. The visual style changes a little bit. It’s not quite so much inspired by expressionistic pop art but [has] a more grounded set and naturalistic lighting. And it’s a little bit darker, a little more on the moody side. But it’s still a lot of fun. Viewers won’t be disappointed.

Legion airs Mondays at 10 p.m. ET on FX.