Miguel Cármenes On Sculpting Light

The director of photography shares how an equatorial upbringing shaped his feel for colour, how he adapted to British skies, and how he crafted the shifting look of BBC Three's Juice series two — all while holding on to the joy of filmmaking.

Raised in Ecuador, Miguel Cármenes formed a deep, instinctive relationship with light and colour that continues to guide his work. After moving to the UK, he found fresh ways to achieve the same emotional impact under grey, changeable skies, applying new tools to the same core goal: to mould light so it reveals character and feeling.

"Color has always been part of my life. It's hard for me to detach from it. In Ecuador, obviously, we're on the equator. The sun only moves in a perfect curve. It sets at 6:00 [p.m.] and it comes out at 6:00 a.m. every single day, every time, every day of the year. So you do learn to shape it in a way. Use mirrors a lot. You learn how to balance it," Cármenes notes.

Adjusting to the UK's cloud cover demanded a different approach. "I feel like my first time shaping sun with a lamp was quite interesting," he shares. "You get the exact same result. Completely different means to get there.

"Being an outsider and coming to the U.K., I was doing a lot of music videos like everyone else at the beginning," Cármenes continues. Working on those projects, he says, "You actually do learn a lot. You learn speed, which is fantastic. I can work really fast and not be stressed about it."

Cármenes brought that agility to Juice, joining the BBC Three series for its second run and leaning into its heightened, subjective perspective. "You see the world through this fever-dream mindset that he has," the cinematographer explains. "We were like, 'How would that look on camera? How does he perceive the world?' If he's really scared about being somewhere, it's like a horror [film]; if he feels his life is an entire joke, then we're going to shoot it as a sitcom. Using cinematic language to be able to adapt to how the character feels was one of the beautiful things about it.

"My gaffer [on Juice], Vianney [Kernanet], he's an incredible guy," the cinematographer adds. "We've known each other for a while now. I was pulling references, putting them in a lighting deck that was just for him and me to see."

Roughly 70 percent of Juice was staged in studio — uncommon for a comedy, Cármenes points out — which allowed him to lock in the show's visual identity from the ground up. "That was also a rare thing for a comedy. But that gave me the chance to be able to shape the look of the show much more. We went through the sets before they were built [to determine] where the lights would be. Inside the sets, it was mostly LED." Working with Panalux London, he and Kernanet assembled a flexible package: "had a great selection of everything, really. We had SkyPanels, we had Nanlux. There was a little bit of everything. It was so incredibly useful.

One favourite build was a compact street set with multiple shopfronts. "My favorite set, we built a small street set in a studio, and it had six or seven [store] fronts," he continues. "We didn't have the space to be able to do a soft box to create some sort of huge skylight. We needed a punch, so it needed to be something strong like an 18K bounce into a 20-by Ultra, and then an array of Maxi Brutes at the back to create sunset. And it was amazing because Callum [Crisell, the desk operator] was able to go from overcast to last light in minutes and on a tiny space."

Cármenes has turned to Panalux on other large-scale jobs as well. "Panalux has always helped me out when I go for scale, something big," he says. "I've done a few commercials for McLaren where I rely on Panalux. [One called for] like 100 PAR cans on a wall. We just agreed early on it should be Panalux. Very reliable. So it just was a no-brainer for us, really."

Ultimately, he says, the craft is sustained by the same enthusiasm that first drew him to the set. "Your first time walking on a set or your first time filming something, even if it's a student short or something, that joy that there is in doing something for the love of it. The love, the passion for film, and the fact that we're able to do it and we're with friends and you're with them — and when you get the perfect take, and everyone looks at each other, and it's amazing. I'm trying to find things that keep me so awake and excited all the time. I think those are the projects I'm trying to chase nowadays. I want to keep that sensation alive."

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