Inside Fernando Meirelles' creative decision to switch to black and white shots in Apple TV+'s 'Sugar'
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Apple TV+'s 'Sugar' tells the story of a mysterious detective John Sugar (Colin Farrell) who investigates the disappearance of Olivia Siegel (Sydney Chandler), the granddaughter of a famous Hollywood producer. The series contains eight episodes streaming weekly on Friday on Apple TV+.
The series created by Mark Protosevich and directed by Fernando Meirelles and Adam Arkin, follows an unusual filmmaking style where the screen turns black and white in some scenes. Apart from black and white, there are shots where scenes from famous films of old are juxtaposed into the narrative. In some scenes, the aspect ratio of the shot changes as well to an old-school filmmaking way.
The premise of the series is heavily set in the realms of Hollywood and films form an important part of the narrative. Let us examine the creative choice of switching to black and white in 'Sugar'.
Establishing John Sugar as a cinephile in 'Sugar'
The protagonist of the series John Sugar comes across as a mysterious person. With each passing episode, we are learning something new about him. He deals with a strange neurotic illness, suffers from hallucinations, and stays away from violence. Another important character trait of his is a fondness for cinema.
He claims to have learned a lot from cinema and his mind keeps going back to his favorite films when confronted with similar situations. The situation of this ongoing case keeps taking him to the era of the Film Noir of 1940s and 50s.
Film Noir which stands for Dark film in French, is a cinematic term coined for the stylized crime dramas of the 1940s and 50s. The films were shot in black and white and were categorized by cynical attitudes in the post-Great Depression era of the United States.
The filmmaking of 'Sugar' is heavily influenced by Film Noir and we see shots switching to black and white during the series. Scenes from some of the classic films of that era have been juxtaposed into the narrative too. Films like ‘The Big Heat’ (1953) by Fritz Lang, 'Kiss Me Deadly’ (1955) by Robert Aldrich, ‘Gilda’ (1946) by Charles Vidor are some of the films that have been featured in the series.
The director of the series Fernando Meirelles talk about this in an interview with IndieWire where he says "Listening to Sugar’s backstory, as Mark told it to me, he was like an anthropologist, [except] Sugar would watch a lot of films to understand [people].” “So every time he’s in action, the specific actions reminds him of something that he watched. The black and white inserts are what is in his mind,” as per the outlet.
Fernando Meirelles and Fernando Stutz came up with the idea
In an interview given to IndieWire, director Fernando Meirelles reveals that the showrunner of the series Mark Protosevich gave the director and editor a task of watching 15 films from the era of Film Noir as the director was not well-versed in it.
"The first thing Mark did was give me 15 films to watch, to start our conversation. I watched [them] nonstop, and I loved it. One of the things that I loved about the scripts, after watching the films, is I recognized a lot of lines from different films, or a specific situations from a film, that were in the script,” said Fernando Meirelles, as per the outlet.
Fernando Stutz, also added, "And then from there, while cutting, sometimes it pops into your head, ‘Oh, okay, Sugar is discovering something here, I remember Peter Lorre doing [that],", referencing the great American actor who starred in many classic films of that era.
'Sugar' trailer