How did you develop the palette for the film?

We found five color photos that Lyon took which helped a lot. After looking at so many black-and-white photos from the book, it was strange to see what his world looked like in color suddenly. Those photos were especially helpful with costuming and hair and make-up. Using those photos, we developed an overall palette for the film.

Mitch Paulson was our color grader and he helped us keep all the colors pretty warm. When we did our digital intermediate, we had the colors be a little saturated and a little on the sepia side, which helped pop greens and reds, like the red shirt that Johnny wears.

What was particularly memorable in shooting this film?

We hadn’t shot in film in a while, especially since so much is digital right now. We had to get out our light meters out and start taking reference photos. Shooting film again felt a little like getting back on a bike. The thing that is interesting about shooting celluloid is you never know what you’re going to get. No one knows what the film’s going to look like until you get it developed and look at the dailies.

I remember we were shooting Cockroach (Emory Cohen) at the end of the day in a location in Ohio, just above Cincinnati. The clouds were moving in and suddenly there was no more light. We just shot it and had to wait to see what we got. It went really blue, but we just kept it in the film. I’m sure that when Danny was shooting his book, he ran into situations where he had to shoot when the light was gone and create what he could from the elements he had. That’s kind of what we did for that scene.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.