‘Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty’ Scored a Visual Slam Dunk

Daron James

Wed, August 14, 2024 at 8:30 PM UTC

12 min read

‘Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty’ Scored a Visual Slam Dunk

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For the Los Angeles Lakers of the 1980s, “Showtime” was more than a catchy nickname — it changed the game of basketball. And the first season of “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty” dramatically captured how it all started in 1979 with Dr. Jerry Buss (John C. Riley) purchasing the team and their ace in the hole: a No. 1 draft pick named Earvin “Magic” Johnson (Quincy Isaiah). For its second season, the desire was to develop an immersive journey that brings viewers courtside while connecting a progressing narrative to each character’s dynamic viewpoint. The result is an alluring spectacle that feels like an imaginative ride that takes you straight back to the Lakers’ golden age.

“We both understand the language of the show from the first season,” director Salli Richardson-Whitfield told IndieWire. “The conversations I had with Todd Banhazl, our DP, was about how to get inside of the game even more than we had done last year.”

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“With Season 2, we wanted to take all the style that we had developed for the show and expand it further as the show kind of narratively goes deeper into the ‘80s and leaves the romance of the ‘70s,” added Banhazl. The pair approached the visuals with room for interpretation. “We basically created a look bible and gave it out to all of the departments and shared it openly with the different directors. And from there, we kind of said to everyone, ‘Here are the paintbrushes, but do with them what you will.'”

The creative freedom inspired costume designer Emma Potter, who created wardrobe that allowed character to parallel story. “For the first season I had kind of focused my original research looking at the Lakers from anywhere between like 1976 through to 1984, so I already kind of had a sense going into this second season where they were heading. But I had expanded that research further into the ‘80s to give ourselves a parameter that we wanted to play with,” said Potter. “In early conversations with Todd we talked a lot about color and texture, and for me, it was exploring that idea of color and making things more punchy as we moved more into the ‘80s.”

Visual effects embraced the fluidity by not limiting what production could or could not do on set. “I am a fan of moving the camera as much as possible or as much as needed,” visual effects supervisor Raymond McIntyre Jr. said. “My feeling on visual effects is that I don’t want the motion of the shot to come to a stop for visual effects, so I embraced and said, ‘Let’s move the camera all of the time or whenever they would like.’ I think that really makes for a more fluid sequence.”

In the videos below, director Salli Richardson-Whitfield, cinematographer Todd Banhazl, costume designer Emma Potter, and visual effects supervisor Raymond McIntyre Jr. explain how they brought the visual magic to the second season of “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.”

The Directing of ‘Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty’

Winning Time - Directing - Craft Considerations

In expanding the photographic language of “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty,” director Salli Richardson-Whitfield had her eyes on pushing the basketball to bring viewers inside the game in a way they’ve never experienced before. All this without losing sight of a growing narrative that sees the characters’ evolving complexity, which had the Chicago native “instinctively” emphasizing dramatic moments through different formats. “There’s one particular scene with [the Buss family] playing Monopoly, which is one of my favorite scenes. We leaned into that 8mm footage much more than we have before. Usually we’ll just do little snippets, but we really went for it,” she shared with IndieWire. “It gave that scene a particular depth and this feeling of a memory. It just had this griminess and this emotion that was infused that was completely different than something that we had done before.”

To emphasize Magic’s lack of maturity, the director isolated the character from others in the scene. “When the whole family’s talking about her being pregnant and what are they going to do, you know, and we really want to be with Magic. And we did that by separating him from the table, really being even tighter on his eyes and in his perspective than we normally are. It kind of separates him still as this little boy who hasn’t grown up yet and isn’t man enough to sit at the table,” she noted. “And that’s part of our growth of Magic throughout the season.”

As an actor’s director, Richardson-Whitfield always approached scenes to bring out the best performance. “When you get to the Lakers locker room, and [Pat Riley] tears up everything in the room, and then he comes out to give that speech, Adrian [Brody] is ready to go. I want the camera attached to Pat at all times. The camera and Pat are one. And we let him connect those two scenes so that we were able to be in the office with him while he tore everything up and then had a camera waiting for him so that he could stick with that same energy and come right in the room and go off on all the players.”

In the video above, watch Salli Richardson-Whitfield discuss directing “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.”

The Cinematography of ‘Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty’

Winning Time - Cinematography - Craft Considerations

While collaborating with director Salli Richardson-Whitfield, cinematographer Todd Banhazl challenged himself to “create the best basketball ever put to film,” and in approaching that task, sought to capture the “kinetic and emotional specificity” of the game. “It’s not just basketball. It’s story within basketball,” he said.

Shooting format defined the distinct visceral journey, intertwining 8mm, 16mm, 35mm, and VHS based on the emotional tone the filmmakers wanted to invoke. “This is an experimental show. We tried to create a more broad, more jazzy canvas. There was like a set of paintbrushes that could be used in given scenarios. Like we knew how we normally use the 35mm for the deep narrative and emotional stuff. We use 16mm for the slightly more gritty emotional stuff and the more doc-style stuff getting inside the game. We use the VHS to play even more like the feeling that these things really happened and that they were archival footage,” Banhazl explained.

Connecting the camera to the characters was another element. “The camera is kind of allowed to do a couple different kinds of things in ‘Winning Time,'” he said. “The camera can be completely aligned with all the kind of bravado and cockiness and confidence that characters are putting on, and it can also be more like a fly on the wall and trying to capture the energy of what really happened in these rooms.”

In the video above, find out how cinematographer Todd Banhazl approached the alluring aesthetics, including a dramatic one-shot in the episode “Beat L.A.”

The Costume Design of ‘Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty’

Winning Time - Costume Design - Craft Considerations

For costume designer Emma Potter and her team it was important to connect color, style, and silhouette to developing character arcs. With Jerry Buss, she collaborated with John C. Riley on the evolution of his wardrobe, which included a number of tracksuits featuring Lakers colors. “To us, it represented his idea of perceiving himself as one of the team members but he’s wearing it with his zipped halfway down to his belly button and he’s got his gold chain on,” she told IndieWire. In contrast, Buss’ office attire was more controlled, while his threads for nights out on the town touted a sense of flair from the era. “We always leaned into the collared shirts, often more in cotton fabric to give it a little bit more structure,” noted Potter. “We kept the more fluid silky or velour pieces for when he’s out partying or when he’s at home.”

To transform Pat Riley from assistant to head coach, Potter kept his wardrobe restrained until the character steps into the light. “Adrian [Brody] is already a coach, they’ve already won a season, so he is a little sure of himself, but he’s still the assistant coach in that capacity, and so he’s pretty reserved,” she said. “When he’s doing a practice with the guys he’s still kind of a little bit more casual. He’s got that navy Adidas tracksuit and then as he kind of settles in, the colors get more vibrant.” The absence of color also played a role in bringing the NBA figure to the screen. “One of the things I really liked that we did with his character was keep black out of the wardrobe, and then you get that reveal, and he just appears in his Armani suit with the red, black, and gold tie,” Potter said. “To me, that was so Pat Riley in that moment, and Adrian looks fantastic in it.”

With Magic, the costume designer blended his past with the present until he steps out a star. “When we see him show up back at a Lakers game, he’s carrying his blazer and he’s got this red silk shirt and we had kept red out of all of the audience that were going to be around him so it’s just this punch of color that’s bold it’s a beautiful fabric it flows beautifully it looks great on him and he just walks in there so confident.”

In the video above, learn how the costume team threaded the fashionable details to the historic Lakers dynasty.

The Visual Effects of ‘Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty’

Winning Time - Visual Effects - Craft Considerations

The biggest change for visual effects supervisor Raymond McIntyre Jr. going into Season 2 was to give the basketball arenas a sense of scale that he felt was missing in the previous season. “In Season 1, they had a big gray wall in production at the green screen stage build with the basketball court and [I] felt it didn’t look like an NBA arena. That wall made it feel more like a high school arena,” he said. “I just suggested we should lose that wall, and visual effects will put the additional seats immediately behind the last row of seats. I felt that made the arenas look more NBA realistic.”

Another concern was filling iconic arenas like The Forum and Boston Garden with cheering fans that not only looked believable (the majority was made with CG) but would support the aesthetics of the show. “Our normal contingent was 200 or 300 extras, and they would not even fill the eight rows of seats that we had on the one side of the basketball court. So the crowd extension in virtually all 900 shots is digi doubles,” McIntyre Jr. said.

Adding to the realism was lighting that seamlessly matched the practical set lighting of the arena as well as a set of defined rules that coincided with each type of crowd shot. “When you’re close up, it is less expensive to composite people in than to make digital people that hold up when they’re close to camera,” he said. “They’re more expensive because you have to start putting in facial expression and motion. That was the distinction we made. If we needed to see facial expressions in the crowd, then we shot and composited people. Then as soon as we were seven or eight rows back, when you don’t really see facial expression change on the human that far away in a crowd shot, then they were all digital people, all of the time in every shot.”

In the video above, watch how the visual effects department dominated the arenas of “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.”’

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