Exclusive Interview: Marvel’s ‘Echo’ Series Cinematographer Kira Kelly
Michelle Beck, DISNEY PLUS INFORMER
January 18, 2024
Could you first tell us a little bit about what your job as a cinematographer entails and what projects you’ve worked on in the past?
The job of a cinematographer, if you distill it down to the most basic form, my job is to translate the director’s vision of a story. My job is to make sure that we are telling the story visually the way that the director wants it told or the way the director sees it.
I shot the “13th,” which is a documentary by Ava DuVernay. I also was part of a series called “Y: The Last Man” that was based on a comic and a graphic novel that I absolutely loved. I’ve done a lot of television along the way that has been a fun, definitely a different way of storytelling, which was really exciting.
How did you become involved in “Echo” and what drew you to the series?
I actually met Sydney Freeland, who’s the director of “Echo,” about a different project. We were going to do this basketball movie that takes place on a Navajo reservation. We started prepping that together and were going location scouting and getting everything set but when the time came to actually shoot, that is when the Delta variant started to build up. The Navajo Nation had already been hit so hard by COVID, they very understandably we’re like you guys can’t bring a full film crew in. So that job took a pause and we’d already started building a relationship and then when “Echo” came about for her, she immediately was like, ‘what are you doing next year? I’ve got this project and would you be interested in it?’ And I was like, ‘of course! Definitely!’