Lincoln: Divided We Stand
CNN’s Lincoln docuseries needed an image you can’t actually film: Abraham Lincoln himself, standing before the Lincoln Memorial. Shooting a live actor at the memorial was a non-starter for every practical and logistical reason. Working with The Joelsons and Gravillis, we built the shot that couldn’t exist: a fully CG Lincoln, composited into the scene, with the whole spot cut and finished in house.
The Weight of It
Lincoln carried the nation through its hardest chapter, and the piece had to feel that. We built it in black and white, heavy with shadow and movement, light pulling in and out as if the weight itself were shifting. The mood is the message: this isn’t a portrait of a monument, it’s a portrait of the burden behind it. Every choice, the monochrome, the shadow play, the slow deliberate motion, points at what the man was holding.
Building the Impossible Shot
The foundation was the memorial. We built a full CG Lincoln Memorial and composited our CG Lincoln into it, then shot the whole piece around that environment as if a camera had really been there. Getting a believable Lincoln and a believable memorial in the same frame, lit and graded to hold together in stark black and white, was the entire job, and it’s the one image the series needed that no location shoot could have delivered.
