The science fiction drama series For All Mankind explores an alternate history of what would have happened if the space race never ended after the Soviet Union succeeded in the first crewed Moon landing ahead of the United States. And for each of its five seasons so far, a different decade of this alternate timeline has been featured. A spin-off series premiered earlier this year, Star City, which focuses on the Soviet Union and its space program, ultimately telling the story of the events that led to For All Mankind. Leading up to the final episode, Dorkaholics was invited to speak with cinematographer Brendan Uegama about his work on the series.
When asked what made him a dork growing up, Brendan highlighted his interest in film, science-fiction, and the franchise created by George Lucas.
“My love for movies, sci-fi, and Star Wars, I think. That got me into making movies in the first place, or [at least] interested in it. I was just like anyone else at that time, just loving Star Wars and playing video games and all that.”
When it came to crafting the visual foundation of Star City as a prequel spinoff to For All Mankind, Brendan focused on exploring what life in the Soviet Union was like and creating a world that felt true to that.
“When I got the script for it, I really saw that it was so much more than just like a space show or an alt history show. I really saw something that was about the characters and the kind of oppressive effect that the government had on them, and their struggles to try and achieve something great,” Brendan said. “I wanted to kind of explore what that could be and what life could have been like in the Soviet Union at that time, and how we could dive into it and create a world that we could photograph that felt authentic and truthful.”
Research, still photography, and even movies from around that time played a role in Brendan’s world-building of the series.
“I tried to draw as much inspiration as I could from what I found the Soviet Union to be like in that time,” Brendan shared. “I did a lot of research into still photography from that time, movies that were made in the Soviet Union around that time, and I took a lot of inspiration and took note of how things felt and what the textures felt like and looked like.”
That preliminary research would lead him to consider how to incorporate those elements into the series.
“I tried to think of how I could bring some of that forward into what our show was and it just came down to a lot of specifics with our lensing, specifics with our atmosphere, and how we decided to create the image on many different levels.”
Catch Brendan Uegama’s cinematography in all 8 episodes of Star City on Apple TV.
